Wallwalker (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} wallwalker) wrote,@ 2008-04-15 10:52:00 |
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Wally's book list of doom
Ten books that I have loved (yes, I have strange taste in books.) For 342,745 Ways to Herd Cats, OR tl;dr, which I encourage all of you who like reading to join.
So many of the books that I really like are part of a series and don't stand as well on their own. I've recced a couple of series books, but they're the first in their respective series, or at least don't require the others to be read to be comprehensible.
There are quite a few things that should be on here, if only I actually, y'know, owned the books. Or if I'd finished the books before now.
Edited. I'm done now. And I decided not to rec two books by Swanwick, but that doesn't mean that I don't recommend Bones of the Earth. Just means that I wanted to try to get more variety in here.
---
Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul
I loved The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and so forth, but this is actually more to my taste. More subtle. More effort required to really get the big picture. Still hilarious.
Octavia E. Butler, Imago
Speculative science-fiction. It's fairly short, but in a short space it's able to build up a very detailed picture of a society between aliens and humans, and the way that they shape and change each other and begin to meld together, and what happens when something is created that no one expected.
Hugh Cook, Wizard War
It's actually the first book in a series, and hard to find (apparently it was published as The Wizards and the Warriors in some countries.) But the book itself stands alone. I love Cook's writing style and his worldbuilding and for all of its flaws it's still some of the most entertaining sword-and-sorcery high fantasy I've ever read. (There's a lot of profanity and crudeness, if that sort of thing bothers you.)
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
Yeah, this was inevitable. See, I wanted to recommend something by Gibson here, and didn't want to rec any of his interrelated works, and then I remembered this, which is a good example of the alternate histories that I like so much, so there you go.
James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small*
When I was much younger, this was one of my comfort books, along with the rest of Herriot's stories (I think the first one I actually read was The Lord God Made Them All.) Funny and cute and sad and poignant in turns, and it was always interesting to see how vets like Herriot operated back then, and to see that for all of the changes the core of it is still the same.
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Another book that I read for school, and another book that's stayed with me for a very long time, because of how disturbing and relevant the society is. (Also, I must admit that if I have a literary alter-ego, it's Bernard Marx. -_-)
Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana
I fell in love with the world. And the characters. And the language. And the way that more seems to happen in the space of one volume than in some series that I've read. (Sidenote: was the last line really necessary?? If you haven't read it, you'll understand what I mean when you get there.)
Hedrick Smith, The Russians*
If you're interested in Russia, especially Soviet Russia, at all, read this book. It's such a fascinating picture of the culture, framed by the fact that there were a lot of people who didn't want us to get a picture of their culture at all.
Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter
This one's a bit hard to find, but I'll definitely recommend it anyway, because it's such an awesome coming-of-age fantasy story, if a little surreal. Okay, I lie; it's a lot surreal and dark and NSFW, but it's a good dark.
Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men
You've probably read this one in high school; I read this back in AP English, among other books. For some reason this is the one that keeps coming back to me, perhaps because of the greatness of the language, perhaps because I can relate to Jack Burden more than I sometimes like to admit.
*Nonfiction.
Ten books that I have loved (yes, I have strange taste in books.) For 342,745 Ways to Herd Cats, OR tl;dr, which I encourage all of you who like reading to join.
So many of the books that I really like are part of a series and don't stand as well on their own. I've recced a couple of series books, but they're the first in their respective series, or at least don't require the others to be read to be comprehensible.
There are quite a few things that should be on here, if only I actually, y'know, owned the books. Or if I'd finished the books before now.
Edited. I'm done now. And I decided not to rec two books by Swanwick, but that doesn't mean that I don't recommend Bones of the Earth. Just means that I wanted to try to get more variety in here.
---
Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul
I loved The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and so forth, but this is actually more to my taste. More subtle. More effort required to really get the big picture. Still hilarious.
Octavia E. Butler, Imago
Speculative science-fiction. It's fairly short, but in a short space it's able to build up a very detailed picture of a society between aliens and humans, and the way that they shape and change each other and begin to meld together, and what happens when something is created that no one expected.
Hugh Cook, Wizard War
It's actually the first book in a series, and hard to find (apparently it was published as The Wizards and the Warriors in some countries.) But the book itself stands alone. I love Cook's writing style and his worldbuilding and for all of its flaws it's still some of the most entertaining sword-and-sorcery high fantasy I've ever read. (There's a lot of profanity and crudeness, if that sort of thing bothers you.)
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
Yeah, this was inevitable. See, I wanted to recommend something by Gibson here, and didn't want to rec any of his interrelated works, and then I remembered this, which is a good example of the alternate histories that I like so much, so there you go.
James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small*
When I was much younger, this was one of my comfort books, along with the rest of Herriot's stories (I think the first one I actually read was The Lord God Made Them All.) Funny and cute and sad and poignant in turns, and it was always interesting to see how vets like Herriot operated back then, and to see that for all of the changes the core of it is still the same.
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Another book that I read for school, and another book that's stayed with me for a very long time, because of how disturbing and relevant the society is. (Also, I must admit that if I have a literary alter-ego, it's Bernard Marx. -_-)
Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana
I fell in love with the world. And the characters. And the language. And the way that more seems to happen in the space of one volume than in some series that I've read. (Sidenote: was the last line really necessary?? If you haven't read it, you'll understand what I mean when you get there.)
Hedrick Smith, The Russians*
If you're interested in Russia, especially Soviet Russia, at all, read this book. It's such a fascinating picture of the culture, framed by the fact that there were a lot of people who didn't want us to get a picture of their culture at all.
Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter
This one's a bit hard to find, but I'll definitely recommend it anyway, because it's such an awesome coming-of-age fantasy story, if a little surreal. Okay, I lie; it's a lot surreal and dark and NSFW, but it's a good dark.
Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men
You've probably read this one in high school; I read this back in AP English, among other books. For some reason this is the one that keeps coming back to me, perhaps because of the greatness of the language, perhaps because I can relate to Jack Burden more than I sometimes like to admit.
*Nonfiction.
