Just Be There Blog

For the Love of Books;

Authors and their stories I enjoy...Most of these are found in my Personal Library

Issac Asimov--The Robot Novels; Foundation and Empire Novels.

Robert A Heinlein--Nearly every SciFi book he's written

Arthur C. Clarke--Childhood's End, Rendevous With Rama, Prelude to Mars, and his short stories.

Gordon R. Dickson--His Dorsai Novels

James Blish--Cities in Flight Novels

Frank Herbert--Dune Novels

Andre Norton--Every Novel she's ever written (Although I don't have every one in my Library at this time)

Mercedes Lackey--Heralds of Valdemar Series

Anne McCaffrey--Pern Novels

Marion Zimmer Bradley--Darkover Novels

Stephen R. Donaldson--Thomas Covenant Series

R.A.Salvatore--Dark Elf Novels

Fred Saberhagen--The Lost Swords Novels

Juliet E. McKenna--The Einarinn Tales

Patricia Wrede--Magic and Malice; The Enchanted Forest

Matthew Woodring Stover--Heart of Bronze

Harry Harrison--Warriors of the Way; To The Stars
Harry Harrison also wrote: Deathworld, Captive Universe, and The Stainless Steel Rat. I love his short story anthology War With The Robots.

Stephen R. Lawhead--The Iron Lance A historical fiction based on one of the Crusades.


Other authors and genre I have and read.

I read historical fiction/romance a lot when I was younger.

One of those books include The Persian Boy by Mary Renault. About Alexander the Great through a eunuch slave's eyes.

Jean Auel's Earth's Children Series.

I have several Mary Stewart novels including her version of Camelot; Crystal Cave, The last Enchantment, The Hollow Hills, and This Wicked Day.

My Favorite Mark Twain book he wrote as Samuel Clemens, is titled My Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

My nonfiction library is extensive though I just use it for reference. Here are a few.

H.W.E. Saggs' Civilization Before Greece and Rome;

Tikva Frymer-Kensky's In The Wake Of The Goddess; Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth;

King Arthur: A Military History by Michael Holms;

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan;

The Druids by Peter Berresford Ellis;

Arms and Armour in Antiquity and the Middle Ages by Charles Boutell;

A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? 3500B.C.--1603 A.D by Simon Schama;

1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann;

Fighting Elite: Celtic Warrior 300 BC--AD 100 by Stephen Allen and Wayne Reynolds;

Native American Hunting and Fighting Skills by Colin Taylor;

Outdoor Survival Skills by Larry Dean Olsen (I have six wilderness survival books (including one Boy Scout Manual from the 1940's) though Mr. Olsen's book is the one I use the most.

I also have dictionaries of history and timeline references.

Then there's my library of Mythology and Legends around the world including, Russian, Celtic, Native American, Norse, Hawaiian, Greek, Roman, German, Egyptian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Bohemian, and India. My next buy will include African Myth and Legends.

As you can tell I have a fascination for world pre-history and ancient world history before the domination of the Major religions {Islam, Christian, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism). I love all of Human diversity before the melding of cultures. Unfortunately, Mankind as a whole never learns from history. If Mankind did we would have found a solution to our differences rather than resorting to war, genocide, matricide, patricide and all the other 'cides.

For other genres I tend to get books on tape, rather than sit and read.

Mystery/Suspense/Detective genres I have many John Grisham as well as Tom Clancy, John Sandford, Robin Cook, Jackie Collins,
Tony Hillerman, and Patricia Cornwell.

My collection of books on tape also include nonfiction, philosophy, biographies and autobiographys as well as some SciFi/Fantasy, classic collections (Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe and Louis L'Amour), adventure/action, and comedy. But by far, the majority of my library consists of my love of SciFi (first) and Fantasy (second).

I once had all the Harry Potter Books as Audio Books. Seems I only have #6 The Half Blood Prince and #7 The Deathly Hallows, now. Silly me, I let other people borrow over the years and the first five audio books never made it back to my Library. I'm not sure who has what, but I know they either are still enjoying the stories or have themselves loaned the audios out to others. So It's all good