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What do you want on the shelves?


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Are there any ideas you can give to young authors about what YOU would like to see on the shelves? Any genre that you feel is at it's weakest and needs something new? Do you have the perfect book in your mind that has not yet graced the bookstores? Are you sick and tired of the same thing? Well lets hear your opinions!

 

I am an open book! :)

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I'd like to see more ghost stories. My local bookstore have very few and the ones they have aren't that scary. I want to read something that makes me feel the way the Goosebumps books made me feel when I read them as a child - scared out of my wits. But perhaps vampires are more in vogue these days than ghosts... :)

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At present I'm enjoying the sci-fi/fantasy especially with strong women roles but it would be nice to see less of the leather clad women and those Barbie types who accidentally get themselves into an adventure whilst still worrying about the latest fashion.

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I would like to see some serious alternate fiction.

 

I have always enjoyed wondering about what the course of history would have been if, for example:

 

Had Hitler been killed in the attempt on his life.

Had Kennedy NOT been killed in the attempt on his life.

Had vaccinations or cures for smallpox, polio, or other diseases been impossible.

etc, etc, etc

 

Harry Turtledove has proven to the the best at this in my opinion but I think there is room for others in this genre.

 

Serious work and story lines only, not silliness.

 

dan :)

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Hello,

 

I would love to read some true inspiring stories, be it love story, family drama or business house related, but there should be some element of reality so i can relate with them.

 

 

 

Regards,

sarah_9

Edited by Janet
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I'd like to see more ghost stories. My local bookstore have very few and the ones they have aren't that scary. I want to read something that makes me feel the way the Goosebumps books made me feel when I read them as a child - scared out of my wits. But perhaps vampires are more in vogue these days than ghosts... :)

 

I agree with the need for more ghost stories. They seems to be out of fashion at the moment :) I'd like to see more!

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Genres I'd definitely like to see more of include:

 

Philosophical novels, such as Lucy Eyre's brilliant "If Minds Had Toes" (in which a 15yr old chip-shop worker finds himself entangled in a bet between Socrates and Wittgenstein re: does wisdom equal happiness?).

 

Clever books straddling the boundaries between fantasy, myth and gothic such as Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere".

 

Books about the adventures of reading, such as Walter Moers' "The City of Dreaming Books".

 

Stories with strong female leads where strong doesn't mean "hacks people in half in a bikini", but "intelligent, resourceful, inspirational".

 

Hope that helps.

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  • 11 months later...

I was actually trying to find a good ghost story recently! And I failed, but I also didn't look too awful hard, as I have a list of things I want to read...

 

Does anyone have a good, scary recommendation for a ghost story? Or a thread link for me to follow??

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There is a definite need for a revamp of the "chick lit" genre. I think I picked up a Marian Keyes book once because it came free with a magazine, read the first couple of pages and already knew what the whole book would be about. It's just not worth reading them. Middle-class fashionistas are not the only type of woman, nor do they even represent the average young woman today. Personally I'd like to see the alleged intelligence and wit accredited to the heroines of chicklit applied to a more reasonable, stronger and less man- and material-driven woman. A woman that thinks about more than shopping, for example, and works hard for reasons other than "to afford that new pair of Manolo Blahnik's."

 

Also, the ghost stories is a great suggestion. I'm currently reading Frankenstein and the thing which drew me to it is that I've never really read an horror novel. A throw-back to the 19th century gothic novel, for example, would be fantastic.

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Nienna, I agree, and I think there are some women out there writing that sort of chick-lit. I would definitely recommend you try Anna McPartlin, and I think The Shoe Queen by Anna Davis (don't be put of by the title, there's more to it than it appears!) would also fit the bill.

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Agreed on both counts, Nienna - much as I love pink and glittery things, I don't particularly want to read pink and glittery books about a lifestyle I couldn't be less interested in; and, if a revival of Frankeinstein-esque freaky fiction happened, I'd be a very happy bunny indeed.

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More decent original fantasy.. most fantasy books seem to follow Tolkien's example.. an ancient evil arises again, a fellowship :D of people have to make a long and hard journey to counter it and save the world, there are some losses along the way.. well you know what I mean.

 

Some sci-fi that's not a space-opera sort of thing.

 

But most of all, since I love these type of books but they are rare, and decent ones most of all, some proper post-apocalyptic books. And I don't mean the type where the world has resorted back to medieval society really, those are plenty.. that's when you sort of get fantasy books. No, I mean the first few years after the apocalyps, the first few centuries. And I like details about the apocalyps, not some general disaster that happened, without more info.. I like the science to be good too, if you know what I mean. I hate reading books where the science is so general or flawed. :D

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More decent original fantasy.. most fantasy books seem to follow Tolkien's example.. an ancient evil arises again, a fellowship :D of people have to make a long and hard journey to counter it and save the world, there are some losses along the way.. well you know what I mean.

 

Yeah, this is pretty much what put me off the fantasy genre. I loved loved loooovveedd LOTR and The Hobbit. I read them when I was about 12 or 13 and they were really what got me into reading. After that I looked into other fantasy books but they all seemed to just follow the trend, especially The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. People tell me the series ends up a lot different to LOTR but my god, if ever there was a Tolkien carbon copy it is that book. Terry Pratchett is a good refuse if you enjoy fantasy and Philip Pullman is the first truly original fantasy writer I have come across since Tolkien. His Dark Materials trilogy is absolutely wonderful - one of the best fantasy writers I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Apart from that, though, it is a fairly stagnant genre! :S

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Well there's good and original fantasy out there, you just have to look really hard. Or you have series that the writer intended to be LotR-like.. like some books in the Wheel of Time series. Terry Pratchett writes humoristic fantasy right? That's what has kept me from reading any of his books, I don't like my books to be too funny if you know what I mean.. I like books that make me laugh or smile incidentally of course, but the bits and pieces I have read about TP make me think I won't enjoy those books. I like heavy, dark and intense fantasy. :D Philip Pullman is good I agree, only read the first in the series so far, when I finished that years ago the later parts hadn't been released or translated yet (just checked, yeah can be not released, read it somewhere in my teens and the Subtle Knife was released in 1997, I was 15 then). They're on my to-read list. Though the film the Golden Compass made sure I didn't feel like reading it for a while. Didn't particularly like the film. :D

 

 

Ehh back on topic. Who was it that said alternate realities? I like that too, alternate history etc. Which is what I like too in the Kushiel's Dart series.. it's almost our own world, only not. But we could use some more alternate history novels.

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