Happy St George's day
Apr. 23rd, 2010 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI'm not really interested in celebrating a saint's day (not being Christian), nor in celebrating Englishness (not being that sort of patriot), nor in dragon-slaying (as I generally find myself on the side of the dragon). However, I kind of like the idea of the Catalan version where people give eachother books.
So I propose a game: comment and recommend me a book, and I'll rec you something in return. If I don't know anything about you, I'll suggest something that I really like, and which I generally find isn't well known. And I'll keep going until I find something new to you, if necessary. You can give me a hint of the sort of books you prefer if you want to, but it's not required; it might be a more fun game if I have to guess based on my judgement of your character.
I have a comprehensive list of everything I've read in the last seven years, in case you find it hard to know where to start, but you obviously don't have to read through all that.
So I propose a game: comment and recommend me a book, and I'll rec you something in return. If I don't know anything about you, I'll suggest something that I really like, and which I generally find isn't well known. And I'll keep going until I find something new to you, if necessary. You can give me a hint of the sort of books you prefer if you want to, but it's not required; it might be a more fun game if I have to guess based on my judgement of your character.
I have a comprehensive list of everything I've read in the last seven years, in case you find it hard to know where to start, but you obviously don't have to read through all that.
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Date: 2010-04-23 09:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-23 11:58 am (UTC)What to rec you, hmm. I could choose something Victorian and feminist, but that would be too obvious and you'd probably have read it already. How about Jane Gardam's A long way from Verona?
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Date: 2010-04-28 09:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-23 09:46 am (UTC)Apparently, as your current romantic squeeze, I am especially supposed to give you books, but of course, since that is pretty much what we do all day, every day, it may be an uphill struggle to recommend anything I haven't already :)
Things I have read recently, that may be of interest:
* Cyberiad. Stanislaw Lem, a lot of really cute fairy-story-style short stories about two friend/rival robot inventors who invent all sorts of strange stuff, notably including (a) a machine that can make everything starting with the letter 'n'.
* The book of Nehemiah, which was surprisingly tense when they were rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem as fast as they could, all the while standing guard against imminent attack
* I think I mentioned it before, but George Martin's and others Wild Card series, which are like superheros in literature form. They're a bit inconsistent because there's lots of different authors, but some bits are really good.
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Date: 2010-04-23 12:06 pm (UTC)And yes, you are definitely supposed to give me books (if you gave me a rose instead cos I'm a girl you would be in Trouble!) You're quite right, though, it's getting to the point where we've already recommended eachother everything that really urgently needs to be shared.
If you lend me Cyberiad next time it's convenient, I'd be very interested to read that! *hug* It's really one of those things I ought to have read already, I think. I am put off Nehemiah because it's one of those books that are half in Aramaic, and change language mid-sentence, so it would be a bit of a slog to read. But it's short, and if you think it's exciting maybe I should give it a go.
What should you read? I think it's time I rec'd some biology books; have you read Darwin's dangerous idea? That is Dennett's atheist magnum opus, and has some really good explanations for how you get consciousness by evolution, without needing to invoke an omnipotent creator. And very readable, for something that is dense with both biology and philosophy.
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Date: 2010-04-23 10:32 am (UTC)If you can't get hold of Hammered et al, then I also recommend Blood and Iron/Whiskey and Water which are two books which really play around with myth and fable and Faerie and Merlin all interacting with the modern world.
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Date: 2010-04-23 12:13 pm (UTC)I think you might enjoy AS Byatt's Babel tower. It's one of my favourite books in the world, and is literary fiction written with a really SF mindset (sort of the anti Margaret Atwood, if you like). Caveats: it's actually the third in a quartet, though it stands alone really well, and I read it long before I even knew the others existed. And the main character is the mother of a boy a little bit older than Charles, which is interesting but has the potential to be upsetting as well.
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Date: 2010-04-23 10:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-23 12:16 pm (UTC)I think you should read Jack Womack's Random acts of senseless violence, which in spite of having the worst title in the world is actually a really thoughtful, interesting book. It's sort of an SF version of the diary of Anne Frank.
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Date: 2010-04-23 02:32 pm (UTC)I'd recommend Ali Smith's Girl Meets Boy. The title might be slightly misleading, because it's totally not chick lit - not that there's anything wrong with that, it just doesn't seem your genre.
It's a modern-day retelling of the myth of Iphis and I just think it's beautifully written.
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Date: 2010-04-23 03:08 pm (UTC)Choosing something for you is going to be quite difficult, cos so far I don't get the impression our reading overlaps that much. Have you read Stendhal's La chartreuse de Parme (English title The Chapterhouse of Parma)? I suggest it because it's a French novel about Italy, and one I enjoyed very much, though it is very early nineteenth century. I liked it better than the more famous Le rouge et le noir, anyway.
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Date: 2010-04-23 03:03 pm (UTC)As for a rec: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms still is the best book I've read this year.
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Date: 2010-04-23 03:17 pm (UTC)Going by some of the incredibly wonderful and exciting books you've sent me, hmm. Have you read Salman Rushdie's less well known The ground beneath her feet? It's not as magic realist as Midnight's children, but it is somewhat so, and it's also a modern retelling of the Orpheus myth except recast in an Indian context. I like it very much indeed.
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Date: 2010-04-23 03:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-24 11:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2010-04-23 04:06 pm (UTC)Also i saw you read (most of?) the Ender Series ~claps~ that was a good one! Stumbled over it a year or two ago and really enjoyed the world that was created.
Books! yay!
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Date: 2010-04-24 11:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-23 04:31 pm (UTC)Alternatively, "The soul of a new machine" (sv. transl. "En dators födelse"), a documentary book describing the design and initial implementation of Data General's MV-8000 Eclipse series (Erm, I tink it's the MV-8000 at least, been a LONG while since I read it). Tracy Kidder is, I believe, the author.
Everything I've read (except Shadow Unit) in the last few years linked on my LJ, under a dedicated tag.
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Date: 2010-04-24 11:32 am (UTC)Taking a wild guess, based on these recs and your other reading, I think you may enjoy Samuel R Delany's Triton. It's SF with some really interesting philosophical speculation as part of the story.
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Date: 2010-04-23 05:12 pm (UTC)Also if you happen to want books from the US, I would be happy to bring you some on my trip.
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Date: 2010-04-24 11:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2010-04-23 05:57 pm (UTC)It's a really fascinating book, although I might recommend a different book of hers to start with if I had read any others yet. So maybe a general Nalo Hopkinson see-what-appeals recommendation.
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Date: 2010-04-24 11:57 am (UTC)I read your mindful reading essay with great interest. To fit in with that theme, I think you might well like Keri Hulme's The bone people. No, not like, I would have to say appreciate, because it's a very disturbing book with some child abuse themes. But anyway, it's a really beautiful book about indigenous people in New Zealand, and it's like pretty much nothing else I've ever read. It certainly avoids most of the obvious clichés you often find in writing about the intersection between dominant European-origin cultures and indigenous cultures. The protagonist is also asexual, as I believe the author is. Hulme herself I believe is ethnically mixed, but to at least some degree is an insider to indigenous New Zealander culture, just not in a totally uncomplicated way.
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Date: 2010-04-23 07:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-24 12:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2010-04-23 08:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-24 12:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:Hello!
Date: 2010-04-24 03:04 am (UTC)Fiction: Ou Lu Khen and the Beautiful Madwoman by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Or maybe the first of the Demon Princes books, Star King, by Jack Vance. (Whom I enjoy quite as much for his delight in the English language as for his story-tellin.)
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Date: 2010-04-24 01:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-24 02:13 pm (UTC)If nobody else has recommended it yet, can I recommend Michael Faber's 'The Crimson Petal & The White' for a) Victoriana, b) flower theme and c) being a bloody brilliant novel about men, women, sex, class, power, control and actually, beautiful & moving love stories. It also has a lovely sub-topic about faith (from a Victorian Christian perspective, obv) which I thought was rather touching.
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Date: 2010-04-24 07:58 pm (UTC)I think you might like Rose Macauley's The towers of Trebizond. She's an interesting early twentieth century English feminist, with a really sly sense of humour. In some ways her stuff is a bit dated, but in other ways it gives you a real sense of period. It also has the absolute best opening line in all of literature:
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Date: 2010-04-26 04:33 pm (UTC)You might also enjoy a series that I've been enjoying - M.C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin series about a self-made high powered PR executive who retires to the Cotswolds and solves mysteries. They get a bit repetitive but the first few and particularly the first one - Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death - are very good.
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Date: 2010-04-26 04:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2010-04-28 09:17 pm (UTC)Pictures in the Cave by George Mackay Brown - poetic Orcadian magical realism. Small Island by Andrea Levy - one of my favourite books written in the last few years, it's a wry but very lovingly written story about post- and during- WWII Jamaican immigration to the UK. I remember recommending 'Jacob's Gift' by Jonathan Freedland to you, although it's aimed at non-Jews with little knowledge of Judaism: it's a heartfelt account of British Judaism told through his family's story.And definitely, always, The Sopranos by Alan Warner.
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Date: 2010-04-28 09:34 pm (UTC)I recently read Anne Michaels' new novel, The winter vault. She's a very poetic writer, who talks a lot about the indirect effects of the Holocaust but without making that the central focus of the story. Also she's really, really good at interpersonal relationships, without falling into Romance cliches. The other thing about The winter vault is that it's about land that gets flooded to build dams, looking at different perspectives on what that dramatic change means, so the subject matter might interest you. *bounce* Yay bookies!