Journaling January: preferred book genres

My prompt from gloss was: Preferred book genre, optionally with faves


This is an easy one, as my reading (outside of fanfiction) is probably 95% SF/F by volume. :D

I switch back and forth between the "SF" and the "F" sides of the genre - I'm generally in the mood for one or the other specifically, so I go through phases where most of my reading is science fiction, followed by phases where it's mostly fantasy.

Here are three recs from each, which I tried to keep to single works and short series!

Fantasy:
Eyes of the Basilisk by Patricia McKillip, for incredibly beautiful and lyrical prose
Dragon Bones & Dragon Blood by Patricia Briggs, for a really fun main character and love interest
Flesh and Spirit & Breath and Bone by Carl Berg, for interesting magic

Sci-Fi:
Chanur series (5 novels) by C.J. Cherryh, for great alien cultures and tense plotting
Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntire, for postapocalyptic medicine
Eifelheim by Michael Flynn, for aliens in medieval Germany and speculative physics

Journaling January: username

My last prompt was from edenfalling: There are many snakes in the world; why a krait in particular?

The short version of this is: Sometime in 2012 I unexpectedly needed a new username, but wanted to keep the same general style (the last one was a venomous snake, too), so I compiled a shortlist of good candidates and eventually picked this one.

It had a number of points in its favour:
* short
* no non-alphanumeric characters
* there are not only multiple species of snake called a krait, there are multiple species in multiple genera! Which opens up more options for icons
* I really really love blue animals, and some krait species are blue
* Rikki-tikki-tavi is a sentimental fave for me, and a krait is featured in it

All told, it's served me well! It's been my name for almost 9 years now - its 'anniversary' is next month - and I hope to keep it for many more. ♥