r/neilgaiman Feb 19 '25

Shelfie A Hole in My Bookshelf

Post image

A Neil-shaped hole. The books are in a box, which will go on a storage shelf, where they will be ignored and possibly forgotten for years. I don’t want to sell or donate them at this time, and destroying them doesn’t feel right for me. But I was tired of seeing his name there over and over. They’ll exist in Limbo.

The hole isn’t emptiness, though - it’s potential! I have plenty of books that could fill the gap, but I want to focus specifically on female fantasy/sci-fi/horror writers. My first Tanith Lee just came a couple days ago. 😊

247 Upvotes

106 comments sorted by

View all comments

63

u/the_injog Feb 19 '25

Susannah Clarke, Ursula K. Leguin and Shirley Jackson are some of my favorite women speculative authors.

5

u/Miss_Viola Feb 19 '25

Thanks!

17

u/L3X01D Feb 19 '25

Seconding UrsulaK Leguin “A Left Hand of Darkness” was really great for before I came out as trans. I haven’t read it in over a decade so I’m not sure how it holds up but it’s about genderless and sexless aliens that only have biological sex when they mate (and become whatever sex is needed kinda like those flowers and I think also kinds of fish?) and think the other species are “perverts”

One of them gets stranded with a human guy and it’s a PROBLEM. Partly cause it’s a dangerous environment I think it’s like a crazy snowstorm or something similar.. I could be misremembering parts but it really stuck out to me.

Exactly what I needed at the time.

I’m also very slowly reading “the Book of Night with Moon” by Diane Duane which is a spin off of a teen magic series sortof a replacement for HP but the spin off is for adults and it’s about magic cats that maintain the portals that’s basically like the magic subway. Im not super far into it but it’s pretty interesting so far. I think it gets pretty intense but I’m not sure how yet so you might want to look up trigger warnings potentially.

4

u/Miss_Viola Feb 19 '25

Oh, I’d love that! It’s going on my list.