I just finished The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology (reccommended - not too technical, well-written, the writer has thorough knowledge, background in the subject, a sense of humor, and takes a respectful but non-hagiographical approach), and now I need a new book. I've been trying to read Anna Karenina for the six months now, but the holidays are scary enough without reading about imploding families. I just got Robota in the mail, but that should be finished this afternoon.
I need a book I can sink my teeth into, well-written, by an author with some wisdom. Any genre welcome, but I haven't read any new science fiction/fantasy for a while.
posted
Have you read any Irving Stone Katie? I would really be interested to see what you thought of his writing. My vote is for "The Agony and the Ecstacy" with "Those Who Love" as a close second. I know I always suggest these to everyone, but they are SO WONDERFUL!!! Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
*grin* I LOVED the Agony and Ectasy. I had not read the other; it is worth it? I am always trying to find good biographers. That sounds great, but I think I want something other than a historical biography for the next few books. I need to chew on this particular bit of history.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Have you read robin hobb? Her assisign trilogy is very good followed up by live ship traders trilogy and she is currently finishing Her fools trilogy. They are all related and in chronological order. I read them after reading OSC review them and I really loved them.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm a couple of hundred pages into Ambrose's Undaunted Courage, which is an account of Lewis and Clark's expedition. It's pretty good so far, but it's very long.
posted
Ok, I see you read Holes and since I teach middle school reading let me throw a few of my favorite young adult novels at you.
Freak the Mighty by: Rodman Philbrick - a story about two kids that don't fit the norm but team up to be something special. One of my favorite books period.
Redwall (14-15) books in this series by Brian JacquesRedwall - This is a fantasy series with animal characters set in a midevil type of good vs. evil situation. Very fun reads.
The Chronical of Pryn by lloyde allexander -clasic fantasy series
The chronicals of Narnia by C.S. Lewis -another clasic fantasy series
there are many more. I actually really enjoy reading Y.A. novels. Good stories that move quickly.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. Not fantasy, but fantastical. Wise, but also hilarious. Religious and profane (but profane in a good way). Literary but incredibly readable and not stuffy at all. Plenty of action and whimsy yet still profound (but not profound in some heavy-handed way).
posted
Yay! Done. Jumper from Uncle Orson's Lost Books list, and The Master and the Margarita from Zal's suggestion are on their way from my beloved www.half.com. Also, I found an Agatha Christie I hadn't read yet in the bookstore yesterday, so that and Robota should take care of the next day or so. I'll stop by Borders and get Freak the Mighty after work today. Thank you! Hatrack saves the day againPosts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
When you finish freak could you let me know how you like it. I suggest it to a lot of people and always like to hear what other people think.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
Just a little FYI - they made it into a movie a few years back staring Sharon Stone and it actually got a few oscar nods. Not nearly as good as the book, are they ever?, but worth watching after you read the book
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
---- beat: have you ever read Lloyd Alexander's _Westmark_ trilogy? Good stuff. Not straight-up fantasy. The setting is a faux 18th century France/England/Germany-type country -- no magic. About monarchy and democracy and revolution and compromise and a feisty young princess and a teenaged orphan who is an artist and a reluctant leader.
Posts: 3423 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
No, I haven't but I've thought about it. I have read The Iron Ring which is stand alone fantasy of his. It was a good read.
I'm glad to see other people out there enjoy Y.A. novels. There is some great writing that gets ignored because most people don't wonder to that section of the library/book store.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
Very good story about what might happen if you could live your life over again - and over and over and over.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think YA novels are great and deserve more respect in literary circles.
Two more favorites:
Hakon of Rogen's Saga by Erik Haugaard
and another Lloyd Alexander that doesn't come up as much as his other titles: The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha.
EDIT: Spelling. And to add -- I *really* recommend Hakon of Rogen's Saga to all Jatraqueros. Plus the illustrations included (woodcuts) are amazing and totally suit the book.
posted
I would recommend Grace Chetwin's Gom series to anyone who likes Y.A. books, they're some of the best I've ever read.
Also Pamela Service writes really fun Y.A. science- fiction, and Patricia Wrede writes really good fantasy. Her lesser known Lyra books are (I feel) even better than her famous Dragon Quartet.
I can go on about Y.A. fiction if anyone is interested. I still harbor a dream of being an editor for Y.A. books, but my grasp of grammar is horrible, so I'm trying to break myself lose from it.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Wolf in Shadow - David Gemmell. One of my top five favourite books of all time. It's a sort of fantasy western, if you can imagine such a thing. And I especially love the opening lines.
Sharpe's Eagle - Bernard Cornwell. If you liked Ender's game, you'll probably like this as well, although the setting is very different - Napoleonic wars.
The Crow Road - Iain Banks. OK, it's li-fi, but it's one of the few li-fi books I have read that I actually enjoy.
Posts: 20 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
The Crow's Road is one of Banks' best books, I think.
I'm reading Hanief Kureishi's The Black Album at the moment. Brilliant. Might not be your cup of tea though Kat - sex and drugs make a pretty strong showing in the novel *shrug*.
Other stuff you might want to look at...
Underworld by Don DeLillo - brilliant story about Cold War America. Just amazing.
The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie - not his "best" work but one of my favourites. The characters are really intriguing.
The Alexandria Quartet by Alexendar Durrell - I REALLY think you'd like this, Kat. It's set in Alexandria in the 1920s and 1930s and tells the story of a group of friends, lovers and enemies in a turbulent city that was a microcosm of cultural change. The first book tells a story, the second book re-tells the same story from a different "more true" perspective, the third book contains the first story as a sub-plot and the fourth book looks back on the first three. The writing is vivid, thoughtful and poetic. I can't recommend the Quartet highly enough. Hefty read too - might keep you occupied for a couple of days.
quote:I'm reading Hanief Kureishi's The Black Album at the moment. Brilliant. Might not be your cup of tea though Kat - sex and drugs make a pretty strong showing in the novel *shrug*.
Drugs I don't mind so much. Sex is usually skippable.
The hardest part for me is language. I couldn't even finish Mystic River, and it was because of the language. I got about a quarter of the way through and started skimming for story and highlights because the language was making me sick, and it isn't skippable. That's really sad, because I could tell how well it was written. The language wasn't used just as a spice, though; it was in the primary tongue and on every page, every third paragraph. Just wasn't worth it.
On the other hand, I wasn't real impressed with Neal Stephenson, and while I can't remember exactly why, I think it was the sex scenes that were supposed to give meaning to all the action.
Did you read Arslan? That was a book with unmemorable violations of language, and a very effective use of sex. It also made me sick to my stomach and I wish I hadn't read it. I don't feel edified or enlightened or any wiser; I feel manipulated. I don't like that.
With that in mind, is it still worth it?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Gotcha. Which Stephenson did you read, by the way? I've only read Cryptonomicon and I don't really remember there being sex to speak of in that...
The Black Album doesn't rely on the sex at all. The sex is well-written and doesn't give in to any temptations of the pornographic, in my opinion. It mostly serves to contrast the conflicting desires in Shahid, the main character, as his desire to belong and be a part of something is torn between his involvement in an extremist Muslim gang and his affair with a teacher at his college. I think the sex (and his reaction to it, feelings after and before it) are meant to be a counterpoint to the strict world of the Muslim brotherhood.
Just don't get me made at me if you find it squicky Posts: 2945 | Registered: Apr 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I really enjoyed The Player of Games by Iain M Banks.
Gotta love the HR book threads - I read Microserfs last month after seeing a recommendation on Hatrack. Then I made my boyfriend read it. We both loved it!
Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, you know I have to tout Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. I've already said too much about it....
Posts: 2506 | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yeah, I know about this great author. I think his name is Orson Scott Card. Here is his website. You should check it out! Posts: 1466 | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier. It's AMAZING. You know how you can tell a good book because it has a certain...flavor to it? Daughter of the Forest has one of the strongest flavors I've read since Tolkien
Posts: 3493 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, seriously, I ready some pretty interesting books by David Eddings, but I can't for some reason remember what they were called.
Posts: 1466 | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
If you're in the mood for nonfiction, there's a very entertaining book by Simon Winchester called The Professor and the Madman (murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary). Nonfiction, obviously; the author digresses a lot, but they're interesting digressions. Good read.
In the sci-fi area, have you ever read The Golden Globe, by Philip Varley? A bit weird, but definitely good.
posted
There's this guy named Orson something or other and he just wrote a book about a glass city or crystal town or something like that. But anyways, I read that book and it was very good. You should probably check that one out too.
posted
Ever read anything by Maureen McHugh? I've liked all of her novels, with the exception of her second, Half the Day is Night. Her China Mountain Zhang is incredibly good, probably the best book I've ever read, and won the Hugo, the James Tiptree award, the Locus award, and was nominated for a Nebula (so it's not just me). It's set in a future in which China is the dominant cultural and political force on Earth, and is just an amazing book.
Her most recent book, Nekropolis is also well worth reading. It's set in a 22nd century Morocco, and is probably my second favorite of her books (although Mission Child is well worth reading also).
posted
I've been going out of genre lately. I'm about to start Journey to the West (big surprise, I know).
Posts: 2506 | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Argh! Too many good books have been mentioned for me to champion them all, but let me second the suggestions of Gene Wolfe, Iain (M. or not) Banks, and Maureen McHugh. Let me also add The Chess Garden by Brooks Hansen, which I've recommended on countless such threads but, as far as I can tell, have yet to convince anyone to pick it up. Woe is me. Posts: 2443 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
They're making a new movie?????? *very excited* This was my FAVORITE movie as a kid, not in the least because I only saw it once. I saw it once and dreamed of it for the next TEN YEARS. I'm excited; I hope they do a good job. I'm still half in love with the magician.
posted
If you've not already read it, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is beautiful and worth a second reading if you have already read it.
If you plan on reading The Lord of the Rings anytime soon, whether you've read it before or not, I recommend a good reading of The Silmarillion first. It's a little lengthy and a tougher read than The Lord of the Rings , but worth the time it takes to read it if you want to better understand Tolkien's world.
Posts: 46 | Registered: Nov 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Right now I'm about 700 pages into James Clavell's Shogun. It's pretty good--he does an excellent job of explaining the Japanese worldview, which is radically different from how westerners think. The story is interesting, and the window on Japanese culture helps put history (particularly WWII in the Pacific) in perspective.
For those that are interested, the plot describes an English ship pilot who guides a Dutch ship on the very difficult journey from Europe to Japan. When he arrives, the only contact the Japanese have had with the West are the Portugese, who have set up a lucrative trading arrangement and are working hard to spread Catholicism as well. The pilot goes headfirst into a very complicated Japanese political situation and works to climb their social structure even as various groups maneuver to use his skills or neutralize the threat he presents in the political struggle. It's a good read.
Posts: 224 | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Kiss]](graemlins/kiss.gif)
![[Laugh]](graemlins/laugh.gif)
@ self.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
