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Fallorn posted:Can any one give me some good mind numbing/or not urban fantasy/paranormal romance since they seem to be just about the same thing these days? I've read the Sookie Stackhouse books, Kim Harrison's books, and quite a few others. What is at least an entertaining read, please help me book barn, your my only hope! Not my native genre but I asked an expert in the field. Apologies if some of these are repeats. Here's the list: Patricia Briggs - Mercedes Thompson series (first book: Moon Called) Rachel Caine - Weather Warden (first book: Ill Wind) and Morganville Vampires series (first book: Glass Houses) [Actually, I did read the first one in this series and it was a lot of fun - KPtN] Carrie Vaughn - Kitty Norville Series (first book: Kitty and the Midnight Hour) Tanya Huff - Vicki Nelson Series (first book: The Blood Prince) and Summon the Keeper Laurell K. Hamilton - Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series (first book: Guilty Pleasures) Emma Bull - War for the Oaks: A Novel Maria V. Snyder - Study Series (first book: Poison Study) Jacqueline Carey - Kushiel series (first book: Kushiel's Dart) Juliet Marillier - The Sevenwaters Trilogy (first book: Daughter of the Forest) Cecilia Dart-Thornton - The Bitterbynde series (first book: The Ill-Made Mute) Elizabeth Haydon - The Symphony of Ages series (first book: Rhapsody: Child of Blood)
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Jul 25, 2009 16:29
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Ballsworthy posted:You aren't serious. Piers writes very realistic female characters.  To be fair, I haven't read Bio of a Space Tyrant but, if I hadn't read the first nine Xanth novels, I wouldn't know how to touch my wife.Now. There was this post in my beloved Doctor Zero posted:... I really loved Heavy Metal (film). I like the 70's (in fiction). I like the spirit (if not always the letter) of Sci-Fi, and I'm fascinated by the glut of sci-fi that seemed to happen (in film, at least) in the late 70's. Could TBB please recommend me some "'pulp' sci-fi of the 70s"? I can't say why, but that sounds really fun to me now. (Really, focus on the film Heavy Metal here -- I would love to read something with that same vibe.) King Plum the Nth fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Feb 11, 2010 |
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Feb 11, 2010 10:11
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Sorry in advance for the wall of text. I wrote this response when I had better things to be doing. 7 y.o. bitch posted:Hi guys, I'm looking for a book that takes on misogyny and patriarchal oppression from a Tolkienien standpoint, it's so hard to find good fantasy that doesn't silence women's voices and remove their autonomy! I'm sure you know what I'm "Tolkien" about I should really ask my wife about this and post her response; this kind of thing is her passion. She really enjoys FF but only reads stuff with strong female protagonists. She's not even especially feminist or anything. I guess, like a lot of people reading popular fiction, she’s just looking for heroes she can identify with. She also dislikes the self-indulgent sex scenes that seem common among FF authors male & female alike. For that reason she tends toward YA books which some people dismiss out of hand. Off the top of my head, I know she’d enthusiastically recommend The Alanna Series by Tamora Pierce (favorites from her childhood) and The Obernewtyn Chronicles by Isobelle Carmody which she’s been reading recently. She’s also read and liked books by Mary Brown and is very keen on the series that starts with Resenting the Hero by Moira J. Moore Of these, I’ve read a bit of everything but Resenting the Hero. In general, the missus has great taste regarding quality of writing and depth of world/characters no matter what genre she reads and that’s reflected in this selection. Obviously, though, your mileage may vary. Alana is straight up FF – swords, magic, and whatnot. They’re defiantly YA or kids books but highly enjoyable (I read the first two in my early twenties and found them plenty engaging). It also specifically addresses misogyny as the primary issue of the plot revolves around social mores which insist that women can’t train to be knights. Obernewtyn is FF-like set in a feudal society that rose up after the (presumably nuclear) apocalypse. I didn’t read far enough to know for sure, but I strongly suspect that it was our earth or as close as makes no difference. I found the first book a bit slow going but I liked the world and characters it established. It seemed like the payoff was coming in the second book but I’m easily distracted and haven’t finished that yet. This one didn’t seem to address feminism overtly, the hero just happens to be a girl. (Who’s hated/hunted for reasons other than her sex.) Mary Brown is a bit lighter, tending toward humorous FF. It’s not outright comedy though, just a bit more whimsical in tone. Her first book, The Unlikely Ones, is really fun. The heroine is a pudgy, arguably unattractive girl who has the misfortune of being the village whore’s daughter. She’s very practical, stalwart and immediately – immensely – likable. All I know about Resenting the Hero is that Mrs. Plum loves them. So much so, she takes the unusual step of buying them new as they’re released. (That’s a huge recommendation. She works at a library, is irritatingly patient most of the time, and generally disdains spending money on anything other than food and drink.) I gather they tend toward comedy as well. None of these are quite Tolkenian, I don’t know where else you’d find depth like that. On the other hand, much as I like and respect Tolkien, I’d say all of these are much more readable and the worlds are well constructed, if not quite as painstakingly researched & detailed. The characters are much more realistic (though, I gather that Tolkien meant to present archetypes rather than proper people) and, of course, the woman’s point of view gets at least equal billing. criptozoid posted:There's also The Mists of Avalon, which is a feminist take on Arthurian fantasy (it sucks). Yikes? To be fair, I only know Marion Zimmer Bradley by name but isn’t that like recommending Anne McCaffery? It did make me wonder if you or anyone else here was familiar with Mary Stewart, who wrote an Arthur (actually, apparently a Merlin) series in the 70’s starting with The Crystal Cave. Don’t know if they’re feminist or not, I just keep seeing them around. Which reminds me: If you like Arthurian legend and, again, don’t mind YA books, I can’t recommend Gerald Morris highly enough. His Camelot series starts with A Squire’s Tale and is just wonderful. Not expressly feminist, he tends to focus on the minor character from major stories. Several of his protagonists are spunky, independent, intelligent young women and generally the sexes are treated equally. E: OK, so, I showed this post to my wife. She chided me a bit for missing the "Tolkien" part of the request with these recommendations (Obernewtyn coming closest). She said she got bored with the Hero series and drifted away from it  . She does like all of these, she's just a bit shy about her tastes and not sure they fit the bill. She said she could come up with a list ("Honey, I've read so much over the years") but her first recommendation was The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. She loved this one and, apparently, it's closer in epic scale to Tolkein while having been written by a woman and featuring a female protagonist. She seemed keen on the fact that Moon was actually in the military so all of the military stuff is very realistic seeming.
King Plum the Nth fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Feb 17, 2010 |
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Feb 16, 2010 20:37
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Flaggy posted:Just got done reading all of Anthony Bourdain, I do love his work but I would love to read more about the culinary arts. Where is a good place to begin? How to Cook a Wolf by M F K Fisher. Really, anything she wrote is gold but if you only read one this is the one. There's a lot of story telling among the recipes, not quite a narrative cookbook but it can almost be read that way. It's a fascinating read because she's talking about cooking well on a budget and getting back to basics. Which is all trendy now but this was published in 1942; she's writing for an audience limited by wartime rationing. So it's a neat read on multiple levels: good practical cooking advice & recipes, kitchen/home economic theory, history, anthropology, etc. It's seriously good poo poo and ought to be in the foundation of any well rounded cook's development.
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Feb 18, 2010 07:06
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While I'm here, I apologize for the bump but I'm bummed and surprised that TBB didn't jump all over my earlier request. Can anybody recommend me some metal sci-fi? To expand: I'm enthralled by the 1970's and enjoyed the film Heavy Metal. So think of the music, the themes, the film, the comics. Think of ideology that stemmed from that era: Judge Dread, V for Vendetta (from the 80's, I know, but it feels born of the spirit of disaffection I associate with the 70's), punk music. Think of Britain. Think of the glut of sci-fi that inundated every medium in the 70's but I'm not limiting my search to sci-fi. Mystery, weird fiction, pulp of that decade. I'm not sure I've ever read quite what I"m looking for. Some spiritual examples would be the works of Donald Goines, the Continental Op stories by Dashiell Hammett, Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. I'm really looking for anything that could be suggested by some combination or all of these sources and which will encourage the reader to go "gently caress ya!!!!" and pump his fist from time to time. Anybody?
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Feb 18, 2010 07:25
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7 y.o. bitch posted:Thanks man! I really appreciate it! I was actually asking for my SO, who's a vegan hipster chick who has a hard-on for Joanna Newsom, so the Tolkien part was really super important! Nai haryuvalyë melwa rë! I'm sorry to hear your SO won't eat meet. That's a hell of a way to go through life.
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Feb 20, 2010 01:42
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Lockback posted:I just saw Shutter Island, and it renewed my interest in psychological story lines like that. Anyone have any good suggestions? I know Shutter Island is also a book, but I'd like a new story, might come back to SI later.... If you haven't already, I'd recommend you read The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I don't know how literally you meant "psychological story lines" since Shutter Island takes place in an asylum but Jackson is really adept at getting into her characters' heads and, consequently, into her readers'.
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Mar 12, 2010 16:01
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 I'm not proud of this but I'd love to read some fiction involving voodoo/the supernatural preferably in New Orleans. Think Gabriel Knight or (if anybody has read the odd Doctor Who novel) The City of the Dead. There's a particular Lovecraft story I've in mind too but I can't think of the title just now. Dudes in a swamp coming across a Cthulhu (or related elder god) cult.
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Mar 18, 2010 06:02
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Hopes Fall posted:Earlier today my sister asked me to help her recommend a book for one of her friends. I’m not a sports fan -- I'm sure that's a whole vein of literature in and of itself -- but I can speak from experience of the rest of your criteria. I know a lot of off-center personality types (OCD, ADD, ADHD) who prefer non-fiction to fiction, but I don’t read a ton of NF myself. Based on my experience, I’d recommend short story collections & anthologies. Ballsworthy has recommended some kick-rear end stuff in the past which turned me into a fan of the form for its own sake and which suited my...uh...twitchiness very very well. First off, if he can read/enjoy Poe, he might enjoy Sherlock Holmes. Doyle’s prose hasn’t aged hardly at all which is a big part of what makes him stand out from the crowd IMO. (I always want to enjoy Lovecraft more than I do but his writing is so intentionally arcane I find it less approachable than stuff written a generation or more before it). Specific Titles which have flipped my poo poo: Dark Delicacies, horror story anthology edited by by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb. There are two follow ups I haven’t read yet but this one is wonderful and lead to Criminal Macabre: The Complete Cal McDonald Stories by Steve Niles. Fast paced, visceral, hardboiled supernatural detective stories and novels not to be confused with the graphic novels/comics of the same name. (I like these prose stories better than the comic versions.) As a gauge of interest, Niles also wrote 30 Days of Night. The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye & Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem. Lethem’s all over the place, sci-fi & straight lit fic, maybe he can generally be referred to as “speculative fiction”. It’s all really well written and profoundly engaging. Looking for Jake and Other Stories by China Mieville. I should think he’s a very well known quantity in these parts. Speculative fiction again – tending more toward supernatural than sci-fi. I haven’t yet been able to get into his novels but goddamn did I love these stories. Punktown by Jeffrey Thomas Maybe not quite as classy as all of the above (the Punktown novel I tried after this collection disappointed me enough to steal some of Thomas’s luster in my estimation) but really enjoyable nonetheless. This is urban sci-fi. Stories about life in a city founded by humans on another planet atop the remains of a prior, alien, civilization where humans and various alien races cohabitate with mixed results. Collectively, these titles got me so high and excited about short weird fiction that I crashed pretty hard when I couldn’t find more of the same. It was a while before I could go on reading “just whatever” again. Most recently, I’ve returned to my high school fascination with old-school hardboiled detective fiction with an anthology on loan called Hardboiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories edited by Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian. Not just a collection of great stories but a truly wonderful anthology with plenty of editorial information about the history the genre and the individual authors & stories. You’ll find some staples here, from Dashill Hammet to James Ellroy, but it’s the guys I’d never heard of who are doing the heavy lifting. So many good stories, a lot of them are only around 2000 words or so, but man they pack a lot of punch in a just a couple of pages. King Plum the Nth fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Mar 22, 2010 |
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Mar 22, 2010 18:58
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Sir Spaniard posted:Sorry if this has been asked before, but is there anything out there that's similar to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in terms of structure, humour, and level of writing/intelligence? You might like Tom Holt or Christopher Moore. I haven't read any Holt I didn't like. Moore less so.  Holt I've read and liked: Expecting Someone Taller, Who's Afraid of Beowulf?, Flying Dutch. Three novels from quite early in his career all of them take a historical/literary/mythological/folk tales theme and bring it into the modern ere with wackiness. It's not unlike The Norse gods in Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. Plus Holt is British so he shares a similar voice as well as the kind of dry observational wit Adams had. Moore I'd recommend: Practical Demonkeeping, Coyote Blue. Where the tone of Holt a bit Dirk Gently, Moore is closer to HHGG (At least the first 3-4 books. IMO HHGG was jokes first, plot second where DG was the reverse); the difference being that Moore is zanier than Holt. King Plum the Nth fucked around with this message at 23:17 on May 4, 2010 |
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May 4, 2010 21:22
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Bonus posted:I'll check those two out, thanks! Any more suggestions are also welcome. It doesn't really have to have traveling, I guess I'm just looking for books with that sort of American atmosphere. I think Travels with Charley by Steinbeck counts. If you haven’t read it you really should. It's a beautiful short travelogue Steinbeck wrote about a cross country trip he took to get back in touch with America near the end of his life. It's a good read, interesting, entertaining poignant and prescient.  Actually now, nearly 50 years after his journey, some of his wistful observations about the direction the world/country were heading have become positively crushing. But first and foremost, it's a great road trip; it practically defines American atmosphere.
King Plum the Nth fucked around with this message at 03:51 on May 14, 2010 |
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May 14, 2010 01:14
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So I was just perusing this thread about Cormac McCarthy's The Road which reminds me how much I want to read that and the oft recommended Blood Meridian but... Say you happen to be a bit depressive; you don't have suicidal thoughts but sometimes fantasies about getting off the ride because everyone and everything is worthless and sad and hopeless and hosed up. You know, all that e/n  crap. I'm just not sure Cormac McCarthy's my boy right now. Are there any books of merit that don't focus on human frailty, entropy, cynicism, longing, etc.? I could be way off base but it seems like intelligence is usually equated with a degree of sarcasm or cynicism (at least when people are trying to fake intelligence/insight this is the route they take) and most of what I've read or tried to read -- especially the stuff which could be argued to have "literary merit" -- is kind of a downer. Intellectually stimulating, sure; I’m asking questions and seeking answers and all, but a bummer none the less. I’m open to the possibility that it’s not the books, it’s just me, but I think I can objectively say it is the books to some extent. I don't want any sappy, saccharin religious or Hallmark type fiction. If at all possible, I'd like to avoid fluff in general. Just wondering if there's a vein of uplifting, or at least less bleak, literature out there. Anyone?
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Aug 11, 2010 19:02
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