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Sunday 22 April 2007

To My Secret Admirer (Still) ...

Anonymous said..
*blush* a post dedicated to me? I must say I am honored. Yet the fact that I must remain a secret to admire, must mean holding back my true identity.. for now! James Rollins' Black Order is available from the national library - you might want to borrow it rather than rent rent rent LOL :) I'd strongly recommend the Pendergast series.. It's like Sherlock Holmes on speed - exciting and one of those books you do NOT want to read before you go to sleep, or you'll NEVER sleep until you've finished it! In fact, most of the books are available from the national library too! (No, I do not work for them!) For a very VERY different take on Rollins, you have to try his fantasy series (W'itch series) or his latest (which has only one book) Shadow Fall. Beware though - the themes are very dark and can be horrific (the visual images are sometimes shocking)... they are very different from his thrillers although they're still page turners. He writes under a pen name "James Clemens" and yes, you can find the books in the NLB. Solo books by Preston and Child are hit and miss.. I would start with the Pendergast ones. The Relic movie should be burned to ashes for its very poor adaptation!
A Secret Admirer (still)
ps. Cautionary note - these books can severely distract you from your studies!LOL
22 April 2007 16:56

Woo hoo! That's a long comment from you, Secret Admirer. Hmm...another clue to who you might be. Someone very free. Hahaha. Only joking. I hope you don't mind that I am responding to you here. I am hoping I can get others interested in reading James Rollins and others. I think they are pretty awesome authors.

Ok, maybe I will go check out the Pendergast series. Not sure from the NLB though. It has been ages since I last stepped into NLB. I think it was about the same time I discovered Sunny that I stopped going to NLB. Hahaha. Reason being, I sometimes like to keep the book if it really grabs my attention. Well, I can't do that with books from NLB now, can I?! Hahaha. The Relic was really a bad adaptation?! No wonder, I felt things were missing after watching the movie. Hmm...now I can't wait to get my hands on The Relic book.

James Rollins writes fantasy too?! I didn't know! Thanks for letting me know. I will keep an eye out for his Wit'ch series. Don't worry about the dark and at times, horrific themes. I have a strong stomach so there will have no problem reading such themes. Hahaha. By the way, I am also a very visual person so all the more, I am going to enjoy the books. Hahaha.

Talk about fantasy, hmm...that didn't sound quite right, especially talking to my "secret admirer"?! HAHAHA. Sorry about my whacky sense of humour. I meant, talk about reading fantasy, have you read David Eddings before? He's not too bad. I enjoyed reading The Elenium series (3 books) and The Tamuli series (3 books). I gave up on The Belgariad series because there were too many books and I think I was preparing for one of the high-stakes exams then.

Sherlock Holmes is one of my all time favourites for mystery/ detective stories! If you enjoy reading Sir Arthur C. Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, try Laurie King. Her Mary Russell series is good, along the line of Sir Doyle. She, very cleverly, writes about Mary Russell as an equal to Sherlock Holmes in solving mysteries. Go read the series if you have the time.

Thanks for the cautionary note too. But a bit late cos my appetite for the books have been whetted! Hahaha. Don't worry, I will be writing doubly fast from now on. Hahaha.

PS. Since you mentioned NLB, you can't be one of my overseas friends. So you have just helped me to narrow the list down to friends in Singapore. HAHAHA.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

David Edding's Belgariad is the classic story for him; the others are not as well written in my opinion. But his style of writing and plot tends to become repetitive after a while (eg his Younger Gods series) - acerbic humour, 'hero' being a young kid with fantastic powers able to save the world etc. After a while, it becomes.. boring LOL.

A more mature fantasy series, and one I'm reading (struggling!) to read is George R R Martin's Fire and Ice series. Huge books each one of them, and every person (bad AND GOOD) are subject to the whim of Martin as to whether they live or die. Put it this way - I thought some good characters that I really like will last through the series. He killed them off in the first 2-3 books! And it's epic in a Tolkienesque way too, with not a lot of magic thrown in (so none of that "mysterious ancient magic spell unheard of except at one point in the 5 books suddenly comes to save the day in the final book"). In fact, Martin's book requires the appendix which lists all the major and minor characters (numbering hundreds) that one gets lost very quickly when it comes to names of non-main characters! Still, a very good read!

Another fantasy series you can probably find in Sunny - Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders series is great :)

Now explain something to me, dear hweiming - why 'buy' from Sunny? You pay almost the same price if you'd bought them from Borders or Kinokuniya, yet the books are not new, esp if you decide to keep them! If you borrow from the library, you pay a small charge for inter-library transfer (if it's not in the library near you) and that's all. Read it and if you like it, wait for those 20-30% discount offers from Border/Kinokuniya and get a brand new book. No?

(Besides, James Clemens books are not available in Sunny I'll bet, nor in Borders or Kinokuniya.. only the NLB has them!)

Your Bookworm Secret Admirer

hweiming said...

Again, I've replied your question via my post. :)