ratcreature | looking for book recs...

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looking for book recs...

My to-read pile of actual books is getting rather smallish. I mean, I still haven't read Water Logic by Laurie Marks, and Amazon assures me that my copy of the newest Dresden Files will get to me in the near(ish) future, but I'm looking for recommendations what to read after that. And since my f-list is much more widely read than me, I thought it can't hurt to ask.

As for what I'm looking for, the most important thing for me to enjoy a book is that there is at least one likable main POV character to identify with. Generally I can't stand books where the hero is a jerk, or you end up hating everybody. I also dislike ambiguous endings. There are exceptions to that, but in general I prefer plots to be resolved when the book ends, unless it's setup for the sequel. Also, I prefer there to actually be a plot with stuff happening rather than all internal and relationship conflicts. And for the plot to make sense and have not too many holes. OTOH I can overlook slightly clunky language (see the above example of the Dresden Files, though the later novels aren't quite as bad as the earlier ones). I guess I'm rather lacking in avantgarde sensibilities...

As for genres, I like sf and fantasy, unless the worldbuilding sucks, but I also like mysteries, though not so much the serial killer genre. Thrillers rarely do anything for me, nor does romance as the main plot. Another of my quirks is that I don't cope well if a ton of characters are introduced in quick succession. I have nothing against an epic scale in principle, if characters are added slowly, but I don't remember names easily, something which results in me being confused a lot with a certain kind of mystery for example, where you'd be introduced to a dozen people over a few pages.

So do you have any suggestions for me?

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Knowing my memory, you've probably not only read all of these, but we've probably had extensive conversations about them ;) However, I'll list some of my favorite series, in case you haven't read them yet.

1) Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold (Great characters and amazing plots)
2) Liaden universe novels by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (Same! Some of the books include romances, some do not.)
3) Karen Pelletier mysteries by Joanne Dobson (Murder mysteries set in academia)
4) Amelia Peabody mysteries by Elizabeth Peters (Very charming characters and excellent mysteries, with archaeology as a background)
5) Wizard books by Diane Duane (Great plotting and worldbuilding, as well as good characters)

I could go on for hours, but I must go back to work now :)

No, I actually haven't read them. (I did mention being less widely read than my flist...*g*) I'll take a look at these. Unfortunately the first volumes of the Liaden universe novels aren't available anymore it seems from my quick glance at Amazon? So I guess I won't be reading those.

The first four Liadan books don't have to be read in any particular order, if you're interested in them. Local Custom, Scout's Progress, Conflicts of Honour and Agent of Change are all stand alone, dealing with different sets of characters. There are also two compendium volumes; Pilot's Choice has the first two books, Partners in Necessity has the next two and the sequel to them both, Carpe Diem.

I also recommend Doris Egan's Ivory books, starting with Gate of Ivory, which I love for the marvellous heroine.

And, like everyone else, I love Bujold ;).

Thanks for pointing that out about the Liaden books, and for the recs.

I like Bujold quite a bit; not just the Vorkosigan works but her other stuff as well. The Spirit Ring I liked particularly. I am also, perhaps, odd in that I prefer Miles's mother to Miles himself -- she's the protagonist of the first two books in the series, Shards of Honor and Barrayar. Miles is wonderful, but Cordelia is Cordelia.

Duane is lovely but the wizard books are YA,

ratcreature, so as long as you expect advanced-YA complexity from them, I shouldn't think you'd be disappointed. I liked the second of the whole series best, fwiw.

My husband likes Iain Banks a lot, and CJ Cherryh. I think the Foreigner/Invader/Inheritor stuff by Cherryh might suit; the main characters are surrounded by quite the supporting cast, but I don't think the introductions were too quick.

I like Robin McKinley a lot, but I wonder if some of her stuff (retellings of fairy tales) might be too romance-y for you? I'd disrecommend her Sunshine specifically on that front, I think, but the Damar novels (The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown) and the retelling of "Donkeyskin" set in the same universe (Deerskin) are good, and you might like her second retelling of "Beauty & the Beast", Rose Daughter.

You say thrillers don't do much for you...how about Creepy Maybe Haunted House books? House of Leaves and The Haunting of Hill House are the two freakiest, scariest, bar-none haunted house stories I've ever read, and not a single drop of gore to be found. House of Leaves will make people on public transportation think you are insane, though, because it has tunnels. I don't know how else to describe it. It's got at least four dimensions, possibly five.

I generally don't like reading horror, I have enough nightmares as it is (frequently featuring scary, convoluted architecture too!), so I think I'll pass on those. And I admit that retold fairy tales rarely do much for me. I mean, I enjoyed reading real fairy tales a lot as a kid, and still have a shlf with collections of fairy tales from around the world, but I like them as fairy tales, not as novels which need real characters and solid worldbuilding and such.

Thanks for the Bujold link, and the other recs though.

Oh, I forgot to mention -- if you want to sample Bujold, her novella "The Mountains of Mourning" (http://www.baen.com/library/1011250002/1011250002.htm) is up at the Baen Free Library.

Hmmm....for some reason I feel like recommending The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time to you. It's...kind of a mystery, from the POV of an autistic kid.

I've heard about that, but never checked it out, iirc I thought premise sounded kind of gimmicky?

I understand where you'd get that from, but it's not true. I actually found it very moving.

I liked that book, but erm SPOILER - remove qs to read

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*highjacks comment*

Dude, thanks. *strikes book from to-read list*

Yeah -- it's a good book, but it took me a while to get over, well, the curious incident.

I usuallly don't have a problem with this, unless it's the protagonist's doing, but that's more due to my dislike for horrible jerks as heroes, that I mentioned above.

How about some (or one) of these:

Iain Banks: The Player of Games" (http://www.amazon.com/Player-Games-Iain-M-Banks/dp/0061053562)
Midori Snyder: "The Innamorati" (http://www.amazon.com/Innamorati-Midori-Snyder/dp/031286924X/ref=ed_oe_p)
Josephine Tey: "The Daughter of Time" (http://www.amazon.com/Daughter-Time-Josephine-Tey/dp/0684803860/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207612262&sr=1-1)
Audrey Niffenegger: "The Time Traveler's Wife" (http://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Wife-Audrey-Niffenegger/dp/0099464462/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207612362&sr=1-1)

Thanks! I've read "The Time Traveler's Wife", which I liked overall, though it desperately needed an editor for its few German phrases, which were short, but jarringly wrong, iirc, also the gender dynamics were less than great. But I'll take a look at the others.

James Alan Gardner: "Expendable (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/038079439X/o/qid=959623298/sr=8-4/ref=aps_sr_b_2_1/103-0339512-3828607)". Sample chapter here (http://www.thinkage.ca/~jim/ecm.html). SF&F, first in a series, but a much looser one than I'm used to-- you can pretty much read out of order, or leave out any of the four books in the series if you feel like it. And there are two standalone novels as well, so if you want more of the world, you can splash out that way. I liked how easy this book was to read, actually-- it wasn't epic in scale, even if there were the usual Big Happenings toward the end. But the plot was easy to follow, and Festina, the main character, was really interesting, and everything fit together very well.

Joshua Palmatier: "The Skewed Throne (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0756403316/ref=cm_arms_pdp_dp)". Sample chapter here (http://www.sff.net/people/jpalmatier/excerpt.html); please pay no attention to the wacky cover, which doesn't convey how good the book is. This one is also first in a series, but is the kind that leaves stuff untied at the end. I really liked how he resolved everything within three books-- this is no winding monstrosity here-- and I loved the central character. Gritty fantasy, written really well, with a nicely moving plot and interesting details to offset the standard nature of the "orphan on the streets" fantasy staple.

Scott Westerfeld: "The Risen Empire (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/076534467X/qid=1115997257/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-1769953-7491151?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)". Amazon excerpt here (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/B0009S5AKS/ref=sib_dp_pop_ex?ie=UTF8&p=S00D#reader-link). This is hard SF, but it is SERIOUSLY AWESOME hard SF. There are amazing space battles! An interesting love story! Shades of grey! I really wish the writer was doing more SF or F these days :(. Oh, and beware: this is a duology, split by publisher out of ineptitude so it has an awful cliffhanger. If you're interested, have "The Killing of Worlds", its sequel, on hand so you don't die of suspense.

Thanks, these look interesting, though the first looks to be out of print and used English books more often than not are a comparatively expensive hassle for me to get.

I've been enjoying Lindsey Davis's Marcus Didius Falco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Didius_Falco) mysteries -- set in Rome during the time of Vespasian.

Have you tried The Cold Fire trilogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sun_Rising) by CS Friedman -- her world building is brilliant.

Thanks, I haven't read these. But I think I've seen The Cold Fire trilogy recced on my flist before.

I second the Cold Fire trilogy rec. I enjoy Friedman's work in general. Her writing is very dense, but definitely good worldbuilding, and she explores big thinky thoughts. & there's some good Yuletide fic in the ColdFireVerse to look forward to. :)

Oh, thinking about it, at the start, I hated the POV characters for the Cold Fire trilogy. It gets a lot better if you stick with it, and I ended up really appreciating the depth of character she gave to the one fellow who I'd written off as a stereotypical jerk.

That's good to know. I mean, if something's been recced to me, I usually give it some time, even if I'm not into it. I gave "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" over 300 pages before giving up, even though I disliked the characters, and that had *footnotes*, which are not my narrative kink.

I really enjoyed Tanya Huff's Blood Ties series, and the spinoff "Smoke &..." series. Probably more the latter than the former since it's all about a canonically gay character. They're horror, but more in that they reference the horror genre. I'm not a big horror reader, but these were OK for me, especially the spinoff. Yes, her writing can be clunky, but if you can read Dresden Files, you'll probably be OK with these (I agree, Butcher's writing has improved a lot over the years).

I'm also big on Elizabeth Bear at the moment, though I've not yet finished anything by her. So far, Hammered is quite good, and she's one of the writers behind Shadow Unit, which I also recommend.

Nalo Hopkinson is on my list to read more of. I really liked Brown Girl in the Ring - defly an interesting look at near-future Toronto after riots caused wealthier citizens to move away and the government to stop providing social services. Dialog is largely dialect, which I found a little challenging to get used to, but I really appreciated how much Caribbean culture & religion she wove into the story.

Ah, and mysteries! I adore Dana Stabenow. All her books are set in Alaska (skip the thriller (which is OK but not nearly as good) & go right to the mysteries), and filled with incredibly quirky characters, and her sense of place is amazing. Especially in the early ones, the endings do tend to stab you in the heart (which makes sense - in a rural area with little population, murder is almost always committed by someone you know) - the later ones are not quite so much. They're so good, I just keep reading them. The Kate Shugak series is my favorite - how can you go wrong with a female Native Alaskan PI?

The Donald Strachey mysteries are a hoot. He's an out gay private eye in the 70s, so you get a look at gay male culture in the US in the 70s as well as a mystery. In the noir realm - I've only read the first, but will read more as I find them.

You mentioned not being into thrillers, but I will mention Thomas Perry just in case. I read Vanishing Act recently, about a Native American woman who helps people disappear, and it was quite good. Definitely intense, and excerpts from future books in the series look to be even more so, but I found the premise & lead character to be quite compelling, and I'm very curious to read more & learn more about her (and have 2 more sitting on my coffee table waiting for me).

Thanks! I'll take a look at these!

Hi, random person here who followed a link to some comic-rantings...and found your journal. Shall be friending you if you don't mind.

Holly Black is awesomeawesome fantasy--Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside is a great sort of grunge-punk faerie tale series. There's romance, but it's not the...point of the stories, I guess.

I'm going to ditto Diane Duane--really thoughtful impressions of reality within the sf.

I really like Mercedes Lackey's stuff--all of it, though it varies from modern-day supernatural mystery to historical fantasy, to her own fantasy worlds.

Um, if you haven't found Terry Pratchett (I can't imagine such, from how cool you seem), find and read all the Discworld books immediately. Humor/fantasy/parody/awesomeness.

Diane Wynne Jones' books are generally considered YA, but Dark Lord of Derkholm and its sequel, Year of the Griffin, are great takeoffs of the problems of the hackandslash generic fantasy/fantasy RPG.

Digital Knight...I can't remember the author's name, but it's a fun vamp/werewolf/normal guy stuck in the middle book.

Robert Asprin for classic fantasy/scifi humor in the Myth series and Phule series.

The Hounds of the Morrigan...again, author's name escapes me. Great look at Irish mythology.

Eyah, I'll bugger off now. ^_^ Cheers.

Thanks for the recs. In fact I haven't read Pratchett, mostly because from osmosis of people talking about Discworld the books didn't sound like something I'd enjoy, because I generally don't like parody, and I heard they have footnotes, which I loathe in fiction. Also when I was curious once about the series, I saw a timeline for a suggested reading order and chronology that was a horrible complicated diagram, iirc, and seemed quite convoluted, so that I backed away before even figuring out which would be the first to try to read if I wanted to read Discworld. (Somehow I can deal with convoluted timelines in comics, but in books it's a deterrent. *G*)

And I don't mind being friended, though I don't friend back automatically.

Well, you can always read "Good Omens" to start with. It's not Disc, but it's a good sample of his writings (and a collab work with Neil Gaiman). I really consider Pratchett to be one of the greatest scholars of human nature out there--I made my Philosophy prof read some of his stuff after taking a Philosophic Themes in Literature class from her. It's parody, but it's very clever and British (and you get used to the footnotes--they're part of the humor, really). Um...It's 7 am local time and I haven't actually slept yet, so I apologize if I sound a bit loopy. I really am going to bed now!

Butting in to say that agree with the prev. comment - "Good Omens" is an awesome book; fun, nicely paced, immensely quotable (I know of bunches of icons to prove it *g*) and the main characters are even slashable! What more could any fangirl want in a book? ;-D

Also, I've never read Pratchett, but I adore Neil Gaiman. If you like dark worlds and everyday guys turned heroes and the occasional fable or myth or children's rhyme reference, "Neverwhere" is FTW. I love it to pieces.

His "American Gods", a but heavier, and more with the mythical themes transplanted to modern times, is not an easy read, but golly, once I made it past the difficult middle parts the rest was a joyride. :-)

Also, I randomly wanted to ask you if you wanted to be a co-mod at

sgagenrefinders. I suppose I will have to hunt down

nopoetry to confirm it, as she's the original owner, but it would take a load off my back if you were authorized to wave your modly authoroton over folks who need moderating. Or something of the sort. :-)

Thanks for the recs, I have actually gotten Good Omens from my library, so it's probably going to get read soonish, after I finished the new Dresden Files which has finally arrived with me from Amazon. As for Neverwhere, I have the comic version on my comics-to-read pile.

WRT

sgagenrefinders, thanks for the offer, but I'm afraid I'm not cut-out for reliable co-modding. My interest in fandoms sort of cycles in unpredictable ways, and while I'm currently mostly into SGA that may change, also I sometimes gafiate for months. I mean, it's been a while since that last happened, so people meeting me more recently might not have noticed, but for example during 2004 and 2005 I tended to drop out of communication for months at a time, for more than half of either year in total (not the drama kind of leaving fandom or anything, I just get out of the habit of posting, and sometimes I can't deal with commenting on other people's posts, so before I know it, six months have gone by... *g*)

Nevermind then, guess I'll remain a single mod for now. (Also, you've been in the fandom about two years longer than me, so I definitely couldn't have noticed your absences. :-) )

Also: Neverwhere has a comic version? Woah, I didn't know about that. I will need to look it up; I've been avoiding tracking down the miniseries so far, as the book is just not something I feel would make a good TV transfer, but a comic... that's intriguing. Thanks for the tip-off!

It was a BBC tv series first, also written by Gaiman. The book is a novelization of that, though there are expansions and changes from what I've heard. In turn the comic is based on the novel, not on the original tv series.

...Well. I feel like a right dolt now, although I do admit to not looking up much about the books I read usually.

Oh, oh! I just finished The Lies of Locke Lamora (http://www.amazon.com/Lies-Locke-Lamora-Scott-Lynch/dp/055358894X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208178136&sr=8-1) and loved it to bits - it's high fantasy meets Ocean's 11, a gang of con-men running rampant in a fantastic Venice-esque city. There are a lot of chars, but the story stays focused on the heroes - who are rather lovable rogues. The plot's twisty, the world-building's wonderful, and the chars are delightful.

Thanks for the rec! I hadn't heard of this before and it sounds cool.

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looking for book recs...

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my good-character-good-plot recs, let me show you them

Re: my good-character-good-plot recs, let me show you them

I'm a Bujold fan, too, but...

Re: I'm a Bujold fan, too, but...

Re: I'm a Bujold fan, too, but...

Re: I'm a Bujold fan, too, but...

Re: I'm a Bujold fan, too, but...

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