Strong women

I backdated this entry as it is not very interesting and only a way of keeping track of what non-uni books I've been reading.

56.

A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett.
Granny Weatherwax is my favourite character in the entire series. Nothing, not even my love for Vimes and Vetinari, can beat my love for this character. She is one of my main reason why I love Terry Pratchett so much.

55.

I, Claudius, Robert von Ranke-Graves.
I read the German edition. Ranke-Graves actually seems to have supervised the translation - which shortened the two volumes of the original into one slim volume. I need to get hold of the originals some time, as I keep wondering what on earth they could have thought so unimportant that they chopped it down so much. 
Even though I love Claudius, his character's development and story, my favourite character and reason for reading this is Livia - I absolutely love reading about her. She is evil, scheming, cold and calculating - and I love her. In spite of what she did to the other characters, I can't help feeling that she deserves becoming a goddess at the end of the book.

54.

Breakfast with Scot, by Michael Downing.
I absolutely adored this book. The relationship between the two parents is interesting and natural, Scot is absolutely adorable and his deviant gender expression is not overdone and interesting. Thoroughly entertaining and heartwarming.

Nanowrimo 2008

Congratulations to all of you who made it!!

I gave up last Thursday:


It was clear that I'd probably not manage 50k this month, what with the thesis and papers and whatnot, but I loved writing and working on m story. I am going to continue that, it was fun. I would not show the thing to anyone, it's not good enough for that, I think, but it's nice to have something to tinker with again. I am also rather proud of my word count, considering what has been going on and I am seriously considering joining the  National Novel Writing Year 2009, a continuation of the NaNoWriMo madness by other means. There is also a pretty dead LJ community: nanowriye.

The idea is very appealing, although I couldn't say with what wordcount I'd challenge myself. Especially given the fact that I'll be officially in my exam phase for nine months as of next February and anything non-exam related will be pretty much doomed during that time.

Fantasy books with female heroines? British fantasy books with female heroines?

I have a question for my fellow Fantasy readers out there (I'm looking especially at you, fourthage ), do you happen to know any (recent) British (high/epic/heroic/parallel world) Fantasy books which have been fairly popular which have a female heroine?
Preferably written by a female writer?

Crocky asked me for suggestions, but all I could come up with were mumbled suggestions along the lines of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Tamora Pierce, neither of who are British, and Susan Cooper, whom I love to pieces, but whose Jane Drew does not make her a good example because the other characters are all male.

The only real example I could think of was Jill Murphy, whose books were fairly popular but whose target audience is a good deal younger than the ones Crocky'd need (the books she's going to examine are Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, The Bartimaeus Trilogy).

Some  help?