Since becoming a parent, all of my spare cycles have been taken up by preventing two small, darling children from accidentally murdering themselves and I haven't started a new book in almost 2 years. I'd like to change that this year.
What things, particularly recent books, have you enjoyed? I have several ILXor-written things in my reading queue but I'm looking for suggestions. I am also trying to branch out genre-wise; the vast bulk of my pleasure-reading has been in the SF/fantasy realm and I'd like to delve into other genres.
― its subtle brume (DJP), Friday, 29 January 2016 18:19 (eight years ago) link
I am preaching the gospel of Jose Saramago. His all-comma-splices style might drive you batty but God he's great.
― tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Friday, 29 January 2016 18:24 (eight years ago) link
bridging the gap between SF/fantasy and regular old fiction - i read 'the snow child' by eowyn ivey recently and enjoyed it. i think it's about 2-3 yrs old, pulitzer prize nominated, nominally about homestead farmers in alaska but has a fantasy-esque central plot (almost magic realism) and was just generally entertaining and affecting in the way that good fiction can be.
― art, Friday, 29 January 2016 18:26 (eight years ago) link
xp saramago is amazing. i've never read a work of his that i didn't enjoy, but 'blindness' and 'the gospel according to jesus christ' were two of my favs
― art, Friday, 29 January 2016 18:27 (eight years ago) link
also 'seeing' which i forgot the name of until i wiki'd his list of published work but is good
― art, Friday, 29 January 2016 18:30 (eight years ago) link
Well I'm going to be no help here because all I read is community school research findings and sf/f written by women, preferably WoC when I can get it. The following books have been blowing my mind lately:
Uprooted, Naomi NovikThe Shadow Speaker, Nnedi OkoraforAkata Witch, Nnedi OkoraforThe Girl with Ghost Eyes, M. H. BorsonThe Gameshouse Trilogy, Claire NorthZoo City, Lauren BeukesMechanica, Betsy CornwellIcebreaker, Lian TannerSalvage, Alexandra DuncanSound, Alexandra DuncanThe Ancillary trilogy by Ann Leckie OBVIOUSLYThe Gracekeepers, Kirsty LoganThe Water Knife, Paolo BacigalupiSpook Country, William GibsonZero History, William GibsonNative Tongue, Suzette Haden ElginThe Judas Rose, Suzette Haden ElginEarthsong, Suzette Haden Elgin
― If authoritarianism is Romania's ironing board, then (in orbit), Friday, 29 January 2016 18:34 (eight years ago) link
you should read the fan wiki for brandon sandersons 'cosmere'
also xp - uprooted was really, really good. id also recommend 'the scorpion rules' (and to you as well in orbit if you havent read it already)
― -san (Lamp), Friday, 29 January 2016 18:35 (eight years ago) link
UPROOTED WAS A REVELATION. I finished it and then started it over immediately.
The 3 Elgin titles were also a total mind-fuck--from like the '70s but I'd never heard of them at all. Imo they are what The Handmaid's Tale SHOULD have been but wasn't. Isn't. I don't like that book. But I like Native Tongue et al a whole bunch.
― If authoritarianism is Romania's ironing board, then (in orbit), Friday, 29 January 2016 18:38 (eight years ago) link
i'm halfway thru the first book of the ancillary trilogy and it's indeed great
― ciderpress, Friday, 29 January 2016 18:39 (eight years ago) link
gonna look up in orbit's books. sf wymyn are where i'm at in life. though i did just put down the 3rd ancillary book to start:
Elena Ferrante - The Neapolitan Novels
― scott seward, Friday, 29 January 2016 20:44 (eight years ago) link
and i feel guilty about it. i should really finish it before reading all this ferrante.
― scott seward, Friday, 29 January 2016 20:45 (eight years ago) link
Although I'm a science fiction and fantasy fan too, I read more of what sf fans used to call "slipstream," or maybe post-magical realism, some kind of non-genre contemporary lit, good gateway stuff:
Karen Russell, Vampires In The Lemon GroveRamona Ausubel, No One Is Here Except All of UsColson Whitehead, Zone OneI guess A Visit From The Goon Squad might fit, since it seems to go slightly into the future or sideways.unusual realistic fiction (if, for instance, you grow part of the way up with a chimp sibling)Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside OurselvesMiranda July, The First Bad Manmulti-genre anthology:Dangerous Women, edited by (no getting around it) George RR Martin and Gardner DozoisAlso, for sure The Neapolitan Novelsand Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now.
― dow, Friday, 29 January 2016 23:45 (eight years ago) link
As promised on the cover, Zone One works as lit x pulp (was not surprised to read that Whitehead was a teen Psychotronic Magazine junkie). Also, one he endorsed---more unusual/weird realism:ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
― dow, Friday, 29 January 2016 23:50 (eight years ago) link
Hmmph BPL only has THE SCORPION RULES in audio, not as ebook. I'm against all books on tape.
― If authoritarianism is Romania's ironing board, then (in orbit), Saturday, 30 January 2016 14:31 (eight years ago) link
lamp i was on that sanderson wiki earlier in the year and it made me feel complicated bad feelings about art and humanity
― carly rae jetson (thomp), Saturday, 30 January 2016 14:52 (eight years ago) link
What I've finished recently:
David Talbot - The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret GovernmentChristopher Isherwood - Mr. Norris Changes TrainsTed Hughes - RiverPaul Bowles - Without Stopping
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 30 January 2016 15:03 (eight years ago) link
What did you think of that Isherwood?
― rb (soda), Saturday, 30 January 2016 16:03 (eight years ago) link
You're all making me want to go buy Uprooted today (and I was not looking for anything remotely like that right now).
― _Rudipherous_, Saturday, 30 January 2016 16:50 (eight years ago) link
― rb (soda), Saturday, January 30, 2016
Amusing -- perhaps the most obvious wink to the audience regarding his sexuality.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 30 January 2016 16:58 (eight years ago) link
in orbit reminds me that i have a set of the original paperbacks of the justice cycle by virginia hamilton. been meaning to read those. have to wait until i get through the zillion other books i have waiting. love the covers.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sYR8soduf8w/UEBNzZOTG4I/AAAAAAAAAuk/GT50FBIexIE/s1600/hamilton+justice.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CRMmaWdXAAAYnlV.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e2/fd/a3/e2fda3f527797d0b2f5fa8f9991e09a3.jpg[
― scott seward, Sunday, 31 January 2016 00:17 (eight years ago) link
so big! don't hate me...
and i didn't even put them in order...don't hate me twice.
― scott seward, Sunday, 31 January 2016 00:18 (eight years ago) link
OK I bought the first Ferrante novel today!
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 31 January 2016 00:21 (eight years ago) link
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41qms4OkD9L._SY373_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
― Chikan wa akan de. Zettai akan de. (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 January 2016 00:27 (eight years ago) link
coming soon to a 33 1/3 proposal near you
― carly rae jetson (thomp), Sunday, 31 January 2016 06:45 (eight years ago) link
it is truly vast and terrible and interesting to think abt.
― -san (Lamp), Sunday, 31 January 2016 07:50 (eight years ago) link
whereas the malazan wiki just makes me think 'try harder, nerds'
― carly rae jetson (thomp), Sunday, 31 January 2016 08:44 (eight years ago) link
I liked UPROOTED so much that I went back to check out Novik's previous series, an alternate history thing with dragons as national air forces in the Napoleonic Wars. I don't know if it's UPROOTED but it's not bad. My irritation with the person currently reading Bk 2 is climbing with every day that it takes them to read and return it.
― If authoritarianism is Romania's ironing board, then (in orbit), Monday, 1 February 2016 13:50 (eight years ago) link
maybe this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brief_History_of_Seven_Killings
― johnny crunch, Monday, 1 February 2016 17:23 (eight years ago) link
David Talbot - The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, January 30, 2016 3:03 PM (1 week ago)
hey alfred, what did you think of this one?
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 9 February 2016 18:17 (eight years ago) link
I should mention that I still have copies of Wolf In White Van and The Underground Is Massive that I need to get through as well. I also need to pick up this book, which was written by a dude from my Boy Scout troop:
http://smile.amazon.com/Kitchens-Great-Midwest-Ryan-Stradal/dp/052542914X/ref=la_B010XYMBEK_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1455041989&sr=1-1
― its subtle brume (DJP), Tuesday, 9 February 2016 18:20 (eight years ago) link
Was already realizing I should have incl. Wolf In White Van: John D. novel which is not just "novelization" of his Mountain Goats songs about furtive desperate murky backwater kids, full of received dreamz ( stoner gamer metal fantasy occult etc. rehash) and too-fresh personal conflicts----taken much further via the narrator, who has to reach beyond the received, and does, with mixed long-term results for himself and younger followers. Amazing, astounding, very plausible (not that I know the 80s-based versions of these subcultures like he does, but as a reading experience).
― dow, Tuesday, 9 February 2016 18:53 (eight years ago) link
I've read and liked a bunch of the stuff on this thread (Wolf in White Van, the first Ancillary, the Miranda July, Zone One) and I gotta say, the Ferrante novels tower above them all from a titanic height. Like, I read this and I say "Oh yeah this is why there's such a thing as a novel."
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 9 February 2016 18:57 (eight years ago) link
I second Wolf In White Van. One of the best books I read last year.
― i;m thinking about thos Beans (Michael B), Tuesday, 9 February 2016 19:21 (eight years ago) link
Things I've read in recent years that really stuck with me:
Wolf in White VanJourney By Moonlight, by Antal Szerb (Hungarian misfit abandons his wife on their honeymoon due to the pull of nostalgia for his creepy teenage friends, they all chase each other across Europe)Zazen, by Vanessa Veselka (adventures in Portland radical/queer communities in a semi-apocalyptic near-future)Speedboat, by Renata Adler (a novel made up of sharp little vignettes relating to the 70's NYC intellectual scene, she's very funny and I'd be afraid to meet her)Going Clear, by Lawrence Wright (the big Scientology/L Ron Hubbard book, mind-blowing and very entertaining/horrifying)Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter (written in the 60's, starts out as a seedy crime novel, expands as it goes along to encompass race, sexuality, America in general, it's incredible)Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban (you kind of need to set aside some time to read it without distraction, but it's completely brilliant in every way, ripped off by tons of people)Signs Preceding the End of the World, by Yuri Herrera (very short, very strange, kind of a Dante's Inferno experienced by a very tough young Mexican woman crossing the border into the US to find her brother)
― JoeStork, Tuesday, 9 February 2016 19:27 (eight years ago) link
i'm reading hard rain falling right now, love it so far
― #amazing #babies #touching (harbl), Tuesday, 9 February 2016 23:57 (eight years ago) link
Another vote for Hard Rain Falling, and for Journey by Moonlight.
I liked but didn't love Zazen, but the mood of it clung to me for quite a while afterwards
― like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 00:03 (eight years ago) link
Riddley Walker is great. I didn't enjoy anything else I read by Hoban (two or three other books) nearly as much as that.
― _Rudipherous_, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 00:49 (eight years ago) link
Yeah, Riddley Walker andGoing Clear, haven't read the others on that list.
― dow, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 00:54 (eight years ago) link
And you can't go too wrong with anything by Mary Gaitskill. Prob ditto for Henry Green, Ivy Compton-Burnett, or George Orwell. Also check The Horse's Mouth and Brighton Rock.
― dow, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 00:58 (eight years ago) link
And The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie! Don't know how it compares to her others; I'm still new to Muriel Spark. The Moviegoer is ace, but somehow I never felt the need for more Walker Percy, same for Henry Miller after Tropic of Cancer, but I'm very glad I read those at least. Billy Lee Bramner's The Gay Place collects three novellas about living around/on/under/right near a dynamic political gas giant, based on LBJ, except this 'un is Governor of Texas in the 50s-early 60s. Re the same era, James Whitehead's Joiner is picaresque Deep South fun (been a long, long time since I read it, but seemed like a good idea at the time).
― dow, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 01:10 (eight years ago) link
And Robert Stone's first two novels, Hall of Mirrors and Dog Soldiers By those benchmarks, A Flag For Sunrise seemed (in part) Graham Greene-wannabee-izm, which might be unfair, but I got off the bus and never went back. Although the collected short fiction might be good, based on the few early short stories and novellas I read in New American Review (really good literary mag mass-marketed as drugstore paperback, still available at finer garage sales, I hope).
― dow, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 01:19 (eight years ago) link
i went into the local bookshop with the aim of trying out some of César Aira's novellas. dude working there was really pushing Andres Neuman's 'The Things We Don't Do' on me instead. one for next time. looked ace.
― + +, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 01:22 (eight years ago) link
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Remarkable, supporting much of the data we already know about Dulles perfidy with newly declassified data. Didn't know Kermit Roosevelt, responsible for knocking out Mossadegh, was on the board of one of the oil companies with stakes in that coup.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 01:25 (eight years ago) link
Shit, didn't see Riddley Walker on that list. One of the best books ever, to be honest.
― like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 03:02 (eight years ago) link
Miranda July, The First Bad Man
Just started this. So far the laugh rate per page is reassuringly high.
― o. nate, Thursday, 11 February 2016 02:44 (eight years ago) link