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.)

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

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

The Strange Files of Fremont Jones.

[shana.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[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?)

[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.

[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.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We strongly favor lack of stupid.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In fact, I read Cress Delahanty on the train from Toronto to Montreal last time I saw you, and loved it. (pameladean and arkuat put their heads together and decided I needed it.) So The Friendly Persuasion sounds like a plan.

[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.

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

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have read The Big Sleep, yes, and Always. I love love LOVE the Aud Torvingen books. I love them so much it hurts.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

A person would love that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I liked The Green Glass Sea and The Thief et seq. And all three O'Brien books. (Yes, he's also the NIMH fella. I did an encyclopedia article on him once.)

My library has a lot of Margaret Mahy listed. Any suggestions where to start?

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!

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

A guy will do that then!

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

(I was in a rush out the door on an urgent HOT FUDGE MISSION, so to explain: book A is set in small-town Japan and is about the unlikely friendship and bizarre adventures of two girls, a Gothic Lolita devotee and a kind of biker punk. Book B is the first of a rare mystery series I actually liked, featuring Fremont Jones, "typewriter" (secretary/typist) and amateur sleuth in San Francisco around the time of the Great Quake. It seemed pretty well researched to me, but it's not my field of expertise.)

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

I think my favourite of hers was "The Tricksters", but I haven't found a copy of it in many years.

I started with "The Changeover", and am still in love with it.
-: It's a fairly young one, though not nearly as young as "The Haunting". Young YA, I guess.
+: It survived at least two rereads as an adult, so it's not just my tasteless teenage self saying this.

I most recently read "Alchemy" and liked it quite a lot, but not with the deep love I have for the other two books mentioned.

[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.

[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.

[shana.livejournal.com]

I've also been comfort rereading Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher mysteries. They are set in Australia, in 1928.

When I discovered them, only a few of them had been published here and I ordered the lot from Australia, but the American publisher has almost caught up. _Cocaine Blues_ is the first one.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Neat. American publishers catching up is also a great goodness.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Youngness is not necessarily a drawback for me; I've been rereading Edward Eager, after all.