Fiction recommendations.

[mrissa]

I've been going through the fiction on my library list at an alarming rate, because I'm not interspersing it with nonfiction at the moment. Don't know when I'll get my ability to read nonfiction back, but it doesn't seem to go well with the vertigo. So in the meantime: what fiction should I read? Recommend something, or more than one something. If I've already read it, that's okay; I'll tell you, and you can recommend something else, or not, as you like.

I read books aimed at any age of person. The main genre constraint I have is that I tend to bounce hard off genre romance, and horror and traditional westerns are not generally my cup of tea.

In other news, Ista is really not at all thrilled with this entire holiday, and she's alternating between running around wanting to figure out what those noises are and trying to stay hidden and safe behind the living room couch.

I watched the first half of Good Night and Good Luck with today's workout. Seemed appropriate. Happy Independence Day, all those of you who celebrate it today.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Are you looking for comfort or challenge? I'm going through a massive comfort phase, myself. In the last little while I've reread Austen, O'Brian, Jane Eyre, Vlad Taltos, Diana Wynne Jones. (We will please not discuss the utter ridiculousness of using books about the Napoleonic Wars and an assassin as security blankets. Okay? Because we know it's about the language, first last and always.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I can do with either. I started the PT lo these many moons ago with a massive comfort phase -- I read nothing but Sayers and Bujold for a fortnight or more. But new and sometimes challenging stuff is now fine again, too.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

For something really random: Kamikaze Girls (the novel, not the manga).

The Strange Files of Fremont Jones.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[shana.livejournal.com]

I greatly enjoyed Shanna Swendson's _Enchanted, Inc_. The heroine has no magical powers and a refreshing lack of stupidity.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We strongly favor lack of stupid.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Have you read Jessamyn West's Cress Delahanty stories yet? I think you'd like them. If you've already read them, I think you'd like her fix-up novel about Cress's grandparents, _The Friendly Persuasion_. As a general thing, _The Friendly Persuasion_ does not depend on having read the Cress stories, or even on knowing they exist...but I think it could work better for you in that order.

[carbonel]

I've read The Friendly Persuasion and Except for Me and Thee several times, but I haven't read any of the Cress Delahanty stories, so I didn't know there was a connection.

Maybe I'll pick those up for my face-down stint next week.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Have you already read Laurie Marks's element books? Fire Logic etc? Very nice new ideas about families and cooking, both. You must have read Chandler's The Big Sleep. Everyone was talking about Ysabeau Wilce's Flora Segunda but if you haven't gotten to it, do. Against all odds I find Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 to be very funny. Nicola Griffith's Always is a funny love song to Scandinavian Seattle, two words I didn't know went together.

Argh, I read so much YA recently but can't remember what it was.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Oh, Ellen Klages's The Green Glass Sea! The Thief et seq. by Megan Whalen Turner. Do you already know about Margaret Mahy? Robert C. O'Brien's The Silver Crown? (Did he also do The Rats of NIMH?)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

If a person would like a guy could go through the ARCs box at work tomorrow and mail a person some stuff.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

A person would love that.

the "The"s

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong

Re: the "The"s

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I was just noticing that I am as likely to leave off "the" as not, when I'm talking titles.

Thanks!

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

The upcoming Kage Baker is quite good, The House of the Stag. I'd be happy to send you my copy of it--I'm done with it and should be getting a nice hardback when the time comes. It's fantasy and is very different than her SF--much less manic and frenetic.

Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series is a lot of fun and the fourth one just came out. I've an extra of that one, too.

Er, can't think of anything else that I really liked and is out--my brain has just shifted from September to October.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. Lots of good stuff coming out later this year, yep. I liked the previous Kage Baker fantasy I read. Haven't read any Lynn Flewelling yet.

[tewok.livejournal.com]

I recently read Kelly McCullough's "Web Mage" and quite enjoyed it. It mixed Greek mythology, magic, and computers -- and I found it worked. 'course I had to say "LALALA!" when some of the programming/networking details were given, but I chalked that up to suspension of disbelief.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[pameladean]

I can't remember if you've read Amanda Cross's mysteries or not.

P.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Or Sarah Caudwell's Hilary Tamar mysteries?

[wordswoman.livejournal.com]

Have you read Sean Stewart's Perfect Circle? Nicely done twist on the "I see dead people" theme. The protagonist is a refreshingly flawed divorced dad, something of a slacker but a good guy at heart. If only he could stop seeing ghosts, he might even be able to drive a car, hold down a job, and patch things up with his teenage daughter.

For mental comfort food, Sorcery and Cecilia, or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot is great fun. And I must confess to absolutely WALLOWING in Georgette Heyer's Regency novels lately. I rarely read romances otherwise but these stand out from the crowd. ("Jane Austen light" is how I described them to my husband.)

Re: Margaret Mahy, who was mentioned above, my favorites are The Tricksters and Catalogue of the Universe.

Jennifer Stevenson's Trash Sex Magic is a challenging read, but utterly original.

Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box is a grabber of a ghost story. I can't say he sustains the momentum perfectly throughout, but I can forgive that in a first novel with characters I've bonded with. And who wouldn't love the premise of buying a ghost on the internet?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Joe Hill or Margaret Mahy, of those.

I do love S&C et seq. Perfect Circle is not my favorite Sean Stewart, but that'd take a lot; I love a couple of his others. I read Galveston for the first time with a high fever and had to go back and reread it to make sure it was that vivid without the fever. It was.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I know you like history--the letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz are utterly charming, fascinating, often funny, and sometimes poignant.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do like history, and I guess I'm trying to find the edges of what nonfiction is being iffy right now.

For start...

[callunav.livejournal.com]

YA/Children's:

Zilpha Keatly Snyder, The Changeling.

- The only problem with this is that, in my opinion, it's the best of her books (also the hardest to find, why are people dumb?) and I always think it's regrettable to read someone's best first. If you want to warm up on some Zilpha Keatly Snyders which are quite good, first, try The Headless Cupid, The Egypt Game, and (terrible title, good book) Eyes in the Fishbowl (seriously, don't be put off by the title) first. Then read The Changeling, which is different from all of the others and quite amazingly good.

- The Lionboy trilogy, by Zizou Corder. The first book is a little choppy, but has enough strengths to pull through on, and the others fall into place better. These books have lots of flaws, and I consider them one of my best "finds" in children's literature in the last decade.

- Dorothy Gilman, but only some of them: The Unexpected Mrs. Polifax (read the sequels at your own risk - they are highly variable in quality), The Clairvoyent Countess, Uncertain Voyage, Incident at Badamya (really quite nice), and, possibly my favorite, Nun in the Closet (no, no queer subtext in the title, alas). These books are I think marketed as "suspense" and for adults, but they're mostly fun with just a touch of suspense, and I found them entirely accessible as a teen. If you haven't read them, give them a whirl. If you think you might read some but not all, I'd recommend the first one first - it's practically part of my standard for a certain kind of cultural literacy - and then, if you loved the wackiness of it, the last, and if you wished it were a little more plausible, the second to last, which is more serious. They're all dated. Of all of them, I'd say Uncertain Voyage has aged the least gracefully, but it has its own strengths.

Non kid-lit:
What have I read that you may not have read? Hard to think. Hm. If you can find a copy, try Patricia McKillip writing science fiction in Fool's Run. It is both like and unlike her fantasy.

If you haven't read Nina Kiriki Hoffman - and as I type those words, they seem implausible, but I'm sure lots of people haven't, and you *could* be one of them - my highest recommendations are The Thread that Binds the Bones (now very hard to find, alas) and A Fistful of Sky, though I'm seeing more flaws in the construction of that upon recent re-readings.

You have read R.A.MacAvoy's Lens of the World trilogy, right? Possibly my favorite things of hers. (And now I die, suffocated under a throng of outraged Damiano fans.)

If you tolerate pulp all right, and haven't read it, consider Barbara Hambly's The Ladies of Mandragyn and its sequels. I remain convinced that Hambly is doing a hell of a lot of interesting (not revolutionary, but interesting) gender norm stuff in the subtext, different from and sometimes at odds with the pulp surface story. The pulp surface story is, however, also fun.

Also - this is actually not fiction, but it reads as a story - have you read 84 Charing Cross Road? Probably. But if you haven't, do check it out, along with the sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street which takes some of the sting out of some of the things which are not what one would wish in the first story which come from it being, unfortunately, not brilliant fiction but the letters of a brilliantly funny writer.

Changling love!

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

"Don't do anything that can't be a game!"


I loved that book. I also loved the Below the Root stuff.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I haven't been reading new things lately. Sarah Prineas, who is in my writer's group here, has her book out. The Magic Thief is a middle-grade book, very fast, with runes you can puzzle out if you want a puzzle, and little jokes. Besides it being a good book, she did some things very well, I think-- the protagonist is completely self-centered in a non-annoying and believable way, there are little mistakes in how the characters interpret each others' actions which don't affect the plot hugely, but do add depth to the characters.
I've ordered Ursula Vernon's Nurk, but it's not here yet. Sigh.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Our Nurk is here. She said non-gloatingly.

[fmi-agent.livejournal.com]

Have you read George Alec Effinger, particularly When Gravity Fails? I found it to be great fun.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, but not for quite some time now.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Mary Gentle's Book of Ash quartet.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ate my head!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Some fairly recent authors I've fairly recently discovered that you might like:

Kazuo Ishiguro. Vikram Seth. Amy Thompson. Joan Slonzewski.

I've also fairly recently got into George Eliot, who is much better than you'd think from looking at them.

And I've just found this weird US writer called Kathleen Norris, who wrote from 1918-1957 and published forty or fifty books and is completely forgotten. Her books are shelved as romance (in the Grande Bibliotheque) but they're very odd romance if they are, because I don't think there's one of them where anyone who falls in love with someone ends up with them. They're mostly about acutely observed unhappy marriages in the early C.20 US, a very different tech level and social world to any I'm familiar with. They have great characters, very real, and no ridiculous implausibilities. Very few, anyway. One of them has something that looks like one, but when you find out, it's completely sensible, not to mention having consequences. Oh, and one of them is completely mad SF. Through a Glass Darkly is right up with Exaltation of Larks as weirdest book I've ever read. If your library has any, I'd be interested in seeing what you think.

Oh, have you read Sumner Locke Elliott? He's as OOP as can be, but you r library might be one that keeps things. Do try him. He's a gay Australian writer who wrote from the forties to the eighties and he emigrated to the US and he wrote about life and families and Australia and the US and being a person from the perspective of somebody who never felt quite at home anywhere but who was observing as acutely and as kindly as he could. I think you'd like him. My very favourite of his is The Man Who Got Away, but none of them are duds if your library has any at all.

On the same lines, you've probably read Dodie Smith's dalmations books, and if not, you'd like them. She also wrote I Capture the Castle and a handful of other more adult novels, which might be just the thing if your library has them. Well, shelved with adult anyway. The New Moon With The Old is like a slightly more grown-up Noel Streatfeild book.

Have you read The Long Ships? Because we have a spare copy of it if not.

Oh, how about Nevil Shute? Do you like Nevil Shute?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I did like Remains of the Day, so I'm not sure why I didn't go looking at more Ishiguro. Will do that.

I'm very glad you specified which Kathleen Norris, because our library has a completely different Kathleen Norris, who looks to be an "inspirational" writer, and I would have been completely confused at the turn your recommendations had taken.

Maddeningly, our library has Sumner Locke Elliott in their card catalog with "0 books" listed. I hate it when they do that. Haaaate.

gaaldine gave me I Capture the Castle for my birthday a few years ago, but oddly enough I haven't read the Dalmatians or the other books of hers. Or The Long Ships. Or Nevil Shute. Our library appears, out of all that in this paragraph, to have a bunch of Shute and nothing else. Do you have a recommendation for a starting point?

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

A rereading of Ransome?

Also, what about nonfiction that tells stories? would those be appealing? One I've just finished and enjoyed a lot is "Flight of Passage," by Rinker Buck, about flying all the way across the country in a Piper Cub with his brother when they were 15 and 17. Only flaw is waaay too much "this thing" dialog, as in "Let's do this thing!" or "Rink, do you realize what we've done? We have actually done this thing." But I wasn't around in 1966 and I'm willing to believe people did talk that way at the time, at least people who wanted to sound like Holden Caulfield.

One I enjoyed a while back is Iain Back's "Raw Spirits", about touring around the Scottish Highlands tracking down single-malt distilleries.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm looking at the boundaries of what nonfiction works myself, but I mostly wanted fiction recs.

Did a Ransome reread not so long ago. Well, all the ones with the Amazons in, anyway. I suppose I could go back and read Coot Club and We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea and The Big Six -- except I don't even own The Big Six, because I'm sort of permanently in No Amazons, No Good mode there. Probably I should get it for completeness's sake at some point. Probably I should replace my copy of Winter Holiday before it falls completely into rags.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Have I ever recommended to you E M Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady, and its sequels? It's wonderful.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know that you have; if you did, it didn't stick somehow. On the list!

[joeboo-k.livejournal.com]

Some Octavia Butler? Parable of the Sower (followed by Talents) or Fledgling. Both are standouts.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Love those. Yes. I'm still sad that there won't be sequels to Fledgling.

[aedifica]

If you can read the discursive essay style of nonfiction, I recommend Barbara Kingsolver's High Tide in Tucson. Regardless whether that type of nonfiction works for you, I recommend her novels The Bean Trees (not so much the sequel, Pigs in Heaven) and Prodigal Summer, and Animal Dreams is excellent.

James Thurber wrote a lot of amusing short stories (with illustrations!). They do tend to be pervaded with a certain kind of sexism (nearly all husbands are henpecked), but in Thurber it somehow doesn't raise my hackles the way it would anywhere else.

Diana Wynne Jones Tough Guide to Fantasyland in conjuction with her Dark Lord of Derkholm.

Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded if you don't mind some heavy Christian symbolism. The books are very sweet and have some really fun digressions (what would happen to the man who decided to become perfectly round?).

I don't know if these would be to your taste, but I really like Daniel Pinkwater's YA novels, NPR commentaries, and essays. (I can only remember one adult novel of his and I was really disappointed in it.) In particular, Alan Mendelsohn, The Boy From Mars, Lizard Music, and the essays in Chicago Days, Hoboken Nights and Fish Whistle (collected in one volume as Chicago Fish, Hoboken Whistle). And any time he writes about food I get hungry (I'm thinking of the baked potatoes and beer in one of the Snarkout books).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I've read some Kingsolver and the Wynne Jones. Not enough Pinkwater, though! I've read some of those but not all. After one of our old writers' group meetings back in the day, I got zed_lopez and alecaustin recommending books for me, and Pinkwater came up in that context, but there's so much out there! I keep forgetting to go on finding more of it.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Hmm. [FX: Clatters & Bangs as Ulrika roots through junk drawer brain]

Tove Jansson - The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip volumes 1 & 2 - This is the Moomins as they are meant to be, panel by panel, all in Jansson's gloriously imaginative style. Only the first two volumes out so far.

Matt Ruff - Bad Monkeys - hard-boiled, fast-paced, litfic flavored urban fantasy. Is so fantasy. Is so, is so.

Barbara Kingsolver - Prodigal Summer - the one Kingsolver to read if you only read one, for my money. A trio of interesting and strong female leads, and a clever weaving of their story lines as they lead three seemingly unconnected lives.

Robert C. O'Brien - The Silver Crown - lesser known work by the guy who wrote Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and a pretty good bet if you liked A Wrinkle in Time.

Nominally romance, more suspense with a smidge of romance, really, and if you british mysteries, you might still like: Mary Stewart's romantic thrillers. Start with Nine Coaches Waiting and if you don't like that then nevermind.

Pinkwater if you haven't already: The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death and The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror. Also, Lizard Music.

Will Shetterly - Dogland and The Gospel of the Knife

If by some freakish accident you haven't already, Ellen Klages - The Green Glass Sea

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Of those, I haven't read...the Tove Jansson. Which tells you we're mostly on the same track here, which is good. I'm not sure about them. I recently reread one of the non-comicized Moomin books, but I tend to bounce off comics due to being drastically non-visual. On the other hand, Moomins. Hmmmmm.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Also, Sarah Caudwell's mysteries, particularly Thus Was Adonis Murdered.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Love those. pameladean lent those to me, and I was completely immoderate about my reading rate with them.

[seabream.livejournal.com]

One more author one might try: Lucy A. Snyder. Sparks and Shadows is the short story collection that I've read. Installing Linux On A Dead Badger I haven't, though I have read an earlier version (http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040405/badger.shtml) of the title work, and enjoyed it (I realise the high likelihood that you or someone in your household has already come across it. This is more in the way of a contextual reminder.). As a writer, she's quite stylistically flexible, so it's difficult to categorically recommend or dis-recommend her with that metric. When you're back to not having to fight for computer time, Look What I Found In My Brain, a website she shares with a number of other authors, has a variety of articles and short fiction pieces, many of which are pretty good. Unfortunately, the navigational setup of the page isn't great if you're looking for something in particular, so I'd not recommend it at the moment. Also for later, a number of her pieces can be found on Strange Horizons.

I will leave you with a quote though "Engels does not claim to have the only sledgehammer-based workout around; workouts based on Thor's hammers and Indian clubs have been around for a long, long time. This is the same basic concept, just a little more DIY and with more imaginary orcs."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh my.

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

I know you said horror is not generally your cup of tea, but what about mystery/ghost-story-type stuff (as opposed to gore and ick, for which I absolutely have no patience)? If you feel like trying a good ghost story series with a strong elements of southern history, I recommend Cherie Priest's trilogy beginning with Four and Twenty Blackbirds (http://books.google.com/books?id=1HWWWFDmJwYC&dq=Cherie+Priest+Four+and+Twenty&pg=PP1&ots=l8lutIpOcC&sig=gy22Qe4k5CIxQG40hmKWj-rZRLE&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA9,M1). There's an excerpt of the beginning at that link so you can decide if it's something you might enjoy.

A book I read not long ago which I still can't get out of my mind is The Harem Within (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Harem-Within-Fatima-Mernissi/dp/0553408143), which is technically nonfiction, but reads sort of like fiction because it's an old woman's recollections of her childhood growing up in a harem, with her memories told as stories. The writing is beautiful and the descriptions of scenery and life in general are rich and exotic. I loved this book, and may have actually already recommended it to you in the past (if so, sorry for repeating).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do like Cherie's books! For me they are dark fantasy rather than horror. Possibly this is a semantic excuse on my part.

I don't think you've recommended The Harem Within before, no. Thanks.