My Best of Everything – Best Fantasy Books, Best Sci Fi, Best Historical Fiction, Favorite Authors, Music, Food to Eat while Reading . . . well, maybe not.

So my blues band, Gyre, is steamin’ hot. Not just for a prison band, but for any ass-kickin’ blues band. We lay it down. And our jazz group is so cool. We’re working on some Dave Weckl right now. All this fuels my scribbling. Come off a night of Bonamassa, Marcus King, John Scofield, Snarky Puppy . . . well, hells bells, but I can’t keep up with the pitter-patter of my muses’ sandals. Scribble, scribble, scratch, scribble – the ink flies, fingers cramp, life is good.

But, I gotta admit, this blogging gig is a whole diff bottle a’ pitch. I mean, in here, for me, writing over the years has always been a very private, insular experience. There are times I’m dying to share a passage or idea with another soul. Listen to their impressions, critiques, see if I’m really on to something or just over-caffeinated, and there’s no one. So, writing about this passionate experience that has seen me through these many years, much less writing on a regular basis, well . . . this week I’ve drawn blanks. So, I’m thinking maybe an exhaustive sharing of what inspires me may find some little common ground out there. Or not. But this is already beating hell outta the past few days’ mental abyss.

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For Best Fantasy Books:

-:- Lord of the Rings by Tolkien – This guy set the bar.
-:- Conan the Barbarian by Howard – A young teenager’s introduction to fantasy. And yeah, Arnold kinda ruined my whole visual and auditory construct of Conan.
-:- The White Luck Warrior by Bakker – I was coming up on the last of Erikson’s Book of the Malazan Fallen series and my daughter sent me the first of Bakker’s epic. I could put his writing into my lit. fiction column. An emotional life vest. From, Oh hells, a great read’s end is fast approaching to thank the gods great and small, salvation. Did I mention I love heavy, thick tomes of 1000 pages or more?
-:- And yeah, my Malazan novels. Captivated by Erikson’s take on magic/sorcery and elder races. Creates the same sense of a sweeping epochal epic.
-:- Harry Potter – Yes, I read them. And enjoyed them. Started out of curiosity which quickly turned into gratitude for what Rowling created. She brought so many millions of young readers into really, really great fantasy. And then these same readers grow older and continue to search out good fantasy and then science fiction and then . . . and the genres expand. But they love a good read. We all owe her a debt of gratitude.

My Best Sci Fi Books

-:- Yep, gotta start with Frank Herbert’s Dune, Children of Dune, Dune Messiah – anything I re-read a dozen times and more over the years speaks for itself . . . and probably says something about me as well.
-:- The Martian by Andy Weir – His first novel kept me rivetted as catastrophe after catastrophe found solution after solution. And Weir’s story of how he came to self-publish inspires me as a self-published author. I think this is one cool, cool read.
-:- Red Mars; Blue Mars; Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson – Before Weir, Stanley set the bar for space fiction. Another technical masterpiece.
-:- The Foundation series by Heinlien – These books, along with Dune, set me onto science fiction. Later, when I read Lonesome Dove by McMurtry, Blue Duck filled me with the same dread mystery as the Mule had in Foundation.
-:- Philip K. Dick – Ok, Jules Verne too. Our forebearers of science fiction.

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Best Historical Fiction Books

-:- Everything by Lady Dorothy Dunnett. Lady Dunnett wrote outside of historical fiction, but it was her Francis Crawford of Lymond series, and then her Niccolò series that drew me into the world of 15th and 16th century Europe. One review wrote: “Dunnett doesn’t transcend the genre, she epitomizes it . . . Salts it with wit and intelligence and serves it with style and elegance.” The historical accuracy into which she throws her fictional characters is uncanny and riveting.
-:- Captain and Commander, and the whole series that follows, by Patrick O’Brian – A must re-read for me over the years. Again, the historical accuracy and characters are amazing.
-:- The Sharpe’s series by Bernard Cornwell. Read and re-read. Sharpe’s Waterloo is as factual a day-by-day, blow-by-blow telling of the monumental battle as any military archeologist could want.

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My Favorite Lit. Fiction

This was tough. So, I applied my read and re-read litmus and came up with:
-:- East of Eden by Steinbeck – I have passage after passage from this novel copied away in my Best notebook. Favorite? “Her head was small and round and it held small round convictions.” And another: “It was the sweetness of his tongue and the tenderness of his soul. And just as there was a cleanness about his body, so there was a cleanness in his thinking.”
-:- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin – What’s to say? Just a beautiful novel, wonderful characters, and yeah, I love chic flicks and any movie or book that leaves me wet-eyed for joy or woe.
-:- Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James – How does she do it? I believe she allows Austin’s ghost to possess her. Both are in the afterlife now, and I’d love to be a haunting fly on the wall if the two’s spirits ever sit down for a chat.

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Music I live By

Too much here, so this is truly the highlights of the moment. Tomorrow I’ll think of a whole different set. So its by musicians I’m currently listening to and playing …
The Marcus King Band
Dave Weckl Band
The Derek Trucks Band
The Allman Brothers Band
Joe Bonamassa
Steely Dan
Snarky Puppy
John Scofield
Return to Forever
Miles Davis
Michel Camilo & Tomatito
Animals as Leaders
Dave Matthews
Little Feet
. . . I’ve missed some. Next time.

And that’s my Best Of list. So full of holes it’s Swiss. An impossible task to start with, still, it was easier and ended up more honest than my original idea of The Best Book. There is no, single best. Hell, there have been hundreds that touched me with wonder and humble gratitude for their authors.

We shall know each other in the intimacy of what we read.

And Earth wept . . .