Twilight

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway.

Post-apocalypso with ninjas and mime artists.

The Temeraire books by Naomi Novik, starting with Her Majesty’s Dragon
Excellent account of the bond between a dragon and his captain during the Napoleanic War

Lynn Flewelling’s The Bone Doll’s Twin - Subject matter that could be considered horror, done in a thoughtful fantasy way.

Anything by Lois McMaster Bujold, except the newest stuff (Sharing Knife)  Vorkosigan books especially, but best to start at the beginning with Shards of Honor(OK) and Barrayar(Excellent).

All fantasy and scifi, and each is part of at least a trilogy, but well worth the reading.

Imagining Argentina by Lawrence Thornton.

I mean Patriots by James Wesley Rawles!!!

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

The Charlie Mortdecai series. First novel here. I’ve almost finished the second, and they are brilliant, dated pieces of Britticana (or whatever the British version of Americana is.)

But! I have a secondary, ulterior motive: If anyone has read this series and will help me figure something out, drop me an e-mail - augusteisfree at g mail dot com.

Infinite Jest, assuming you haven’t already. Just go all in.

You bastard.  What did Jesse ever do to you, that you would do that to him?

_Mr. Norris and Jonathan Strange_

It’s refreshingly complete and not a part of some lame series designed to separate you from your money.

Good Omens bt Terry Pratchett.  Actually almost anything by him is worth while.

Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

If you’ve ever been to London, you’ll never look at the Underground the same again!

A wonderful book I just finished—An Equal Music, by Vikram Seth.  Stay far, far away from his The Golden Gate, however . . .

Infinite Jest made me want to tear my face off.  About 3,000 pages in I had to call it a day.  I just didn’t have enough stamina to torture myself anymore.  I’m sure it’s moral weakness on my part.

I really love the Aubrey and Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian.  Starts with Master and Commander and goes on for 20 more novels, set during the Napoleonic Wars.  It’s brilliant writing, hilarious at times and always entertaining.  Don’t let the movie starring Russel Crowe ruin it for you, if you saw it and didn’t like it.  The books are exponentially better than the film.  I checked them all out of my local library one by one, then ended up buying them one by one.  I still go back and read the entire series again every few years.

I just started Anathem, so far it hasn’t grabbed me as much as other Neal Stephenson books but I’m giving it a chance to develop.  Speaking of Neal Stephenson, a couple of books he wrote under his pseudonym, Stephen Bury, are definitely worth checking out: The Cobweb, which is a spy/sabotage/CIA-inner-workings novel set mostly in rural Iowa (it’s fabulous, really!) and Interface, a fun sci-fi Manchurian Candidate-type election novel.

Hm, what else?  I really like Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, both of which are time-travel novels.  Doomsday is a serious one, set during the black plague in Medieval times, while Dog is a fun romp set in Victorian times.  Dog is inspired by another really really fun novel, Jerome K. Jerome’s Victorian classic Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog).  That book had me convulsing with laughter at several points.

I could go on, but I’ll give someone else a turn.

Ooh, I take that back for one second: William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition and Spook Country.

I will be a little different and recommend some graphic novels, which do not take as long to read as regular novels:

Blankets by Craig Thompson makes me sob like a child whenever I read it.
Black Hole by Charles Burns was disturbing and magnetic and dark.
Any of the volumes of Flight, which are all very fanciful and lovely.

(Also Shake Girl, and not just coz I helped write it, I swear.)

World War Z should satisfy your brains cravings.

“Natural History” by Justina Robson

http://www.amazon.com/Natural-History-Justina-Robson/dp/0553587412/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228214272&sr=8-1

You can go for the anti-Twilight. <a >Let The Right One In</a>
It’s just like Twilight, except the main character is a picked-on Swedish kid in an early 80s suburban dystopia. It might also be available in your local movie theatre, if you’re really lucky.

Fantasy is basically the staple of internet recommendations, and I’m no different. I usually recommend the following series-starting books:

The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Daggerspell, by Katharine Kerr

The Spirit Gate, by Kate Elliott

The Year of Our War, by Steph Swainston (though this is apparently called weird fiction)

Like someone above posted, I also like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, excellent “historical” fiction.
I’d also recommend Terry Pratchett, if not everyone did that already

And apparently I suck.
Let The Right One In
http://www.amazon.com/Let-Right-John-Ajvide-Lindqvist/dp/0312355297/

“The Change” series by S. M. Stirling, for escapist fare.

And you can have fun with Twilight by underlining stupid things. I’m not the only one who’s done that, right? Right?

Ginger Yellow beat me to it. Actually I would very highly recommend World War Z for anybody who is interested in both zombies and public policy, which probably fits the bill here. The book is less about the zombies, like all good zombie stories, and more about the people and the society trying to adapt to a world where the dead have come back to life.

Totally agreeing about world war z

Wow, it really just hit me that the last piece of contemporary fiction I read was:

“The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy.

Highly recommended. But after that I’m afraid I can only recommend ‘classics:’

“As I Lay Dying” by William Faulkner
“The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoevsky

being two of my all-time faves.

““The Change” series by S. M. Stirling, for escapist fare.”

I second this, but realize that you’re escaping the modern world for pseudo-medievel distopia after civilization dies a nasty death. “Dies the Fire” is the first one. Stirling is George R.R. Martinizing the series, planned for seven or eight in total now, although he published number five this year. Though, there’s a reccomendation, George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire sure is something.

I just finished an omnibus of James M. Cain, I love the way the guy writes. Not a wasted word. I think he did the originals over telegraph or something. Anyway “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Mildred Pierce” are both pretty damn good. I haven’t cracked “Double Indemenity” yet, because I’m reading “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” which seems fun so far.

What else? “The Years of Rice and Salt” by Kim Stanley Robinson, alternate history where the black death does wipe out Europe. Really well written.

If you haven’t, probably time to read “Watchmen” before the possibly good (!?!) movie comes out.

Oh, and of course I must also recommend the best online graphic novel (also available in TPB format):
GIRL GENIUS
Starting here: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20021104

Here are a couple of short stories to whet your appetite:
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/stories/electriccoffin/gg.SS1.php
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070827

FOR SCIENCE!

American Gods, Neil Gaiman. As recc’d above. Oh, and Party of Death. You know you want to. (It’s not actually that bad, and hypocrisyspotting is fun)

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida

Best thing I’ve read in a while.

Laughin’ Boy and Blackburn, both by Bradley Denton. Also, anything at all by Howard Waldrop.

Mobius Dick by Andrew Crumey

Not particularly well known, but everything he’s written is great, and this is his best book. I guarantee you won’t have read anything quite like it. (The blurb the book is sometimes given can make it sound kind of lame, but don’t let that put you off!)

I hate to admit it, but i read Twilight, under the pretense it would be as great as Harry Potter. Huge waste of time.

Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six after the Collapse of the United States of America by Brian Slattery.

Here is a review on Boing Boing: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/19/liberation-a-magical.html

And here is a review on io9: http://io9.com/5019641/were-all-slaves-of-history-in-sprawling-dystopian-novel

Fuck, someone beat me to <u>American Gods</u>.  However, it doesn’t appear that anyone has recommended <u>Anansi Boys</u> or the Sandman graphic novels.  Neil Gaiman is on a whole different level.

Also, for old fiction, if you haven’t already (and you probably have), <u>The Count of Monte Cristo</u>.

I enjoyed the Marquis de Sade’s stuff, but that was inbetween retching.  I don’t think it’s pleasant fiction.

If you want fun mysteries then look for Donna Andrews series.  The first is Murder with Peacocks and I loved the wackiness inside.  For mystery/crime/futuristic my guilty pleasure are the J.D. Robb novels starting with Naked in Death.  For wonderful flowing language I love the Thirteenth Tale by Setterfield, Diane.  For science fiction I would try On Basilisk Station by Weber, David or Hunting Party by Elizabeth Moon.

The Plutonium Blond by John Zakour.  Very very silly.  A campy, Dick-Tracy style mystery set in a cliche sci-fi future.  Really, any of Zakour’s mysteries.  Plutonium Blond is the first one, but reading them in order isn’t terribly important.

I’m nearing the end of “Soon I Will Be Invincible” by Austin Grossman, and so far, I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s about Dr. Impossible, evil super-genius, as he escapes from prison and tries to conquer the world, and Fatale, cybernetic superhero, as she and her teammates in the New Champions try to stop him before it’s too late…

Anathem really does get going and is worth it, though watch out for the veneer of egalitarianism overlaying some really endemic sexism. Most of his other books are like that, too.

Read Tales of the Black Company by Glen Cook. Plot-driven fantasy that doesn’t suck.

And I got exactly one paragraph into Twilight before putting it down. No editor’s pen touched that text.

I know you left it open, but which authors or genres or books do you usually go to for light reading, Jesse? That’ll help.

I’d second (third? fourth?) the Neal Stephenson recommendations, although Anathem, while jam-packed with ideas like his other books, isn’t as light reading as the others.

Don’t have any book suggestions, but I do have a story:

A few weeks ago, I was reading a David Sedaris book while waiting for Civ Pro to start. All of a sudden, someone goes “IS THAT A NON-LAW SCHOOL BOOK? Are you…READING FOR PLEASURE?”

About 15 people whipped their heads around and stared at me.

I’ve got Torts tomorrow, Contracts on Friday, and Crim and CivP next week - then a relaxing three weeks of nothing but reading for pleasure.

The Paper Chase, by John Jay Osborn, Jr.?

Seriously, I’ll second the recommendation for George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series.  It’s outstanding.  And I’m eagerly awaiting the fifth book.

I know it’s on the younger side, but I really enjoyed the Fablehaven series of books. I read before I go to bed, so I like fantasy that is easy to digest, along the lines of any Harry Potter book.

Also, while I’m waiting for the fourth Fablehaven book to come out, I’ve started reading the Leven Thumps series of books (also numbingly good fantasy for younger readers, but enjoyable enough for older readers).

I would recommend Good Omens as a fun, light read. Really, Terry Pratchett is a safe bet for fun, light, and stupid.

Jesse—if you’ve read Jane Eyre and have taken a few college lit courses, I might recommend The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fford, which is a lot of fun. If you’re light on the Vic Lit, I would recommend his other series, the Nursery Crimes books—we listened to The Fourth Bear on the road last holiday and it was great.

The Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde.  Quirky and fun, and it’s sort of…meta-literature.  Sort of.

I second the Temeraire suggestion above—love love love those.

Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie novels/mysteries are highly enjoyable.  Compelling.

And I just started listening to “Company of Liars” by Karen Maitland, and an hour into an 18 hour audiobook, and I am SUCKED in.  I think it’s going to be brilliant.

Oh, one more.  Ten Days in the Hills, by Jane Smiley.  Apparently I’m a sucker for re-worked classic literature.  (Company of Liars = Chaucer, Ten Days = The Decameron).

Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos and also Ilium/Olympos. Both sets are fun and staggeringly ambitious (posthumans, the Trojan War on Mars, mind-boggling time travel, alien cyborgs who read Proust, characters from The Tempest and John Keats popping up). Not Great Literature, but very fun.

All Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett recommendations second’d. Also Fury by Salman Rushdie and everything ever by Kazuo Ishiguro (of Remains of the Day fame), and my go-to recommendation for everyone is The Once and Future King.

Jesse, you’ve talked about Watchmen here before, haven’t you?  In the realm of superhero comics, there’s some new Jack Kirby collections out (notably The Eternals in two paperback volumes); and there’s two or three volumes of Grant Morrison’s recent Batman work.

Important Af-Am SF volume this year:  Filter House by Nisi Shawl.  Got well-deserved endorsements from Le Guin, Delany, Ms. magazine, and others.  A very diverse story collection, with ghost stories, technovoudun, Enlightenment satire, and other genres.

A novel that’s recently been issued in paperback that I found to be very witty is Brock Clarke’s An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England. 

If you like a fantasy/Gothic atmosphere but might not have the time for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (am I spelling that right?  I really fear becoming one of the people in this thread who gets book titles wrong!), be aware that Hesperus press has put out two little volumes of Mary Shelley’s hard-to-find short fiction.  Lovely Romantic stuff.

Another Anti-twilight: Sisters of the Moon series by Yasmine Galenorn (4 books so far: Witchling, Changeling, Darkling, Dragon Wytch)

Nice afterlife novel: Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

I don’t remember why I got this: In Search of an Impotent Man by Gaby Hauptmann

And I totally second Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik

Still trying to decide if Invisible Man is my favorite novel EVAH, or Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark: novelized autobiography, gorgeous writing, about republic vs. north in late 50s-early 60s Ireland without being about republic vs. north. 

Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White: Classic Victorian mystery, including wrongful committal to a lunatic asylum! Collins was friends with Dickens, and a more captivating writer if you ask me.

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children: about partition without being about partition.  I can still taste this book.

I assume you’ve read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, since it seems like everyone and their mother has read it (courtesy of Oprah), but it is certainly worth it.

Any of Stephen Carter’s books - The Emperor of Ocean Park, New England White or Palace Counsel.  New England White is my favorite of the bunch.

Er, Palace Council, not Counsel.  Too much lawyering has muddied my brain.

If you like vampires, let me offer Elizabeth Donald’s Noctural Urges series. In Memphis, vampires are a permanent underclass, forced into the least appetizing work, including sex work. Nocturnal Urges is the club where they sell the bite. The first book is a murder mystery, the second a political thriller and the third is a straight-up thriller.

If you like horror short stories, I strongly suggest her collection, Setting Suns.

If you like GLBT fiction, let me rec Cheating Chance</i> by James Buchanan or AM Riley’s <a href=“http://www.torquerebooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&manufacturers_id=18&products_id=1194”>Quod Tam Sitio. (the latter is another vampire book)

Pure escape: Louis L’Amour’s Sackett’s Land and To the Far Blue Mountains. Set in 1599, they’re more Captain Blood than Gunsmoke.

Booched my HTML, sorry folks.

Seconding the recommendation for the books by Lynn Flewelling.  Great reads.

For lighter brain-candy I’d suggest stuff by Tom Holt - I’m reading “You Don’t Have To Be Evil To Work Here (But It Helps)!” and enjoying it.

Ooo, ooo. Diana reminded me. Read Bernard Cornwell’s deromanticized King Arthur books, “The Winter King” is the first one, followed by “The Enemy of God” and “Excalibur.” Gritty and unhigh falutin’. His Merlin, Guinevere and Lancelot are especially good. His Arthur is more complex. The novel is told through the eyes of Derfel, one of Arthurs warriors, and is about the clash and intrigue between Britons and Saxons, Britons and Irish, Britons and Britons and Pagans and Christians.

New fiction I loved this year: The Elegance of the Hedgehog—a French novel that seems insufferable at first but then takes an unexpected turn, and becomes one of those books I keep thinking about at odd moments. I did love Edgar Sawtelle (despite Oprah’s endorsement)—a strange and marvelous Hamlet-in-the-Northwoods with dogs. If you’re a dog person it’s especially good—and again, characters that get inside your head. I’m on an Irish writing kick: The Gathering by Anne Enright and The Secret History by Sebastian Barry were both haunting. And then I’ve been reading Marilynne Robinson’s two latest back-to-back: Home and Gilead (a strange interest in Protestant history helps here).

If you dig sci-fi, then Light by M. John Harrison is pretty amazing, and the sequel, Nova Swing is not bad either.
Also, I can’t believe no one has put up Haruki Murakami’s name. I don’t really know what genre he falls into, but it’s fucked up and insane and really really awesome. Wind Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore are nice and epic, and Wind Up Bird is especially good, but my personal favourite has got to be Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
People are totally right about Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, so I’ll mention Susanna Clarke’s book of short stories, the Ladies of Grace Adieu, which is also really good.
Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day is long and insane, but the motherfucker can write.
And maybe Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell.
That’s gotta be long enough.

Halting State by Charles Stross. Humanistic cyberpunk, with zombies (no, really—check it out).

Anything by Cherie Priest, if you’re okay with horror. Her Eden Moore books (Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Wings to the Kingdom, and Not Flesh Nor Feathers) get better with each book. And then there’s Dreadful Skin, which is awesome. She’s got two more standalone books coming out later this month.

Others have recommended Neil Gaiman, but I’m going to specifically recommend his latest, The Graveyard Book. It’s technically YA, but it’s phenomenal. And if you’d rather not actually pay hardcover price, you can always listen to him reading it in a series of videos at his childrens’ book website or his regular website.

The two Chris Moriarty books, Spin State and Spin Control.  They are pretty much up there as among the best sci-fi written in the past decade.  Got plenty of stuff in a Ghost In the Shell superstructure.

The Correction by Jonathan Franzen was the first good novel I read after finishing law school.  Great reading for the holidays.

I’m sorry, that’s “The Corrections”, it’s too early for my fingers to pluralize on their own.

In The Woods by Tana French - three 12 year olds go into the woods outside of a Dublin suburban development. Only one of them is found, with his nails dug into the wood of the tree he is embracing, and his sneakers full of blood - someone else’s blood. That child grows up to be a detective and finds himself back in those woods when a young girl is found murdered. Wonderful characterization and writing.

These recommendations are assuming you’ve already read George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, at least as much of it as he’s deigned to release.  Also Lois McMaster Bujold.

Dan Simmons’ The Terror is a good read, if a little unsatisfying.

But my current favorite, if you like hard sci-fi with great characters (really! it exists!) is Jack McDevitt’s Priscilla Hutchins series:  Deepsix, Omega, Chindi, The Engines of God, and Cauldron.  Great, great stuff, really gripping and well told, and very plausible.

Oh, I almost forgot, shame on me!  Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series!  Read that first!

I hate to admit it, but i read Twilight, under the pretense it would be as great as Harry Potter. Huge waste of time.

I read it, but only because a lady in my book club selected it as our book for September. Ditto the waste of time, but it was interesting how evenly it divided our book club into the romantics and the feminists.

Second the recommendation for Jasper Fforde’s books. Also Follett “Pillers of the Earth” and “World Without End”  (Pillars is better) for intricate plots and complex characters.

The Brothers K, by David James Duncan.  Great American family saga - lots of baseball - lots of politics - and the best characters in contemporary fiction.

Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson, although reading this in the middle of a Michigan winter might make you reach for a shotgun.  It’s an experience.

And I second the recommendation for Dan Simmons’ Hyperion books - first sci-fi I ever read, and I devoured them.  Great, great books.

No one has recomended the Golden Compass books? I thought those were ten times better than Harry Potter, one hundred times better than Narnia, shoot - better than Lord of the Rings. Loved them. And, hey, atheists need love too.

the “hap collins and leonard pine” mysteries by Joe Lansdale. Lansdale is funny and wise and compassionate and exciting. I will compare him to Mark Twain. Once I discovered Lansdale I have read all his books. except the ones out of print. and the tarzan book he finished for edgar rice burroughs!

Read Tales of the Black Company by Glen Cook. Plot-driven fantasy that doesn’t suck.

Well, if you’re going to go down that sort of alley, try:

- The Vlad the Assassin series from Steven Brust, probably starting with the book of Jhereg - how exactly do you make a living as an assassin and crime lord in a highly magical world.  Bonus - see if you can figure out what the milieu is before Vlad’s grandfather uses the “e” word…

- The Man Who Never Missed by Steve Perry, and subsequent books - a nice short story about ethically rebelling against a fairly popular tyranny…

- Some of Tim Power’s novels - I’d suggest “The Stress Of Her Regard” or “The Drawing Of The Dark” - skewed versions of common fantasy ideas.

- Charlie Stross’s Laundry series, “The Atrocity Archive”, “the Jennifer Morgue” and “The Fuller Memorandum” - Snowcrash meets Cthulhu, with a lot of Dilbert thrown in.

BTW, Stirling is a right-wing asshole with turgid writing.  The only one of his that was above mediocre was “Drakon”, but that was pretty damned good.  If you want to try alternate history/technothiller stuff, give John Birmingham’s “World War 2.0” trilogy a go.  He manages to do a good line in contrasting the society of WWII with the 21st century refugees who have to deal with it.

_Kindred_ by Octavia Butler. Really, anything by Octavia Butler. Amazing escapist entrancing feminist sci-fi(ish) literature. I picked up Kindred after filing my dissertation in a need for anything fictional and readable, and loved it so much that I read everything else Butler has written in the following few months. Kindred is an excellent place to start, a story that jumps between a southern plantation in the antebellum south and 1970s Los Angeles.

A Mercy by Toni Morrison.  I’m only a third of the way through it, but so far it is great.  It’s also short, so you’ll have time for another.  Spouse read it first and she couldn’t put it down.

Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos and also Ilium/Olympos. Both sets are fun and staggeringly ambitious (posthumans, the Trojan War on Mars, mind-boggling time travel, alien cyborgs who read Proust, characters from The Tempest and John Keats popping up).

Those were tolerable before I encountered Simmons on the internet, and discovered that he’s a racist wingnut.  See this, for example:

http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_04.htm

His racism and winguttery contaminate his fiction, although you might miss it if you weren’t alert.

Sherman Alexie’s Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven & Reservation Blues, N. Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony.

I dunno…I wasn’t alert for racism in Simmons, but I certainly did not miss it. And the books weren’t that great anyhow.

- The Man Who Never Missed by Steve Perry, and subsequent books - a nice short story about ethically rebelling against a fairly popular tyranny…

What Piator forgets to mention is that Perry’s series has a better mix of races, genders, and sexual preferences than many SciFi writers do….. I do wish he’d be a little less voyeuristic about his main lesbian couple, and I wondered about the need to couple everyone off. They were fun reads, though.

I had gotten that I probably wouldn’t like Stirling if I met him, but since the Change series takes place less than 2 hours from where I live, I’ve been reading them. I’m impressed with Stirling’s ability to write characters that are genuinely flawed people - as opposed to, say, Twilight, where characters don’t really have flaws, or rather, those things you’re pointing out as flaws aren’t flaws, they’re what makes the character so adorable. *eyeroll* Then again, maybe he didn’t intend his consistent “survivalist with too much testosterone” character to be seen as flawed

Those were tolerable before I encountered Simmons on the internet, and discovered that he’s a racist wingnut.  See this, for example:

Ah, damn, that’s disheartening. I admit to not reading his books too carefully (more as light reading breaks), but now I think on it, certain parts are popping out.

I finally was able to check The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz from the library after being on the waiting list for months! I haven’t finished it yet,  but so far I’m riveted. Here are the rec’s from Powell’s:

Leaping back and forth between the Dominican Republic and New Jersey, pouring across pages in a “combustible mix of slang and lyricism” (quoth Booklist), Oscar Wao bridges several generations and distinct cultures with exhilarating doses of Caribbean history and old-fashioned pulse-pounding drama. Politics, corruption, romance, fantasy, faith, despair — the novel, as Diaz explained in a Powells.com interview, contains multitudes.
Recommended by Dave, Powells.com

Darkly funny and at times heartbreaking, The Brief Wondrous Life is about Díaz’s unlikely hero (an obese Dominican Trekkie terrified of dying a virgin) with a rich narrative voice that compels sympathy over pity as the inner workings of both Oscar and his native Dominican Republic are laid bare.
Recommended by Ann J., Powells.com

Anything by Isak Dinesen, but especially Babette’s Feast.

Cool about the Brief Wondrous Life…I’ve seen it in bookstores, and thought it looked interesting, but knew nothing about it, or its author. Now I think I might try and get it.

Two science fiction classics.  Joe Haldeman’s “Forever War” and then read the not quite a sequel, “Forever Peace”.  If you want to rock hard, then read the real sequel, “Forever Free” but without question, read them in the order listed.

Seconding The God of Small Things. Still haven’t quite managed to get through it with school, but the half I’ve read has been amazing. Ditto Jonathan Norrell and Mr. Strange. <strike>Maybe this reading three novels at the same time thing is the reason I can’t get through one.</strike>

If you like children’s fiction, The Dark is Rising is really good, and pretty much anything Madeline L’Engle has a special place in my heart.

I’d also throw out Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians. It’s a strange novel, that’s problematic in a lot of ways, but it’s still really interesting.

Fay by Larry Brown and an oldie -  A Confederacy of Dunces.
The backstory of this book is almost as riviting as the book itself.

I recommend the fun and supernatural Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris
Dead until Dark is the first book.
The premise is that Vampires “come out” because of japanese synthetic blood. Sookie is a telepathic waitress in Northern Louisiana who dates vampire Bill because he has no brainwaves…finally some peace for her cluttered mind. There are 8 books in the series full of supernatural creatures and they are easy reads with fun characters.
HBO has made the series Tru Blood based on the characters, but the TV series is much darker then the books, and loosely based in may ways.

Gregory Frost’s <u>Shadowbridge</u> and <u>Lord Tophet.</u> A duology (I mean, you don’t have that long between semesters) and they are brilliant fantasies that aren’t Sword and Sorcery. Interesting storytelling about, well, storytelling among other things.

Older one fom me, but one of my favourites ever (and the only “cyberpunk” novel I’ve actually enjoyed for its own sake): “The Fortunate Fall,” by Rafael Carter. Brilliant novel; too bad the novelist does not actually write that much. And makes me wonder which gender pronoun to use, because I just don’t know.

You could do worse than reading some Jim Thompson novels—Pop. 1280, The Killer Inside Me, and The Grifters are classics.  I’d go for The Killer Inside Me, if I had to pick just one.

Also, you should pick up King Dork by Frank Portman (of Mr. T Experience fame).  Very, very funny YA reading.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (yes, two F’s)

Agreed with the GRRM Song of Ice and Fire series.  It’s high fantasy.  The characters completely break archetypes in a way I’ve never read before which made the series even more fantastic. Each chapter is told from the POV of a differing character.  Good guys get killed, bad guys get away with nasty stuff, and it’s so realistic despite being set in an LOTR kind of historical world.  My only caveat is that GRRM will never finish the fifth book, and I’ve been waiting for it so long I now hate him.

American Gods, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and A Confederacy of Dunces (excellent!) all seconded, thirded, whatever.

There’s a huge anthology of Edgar Allen Poe’s stories which is excellent, and you could try any book by Robin McKinley.  I’m a huge fan of Sunshine but people tend to love her work or hate it.

I feel like recommending Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House.  It is pleasant. (and fairly short)

THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins.  (Don’t be fooled by the fact that it’s shelved in the YA section—anything with a protag under 18 gets put there.)  It’s about a future dystopia where some regions of the US have been left to starve.  It’s gripping from page one, a blend of science fiction and adventure with some social commentary.  A lot of starred reviews for this one, and it deserved them.

The Philosophical Strangler by Eric Flint is worth a read.  The discussion of ‘professional ethics’ is hilarious.

For a finely textured mixture of historical novel and good-guy vampire, try any of the Compte de Germain novels by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. The novels cover most of the unlifetime of the main character’s 3,000-year history, from ancient Egypt to the spanish Civil War—including Imperial Rome, Byzantium, the Middle Ages, China, Renaissance and later Europe, colonial South America.

Oh, inky, we could be friends. I LOVED Cloud Atlas.  So I second your recommendation.

david anthony durham: acacia (especially if you enjoy a song of ice and fire)
patrick rothfuss: the name of the wind

two best books of the year, IMO.

Linnaeus:
And I’m eagerly awaiting the fifth book.

You forgot to say the fifth book in the trilogy.

They are excellent. I keep hoping the HBO thing will force him to turn them out a little faster…

In a completely different vein, I’ll also recommend John Crowley’s Little, Big and Clifford Simak’s City, two of my favorite books ever.

I third Cloud Atlas, and also Black Swan Green which is also by David Mitchell.  I also adored The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, Consequences by Penelope Lively, A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss and Affinity by Sarah Waters.

The Count of Monte Cristo (unabridged translation ONLY)

Agreed with the GRRM Song of Ice and Fire series.  It’s high fantasy.  The characters completely break archetypes in a way I’ve never read before which made the series even more fantastic. Each chapter is told from the POV of a differing character.  Good guys get killed, bad guys get away with nasty stuff, and it’s so realistic despite being set in an LOTR kind of historical world.

Mmm - try Joe Abercrombie’s trilogy starting from “The Blade Itself”.  If you make it through to the third book, there’s a serious pay-off ibn how you judged the characters.

The Random Factor by Linda LaRosa.

One of the greatest off-beat crime thrillers I have ever read.

Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino. 

Having gone through the “fun” that is law school, I can heartily recommend this amazing book.  Although slim - perfect for reading during the break - it is without doubt one of the most imaginative works of fiction you will ever read.  100% Guaranteed.  It’s a series of stories describing, well, describing the creation of everything - from the moon, to the universe, to time, to color.  And the creative ways in which Calvino tells his stories is just so joyous, so energetic, so thought-provoking, so goddamn imaginative that it will leave you riding high well into your 2nd semester.  (More Learned Hand coming up!)

Cannot recommend it enough.

Kathleen Ann Goonan’s quartet of books about Earth transformed by nanotech is good. The last “light Music” is one of my favourites.

The Ratha books, starting with the first one, Ratha’s Creature. It’s a series about sentient big cats in mid-Cenozoic North America, what’s not to love.

Also Natural Selection, The Swarm, The Wild Road (and its sequel The Golden Cat), and Godzilla at World’s End.

What Piator forgets to mention is that Perry’s series has a better mix of races, genders, and sexual preferences than many SciFi writers do….. I do wish he’d be a little less voyeuristic about his main lesbian couple, and I wondered about the need to couple everyone off. They were fun reads, though.

Richard Morgan has a fantasy novel with one of the two main characters gay.  It’s amusing because it isn’t ignored, but it isn’t a trick or an excuse for stereotyping - he isn’t swishy, and doesn’t lisp or flounce; the local establishment doesn’t like in-your-face gays, but they have to deal with him because he’s a Hero (i.e. a sociopath with a big sharp sword).  Think in terms of Omar from “the Wire”.

Wow. Somebody up thread recommended “As I Lay Dying”. Don’t do it. Your time would be better spent watching paint dry. Instead you should read Evolution by Stephen Baxter. It’s a fictionalized account of the evolution of humans. It’s a series of vignettes told from the point of view of our ancestors, and later in the book, our children. Really, you could read anything by Stephen Baxter because he’s so awesome.

Don’t have any book suggestions, but I do have a story:

About 15 people whipped their heads around and stared at me.

Back in the day, I would have been one of those fifteen.  Law school turned me off to reading, not to mention police/courtroom TV shows, etc.

It took me YEARS to recover.

Tks for the suggestion, piator.  I’ll check it out.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.

book is amazing.

Also, Twilight becomes much better if you assign muppet voices to the characters. Edward becomes Count Von Count, Jacob becomes Fozzie Bear (it works better than Rolf).

Bella is Miss Piggy, which requires you to replace all personal pronouns with “Moi”

‘Perdido Street Station’ by China Miéville—wildly imaginative.

Delurking to offer my own small contribution, as a book lover and law school survivor.

Books:

-I second (third, fourth, etc.) all of the recommendations for Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett and Charlaine Harris.  Perfectly escapist stuff.

-If you’re into Buffy, I recommend settling in with the Season 8 comics (you can get them in 3 volumes so far: The Long Way Home, No Future For You, Wolves at the Gate), and/or the Buffy Omnibus volumes 1-5.

-One of my favorite worlds to slip away to is in Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series (Kushiel’s Dart, Kushiel’s Chosen, Kushiel’s Avatar, and then Kushiel’s Scion, Kushiel’s Justice, Kushiel’s Mercy).

-If you like intermediate kids or YA fiction, check out Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart trilogy (Inkheart, Inkspell and Inkdeath).

Law school:

-It’s good to stock up on pleasure reading now, because if you’re anything like me, you will promptly fall ill with a cold/flu upon finishing exams.  All the exam prep was so go-go-go that once I finally slowed down, I got sick.  So I’d also say keep up with vitamins, etc. to try and combat that.

-Good luck!  I found that first semester was truly the hardest in terms of adjustment, and once you’re past it, you will probably feel a lot better about law school in general.

Another vote for A Confederacy of Dunces.

Sorry, I don’t read comforting fictions.

Bot as it seems that many of the books that have been recommended aren’t necessarily comforting, I’ll advance some nominations:

H. P. Lovecraft - The Fiction - just published by Barnes & Noble ad as close to a complete collection of his stories as you can get in one volume.

Samuel R. Delany - Dhalgren

Octavia Butler - I’ll second Kindred - and recommend Clay’s Ark (or, for, that matter, the entire Patternist series)

S. P. Somtow - The Shattered Horse - a retelling of the Trojan War

Philip K. Dick - A Maze of Death - one of my all-time favorite authors, and this one is my personal favorite

Harlan Ellison - so many incredible short story collections - take your pick

Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub - hilarious and, although a critique of the Polish Communist government, familiar to anyone who’s ever worked for any government

Michael Moorcock - The War Hound and the World’s Pain - Satan repents!

Brian Aldiss - Barefoot in the Head - you have to experience it, trust me

John Brunner - Stand on Zanzibar, and I’ll add The Sheep Look Up

That’s ten. I’d better stop or I’d be here for weeks…

My only caveat is that GRRM will never finish the fifth book, and I’ve been waiting for it so long I now hate him.

HAHAHA! I read the first two books forever ago, and my friend has been rereading all of them endlessly for the last two years, hoping for the day the next book appears… I can see her die a little inside every time she thinks about her favorite character’s current fate. :p (But yes, they are awesomely f’ed up.)

...and I only read manga lately, so no *book* suggestions here (other than those already mentioned—Pratchett and Bujold ftw!). *hides in shame* I’d recommend the Fullmetal Alchemist series though; it should be find-able online somewhere, and if you like anime-type-stuff, it and Black Lagoon are wonderful.

Tim Powers!  Tim Powers!  Tim Powers!

Nobody else does historical occult fantasy horror quite as well, at least as far as researching odd bits of history and gluing them together in a crazy collage weird/scary goodness!  A list of some highlights:

Djinnis + John LeCarre:  Declare

Tarot + Ghosts + Bugsy Siegel = Last Call

Blackbeard + black magic = On Stranger Tides

King Arthur + Beer is the Secret of the Universe = The Drawing of the Dark

Time Travel + Springheeled Jack + Victorian Steampunk = The Anubis Gates

I fifth (or whatever) Jasper Fforde! But only if you love the bizarre…

And if you are well-read and know the characters from their original books, the books are even more fun.

<u>Semi-Tough</u> by Dan Jenkins.  Honesty.  Really.  Sounds like you could use a good laugh.

H. P. Lovecraft - The Fiction - just published by Barnes & Noble ad as close to a complete collection of his stories as you can get in one volume.

You’re citing Lovecraft as an example of comforting fiction.

Man, and I thought my life sucked…

Both of these books are by Gabrile Garcia Marquez:
A Hundred Years of Solitude and
A Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
Also,
The Last Temptation of Christ by N. Kazantzakis
Enjoy

I’ll second (or third) the nomination for Lois Mcmaster Bujold’s _Curse of Chalion_.  This is one of the best fantasy novels I’ve ever read.  Thorougly enjoyable mind candy / page turner.

I just started reading Six of One, by Rita Mae Brown (yeah, she wrote things besides Rubyfruit Jungle), and it’s pretty good so far.

I work at Borders and it is ridiculous how popular those books are.  We can’t keep them on the shelves and it is baffling.  I keep thinking of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” like, “I can’t be the only one who sees how bad these are, right?  We must all just be scared of speaking up and looking dumb when everyone else seems to like them?”  But even members of the staff whose taste I normally trust are into them.  Like their bodies are temporarily possessed by some dumb alien when those books are mentioned.  Almost eerie.

I am in the middle of Charlaine Harris’ “Sookie Stackhouse” books and they are definitely a lot of fun.  I keep resolving to read something more serious before I start the next in the series but then I end up putting it off and reading the next one anyway.  One of those “The Diet starts tomorrow” sort of situations.  Pretty good sign, when it comes to books.

And by “those books” I mean the Twilight series.

Geez.

I’ll second a bunch of the popular choices (Pratchett, Stephenson, Bujold, Gaiman) and add two great authors & tiptree award winners: Nicola Griffith, especially Amonite, and Matt Ruff, particularly Set this house in order.

In time for everyone to have left the thread, I really have to add a whine, after discovering that the excellent graphic novel Whiteout is being turned into a movie. My complaint (except for the fact that it’s by the director of such stellar works as The Fast and the Furious and Swordfish)?
How did this:
http://goto.glocalnet.net/druv/carrie.png
Turn into this?
http://goto.glocalnet.net/druv/karrie.jpg

Apparently Kate Beckinsale was the first choice of the director :(

I was going to suggest the Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde, but I see Mighty Ponygirl and manogirl (and others) have already beaten me to the punch. Well, I second that recommendation. This series throws in pretty much everything you can think of - vampires and werewolves, time travel, genetic engineering, and characters from famous literature jumping into the real world (and vice versa) - and still manages to keep up a comprehensible, albeit delirious, internal logic. Immense fun.

I just recently read The Graveyard Book and Coraline by Neil Gaiman, both of which I enjoyed, and their purportedly-YA status means they can be finished in a day or two.

You can read Braudel’s enormous three-volume history (of Civilization and Capitalism!) as light reading if you want to (skipping to the next illustration when bored). It is excellent background to all the half-real pre-industrial societies in fantasy novels, and of course handy knowledge for our actual material world.

If you like _Curse of Chalion_ you’d probably like Kage Baker’s _Anvil of the World_, which is somwhere between the Bujold and Tanith Lee and P. G. Wodehouse. Her Mendoza series was excellent for many books; I didn’t like the closer.

I find short stories relaxing as they read quickly and aren’t as frustrating if you end up hating it halfway through. 

Lovecraft is certainly worth a read.  Try Labyrinths, a collection of Borges stories.  I’ve always loved Borges.  Steven Millhauser is great, The Knife Thrower (stories) or Little Kingdoms (novellas).

Benighted, by Kit Whitfield.

Those Pandagonians looking for it in the English-speaking world outside the USA would find it under a different title—its real title, which was deemed inappropriate for the US market.

I’ll let Whitfield herself explain this.

Pandagonians who are also Slacktivites will know her as “Praline.”

As for her book—I’m not touting it as either the greatest or the most entertaining—it’s kind of gritty and depressing, in an edgy way. Sort of Ginger Snaps meets The Wire, or The Wolf Man meets The Handmaid’s Tale.

Why yes, there is a movie deal in the works, why do you ask? Seriously, if the filmmakers have a tenth the craftsmanship and sensibility Praline put into her book, it will blow crap like Twilight away.

It’s really apt for a Pandagonian audience, because Whitfield has created a fascinating cat’s-cradle of oppression and counter oppression, privilege and counter privilege, that gets you from any angle at all. Her narrator is a member of a despised minority—and any reader in our world, no matter how privileged, would be in her category in her world.

A world an awful lot like ours—every day, and just about any night of the month—but not every night…

Oh, go check out the link. And you ought to be able to find it in any library in the English-speaking world (I hope in translation too, but don’t know…)—it was published a couple years ago.

Under one title or the other.

And speaking (ill) of Twilight, one of my co-workers is listening to an audio reading of it. I’m glad I can’t hear more than the general tone of it.

Before he was listening to the Potter canon. Again I couldn’t hear the actual words, but I’ve read them so I didn’t mind.

The guy reading sounded an awful lot like Wolfman Jack, which was fun, though weird.

Just want to offer support for:

-George R. R. Martin (Also starting to resent him, but who else can inspire such hatred because of the amazing quality of his work? Come, join the ranks of the contemptuously addicted)
-Terry Pratchett (Does for Fantasy what Douglas Adams does for Sci-Fi)
-A Confederacy of Dunces (Currently rereading for the third time, and it just gets better every time)

I’ve always found Neil Gaiman to be somewhat hit or miss (sometimes within the same work), but I seem to be in the minority.

If you like mysteries, the China Bayle series by Susan Witting Albert might suit you. A female lawyer who dropped out of practice to run her own herb store deals with issues from her past, life in a Texas small town (which I suspect is a way for her to introduce conservative Red State readers to tolerance and feminism in a sneaky fashion. But the backbone of each book is a solid mystery, the type where one can figure much out by paying close attention.

Iain M Banks might be worth a look, too. He does good character development (for SF), apparently. Doesn’t appeal to me, though not for that reason Avoid Feersum Enjine unless you’re particularly determined or enjoy books written phonetically.

Oh, and note the difference between books with the author as Iain M Banks (SF) and Iain Banks (non-SF). I guess he did this so readers of the different genres wouldn’t be annoyed by a book completely different from what they expected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks

Joseph Heller’s _Catch-22_ still holds up after all these years.

I like Gaiman, but he hasn’t yet equalled John Crowley’s _Little, Big_.

Third on Confederacy of Dunces.

I also find myself coming back to Tom Robbins and John Irving, particularly Skinny Legs and All and Jitterbug Perfume (TR) and Hotel New Hampshire or Prayer for Owen Meany (JI). Wildly divergent in style and approach, but a shared love for the human experience.

Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude

My last Xmas in grad school, with nothing ahead but one more class and a perfunctory exit exam, I read Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time.  It’s about a million words of great comic writing taking you through the middle 50 years of the 20th Century.  Best.  Xmas.  Ever.

Or, in honor of getting half-way though your scare ‘em to death first year, you could read William Gaddis’s A Frolic of His Own.  Louis Auchincloss said Gaddis showed that he knew more about law than lawyers did in that one.  It was so funny that I snortled all the way through it.

The Count of Monte Cristo is the way to go! Whether you’ve never read it or you’ve already done so 10 times, there’s always more to appreciate in it in each reread. It has everything - betrayal, love, revenge, tension, secrets, revenge, history, and revenge.

1. Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome
2. The Khaavren series, by Stephen Brust, starting with The Phoenix Guards
3. The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
4. Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym
5. The Foreigner series, by C.J. Cherryh
6. Kiln People, by David Brin

Second Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Octavia Butler, Naomi Novik.

I hit the Blaspheme key too soon.

For fairly short excursions, I highly recommend any of the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout (not the Goldsborough bastardizations).  They are the Sousa marches of murder mysteries.  I found out fairly recently that both Sousa and Stout worked in the same way - they had the concept in their heads and then wrote from beginning to end, straight through, very few corrections or revisions, which is why it’s impossible to imitate either of them.