World-building books

I think I've mentioned before that I love books that do really good world-building - this is one reason why I love Finder, for example. I'm currently reading two wonderful examples of the genre, and reading them very slowly, because I want to savour them.

One I have mentioned before: Austin Tappan Wright's Islandia. The landscapes in that are as vivid as those in The Lord of the Rings, and just as beautiful.

The other I received last week: Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home. I'm not as far into that yet as I am into Islandia, which I started reading a few months ago, but I already love it so much that I can't read it fast. I want to make it last.

Both books are like doors to Other Places, just waiting for me to enter them every night. They remind me how much I love the world. (This may seem paradoxical, as they seem to offer escape from the world. But they're reflections of the world, of course. And also, travelling into the inner worlds of Wright or Le Guin is part of living in this world - my idea of 'the world' includes the personal, inner worlds of everyone, and it's one of the greatest marvels of being alive that we can open these inner worlds for other people to visit them.)

A walk in the park

trees

the park cafe

another view

chair shadows

leaves, light

on the way back home

Need to borrow my mum's digital camera more often...

Strange, anonymous non-sequitur comments on an old post?

I'm sorry for making yet another, the fourth post today (and for not replying to all the comments I got today - I have to work, and can't do any more replying today). I'm just so mystified right now that I have to ask around if anyone else has experienced this, and what it might mean:

For the past few days I've been getting a number of anonymous comments on an old post. The post itself is nearly meaningless out of context (it was a question to my flist about a fic I had posted), and the comments don't make any sense at all. There are no urls or anything in them, though, so it's hard to see them as any kind of 'useful' spam. I can't for the life of me figure out what they're supposed to do. Here's the post in question:

http://hmpf.livejournal.com/216120.html

Any theories?