The Website of Tim Stretton
Vance Integral Edition
A truly amazing enterprise to preserve the literary heritage of Jack Vance. Much of the useful content of this page has been removed, and a far better overview of the project can be found at:
Foreverness is invaluable for the tyro who wants to learn more about Vance's incredible oeuvre
— "Green Magic", one of his best short stories, is included on the site, as well as several first chapters; but it is also useful for the Vance scholar, including as it does the searchable "TOTALITY" database of all Vance's texts, and the Cosmopolis and Extant e-zines which consider all aspects of Vance's work and the Vance Integral Edition project.A site devoted to the joy of words, the more obscure the better. A delight!
A compendium of dictionaries with a useful 'reverse definition' feature.
Ralan's Webstravaganza
An invaluable guide to publishing for the aspiring SF/F writer
Names
Interested in names and onomastics? These sites are worth checking out:
Kate Monk's OnomastikonOther
Refreshingly practical NLP training
Practical NLP training for people who like to think for themselves - in the New Forest National Park and in Swanage on Dorset's Jurassic Coast.
If you haven't heard of NLP, my
website probably isn't the place to start; if you have, this is great
site run by great trainers.
My reading list posted here for
the past eighteen months has become rather stale. Instead, I
present a simple exercise: pick my ten favourite books. I have
adopted the convention that no author may feature more than once.
It was hard enough to pick ten, so I have not chosen to rank them within
that list. All ten are equal. They do not represent my idea
of the ten best books ever written, a project too worthy to be fun.
These are just ten books I have especially enjoyed. Some I have
read endless times (Lyonesse, Pride and Prejudice, Byzantium, Augustus);
some, two or three (My Cousin Rachel, The Miracle of Castel di Sangro,
The Persian Boy, The Quincunx, Master and Commander); and one that made
such an impression that I unhesitatingly count them it my favourites
despite a single read (The Time -Traveller's Wife). Interestingly, I find that five
out of the ten are historical novels (to take a very broad view of
Lyonesse); another one is real history, one is from the 19th century.
However, five were written within the last thirty years, so my tastes
are not irredeemably old-fashioned... Do you agree with my choices?
I'm sure you don't. What would you pick instead? 1. Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen 2. My Cousin Rachel
Daphne du Maurier 3. Augustus
Allan Massie 4. The Miracle of Castel di
Sangro Joe McGuinness 5. The Time-Traveller's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger 6. Byzantium
John Julius Norwich 7. Master and Commander
Patrick O'Brian 8. The Quincinx
Charles Palliser 9. The Persian Boy
Mary Renault 10. Lyonesse
Jack Vance Honourable mentions go to
Bleak House (Charles Dickens), The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler), LA
Confidential (James Ellroy), Beyond a Boundary (CLR James), The War
Hound and the World's Pain (Michael Moorcock), The Woman in White (Wilkie
Collins), Tender is the Night (F Scott Fitzgerald), Jane Eyre (Charlotte
Bronte), Inversions (Iain M Banks), Girl with a Pearl Earring (Tracy
Chevalier), Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis), Midnight's Children (Salman
Rushdie), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark), Buddenbrooks
(Thomas Mann), Point Blank (Richard Stark)
:
:Ten Great Books — March 2006