Recs and Anti-Recs: Books

In case you're wondering, the icon is from a picture of my own bookcase. For a complete list of books there currently, click on the following for my LibraryThing catalogue.

Recommendations listed in alphabetical order by last name of author. A bolded title indicates a recommendation; an underlined title denotes an anti-rec.

0-10

Mister Georgie - Beryl Bainbridge
Dark, sinister novel about a young servant girl so enamoured with the master's son that she follows him despite his misdeeds, his turbulent marriage and even to war. The writing is sparse and all the gaps in between are absolutely filled with the feeling that something bad has to happen, rather appropriately.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil- John Berendt
Slow, meandering prose, but the little vignettes of these absolute characters in the deep South are entertaining - in fact, more than the actual murder-trial story.

Violet and Clare - Francesca Lia Block
Not very likeable characters, and I didn't settle into her style of writing as I did with some of her other books, and the story was mindlessly predictable

Come to Me - Amy Bloom
I love the way she writes, and that she writes about the little things in life - the normal relationships and grind and hurts and joys - and makes them readable, and makes me feel them.

Junky - William S. Burroughs
Very interesting. Chronicles, in fictionalised form, his own journey (for most part) as an addict. Easy to read, oddly educational, all the more interesting for knowing it's a junky's own account, complete with the handy gaps where unsavoury acts are not detailed (such as the murder of his own common-law wife).

The Dandelion Clock - Guy Burt
Lovely bittersweet story that has reliable-yet-not narrator thinking his way through the relationships he build as one of a trio of friends and an incident of their shared summers that traces an inevitable road to tragedy in that future.

Ender's Shadow - Orson Scott Card
Though it basically retreads Ender's Game for most part (the battle school bits anyway), Bean's story of how he went from malnourished street child to brilliant strategist is still a good read, though the prescience of the author can definitely be seen in some of "his" thoughts. And the meta starts to creep in, though it is hardly as annoying and intrusive as in some of the books of the series.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
As good as everybody made it out to be; I started reading it as soon as my last exam finished and stayed up to 3am to finish it. It's a wonderful epic of a friendship, a passion for comics, a talent for escapism and love that never dies.

Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon
I really enjoyed this, the odd escapades and the not-exactly-happy happy ending that somehow befits the characters.

The House of Sleep - Jonathan Coe
I fell in love with this book. It's so rich - all these characters somehow related by a period of time, and the book traces all those meetings in the past, and also their lives from then, in alernate chapters, until it all collides; twisty and compelling and just absolutely great.

Hey Nostradamus - Douglas Coupland
Really quite affecting in its thoughtful exploration of the before and aftermath of a school shooting on people's lives, whether they be immediately or peripherally involved.

The Hours - Michael Cunningham
Lovely, beautiful and fluid in text, exploring the thoughts of three contrasting and comparable women in their different lives.

Following Gandalf - Matthew Dickerson (NF)
A measured look at the moral concerns in the Lord of the Rings text. Interesing because it pulls in Tolkien's own background and his interests and adds to the knowledge of how the world was formed and in particular why it may have been formed in such a way through its balanced analysis of the characters and their actions.

Kissing the Witch - Emma Donoghue
Interestingly structured, ronde-like book. In each section, a different fairytale heroine's story is retold to flow into the next, as a flashback of how the character came to be; the writing is beautiful and minimal, the whole idea intriguing and somehow works.

With Your Crooked Heart - Helen Dunmore
There are major shifts in tense and point-of-view that shouldn't work but nevertheless I just loved the way she writes these intertwined lives, with a lot of emotion under the surface, with rather calm lulling prose, and the ending is just a heartache waiting to be remembered.

The Still - David Feintuch
A rather odd book in the fantasy canon. A spoilt bratty heir is left throneless after some devious maneurvering by his uncle, and with an older companion at his side he learns to grow up and take on his kingly duties. While that plotline is hardly new, it's the relationship side that surprised me, but it's decently written fantasy and the book's a definite page-turner.

Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
Odd, and a tad long in the "novel" section, but the correspondence part is intriguing, and becomes the stronger side by far, mangled English and all. I couldn't put it down.

Maurice - E.M. Forster
Published many years after his death due to the subject of the book, this is at once on par with his best known comedic observations of English behaviour in the early part of the twentieth century, and completely ahead of its time. The language of the book makes the occasionally stumble in the story excusable, there are some really lovely and well-put passages.

Poachers - Tom Franklin Awesome writing. Short stories about American lives: the aimless, the dangerous, the forgotten. There's a wildness running through it all - these are hard, worn people, but the language is so wonderful it draws you in to keep reading about them and their mostly desperate existences.

Paradise Salvage - John Frusco It's a murder mystery and a coming-of-age story and an exploration of family and culture in a certain time, but it manages to weave it into an interesting story with a kid narrator who is never annoying and always recognisable as a child.

Carter Beats the Devil - Glen David Gold
This is a great book. Twisty, absorbing, steeped in period detail and conveyed within a great narrative, it spans the career - the lows, the mystery, the highs - of Carter's career as a travelling magician in the vaudeville age of theatre until the high-profile murder that ends it.

The Abomination - Paul Golding
The writing is too rich, and the characters so unlikeable, and while it may be deliberate the very abrupt ending made me finish with this really uncomfortable and oddly angry feeling about it all

Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon - Lisa Goldstein
What if Kit Marlowe was killed for his part in a battle between good and evil between fairies and demons for Oberon's son? Interesting Elizabethan mystery/fantasy.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
A good read, and it made my heart hurt at times with its story of an autistic boy who sets out to solve the eponymous mystery and discovers more about his own family instead. It has a really great voice, fitting for the main character, which allows the story to present itself as sad and touching without too much fuss.

Mysterious Skin - Scott Heim
This is terribly graphic at times, and on a disturbing topic, but it's so beautifully written - even the horrific images (such as the sexual abuse) are phrased in such a way that you can't look away, but you're aware of the wrong of it at the same time, without any sledgehammer moments of "THIS IS WRONG". The ending is just...gah. I want to write like that, bleak but beautiful.

City of Masks - Mary Hoffman
Lucien has cancer and can hardly live as a normal boy anymore, but after his father buys him a journal and tells him stories of Venice, he dreams of a different world where he is whole and healthy, and living in a city of canals - Bellazia - ruled by a beautiful Duchess and her faithful magician, under threat from sinister forces. A lovely world, likeable characters, and an interesting narrative.

The Swimming Pool Library - Alan Hollinghurst
It's not an easily likeable narrator, but the writing is densely beautiful, and there's something compelling in how these people act, the amoral lives.

The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst
I really quite liked this. I found it more coherent as a whole for a Hollinghurst novel; it has a very wide scope of subjects - Thatcherism, materialism, class, homosexuality, aesthetism, money...and that's just for starters - and it made me work for understanding as I read, while being an entirely absorbing book to read because he just about manages to tie it all in at the end without a pat resolution. It's a period novel about Britain in the 80s, but even with my limited understanding of the tensions in that place and era, I could get the subtle, cunning critique of the people in the book from within. The characters aren't meant to be likeable, we get them warts and all, and yet they're not monsters, we can see why Nick (the main character) is so attached to their aura of money and privilege and supposed beauty while seeing at the same time that it is his main fault and downfall to want this kind of "beauty" in his life. Another thing I liked was that it straddled the line of being rather literary and high-minded, and the rather low and base with its contemporary characters and language and sex/drugs amorality, just as Nick is always stuck between wanting to be, almost being part of, the Fedden's world and his own origins.

How to Be Good - Nick Hornby A depressing but really excellent book; it made me think, and he manages to write really unlikeable people as just really human, if that makes any sense. The ending is so bleak, but it helps to retain the feeling of the whole book, the confronting theme - how unattainable and ridiculous the human concept of being a "good" person by the deeds we do.

The Ogre Downstairs - Diana Wynne Jones
This is a really fun, well-written fantasy story that's not part of her Chrestomanci-verse. Two divorced parents get married to each other, and their children (two on each side) not only have to cope with a new extended family, but the fact that the new father is a bit of an ogre, and gets each child weird chemistry sets that start having strange effects on them and the household... Her dark sense of humour and well-observed sense of the real and mundance against the fantastical events really work together.

Dreamhunter - Elizabeth Knox
Lovely, absorbing and beautifully written. The first book in a two-part series about a fantasy world in which the ultimate entertainment, healing, punishment occurs through the amplified dreams of the special few who can catch and replay dreams for the good of society. But when the most famous, the best, dreamer of their generation disappears mysteriously, it is up to his daughter - who seems to have inherited more than just his talent - to find out what has happened to her father and why.

Burning Bright - Mercedes Lackey
Boring, predictable, annoying. And yet, her books are always well-recommended by other fantasy readers. Trash, and not particularly enjoyable at that.

The Page-Turner - David Leavitt
After I finished every character left a bad taste in my mouth. I guess he was trying to show how ugly they were to each other - careless in their relationships, or too careful - but I just didn't like any of them enough to care

A Song of Fire and Ice series - George R.R. Martin
[incomplete: I-A Game of Thrones II-A Clash of Kings III-A Storm of Swords(i) IV-A Storm of Swords(ii) IV-A Feast of Crows]
I hate it when my friends get me hooked on an unfinished series. But I went ahead and started reading this anyway, and now I have to wait and wait for the next one with baited breath because it really is very good and twisty and absorbing.

IV - A Feast of Crows
Liked it. Frustrated by Martin's propensity for casually off-ing favourite characters and really screwing with his readers' minds - are any of them *really* dead or can I still hope? Unfortunately, almost all my favourite characters (Brienne, Arya, Jamie) were detailed - BUT NOT ENOUGH - in this lot, which will make book 5 a bit more of a drag. However, it has kept me hooked on the series which I guess is his purpose.

Niagara Falls All Over Again - Elizabeth McCracken
This just happened to push all my story buttons - love and dysfunctional families, the thin to disappearing line between love and the closest partnerships/frienships, to name a few - and it was funny and amusing and yet broke my heart in several ways.

The Giant's House - Elizabeth McCracken
Possiby my favourite book of the year (2005). Peggy is a librarian, a young but already dried out shell of a woman to everyone in town. When an child - a boy who will grow up to be a giant, a freak of nature - asks for her help in finding a book, Peggy finds true love and her purpose in life - living in the Giant's house and caring for him in his short life. The sadness is inherent in Peggy, not necessarily in the story, an unconventional romance; it's beautifully written, so very spot-on in Peggy's thoughts on life and her own place in it, and ultimately very affecting.

China Mountain Zhang - Maureen McHugh
Interesting science fiction story, people are still so human even in a futuristic world, with the same worries and dreams

Upside Down Inside Out - Monica McInerney
Fluffy chick novel that is quite fun - a rather serious Irish girl travels to Melbourne to house-sit for her friend and under accidental means is mistaken for a carefree waitress by a nice serious English businessman, who in return is mistaken for a rather carefree artist type. Romantic comedy of errors ensues.

The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
A love story out of chronological order, a good solid read about a relationship that literally overcomes the barrier of time

Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian
I thought these would be awfully dry and very boys-only, but they're actually rather rollicking books, if a little repetitive over a series. This, the first book, is fun - it sets up Aubry and Maturin's friendship from original animosity, and sends them on their first journey together, when Jack is not yet established as the great sea captain and Stephen yet to reveal the full extent of his skills, apart from being an excellent doctor. The story moves along well, and the sea-faring details don't trip up the narrative.

Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
I felt so dirty (grimy, not the other) reading this, does that make sense? Utterly tense and worried with moments of delight at spot-on observations of life. Brilliant.

Man and Boy - Tony Parsons
There are certain things that really put me off books. First person narration. Cheating spouses. Marriage breakups. Lovable little children. However, this manages to have all the above and I couldn't stop reading. Harry's career has just reached a high, he has a beautiful wife and an adorable child, and then he goes and screws most of it all up. In response, his wife leaves him and Harry now has to look after his son, who he hasn't really spent all that much time with. It's a good, solid and just-this-side of realistic read, as Harry tries to make some sense of the things that matter in life - his family, being a good father, love.

Route 66AD - Tony Perottet (NF) This is a really fun book, tourist guide and history text all in one, and the kid in me who loves ancient cultures just gobbled it up. The author takes his heavily pregnant girlfriend of a tour of Europe as it was, through the places where ancient civilisations flourished, travelling just as the people then would have.

A Hat Full of Sky - Terry Pratchett
I like this so much more than Wee Free Men, possibly because he goes back to trying to explore an idea through a character, rather than just leaving it as "hee, look at the weird-talking fierce little blue men!" I see from the APF that there's going to be another three books in the Tiffany Aching cycle, which I find odd because I don't find her a particularly compelling/likeable character, possibly because she really is too much like a mini-Granny Weatherwax.

Going Postal - Terry Pratchett
GREAT. If you are interested in the Discworld, technology advance, words as a source of power, the philosophy of freedom, the idea of Microsoft as a (corrupt, unholy) monopoly, The Truth or any combination of these (though I assume that the pleasure grows exponentially for each factor you can put a tick next to), then Going Postal is an enjoyable thoughtful funny intelligent read in the most vividly-drawn fantasy universe out there at the moment.

Close Range: Wyoming Stories - Annie Proulx
Blunt, hard writing, but it's really lovely in its harshness, and some of the stories are fantastic; the shortest is possibly one of the best short stories I've come across, perfect in its absolute sparsity.

His Dark Materials series - Phillip Pullman
[I-Northern Lights II-The Subtle Knife III-The Amber Spyglass]
I had absolutely no problem with the religious stuff in this. Yeah, he lays it on a bit thick at times, but otherwise, it's a fairly tight and interesting fantasy series and I really enjoyed it. The story's end, the way he leaves the relationship between Will and Lyra, is heartbreaking and yet fitting.

Stiff - Mary Roach (NF)
A respectful, interesting look at a macabre topic - corpses. What happens to a human body after we die? Other than just being buried or cremated (or even ways you hadn't dreamed of that are being created now), what else can be done to them or by them?

Harry Potter the Half Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
For a really detailed review and discussion, click here.

Set of this House In Order - Matt Ruff A little bit of hard work at first, trying to sort out the confusion, but it's very much part of the story for things to be disorganised (as the title hints) and it's very much worth it. Andrew has multiple personality disorder but with the help of his unconventional psychiatrist he's made good progress in getting his life in order, even though there's chaos lurking within his own mind. But when his life collides with Penny, another MPD sufferer with nothing under control, both their lives are put at risk and they need each other to put things right. Clever, affecting and absorbing.

Unless - Carol Shields
It's not so much the story but the way it unfolds inside the narrator's head - her thoughts about being a woman, a mother, a writer - and the mix of these, and the reactions of the world to women being any of these, that makes it particularly interesting. I like her writing too, the sharp perceptions in prose that is deceptively chatty and recognisable.

Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Short, but wonderful, a really interesting look at the futility of war.

Affinity - Sarah Waters
She evokes that Victorian atmosphere really well, all the way through you get a sense of how these lives are full of suppressed emotion, and it's the unlikely meeting with a girl imprisoned that awakes another's imprisoned feelings again, and the end comes out of nowhere, a sharp nasty blow. A really good intense read.

In Her Shoes - Jennifer Weiner
More chick lit, but of a better quality. Two sisters - one very straitlaced and responsible, the other a sexy mess - discover that family matters a lot more than they originally wished. I can't quite pinpoint what I liked so much; there's a fair amount of cliche, it's not that brilliantly written; but I liked reading it, and I cared about the characters after a while, and there's an escapism in there too, that both sisters manage to turn their lives around for the better.

Salamander - Thomas Wharton
YA fiction, but a beautiful story about books and love.

Orlando - Virginia Woolf
I'd resisted reading any Virginal Woolf for ages, because I'd somehow associated her with very heavy-thinking, heavy literature. And it is thought-provoking and interesting, but Orlando is also a very easy read, full of whimsy and a light voice on top of the ideas.