I love to write, plain and simple. :p It's therapeutic, it lets me vent whatever emotion I want/need to vent, it lets me be funny and original, and it lets me use my brain actively. (I've also won awards for it; I've turned down publishers; and publishers have turned me down. And no, I'm not talking about my high school newspaper. *g*)

Also, I just love the art of words... you know, the art of choosing and placing your words in just the right way so that you convey exactly what you want to convey. I find words fascinating (and you're reading the words of a weirdo right now, I might add :p). Here are links that I recommend if you want to see my work:

Ganymede's Library
Here I have a variety of works I've written, such as fiction based off Greek mythology, autobiographical poetry and vignettes, other poetry, pastiches, and fanworks. (Some of the fanworks are based on the anime Sailormoon while others are based on Anne McCaffrey's sci-fantasy Dragonriders of Pern series.)

Shut Up, Ganymede!
A place where I rant and babble about various subjects that I feel the "need" to comment on, from religion to corporal punishment, et cetera. Basically, whatever subject I neglected to rant about in the "T&H" section of my personal profile will be talked about at this site. :p

WOOL - Wil Ohmsford On-Line and Okama Punch!
WOOL is a site where I host my many parodies of Terry Brooks' fantasy Shannara series while Okama Punch! is a site that houses my anime parodies.

on reading, and sci-fi/fantasy in particular:

I love to read as much as I can, though unfortunately I don't read as much as I used to due to time constraints. My favorite genres (not only in books but in television as well) are definitely sci-fi, fantasy, and sci-fantasy. As someone once said, it takes a certain intelligence to blend science with the imagination, and besides that, what I find very interesting about sci-fi is that it's always ahead of its time. Sci-fi writers were talking about supercomputers and a world where everyone would be using computers long before the Internet existed, and many advances in space exploration and medicine can be traced back to something that was "pioneered" in sci-fi books - I could cite as an example a short story Anne McCaffrey wrote in 1956 about a female doctor (I emphasize the "female" since this was written in 1956) implanting a fertilized egg into a surrogate mother. Think about it - that story was written in 1956!

The other nice thing about sci-fi and fantasy is that the only limit becomes one's imagination. Obviously, you do need some boundaries, a frame of reference (the best sci-fi/fantasy is the kind that one can relate to on various levels, not something that's too convoluted to be any fun), but still, sci-fi/fantasy is in my opinion the most expansive genre there is, which is why I love to read books of that nature. Of course, I'll enjoy any book of any genre that's well-written, but I tend to stick with sci-fi/fantasy.

my favorite books and their authors:

by Anne McCaffrey:

(here's Anne's official website)

Dragonflight (all-time favorite)
Dragonsong (all-time favorite)
The Rowan
Freedom's Landing
Get off the Unicorn
The Girl Who Heard Dragons

(For those of you who have read any of Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, people have compared me to Masterharper Robinton and Sebell.)

I first heard of Anne McCaffrey from Zoe Wilson on the last day of eighth grade; she knew my love of Terry Brooks' Shannara novels and suggested in the note she left in my yearbook that I read McCaffrey's work. I finally took that advice the summer after ninth grade, and I picked up Dragonsong - but as it was the beginning of a short side trilogy to McCaffrey's main Dragonriders of Pern series, I was totally lost when I read it. Even so, I loved the story in Dragonsong. Even if I hadn't indentified with the protagonist Menolly (who loved music and was abused by her father), I would have been caught by the quality of McCaffrey's writing and her world of dragons, which had always been one of my favorite creatures.

After reading Dragonsong, I decided to read the books in the order they were meant to be read, and I therefore picked up Dragonflight, the first in the Pern series. I loved it immediately. Lessa and Master Robinton immediately became my favorite characters, and the writing quality and storyline astounded me. I actually got chills reading parts of it, and Lessa's incredible journey in the second half of the book was just too clever for words.

Anne McCaffrey is best known as one of sci-fi/fantasy's classic writers. She has an amazing ability to flesh out a single idea or scenario into an entire novel, or an entire series, each with their own fascinating world. This will be evident to anyone who has read one of her two short-story compilations (Get off the Unicorn and The Girl Who Heard Dragons), because in Get off the Unicorn in particular are short stories which are the beginnings of some of Anne McCaffrey's best novels, like The Rowan, To Ride Pegasus, and Freedom's Landing.

The one problem I have with Anne's work is her portrayal of gay men. Admittedly, Anne was something of a pioneer in that she made gay men a part of her works very early on, long before it would be "fashionable" or "tolerated" - like in Dragonflight, where it is not spoken outright but it is still understood that a lot of the dragonriders are gay or bi (because if the dragons mate, the riders mirror their actions, and since most of the riders are men... :p).

Even so, Anne's gay male characters either flounce (like Naffie in The Girl Who Heard Dragons), are eccentric/vain (like Roy Beach in Get off the Unicorn), are immature (like P'tero and M'leng in Dragonseye), or have major emotional problems (like Kincaid Dano in Lyon's Pride). The only gay male characters in Anne's writing that I actually liked were K'lon (from Moreta, Dragonlady of Pern) and Kincaid Dano.

I'm also not entirely reconciled to the fact that Anne, who is a great writer, admitted to being lesbophobic in a short, informal interview I did with her via e-mail (which would account for the exclusion of lesbians from the dragonrider hierarchy, not to mention practically all of her books). Ah well. Odd lady. :p

by Marion Zimmer Bradley:

The Mists of Avalon (all-time favorite)

When I picked up this book just out of a whim (it looked fun cause it was over eight hundred pages long :p), I didn't realize how much this book would change my life. Sounds cheesy to say, but seriously - at first glance this book is merely the Arthurian legends as seen from the point of view of the women, but it deals with much more.

In Mists of Avalon, it is Morgaine/Morgan le Fay who is the hero, not Arthur. Told mainly from Morgaine's point of view, it is so effectively done that now whenever I read the "real" Arthurian legends I cannot help but see Morgan le Fay as a misunderstood priestess of Celtic religion who was wrongly accused of being a witch and sorceress by Arthur and his Christian crew. I was always taught the value of looking at things from different points of view, but this book really drove that message home.

Besides that, the book is a great commentary on Christianity and religion/spirituality in general. The realization that Morgaine comes to at the end of the book is basically what I had always thought about religion/spirituality but didn't have the right words to express it myself; also, as I read this book a short while after I had categorized myself as agnostic, it had that much more significance to me. I thought the homoerotic tension between Arthur and Lancelet was a nice touch too. :p

I'm currently reading The Forest House (which comes next after The Mists of Avalon but takes place before the events in Mists), and like Mists it is very good, even if Mists remains my favorite. I can't wait to finish it up and then go onto the third (and final) book, Lady of Avalon.

(Anne McCaffrey dismissed Mists of Avalon as "lesbian fiction" and cited that as the reason she never read it. It was a rather inaccurate thing to say - there were bisexual characters, but I didn't see any lesbians in it.)

other books I like:

by Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale
by Terry Brooks: The Sword of Shannara and The Elfstones of Shannara
by Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden
by Sandra Cisneros: The House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek
by Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo
by James Garner: Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, Once Upon a More Enlightened Time, and Politically Correct Holiday Stories
by Benjamin Hoff: The Tao of Pooh (my scan of the book's cover)
by Yasushi Inoue: Tun-Huang
by Kenji Kawakami: 101 Un-Useless Japanese Inventions
by Barbara Kingsolver: The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven
by Gary Larson: any of The Far Side books
by Gary P. Leupp: Male Colors - The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan
by Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
by Gregory Maguire: Wicked and Confessions of An Ugly Stepsister
by Adam Mastoon: The Shared Heart
by Judy Olaufsen: Mother
by Philip Pullman: the His Dark Materials trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass)
by Johanna Spyri: Heidi
by Amy Tan: The Joy Luck Club and The Hundred Secret Senses
by John Updike: The Witches of Eastwick
by Urvashi Vaid: Virtual Equality - The Mainstreaming of Gay & Lesbian Liberation
by Alice Walker: The Color Purple
by Bill Watterson: any of the Calvin and Hobbes books
by Jade Snow Wong: Fifth Chinese Daughter
translated by Coleman Barks: The Essential Rumi (poet/mystic Jelaluddin Rumi)
translated by Stephen Mitchell: Tao Te Ching
translated by Robert A.E. Thurman: The Tibetan Book of the Dead

For a list of my favorite manga author/artists click this link: Anime, Manga, and Seiyuu ...and for a list of my favorite mythology resources and favorite classical writers, try this link: Classical World (both links are also at the "more about me" section of Self-Absorption).

favorite poets/playwrights (only those who aren't named above in the favorite books section or at the two links above I just mentioned):

e.e. cummings, Maya Angelou, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson

authors I detest/eschew:

Piers Anthony: extremely sexist; relies mainly on puns; fantasy world is too lame and convoluted (e.g. "grape jelly trees" and "shoe trees")
David Eddings: no surprises; foreshadowing is about as subtle as a hammer; characters are one-dimensional and do not grow; slow pace
Ernest Hemingway: banal; trying too hard to write in a "manly" fashion; dull; emotions aren't conveyed well (not to mention the dude was an intense homophobe :p)
J.D. Salinger: love the message, just wish it was conveyed in a different fashion
Erich Segal: banal; target audience are the type of people who looked down on me in high school

That's it. :>