Introductions/Re-introductions

[rowana.livejournal.com]

Sounis turned two years old at some point this week. It's been two years since we first started generating discussion about Megan's books, (amongst other things), and in that time we've gained over 200 members, discussed almost every aspect of the books, (though I'm sure we'll manage to find more to rummage through), and generated an awful lot of crack.

To mark the occasion, I thought it might be nice to get to know everyone a little better. So, whether you're a shy lurker, could simply never think of something to say, have only commented a few times or post in every thread and never leave chatzy, introduce, (or re-introduce) yourself in a comment. You can talk about anything - where you found the books, why you like them, how you found Sounis, what else you like to read, or who your favourite character is and why. :)

Comments

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

Hello!

My name is Jade. I'm a sophomore in college in the United States, and I have been reading The Queen of Attolia since I was thirteen years old and randomly picked it up off the shelf because I needed a book to review for the school newspaper. (I still have that original review.) I discovered The Thief after that, and reread QoA after that, and suddenly found myself hooked.

When I discovered KoA was coming out, I screamed and ran around the house.

I found Sounis because I joined LJ at the same time as my best friend (mainly because I convinced her to do it--I discovered Avatar: The Last Airbender, and then LJ, and told her to follow me so I wouldn't be alone XD), and she mentioned this community in passing, and I went OMG WUT and sought it out. I tentatively wandered into Chatzy (not knowing what I would find--but I promise guys, it's really welcoming!) and ended up having two pages of discussion with Willow about Star Wars books. So I figured I'd fit in.

And then, somehow, less than three months into my stay here, I was having a tragic love affair with Costis (which, I am happy to say, ended on a positive note and is still going strong today) and having the time of my life with people I never would've met in any other way, and I'm incredibly grateful that this community exists.

Hm...I like Star Wars, and fantasy. Literature in general, though I don't always just pick books off the generic fiction shelf. I'm an English and Philosophy major, which I means that, for some reason, I enjoy reading tortuously long and complicated texts and spending hours analyzing them for the brief-lived feeling of accomplishment when I finally attain enlightenment...until I pick up the next book.

Attolia is my favorite character, hands-down. She was the first one to strike a chord with me when I read QoA and her story--the complications of her life, how much she's had to hide away--gets to me every time. I adore her (and fear her, too--she is always "Attolia" to me. I daren't get familiar with her and call her Irene, because she's Attolia. Yes, I have strange quirks like that XD).

OKAY I'LL STOP TALKING NOW (I love to talk, too).

*can't wait to see what everyone else says*

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

*waves*

I got to run around Dayton with Megan and Checkers and Bear not too long ago, pretending to be a librarian. It was just about the most fun EVAH.

and I really really love the Japanese editions of these books, even though I can't read any parts of them.

... Hi?

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

Eerm, guess I'll start... just hope I don't say too much.

So I joined... just a couple months ago? Seems longer than that. Hmm. Yes, well, Hi. I'm Rosalee LuAnn... call me Rose or Rosie. (Rosa is not a nickname for Rosalee. Sorry. ;-) I post fairly often and I like to annoy the people who hang around in Chatzy by being oblivious and ranting about how AWFUL acrylic paints are. ;)

How I found the books... I THINK it was Readerville.com, but I'm not entirely sure. You see, when I'm on the computer and I see a book that looks interesting, I just copy and paste the title and author, (and sometimes the paragraph describing it, so I know why it sounded interesting) into my TBR list Word Document. (TBR, for those who don't know, stands for To Be Read. Its a handy little acronym I picked up from the folks over at Readerville. The idea to paste recommended books all into one document also came from Readerville.)

Anyway...The Thief got pasted into my TBR document a few times. (I can't remember all the titles on there, so repeats happen fairly often.) So, I got it from the library and read it. Loved it, of course. Now, heres the somewhat embarassing part... I read QoA when I was in the middle of a Readers Slump. (Writers get writers block, Readers get Readers Slump.) I read it at a time when I was just Depressed About Life, and Gen being Depressed About Life didn't help me at all. I liked it, but... I admit that the first time I read it, Gen & Attolia just didn't quite work for me. And I lost the copy I checked out from the library... and I NEVER lose library books. So... I wasn't that anxious to read KoA. And I had to find QoA to turn it into the library...

That was last spring... around May, I think.

A couple months pass... its summer. Time for a library trip. I go through the TBR list looking for books that Need To Be Read. I saw KoA... Oh, yeah. I started that series in the spring. I might as well finish it.

I got KoA from the library. Read it in one sitting. I was absolutely blown away. Loved it, loved it, loved it. Read it three times in a row in less than three days. Got Thief and QoA from the library and loved them even more the second, third, fourth (etc.) times around.




And that was MUCH longer than it was supposed to be, so I'll sup myself up now.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

I knew this was going to happen. I knew I was going to post a long reintroduction, and then everyone else would post like two lines about them.

*stalks off to sulk in the corner with her John Green shirt for company*

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

Hey, we can make a long introduction club, because mine was trying to be a novel and I was trying not to let it have it's way. ;)

Re: ... Hi?

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

OO OO OO this sounds like a fun idea.

The ~*~*~Long Introduction Club~*~*~
Officers: Rosie and Jade, Co-Founders Extraordinaire, Queens of t3h Non-Brevity.

Requirements to join: Write a Long Introduction for Yourself on This Thread (http://community.livejournal.com/sounis/147478.html). Note: Please do not try to get flashy and go over the LJ comment box word limit or something. That might be viewed as attempting to usurp the Co-Founders' Awesomeness. Which is wrong. Like, um, duh.

hm...I'm thinking we need some sparkles for the club name. What do you think? XD

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

I like the sparkles. But all good club officers need special names. Could I be the Most Very Honoured Head Person as well as Co-Founder, etc? It would make me feel special. Eerm, I mean... Most-Very-Honoured.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

Okayz! I didn't know what title you wanted. Also, this now gives me free reign to make one up for myself. XD

So now!

The <~*~*~Long Introduction Club~*~*~
Officers: Rosie, Co-Founder Extraordinaire, Queen of t3h Non-Brevity, Most-Very-Honoured Head Person
Jade, Co-Founder Extraordinaire, Queen of t3h Non-Brevity, Supreme Dictator of Word Counts As Long As You Ignore That Pesky NaNo Word Count Thing

[karatelunch.livejournal.com]

Super-lurky lurker! I have made perhaps two posts in this community, and I rarely comment.

My name is Nina, and I just turned 18. I read TT for the first time when I was 11; it wasn't until I picked up QoA the following year that I fell hopelessly in love with these characters. QoA and Garth Nix's Sabriel were the books that lived in my backpack during middle school.

I found Sounis because I emailed Megan after I got my hands on KoA and told her (with stilted fangirl gushing and much verbal genuflection) everything in the paragraph above. Not only did she reply promptly (!), she informed me that I was just the type of person she'd written the books for (!!!!!!!). She also mentioned that there was a livejournal community called Sounis that I might want to check out, and I was introduced to lurkdom thereof.

I read everything, ever, all over, voraciously! I am currently on a mission to devour every book about the Romanovs, fiction and non-fiction, that has ever been written.

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

Yay for de-lurking!
You e-mailed Megan? And she replied? Coolness. I'm one of those timid people who can never e-mail their favorite authors because... well, what if they think I'm an idiot? Or what if I get my hopes up and... they never reply? What if, what if, what if. ;) I commented on Robin McKinleys LJ a couple weeks ago... it took serious willpower to do that... AND SHE REPILED. I FELT SO SPECIAL.

Ok, I'll be quiet now. Being a Co-Founder of the Long Introduction Club doesn't mean that I have to write long, random, useless comments on EVERYthing. I think.

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

*HUGS*

but Jade, you KNOW I'm the shy, quiet type with very little to say in a public forum.

[kilerkki.livejournal.com]

Robin McKinley has an LJ? WHERE HAVE I BEEN?

I wrote McKinley a fan-letter when I was 12 or 13. She replied. She even read and commented on the excerpt of my original writing which I'd included--though she said she felt she couldn't be too encouraging about it. I look back at that now and wonder how she could force herself to be even that polite. (It was horrendous.)

So, yeah. Authors who interact with their fans = awesome.

[sandtree.livejournal.com]

I shall re-introduce myself!

My name is Alison. I live in Ontario, Canada. I'm 19-years-old, and currently embarking upon my first year of university. I'm taking my courses through a distance program right now, but I plan on transferring to a traditional university once I'm finished with them at the end of March. I'm majoring in History, but thinking about adding English and Creative Writing, so I'll possibly be double majoring. I haven't decided whether I'm that crazy or not yet.

Anyway, I first discovered the books way back in 2006, when I was looking for something to read on the train. I saw King of Attolia, and thought it sounded awesome, but for some reason didn't buy it. I went home, found out that it was the third in a series, and went back and bought The Thief and QoA. I'm glad I decided to read them in order! And I've been hooked ever since.

I'm also a writer. One day I hope to publish books for young adults, or maybe historical fiction, or, uh, anything else I feel like writing.

I love MWT's books for so many reasons, but a few of them are: the characterisation. I'm a sucker for great characters, and hers are so amazing; political intrigue! Gotta love it; as a history nerd, I appreciate all the references and homages to historical things; and mostly, the incredible plotting. There are so many twists and turns, and she always manages to surprise me, and I love that. And, of course, the writing is spectacular. Seriously, I could go on for hours about all the things I love in these books... that's why I'm in this community!

[kilerkki.livejournal.com]

Yo!

I go by Ki (short for Kilerkki, behind which there is a very long story) here on the Interwebs, and I ran into The Thief long before I knew anything about the Net at all. Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but I wasn't any older than 14. I checked it out of the middle-school library three or four times (and I think I was the only one to read it, which makes me sad), and then promptly forgot all about it. I was seventeen, and on vacation, when I ran into Queen of Attolia in a random bookstore visit. The cover attracted me first, I think; it was the one with Gen and Attolia in the boat, and though I think QoA has had some pretty awesome covers in its run, that one is still my favorite. (Although the new cover is much creepier.)

Anyway, I devoured QoA and then took it home for my mother and sisters to devour it in turn. My little sister forced me to leave it, and my copy of Thief, at home when I went away to college--but in return, for my 21st birthday, she bought me an autographed hardcover of King of Attolia. I had no idea there was even going to be a third book. I read the first half and was puzzled. Then I read the second half, finally clued in, and squealed. Then I went online and found sounis. And then I started lurking, dropping in once in a while to make a fool of myself through babbling. (I also started work on an Attolia/Vorkosigan crossover (http://kilerkki.livejournal.com/193926.html#cutid1) of which I will some day write more.)

Anyway. Um. I'll try to tie this up. I'm now 22 and trying to juggle my senior year of college, law school applications, and a novel-in-the-making. I study English Language, mostly so I can geek out about grammar, and I work as a TA for a Civilization class called "The Pen and the Sword," in which I would argue that we should read the Attolia books if they counted as an original source. (Mostly we read Homer and Thucydides and Aristophanes and Plato). Right now I should be either translating The Dream of the Rood or working on my book, but I'm rereading QoA instead and trying to figure out when Attolia first began to love Eugenides. Even if she didn't realize it at the time.

[fabricalchemist.livejournal.com]

I'm bear, and you all know that. I cause lots of mischief.

*laughs at Jade's consternation, but loves her surly Franco icon*

[pcw-rcw.livejournal.com]

We're Perri and Richard. We've been members of sounis for a month or so. We've commented here once or twice; more often in the comm's sister site, queensthief_fic [where we met two neat people who have become members of our flist!]. We heard about KoA, in particular and Eugenides in general, from a member of one of our LJ-comms, the_mirador. We got The Thief out of the public library since it was the first [one of us being a bit compulsive that way...], but hadn't gotten more than a chapter or two into it going out and getting all three. They're wonderful! We especially love Eugenides' humor and MWT's fantastic plotting and characterization. We've been talking the books up wherever we can and have hopefully gotten at least a few people to try reading the books. One of the things that we always tell people is that the YA label is misleading, that in these books this just means that there are no overt sex scenes or graphic, gratuitous violence. Otherwise the books can hold any adult's attention [even those past 'young', as we are]. But we're 'preaching to the converted' here, of course.

We love the analytical way that the books are discussed in sounis, as well as the info presented about things such as the recent convention appearance by MWT and what the Japanese versions of the books look like.

As for us personally, Perri is a chemist who retired [early!] from teaching pharmaceutical chemistry to pharmacy students at one of the Big Ten universities. Richard has degrees in Medieval Studies and in Library Science. He works as a librarian at the same university. Finally, as we say in our Profile, we have three cats and tens of thousands of books.

Is this long enough? We can go on...

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

robinmckinley

I told her what a squee was. And asked her about the ambiguity of the ending of Sunshine. And she answered. It was awesome. It's really funny, because a few years ago she scared the crap out of me with her "Bitch from Hell FAQ" section on her website. But having read her blog, I'm still a little intimidated, but I also get a sense that she really is a nice person--just one with very clearly defined boundaries, which is a good thing to have when you're fairly famous.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

I'm curious: What type of person did she say you were?

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

Do I espy some Sarah Monette fans? :-)

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

ah-hahaha. After the Sophos contest, I try to have a Franco icon in every batch. That one is particularly surly. ♥

[(Anonymous)]

I'm Feir Dearig (which should be spelled Fear Dearg but I like my spelling better). I'm very shy (which is why I don't post much personal stuff/have a LJ). But I love these books, and I enjoy all the entertaining discussion and good book recommendations on (in?) this community.

~Feir Dearig

[hikari-cyhan.livejournal.com]

D: That is a filthy lie! You told me you don't call her Irene because you don't like the name!

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

...sure. *koffkoffs*

[hikari-cyhan.livejournal.com]

Sup, everybody! I'm Hikki or Kari. I've been on LJ for, uh...six years? Seven? I can't remember, and I can't be bothered to check. Yeah. I'm a freshman in college, about to declare myself as an English major. YA lit is my passion and my life. I also said that about anime four years ago, when I was a weaboo.

I was introduced to the books by Jadeykins, who said, "OMGWTFBBQREADTHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE!!!!!!!!!!!!" So on one of my (many) trips to Borders, I picked them up and didn't read them for about two or three months. Then I read them and was like, "Um, WOW."

What else is there to say? I love books, Avatar, video games, costuming, period dress, and long, romantic walks on the beach. Also, I wish my life were a musical.