Balls and Walnuts
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The Gimme A Good Book Contest
(Not literally “gimme.” I’m not begging for books.)
We have some vacation time coming up — the Bay Area for Thanksgiving, Vegas for Christmas – New Years. That means I’ll have access to real bookstores and won’t be dependent on Barnes & Noble online or Paperback Swap. But I need ideas, people, because whenever I have time for a REAL bookstore, I never have enough time to browse. And if I browse, who knows, maybe I’ll miss something great.
Here’s the contest: in the comments, sell me on a book. Authors, feel free to pimp your own books; the rest of you, pimp your friends’ books, if you like. Or just sell me on the best damned book you’ve read lately. Distant past, best-book-I’ve-ever-read is fair game, too. Easy, isn’t it? As I read through the comments, I’ll keep a running list of the books I want to buy. Of those, I’ll pick two people as winners, and each of you will get a $20 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble or Amazon or whichever bookseller you choose.
The contest ends Saturday, Nov. 17, since we’ll be leaving next Sunday.
Likes, in general: genre fiction, but no horror or cowpunchers, please. I like SF, fantasy (interesting stuff like Neil Gaiman or Tam’s novels, not the 900-page Tolkien wannabes, please), romance (especially if it’s funny or nasty — preferably both), hardboiled/noir, and the occasional crime novel.
I dislike SERIOUS fiction, the kind of novel that aims at revealing the Deep Thoughts of Life and forgets to entertain.
Technical excellence is important.
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I should have a nifty food photo-blog for you later today. Stay tuned.
If you would be interested in guest-blogging while we’re on vacation, email me at (azureus at harborside dot com). We’ll have our laptop with us, so I should be able to do some blogging; nevertheless, Balls and Walnuts hasn’t had any guest bloggers in a long time, and it could be great fun.
D.
Knowing where your proclivities lie, Doug, I almost recommended Piers Anthony’s Bio of a Space Tyrant series. Read those in my youth. Loved ’em. The first three were especially good, but I felt the series wound down after that. Piers should have stopped while he was ahead.
But, if we’re talking about books that I’d really recommend today, I’ll go with Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. These are three of his early short works bundled together and often sold in the Detective/Mystery section of your local bookstore. It’s a first of its kind collection, a sort of metafictional crime noir anthology. Plus, Auster’s really on his game here. It’s the sort of book you’ll read and it will make you want to be a better writer. (Check out the opening paragraph of the first in the trilogy, City of Glass. If that doesn’t make you buy the book outright, nothing will.)
Have you read any Guy Gavriel Kay? Historical fantasy. My favourites are Lions of Al-Rassan and Tigana. I like Tad Williams, too, but he writes 4-book series (Memory, Sorrow & Thorn is fantasy, the hero is a scullery boy who bumbles through the entire first book – Dragonbone Chair – just trying not to die horribly. Tolkienesque, but very likable characters; Otherland is SF, all set inside a massive AI-generated world. Very creative, but goes on a bit long – I’d give the fantasy series a try first).
Oh, and Connie Willis – SF. To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellwether are both very funny – she’s done some darker stuff, too, but either of these is a good intro. To Say Nothing is a time travel mystery, set in the near future and Victorian England. Bellwether is set nowish, about the absurdities of corporate life, grant applications and fads. You might like Passage, too – more serious, about a Near Death Experience researcher. Her short stories are also good.
I’ve been enjoying Richard K. Morgan’s near-future techno-noir such as “Altered Carbon.” He hasn’t written a series, but he does have a recurring character. Takeshi Kovacs.
I also recently enjoyed Scott Lynch’s “The Lies of Locke Lamora,” which is really a classic crime caper set in a (very richly developed) fantasy world. Like Morgan, Lynch appears to be working on creating recurring characters instead of series per se.
I have always enjoyed P. G. Wodehouse. The Blandings Castle stories and the Jeeves and Wooster tales are the best known.
I am currently re-reading C. S. Forester’s Hornblower series. I have always enjoyed them. As single novels, I’d suggest something early. My personal favourite has always been ‘A Ship of the Line’, but ‘The Happy Return’ or ‘Beat to Quarters’ (it had different titles, apparently) is good too. They are classic Age of Sail novels with a protagonist familiar to any introvert. 🙂
OK! Try number two (Your tetchy wordpress, I mean really!) I’m not into the fantasy stuff as much, but my Husband is, so asked him to make suggestions instead. He says you should try The Bridge Iain Banks, but he goes so far as to not even want to tell me anything about it for fear of ruining it in any way. But it does have very high stars at amazon. (Plus it’s a Scottish writer, writing Scotland settings and The bridge in question is the very one I look at every day from my dining table.)
He also suggests Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly which is about a husband and wife dragon slaying team. Husband has read it three times and loves it to bits.
I just did a SBD review of I, Lucifer, on your recommendation of it. So go read it.
Towing Jehovah, by James Morrow, is about the trials and tribulations of towing the mile-long corpse of God from the equator to the Arctic. Followed up by Blameless in Abaddon, where a lung-cancer victim seeks to sue God, and enters the divine Corpse in a bid to gather information; and The Eternal Footman, in which the skull of God goes into orbit around the Earth, like a second moon, and brings on a plague of despair. (The two sequels are increasingly depressing, and the first stands alone.)
Also by James Morrow: This is the Way the World Ends, about a nuclear war and the trial that follows it.
If you haven’t read them yet, I recommend Stations of the Tide and The Iron Dragon’s Daughter by Michael Swanwick.
To give you some idea how my tastes run, here’s what I’ve written down so far:
New York Trilogy (ordered it through Paperback Swap, in fact)
To Say Nothing of the Dog (not available through Paperback Swap, so I’ll have to pony up the cash)
The Lies of Locke Lamora
Wodehouse
The Bridge (with reservations. The writeup describes it as “Pynchonesque,” and I gagged on Banks’s Feersum Endjinn of which, oddly enough, I own two copies, and have read neither)and Dragonsbane
The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (I loved Stations of the Tide, Pat, and I think you were the one who recommended it. I blogged a review way way back). Oh, and I ordered Towing Jehovah on Paperback Swap already.
Noir — Chinatown Death Cloud Peril. And James Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz
Sci-Fi: Snow Crash.
Fantasy: Have you read the His Dark Materials trilogy yet? If not, do.
I keep meaning to check out Ellroy. Thanks for the reminder.
Snow Crash — one of my favorites. His Dark Materials — recently re-read it. Hate to say it (since I know a lot of you are Lyra-lovers, and for that matter, I WILL see Golden Compass when it comes out this Xmas, so I guess I like the series at least a little) but I thought book three really fell down, and the whole trilogy is overrated, IMO. For fantasy trilogies, you can’t beat the Bartimaeus books. I wish they would make movies from those.
My general recommendation for excellent fiction: Lois McMaster Bujold
Fantasy: The Curse of Chalion, set in Chalion (duh, jmc), a medieval Spain sort of land, TCOC is the tale of Lupe dy Cazaril, a broken down knight who has dragged himself home from years of war and slavery in search of a quiet place to rest and heal. He doesn’t get it. Instead he gets intrigue, quests, magic, and god-given tasks.
Space opera: Cordelia’s Honor, which is a compilation of two books originally published separately, Barrayar and Shards of Honor. I don’t really know how best to describe it. Adventure, political intrigue, space battles. Plus romance. The protagonists are Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan, parents of the Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, my favorite fictional character. Well, maybe second favorite, after Anne Shirley.
I’ve read Shards. Kept meaning to get the sequel, but I can never seem to find it in the bookstores. Time to hit Paperback Swap again 🙂
TCOC sounds interesting, too. Thanks!
Dean bought me Lies of Locke Lamora on a whim, and I must second the recommendation.
Oh, that’s the other one: Bone, by Jeff Smith. It’s a graphic novel, and it starts out as a goofy fun adventure story, but it slowly builds until by the end, 1300 pages later, you realize you’ve read a fantasy story as deep, as rich, and as beautiful as anything you’ve ever read before. Plus it’s frequently laugh-out-loud funny, too.
It’s got everything: adventure, swords, sorcery, a malign presence, villains that argue about whether or not they want quiche or stew, love, a cow race, dragons, and rat things.
Enjoy!
I went to dailykos (I do cheers and jeers on occasion because it’s cheery) That’s where someone called Pratchett’s stuff “stealth literature” I liked that phrase.
Unfortunately I don’t have anything new to recommend because there’s a lot of Pratchett to get through. I’m still wading through his books and I’m only occasionally annoyed by him==pretty amazing considering how easy it is to get annoyed during a author-glom. I love Small Gods. It’s the best book about religion I’ve read. (not that I seek out books on that particular topic)
If you ever manage to get into Dorothy Dunnett tell me why I’d like her books. Same with Angle of Repose which my mother and sister loved and I couldn’t read.
How about the Brits??
If you gentle, restrained British humor (nothing supernatural etc) try Barbara Pym. Skip Quartet in Autumn or Sweet Dove Died. They’re fine, but they’re gloomy. She wrote light and was told to be serious.
Less restrained but the same sort of books–> E.F. Benson. The whole war between Lucia and everyone she encounters is pretty damned funny. Nothing HAPPENS. I mean they just sit around and listen to the Moonlight Sonata, but it’s pretty funny.
David Lodge is sort of like them, only very MALE. OHHhhh he’s been compared to Amis… If you’ve never read Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, you have to. The best drunk and hangover descriptions, ever. And the best snark about college professors, ever.
Have you heard of Tom Peters? He is one hell of a management guru 🙂
I am now reading one of his books entitled: “ReImagine!”
It’s about running a business in this new crazy economy era… tips and tricks… about reinventing the whole idea of business… breaking down everything that you learned in business school and giving a new rule… that will ensure the success of your business… 🙂
See the world in Technicolor 🙂
Cheers!
Kate, how about some romance recs? I think you know what I like.
Ervin 🙂 How about some fiction recs? 🙂 Cuz nonfiction ain’t my bag.
Oh, have you read any of the Ian Rankin Inspector Rebus books?? They’re really good crime fiction. I liked Fleshmarket Close and Black Book. And, yeah. Well sure it’s another Scottish writer…what can I say? I support the locals.
Lyvvie, good rec. I keep meaning to look at Ian Rankin.
I’m not Kate, but some romance recs from left field…
Funny: Lani Diane Rich’s books are both funny and touching. You can’t get the best one yet (I was lucky enough to get her uncorrected proof of “A Little Ray of Sunshine, and it’s amazing, but not out until February.) but The Fortune Quilt was great too (what’s not to like about a psychic quilt maker with a transgendered ex husband? and they are supporting characters). Alesia Holliday’s American Idle has laugh out loud moments, and is agood book over all. Funny with elements of romance – If you haven’t read Chris Moore (specifically Bloodsucking Fiends, but I like all his stuff) it’s a MUST!
As far as nasty, I prefer naughty in general, however, Angela Knight’s ebooks such as Mercenaries and the Thrall feature bondage done hot 😉
In other general recent reads that I loved, Caridad Ferrar’s Adios to my Old Life and It’s Not About the Accent both knocked me over, some of the best YA ever (mid to late teen YA, especially Accent)
Fantasy, well, I love retold fairy tales, and Robin McKinley is great at it. I second the Pratchett rec, and if you haven’t read Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman, you should!
Okay, now I really gotta get ready for work…
Thanks, Renee!
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