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listersgirlOkay, you smart and lovely people, I need assistance.
I'm a little bored with my books lately. I'm having a hard time getting into anything I have out from the library, I've read a couple of bad/unexciting things recently, I have nothing coming in from my holds any time soon. In short, I'm in a reading rut.
So, tell me: What is your favourite book? Who is your favourite author? What book do you think everyone around you should read? What is the book that changed your life? What is comfort reading for you? What book can always make you laugh? What have you read recently that got you excited? What book, when you find someone else who loves it, makes you need to be that person's best friend forever? What author do you wish was your best friend?
Give me something, anything, that I need to read. Fiction, non-fiction, genre, new, old, I don't care. Well, I might care a little if it's a western, but I'm willing to have my mind changed. I am your willing reader.
I'm a little bored with my books lately. I'm having a hard time getting into anything I have out from the library, I've read a couple of bad/unexciting things recently, I have nothing coming in from my holds any time soon. In short, I'm in a reading rut.
So, tell me: What is your favourite book? Who is your favourite author? What book do you think everyone around you should read? What is the book that changed your life? What is comfort reading for you? What book can always make you laugh? What have you read recently that got you excited? What book, when you find someone else who loves it, makes you need to be that person's best friend forever? What author do you wish was your best friend?
Give me something, anything, that I need to read. Fiction, non-fiction, genre, new, old, I don't care. Well, I might care a little if it's a western, but I'm willing to have my mind changed. I am your willing reader.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 08:30 am (UTC)If you haven't read Dorothy L. Sayers, go ye forth now and read Strong Poison, Have His Carcase and Gaudy Night, in that order. Enjoyable mysteries of the howdunnit rather that whodunnit variety, that are also good novels about the evolution of a relationship between two strong, intelligent people. Who speak very wittily.
Anne Lamott's Travelling Mercies. It's sort of a spiritual autobiography, with lots of drugs, sex, and profanity. I venture to gurantee it won't make you throw up, no matter how jaded you might be about Christianity.
Rumer Godden's children's books, especially Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. I don't know how I'd like them coming to them fresh as an adult, but I loved them as a child. The inner life of dolls is a frequent theme.
Anything by Robertson Davies. I started with Fifth Business, but another good first would be The Rebel Angels or even What's Bred in the Bone. Character-driven novels about life, art, and scholarship. Beautiful incisive writing.
I just finished Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. It might be hard to get into... it was sitting around my house for two years before I read it, but once I picked it up I read it with much interest. It might best be described as Bladerunner meets Tolkien.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 08:34 am (UTC)A couple more suggestions... anything by Lorrie Moore. Her short stories are brilliant, and the novel Anagrams is also very good. I love Perri Klass, a pediatrician and author, for the way she depicts the emotional tangles of life. Other Women's Children is a great novel about a pediatrician's struggle to sort out her feelings about the tension between her obligations to her patients and her son. The book of short stories Love and Modern Medicine is good, though her earlier collection I Am Having An Adventure has a wider variety of subjects.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 09:56 am (UTC)These are fabulous suggestions. I've been meaning to read some Sayers, but I wasn't sure where to start, and most of the others I haven't run across. Excited now.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 09:34 am (UTC)Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is a distant second.
Who is your favourite author?
Vonnegut. Carl Hiassen deserves an honorable mention.
What book do you think everyone around you should read?
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett is brilliantly funny - like the Hitchhikers Guide only faster and more dense.
What is the book that changed your life?
Catch-22 changed the way I thought about everything. It was a complete mind fuck, in the best sense. I was thirteen, reading mostly Ed McBain novels and it hit me hard.
What is comfort reading for you?
I like old mysteries - Earle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, etc. Few have read him compared to other great mystery authors, but give Dick Francis a chance. He writes about horse and racing related mysteries, which makes it seem like he'd get old, but he knows so much about it and picks characters and locations so well that his books seem so much more realistic and worldly then most.
What book can always make you laugh?
Strip Tease, Skin Tight and Native Tongue (Hiassen), Cat's Cradle, and Good Omens.
What have you read recently that got you excited?
Bel Canto was such a wonderful magical book that it was hard to even describe. It is the type of book that is so poetic and beautiful that it moved me to tears while I laughted. It is the perfect solution to cynicism.
What book, when you find someone else who loves it, makes you need to be that person's best friend forever?
This is the hardest question - I tend to feel an initial bond to people who like Enders Game. There are so many though, and enough of them are assholes, that it only gets your foot in the door.
What author do you wish was your best friend?
Vonnnegut - he seems like he'd be hilarious and cynical and the best person to just sit in a cafe and bitch about the world with.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 09:53 am (UTC)I haven't read Bel Canto yet, though, so that's going on the new list. Thanks!
huge list as it was a post I made in my LJ the other day
Date: 2003-09-24 10:33 am (UTC)_________________________
Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
1984 by George Orwell
The Last Unicorn and Unicorn Sonata by Peter S. Beagle
Fishboy by Mark Richard ISBN # 0-385-42568-6
Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson
MAN-S-LAUGHTER by Ellen Frith ISBN #0-88982-147-X
Practical DemonKeeping by Christopher Moore (there's no ISBN # that I can find on this one) but here's a website link http://www.chrismoore.com/pracdemk.htm
The Narnia Series by C.S. Lewis (which I learned my neice Tonya has for some reason NEVER read!!!) though she had heard of the 2nd book in the series which is The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Prachett
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Selected Journals of Lucy Maud Montgomery
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Anne of Green Gables, Rilla of Ingleside, The Story Girl, Pat of Silver Bush, Mistress Pat, The Blue Castle, A Tangled Web, and all 3 Emily books by L.M. Montgomery (I like everything she wrote but these are my favs)
The World on Blood by Jonathan Nasaw
the Amber series by Roger Zelanzy
the Ender series by Orson Scott Card
the Assassin series by Robin Hobb
the Adept series by Piers Anthony
the Blood series by Tanya Huff as well as Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light and, well anything I've ever read of hers :>:>:>
the Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust
the Fionavar Tapestry series by Guy Gavriel Kay
the Archangel series by Sharon Shinn
the Outlander series by Diana Galbadon
for true crime, I do tend to really enjoy the ones written by Ann Rule
the is a short story collection called Strawberries and Other Secrets that I adored when I was in gr 7/8
the Velvet series by Jude Deveraux
there are many others, but they aren't leaping to mind at the moment
The way books become my favs are my willingness to re-read them many, many times and still enjoying them
Re: huge list as it was a post I made in my LJ the other day
Date: 2003-09-24 12:21 pm (UTC)Re: huge list as it was a post I made in my LJ the other day
Date: 2003-09-24 12:27 pm (UTC)Re: huge list as it was a post I made in my LJ the other day
Date: 2003-09-24 12:38 pm (UTC)Re: huge list as it was a post I made in my LJ the other day
Date: 2003-09-24 04:07 pm (UTC)What's your fav of her books?
Re: huge list as it was a post I made in my LJ the other day
Date: 2003-09-25 06:47 am (UTC)If forced to choose, I'd take The Fire's Stone, Blood Trail, and Fifth Quarter.
You?
Re: huge list as it was a post I made in my LJ the other day
Date: 2003-09-25 03:12 pm (UTC)The Fourth Quarter
Blood ____ the one with the werewolves in London, Ontario....
:>
Re: huge list as it was a post I made in my LJ the other day
Date: 2003-09-24 05:20 pm (UTC)Re: huge list as it was a post I made in my LJ the other day
Date: 2003-09-24 06:41 pm (UTC)So, what's your list of must-reads consist of so far?
must reads
Date: 2003-09-25 11:36 am (UTC)Re: must reads
Date: 2003-09-25 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 10:49 am (UTC)Another vote here for Les Miserables, and also the book that changed my life. So many themes, so many single fantastic paragraphs that slay me every time I read it. Power, justice, love, everything.
Who is your favourite author?
Right now, two historians: Alison Weir and Simon Schama. I'm deeply obsessed with British history, and both these authors can make me shut out the world for hours at a time and indulge that obsession.
What book do you think everyone around you should read?
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. People either love it or hate it, and I'm fascinated by the differences responses to the story.
What is comfort reading for you?
Books from my childhood: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, The Westing Game, The Grounding of Group 6 ... and of course, more history books.
What book can always make you laugh?
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson. A sweet, but happily caustic, look at the United Kingdom and its denizens. It makes me incredibly happy to read this.
What have you read recently that got you excited?
Very little, unfortunately. I'm a loner, so it was a pleasure to read Jonathan Franzen's How to Be Alone, though I think his fiction is a bit overrated.
What book, when you find someone else who loves it, makes you need to be that person's best friend forever?
Les Miserables, usually. :-)
What author do you wish was your best friend?
Alison Weir ... failing her, the late Marion Zimmer Bradley.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 12:24 pm (UTC)A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving.
Who is your favourite author?
Tanya Huff. (As you know.) :)
What book do you think everyone around you should read?
I used to say 'Owen Meany', but so many people have had negative reactions that now I say Last Chance Saloon, by Marian Keyes.
What is the book that changed your life?
Reason for Hope, by Jane Goodall.
What is comfort reading for you?
The first two 'Blood' books, by Tanya Huff. The Fire's Stone, also by Tanya Huff. Maeve Binchy. Marian Keyes. The 'Outlander' series by Diana Gabaldon.
What book can always make you laugh?
Don't Care High and Son of Interflux, and the 'Bruno and Boots' books by Gordon Korman. And Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding.
What have you read recently that got you excited?
The Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes books by Laurie R. King.
What book, when you find someone else who loves it, makes you need to be that person's best friend forever?
Well, my best friend didn't like 'Owen Meany', but I love her anyway. :)
Anyone who likes Tanya Huff can't be all bad, either.
What author do you wish was your best friend?
Tanya Huff, probably, 'cause then I could get her to let me proof her stuff - her publishing houses are pretty bad on the proofing/editing department, IMHO.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 01:04 pm (UTC)Comfort? Prodigal Daughter, by Jeffrey Archer.
Changed my life? Robert Fulghum.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 05:27 pm (UTC)And I definitely need to pick up more Tanya Huff.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 08:32 pm (UTC)My comfort books are mainly by Tamora Pierce, which you'd know if you recognised my handle. ;)
Someone else recommended Zelazny, but didn't specifically say Lord of Light, which is one of my favourites and completely worthwhile.
I also recommend Joel Rosenberg's stuff: D'Shai and Hour of the Octopus, especially. Also good is The Keepers of the Hidden Ways series: The Fire Duke, The Silver Stone, and The Crimson Sky.
Yes, I *do* read serious literature. I just don't like any of it. I'm so sad.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-25 11:42 am (UTC)I've never tried any of the other authors, though, so thanks!
no subject
Date: 2003-09-25 12:06 am (UTC)Hm, my comfort books are really girly.
A book that changed my outlook on life: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I thought it was brilliant.
Another recent re-read that is brilliant: Lolita, by Nabokov. Awesome.
Other than that, I've been reading a ton of left-leaning political stuff regarding US politics, which I am sure you Canadians aren't particularly interested in. So yeah.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-25 12:05 pm (UTC)Bookses
Date: 2003-09-25 11:44 am (UTC)I like fantasy a lot, so I recommend the Farseer Trilogy (starting with Assassin's Apprentice) by Robin Hobb.
The book my friends and I are all currently in love with is Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart.
Re: Bookses
Date: 2003-09-26 05:55 am (UTC)