What was the title of

[james_davis_nicoll]

That paranormal romance/urban fantasy series whose lead was a woman with special abilities and unfortunate taste in romantic partners? I remember the books had covers and often a blurb.

Comments

[redheadedfemme]

Heh. That's pretty much every UF series ever published.

[jamoche]

Was it the three-quarter butt shot with a sword or a gun?

[eub]

Here you tipped it from "funny" to "laughing".

[dsrtao]

Wearing skintight black pants, possibly leather.

[dragoness_e]

with her shirt lifted enough to reveal the "tramp stamp" tattoo on her back...

[snippy]

LOL I can see 3 different possibilities from my chair next to the bookcase.

[thistleingrey]

*falls over laughing*

[ravenskyewalker]

*snerk* Probably all of them?

[arkessian]

Were there words inside the covers? That might narrow it down...

[ejmam]

Are you sure the lead was a woman? There's this series by Jim Butcher that fits in every other respect. The main guy with special powers wears a long coat that probably looks like a dress, so you might be remembering the cover wrong.

[keith_morrison]

Harry doesn't have an unfortunate choice in romantic partners, it's just that his partners can tend to bad luck.

[ba_munronoe]

That would make him the unfortunate choice, like Northwest Smith.

[dragoness_e]

Funny you should mention Northwest Smith, I'm re-reading the stories now. Because of the name, people compare him to Indiana Jones. He's not--he's the original for Han Solo, if anyone. On the other hand, with all of Smith's "I'm an outlaw, I kill people, and Yarol and I are really obviously casing the dock warehouses for a heist in the backdrop for Shambleau", he's now reminding me of John Wick.

[dryadinthegrove]

Oo, Northwest Smith and John Wick? Yeah, I can totally see that.

[james_davis_nicoll]

Wick is competent. Smith gets by because women will literally die for him.

[dragoness_e]

He also gets by because Yarol the Venusian *is* competent, and checks in on Smith now and then.

- "Haven't seen Smith in three days, better see why. Oh, a medusa-succubus thing is eating his soul, better interrupt that."
- "Smith's been in a coma for days. Better find a doctor and try to wake him up. Also this scarf with the non-Euclidean geometry is really ugly so I'll set it on fire."
- "So you think maybe we shouldn't deliver the remains of the dark god to the crazy fanatic guy who hired us to retrieve it so he could rule the world with the power of a dark god of evil darkness? Sure, no problem--he paid in advance." (Sets it on fire with his blaster).

Sadly, he wasn't along on the Venus trip, and probably could have saved much trouble.

[refreshninja]

Was it printed on rectangular paper?

[critteranne]

Was it white paper with black printing?

[martianmooncrab]

need a few more details, vampire? shifter? magic users? selkies... come on.. there are quite a few of them ..

There is also the Rogue Angel series by "Alex Archer" that ran about 50 books..

[(Anonymous)]

Do you remember if her tattoo was vaguely Celtic swirlies, vaguely 2000's clip art swirlies, or some other kind of swirlies?

[thewayne]

Was it printed in the 20th or 21st century? Was the author a person? Was it available in dead tree format and via electrons? Did the book contain punctuation?

That'll help narrow it down!

[lampwick]

I actually had a customer in a bookstore describe a book by saying, "It was in prose, and divided into chapters."

[bunsen_h]

There was a somewhat odd used book store in Kingston, Ontario -- with a somewhat eccentric owner -- which had a lot of its books sorted by spine colour rather than by author name, title, or subject.

[arkessian]

In my youth, I used to frequent a public library that had a 'Yellow' section. Gollancz SF (and other SF, of course, but the predominant cover colur was yellow).

[dagibbs]

Not DAW SF? They all had yellow spines.

[arkessian]

This was a UK library in the 70s and 70s -- I didn't see DAW paperbacks until I was old enough to be allowed (on my own) to a book shop.

[dormouse1953]

There was a Two Ronnies sketch I recall about a bookshop like that.

And I've heard a story of someone having their living room get a makeover by an interior designer who decided that arranging the books by colour was the best way to do it.

[bunsen_h]

Was that rearrangement done without the informed consent of the owner?

A large part of my book collection got scrambled a few years ago when a couple of helpful teenagers moved things around so as to make them pack more "efficiently", without concern for any logical arrangement. I'd told my gf that I was okay with her having the books moved to different shelves; I'd assumed that that would preserve the books' organization -- I couldn't have imagined otherwise. The books actually ended up using the shelf space less efficiently than they had before, because some of them had been double-shelved originally.

I wasn't happy about that.

I'm still dealing with the mess. I should buckle down and sort it out, but it's hard for me to face it.

[dormouse1953]

So the story goes. It may well be apocryphal.

The story ends something like:

"Wow, the room looks great. Hang on a moment, how have you arranged the books?"

"By colour, of course."

[mindstalk]

Some people do that deliberately!

[martin_wisse]

Like me.

I got my two shelves of yellow DAWS, the shelf of (mostly e-library) yellow Gollancz and of course a couple of shelves with orange, blue and green Penguins.

[carbonel]

Possibly Bill Higgins (beamjockey) was the victim. I remember reading a first-person account from someone that was done to. He ended up keeping it that way, at least for a while.

[dormouse1953]

Not the incident I was thinking of. This story was told to me about someone in the UK.

[dormouse1953]

Incidentally, this reminds me. On Cix recently some of us were reminiscing about the old Foyles book shop in London. It's owner, Christina Foyle, had old-fashioned ideas. When I moved to London in the seventies, I discovered several things about this shop.

Firstly, it was a big shop, so they tended to have everything you were looking for.

Secondly, the books were arranged by publisher. They did have different sections, but within the section, finding the book you were looking for could be a problem.

Finally, they had a payment system that was bizarre. You took your purchase to the counter, and the assistant would write you out an invoice. They'd keep the books and you then would have to go in search of a cashier. The cashiers were kept in cages. You paid the cashier who stamped your invoice. You could then go back to the original assistant who'd give you your books.

Apparently, this was supposed to cut down on thieving by the staff. A friend told me that the only other place he saw a system like that in use was in the old GUM department store in Moscow in the seventies.

Christina Foyle died in 1999 and since then the shop has moved premises and opened branches all over London. They no long use either of these systems. Mind you, their main shop is an open atrium building which means with my fear of heights, I can't get to most of it.

[arkessian]

Oh, I remember that payment system -- but also that they had specialist books that I could not get elsewhere. Happy days.

[dryadinthegrove]

Ah, we've had people insist it would be easier to find the books if we just organized them by publisher.

I'm always astonished when people are surprised to hear we organize the books by author and subject. Like...I don't even know how else you would do it...?

[scott_sanford]

I'm recall a writer who organized his library of American geography books by physical location. The wall was wide and rectangular and so too, vaguely, is the United States; therefore it was quite easy to find books about a location by checking the appropriate part of the wall.

[chuk_g]

By number of pages of course, longest books first.

[dryadinthegrove]

Isn't that...all of them?

[kithrup]

It was DUNE MESSIAH.

[batwrangler]

Although I haven't read them, the Anita Blake books spring to mind.

[(Anonymous)]

...
Out of memory error: process halted.

Riderius

[agharta75]

"The Lord of the Rings"? (What did Galadriel see in Celeborn, anyway?)

[bunsen_h]

Cougar.

[mindstalk]

I think he was older, insofar as it matters for immortals.

Arwen was much older than Aragon, but we weren't told of her doing much.

Now, Luthien going for Beren...

[carbonel]

I see a lot of snark, but very few actual answers, so I'll toss in my suggestion: Anita Blake.

[dormouse1953]

I think you may be missing the point of the question. :-)

[carbonel]

Oh, I got it -- I just thought that that was in a lot of ways the ur-example.