Yesterday, I meant to write about urban fantasy versus supernatural fantasy, but instead went off on a tangent about why I stopped reading epic fantasy. (I also think it’s interesting that both Erin and I have made a similar shift in reading.)

So as I’ve said, I’ve been reading much more supernatural and urban fantasy, but–for me at least–there is a distinction between the two.

When I think of urban fantasy I think first and foremost of Charles de Lint and then Nina Kiriki Hoffman. In most of his writing, there is magic in the world, and it has always been there, but most people remain unaware of the magical world, or unable to sense/interact with the magical world. And sometimes even those who do see magic don’t always believe what they’re seeing.

Supernatural fantasy (at least for my classification), tends to focus on magical creatures or individuals with magical talents living in the modern world. That world may or may not be aware of these supernatural beings, but those beings have a strong influence on the world. A big theme seems to be either supernatural beings coming out of the closet or the world at large changed by supernatural beings.

It also tends to be more open to genre bending and combining. I love mysteries, and supernatural fantasy has a lot of series that are both fantasy and mystery. (Simon R. Green, Jim Butcher, and Kat Richardson all do this extremely well.) This combination expands the traditional mystery, not only because the detective or investigator has extra abilities, but because you then get to look at the idea of what constitutes a crime when the victim is undead, or when the battle for pack leader involves a fight to the death?

However, supernatural fantasy also tends to have a fair amount of boinking. There is often a strong romantic and/or sexual element. These supernatural or magical creatures are either super sexy or use their magical powers to make themselves super sexy. That’s my least favorite part of supernatural fantasy. I just don’t care to learn the details of supernatural noogie and how much hawter it is than regular human to human boinking.

I’m not saying they’re badly written sex scenes, I’m just saying I’d rather have more world building than boinking.

And that is one thing the good supernatural fantasy books tend to do very well, they have excellent world building, and have taken our world and twisted it just enough that it’s close to our world, but not quite the same, but those small differences are very well done.

But both types of fantasy are very good, and I’ve been enjoying reading both kinds, although supernatural fantasy is way more common right now. Will you find these distinctions in a book store? Unlikely. I’ve seen the term paranormal fantasy bandied about, but it seems to be used primarily for fantasy books with a lot of boinking. What if you want one and not the other? My recommendation is to check the covers. Sexy women (or men) on the cover tend to designate a fair amount of boinking. But it’s not a hard and fast rule (Charlaine Harris‘ Sookie Stackhouse books are an exception, although I’ve noticed that the reissues are going for the sexy covers).

And you can always check my reviews. I do try to note if there is a large amount of boinking in a book.

I’ve been reading a lot of supernatural and urban fantasy recently.

There are several reasons for this. First and foremost seems to be because unlike other types of fantasy, supernatural fantasy seems to be written more like mysteries. There is often an overarching story, but each book has a plot that begins and ends within the book. We may learn more about the character’s past or talents or secret or whatever, but the story arc is concluded.

Additionally, most supernatural and urban fantasy books are written so that you can start at any book in the series. Sure, there’s a past, and it’s nice to know the past, but you aren’t doomed to be lost if you miss the first (or second or third) book in the series. And when a new book comes out, you don’t have to reread every other book in the series.

Which is why I have all but stopped reading epic fantasy.

I like being able to pick up a book, read that book, and then go onto something else. I am not in the mood to pick up an eight hundred page tome that is the first book in what was supposed to be a trilogy but has stretched out to to five… seven… ten… whatever books. The idea of having to read hundreds of thousands of pages is just overwhelming right now. Not that I haven’t read hundreds of thousands of pages of supernatural fantasy and mystery, I just don’t have to read them all at once. I can read some Carrie Vaughn and then switch to Andrea Camilleri and then read something completely different.

So sorry epic fantasy.

I am over you.

Of course this wasn’t at all what I meant to write about when I started. What I wanted to write about was the difference between urban fantasy and supernatural fantasy.

Maybe next time.

Commentary on the Technology Poll here, including “other” if you chose it.

Why is it that the past several books I’ve read have been horribly depressing?

I’d been saving the last Donna Leon Guiod Brunetti book to read, since it was the last currently published in paperback. I was feeling down today, so I picked up Suffer the Little Children to read, and it’s completely depressing.

That’s it, I’m showering and going to bed. This is more than enough for one day.

tricoteuse
? noun (pl. pronounced same)
one of a number of women who sat and knitted while attending public executions during the French Revolution. origin French, from tricoter ?to knit?.

That’s very disconcerting that there’s a specific word for that.

Books went out today. So if you’re a recipient, keep an eye out.

I still, however, have plenty of books in the basement, so if you want more, here’s what’s left:
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Found some more books to add to the great book giveaway. And Michael decided to add to the pile.
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Is still going on!

Fantasy
Fantasy Series
Supernatural Fantasy
Mystery

Taken books are crossed out, but there are still more books there than I want to take to the used bookstore!

So last night after dinner, I proceeded to rebuild my database. I dumped everything into Access, and created new tables from there. Why Access? Because I can *see* what is happening in Access, whereas in MySQL I have to take extra steps to see my results. The rebuilding wasn’t really as bad as I thought it would be, as I only needed relatively simple Access queries to manipulate my data.

From there, I uploaded the tables into MySQL, and proceeded to rebuild my php files to query the database.

With a minimum amount of bickering and quibbling, Michael and I were able to do that, although he kept trying to make one query much harder than it needed to be. Needless to say, by the time we finished up last night it was past my bedtime, which is why I didn’t have a post ready for this morning.

But the important thing is the new database is up and all public queries are working.

Now I just have to rebuild the administrative back end to allow me to add, edit, and delete books from the database. Hopefully now that the tables have better relationships, the rebuilding will be easier to do.

Hopefully.

So, many years ago, what is now my on-line book database started out life as a simple Excel workbook.

When I had to learn MS Access several years ago, I took that Excel file, and tried to convert it into an Access file. It worked… ok. But at least got me comfortable with the basics of Access.

A year or so later I started working with the woman who was helping me re-write our Access classes, and as an exercise she helped me again convert my Excel file into an Access database, and this time I had a better idea of what I was going, and built queries and life was seemingly good.

Well, when I wanted to learn MySQL, I took that Access database and imported it into MySQL, and that’s how my book database began. I’ve used that database to learn to write queries of various types, and all kinds of PHP/MySQL manipulations. And I’ve gone on to write other databases since then.

Well, I’ve been tying to learn more of MySQL, and been playing with my database and been running into a LOT of trouble. It’s been frustrating, but I’ve mostly been able to get things to work. And as a matter of course the more I learn the more I discover that I should have done things differently, and gone back and changed this in light of this.

Well, yesterday I had a problem I couldn’t figure out, so I had Michael look at it. He was playing with the queries, and then asked to look at the database structure. Since he was driving, I was looking at everything from a different angle, and I suddenly realized the whole damned database had been set up wrong.

That’s right. Instead of having foreign keys liking the databases together, I repeated every bit of data in multiple tables.

(deep breath)

So I’ve dumped the entire thing back into Access, and I’m going to see if I can actually repair the damage.

Wish me luck.

I’ve spent the last month working on my PHP/MySQL skills.

Now I fully admit I’m not a master of the subject, but I’ve managed to beat my book database into submission.

There are still things I want to learn to do, such as making changes to multiple selected records, but I’m pretty sure I’ll eventually figure it out.

Meanwhile, I invite you to peruse my library database, and to make suggestions as to improvements. (Yes, I need to eventually make a single search form that includes genre with the other fields or allows you to select multiple genres, but that’s coming. Eventually.)

Walter.

Because I am a very small person.

And very easily amused.

One of the nice things about taking two weeks off over the holidays, is that towards the end of my vacation I’ve realized what a mess the house is, and am rested up enough to actually do something about it.

About Friday afternoon reached that point, so Saturday was spent not just putting away Christmas ornaments, but also organizing the disaster area that the living room had become.

One of the things I am hoping will be a huge help is I got a bin into which Michael can put his stuff. He tends to leave things all over the end tables, which in turn makes them useless as end tables. So he got a bin.

The second thing, which you probably noticed from Saturday’s posts, is that I went through the book shelves. Not only could I no longer put pictures and elephants and other things on most shelves, but most shelves were double stacked so you couldn’t even see what books where there.

Since the whole point of having the mystery shelves in the living room was so grandmom could peruse the shelves and find something to read, this was no good.

Hence the book cull.
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The Great Book Giveaway continues! Fantasy novels. If I’ve read and reviewed the book, I’ve provided a link to the review. If there isn’t a review, chances are I haven’t read the book.

Why I’m a giving away so much fantasy? Because for the past several years I haven’t had much interest in epic fantasy.

Questions? Read the start of this post.
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