Book Recommendation List

[MarsNeedsTowels]

Since Orson Scott Card is my favourite author i'll just take the time to recommend Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind to any who haven't yet read the quadrilogy.
I haven't been so sad to see a book end in all my life than when I closed CotM.

[pythianlegume]

And jumping on the last post, I'll recommend the companion novel to Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, and its sequels Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow Puppets. They have lots of Peter Wiggin in them and that is never a bad thing.

[bladestarr]

And jumping on his jumping of the thread, I've read all of those books, and I would ALSO like to recommend his other two great book series:

The Homecoming Series (1st book of 5:The Memory of the Earth) - A retelling of the Old Testament story of Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt to The Promised Land, told as Science Fiction! In the primitive world of Harmony, the people have forgotten most of their past, and are happy with it. This is the doing of the Oversoul, an artificially intelligent satellite watching over the planet and protecting its people from the harm of war and technology. However, the Oversoul is weakening and a war is about to break out, so the Oversoul chooses one child, a boy by the name of Nafai to lead the best of his people to a place they have no memory of, their homeland, a place called Earth.

Tales of Alvin Maker (1st book of 6 [so far]: Seventh Son) - Takes place in an alternate American Frontier where only a small portion of the country seceeded from the Brits, Indian magic is real, and Europeans bring their own magical 'knacks' to the playfield. It centers around Alvin Miller Jr., the seventh son of a seventh son, who was born with powers that he can not hope to understand, but will soon realize with time. I've just finished book 3 of 6, and man I can't wait to read more! American historical fantasy like has never been done before.

Yes, if you hadn't guessed, I'm obsessed with this man's writing, and it shows. These synopses I wrote myself, with no outside sources, just from memory. Card is a master storyteller, and he is at his best when he has the time to do in-depth character studies and moral dilemmas, and these book series (as well as the Ender and Shadow series) are all chances for him to explore the greatest themes of all: what is reality, and who are we? Try one out, you won't be disappointed.

[Ms. Jellybean]

Well, I've gotten some reading done and here's the recommendation list:

The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, and Something Rotten... all by Jasper Fforde. It's the series about Thursday Next, who bookjumps into classic literature. Very entertaining, and it makes absolutely no sense at times. Hence the appeal.

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

The Giver by Lois Lowry.

Technically, it's a "young adult", but it is one of my favorite books. It takes place in a 1984-esque "utopia", and the main character is given the high-task job of mentally retaining memories of the way of life before the bleak utopia was created. I'm tired and going to go sleepy soon, so I won't go into more detail, but it is worth checking out.

And I bought The Giver's sequel/companion book, The Messenger, today, so I'll let you know how that one is when I finish it.

[CrankyMonkey]

"My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult... an amazing book that I just finished up this weekend. The main focus of the book is the question of whether it's correct to do whatever it takes to save a child's life, even if that means infringing upon the rights of another. It's hard to sum up in just a few words, but it's the kind of book where you simply can't put it down. I highly recommend it.

[Magill]

oogieboogieman said:

And I bought The Giver's sequel/companion book, The Messenger, today, so I'll let you know how that one is when I finish it.

Have you read the book that comes between those two, Gathering Blue?

I went through a kick where I was reading a bunch of books with dystopian futures: 1984, Brave New World, The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and Evolution. It got a bit depressing.

[duckie]

* The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror, by Christopher Moore

* fiction / humor

* Picture this: ex-wife gets caught stealing XMas trees from ex-hubby's property, accidentally kills him. Neighborhood child sees whole thing. But, did I mention that ex-hubby was in a Santa suit, so the boy thinks the woman just killed Santa? He prays for Santa to come back to life. Inept angel picks up the job, as his "Christmas Miracle", but bungles it pretty bad. I won't give away the rest of the story, but it was pretty entertaining.

[Al]

ooh, good call. Let me also recommend Fluke and The Island of the Sequined Love Nun by the same author.

[duckie]

I think Christopher Moore is a great author, reminds me a bit of others like Kinky Friedman and Carl Hiaasen. I am planning on picking up a few more of his novels, thanks for the suggestions!

[Ms. Jellybean]

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by someone I can't remember, which I'm currently slogging through (I say slogging, but it's really good) and America the Book: The Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction by Jon Stewart and the rest of the people from The Daily Show.

[mysteriorockanova]

Perks Of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky (or something like that, I know his name is pretty much impronouncable in any known language on Earth)

This book is really good. My brother got it for me this Christmas and I've been reading it quite a bit (but I'm not done yet). It's about a kid in the early '90s and beyond that I'm not quite sure what else to say, But it fuels my teen anger (anger not angst, GRRR! I'M MAD!)

[kylerexpop]

anything by grant morrison. ESPECIALLY since they just released his 1990 work "arkham asylum" in a 15th anniversary hardcover edition, which has the original story and the full script by morrison, which is incredible and interesting to check out for anyone who might want to try writing comic books.

"nightmare" by s.k. epperson. she's a fascinating horror author; fairly unrecognized but capable of very interesting ideas and generating palpable suspense. her work is hard to find, though used book stores are your best bet. pretty much everything she writes is good-ish ("neighborhood" revolves around an absolutely huge red herring, so be prepared for that) but nightmare smacked me big-time. blood!

"twelve" by nick mcdonell. written in a style somewhere between 'young adult' and 'adult novel,' this should be nice and smooth to read. the author was 17 and created some controversy when his book was released, but who cares? this is an easy look at what it's like to be rich, lonely/bored, and largely unsupervised as a teenager in new york city. it all deals (ha!) with drug use and our primary perspective (though it jumps around chapter-to-chapter) is via white mike, the guy who deals to everybody. pretty predictable, but for a west coast guy like me it was a fascinating glimpse at ultimate urban living. awesome!

"how to talk to a liberal (if you must): the world according to ann coulter" by ann coulter. a total fun read, and a fascinating and pithy look from the other side of the mirror. it's all her original columns reprinted in one place, but since i hadn't read much of her newspaper work it was pretty cool to read it all in one place. not for the faint of heart living in blue states, but it's just what michael moore or "rants"-era dennis miller did. more awesome!

[Head Mutant]

I think it's pretty cool that Kyle is open to being challenged in his beliefs... I think that makes you a much stronger person in the end, more balanced and less lopsided for it. As I tell my kids (and I believe too) that if you're not willing to see your beliefs and faith challenged, then it'll never really be real. You'll just have these (probably borrowed) beliefs that are shielded by ignorance and an unwillingness to put them to the test. If something's really true and worth believing in, then it should be able to stand up to intense scrutiny and questioning. Hey, it's why God gave you a brain.

As for some books I've enjoyed recently:

* The Rising -- forget who it's by, but it's a really creepy zombie book that's different than most zombie stories... it's a bit like The Stand (the world has already ended and humanity is left scattered and few), and the zombies are demons who infest anything dead... not just people. So, zombie lions, zombie crows, zombie snakes, you name it.

* The Honor Harrington series by David Weber -- my second time through these, they're lengthy military sci-fi that's long on the talky, exposition side, but has a lot of fun buried in there as well.

* Terry Goodkind's Richard Dahl books (lately Crossfire) -- the first two books in this series are by far some of the best fantasy I've read... imaginative and action-packed. The rest of this series wavers from slightly dull to pretty darn interesting. The magic, locales, story and imaginative elements (what I call anything that's new to the genre) are worth your while. He's pretty talky too, more in conversations though. But much, much better than Jordan's abominable Wheel of Time series. You actually like these characters.

[oddgirl]

TEXTOne Hundred Years of SolitudeTEXT, Gabrial Garcia Marquez. Magic Realism. Follows the rise and fall of a cursed family through one hundred years of isolation in the South American jungle. I've been told it's actually a retelling of the Bible from Genesis to Revelations, but I don't know the Bible well enough to say. It's probably the best book I've ever read, and possibly the best book of the 20th century.

TEXTThe Tao of PoohTEXT, Benjamin Hoff. Philosophy/Religion. Demystifies the Eastern philosophy of Taoism through the medium of Winnie-the Pooh. It sounds like cognitive dissonance, but it works. It's accessible to the novice, but never patronizing, and it has Earnest Shepard's illustrations.

TEXTMemory and DreamTEXT, Charles DeLint. Fantasy. The story of a painter whose creative gift is so strong it's become a curse. Not only has she managed to re-invent or completely erase tramatic incidents from her past, but the imagined subjects of her painting become living beings. Thematically, the story is concerned with reality and perception and how we create our own realities through what we remember and how we remember it. DeLint is one of my favorite authors, especially because he's the only male author I've found in the fantasy genre who writes women with unvarnished realism. I unreservedly reccomend all of his book but two ( TEXTWolf MoonTEXT and TEXTSvahaTEXT). He's also largely credited with having invented urban fantasy.