breadandroses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
breadandroses) wrote2005-06-28 05:01 pm
breadandroses) wrote2005-06-28 05:01 pm
quick question
I need a book or books. They must be relatively small and available in paperback, and they need to be literary candy. Nothing I need to work at, nothing that takes time to get into. Readers: which are the books that you read brushing your teeth, and under the covers late at night?
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Robertson Davies' Salterton Trilogy: Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, and A Mixture of Frailties. (Frailties in particular is a good travel book - it's the story of a young Canadian woman who goes to London to study voice.) Actually, anything by Robertson Davies is like literary crack to me. Just can't put it down.
Do you like mysteries? Pretty much anything by Laurie R. King is good, though often scary. A Grave Talent is her brilliant first book. It's totally engrossing, but it is a serial-murderer story.
Connie Willis' short stories (the collections are called Fire Watch and Impossible Things.) Also look for Bellweather, which is a short comic novel about fads. I really liked Doomsday Book (that's where I get my journal-name) but the sort-of sequel To Say Nothing of the Dog is more fun.
Have you read Sayers' Murder Must Advertise? I think it's the best of the non-Harriet books. Thrones, Dominations (which was completed by Jill Paton Walsh from Sayers' notes) is worth a read, though I've some quibbles with the mystery plot. The other Peter&Harriet book Walsh wrote is not worth reading.
I really like Elizabeth Moon's Familias Regnant books, about women starship commanders and their dealings with the elite ruling class of a far-future interstellar society. That makes it sound really highfalutin - really it's just good ol' space opera. The books, in order, are:
Hunting Party
Sporting Chance
Winning Colors (these three have, I think, been collected into a single volume titled Heris Serrano)
Once A Hero
(after this they start to run together for me, but for completeness...)
Rules of Engagement
Change of Command
Against the Odds
Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley mysteries are better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, though they do tend to the depressing.
Did you read any Edward Eager or E. Nesbit as a kid? Both classics of the kids-discover-magic-object-and-have-adventures genre. Eager is totally the literary descendant of Nesbit; if you've read one you must read the other.
That's probably enough to be getting on with. :)
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Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons novels, very sweet and carefully observed children's books about lakes and sailing and the North Country of England.
The early Anita Blake books by Laurel K. Hamilton; everything before Obsidian Butterfly (inclusive) is enjoyably readable brain candy, while everything after sucks.
Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire before, just like the Hamilton but with every single stupid bit taken out and/or made intelligent and interesting.
Georgette Heyer.
Lois McMaster Bujold.
Cynthia Voigt's Tillerman Cycle if you like lovely melancholy YA set in the real world.
Meredith Anne Pierce's book Birth of the Firebringer (avoid rest of trilogy) and the first two Darkangel books.
Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock and Howl's Moving Castle; the latter has the honor of being my favorite comfort read ever, and it never fails to make me happy.
Hopefully there's something on this list you haven't read. ^_^
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Yes! Someone else who understands! I hated the third book with the passion of a thousand burning suns; it should be held up as an object lesson to aspiring writers: "This is what happens when you let psychological theory run away with your storyline and pervert your characterizations."
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Bookcases the world over contain the first volume of Marcel Proust's lengthy and elegant sequence, A la recherche du temps perdu. Readers the world over pray to be visited by a mildly debilitating disease: something that will necessitate their confinement to a chaise in a cork-lined room; something that will drain them of all ambition, save the urge to get beyond the famous dipping of the madeleine that happens early on in Swann's Way.
A Treasury of Royal Scandals and A Treasury of Great American Scandals by Michael Farquhar. Non-fiction, and just what the titles sound like.
Any- and everything by P.G. Wodehouse.
Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris. Screamingly funny memoirs. I'm not sure how many of them are available in paperback, though.
David Starr, Space Ranger and its sequels by Isaac Asimov. If I've not pimped the Lucky Starr books to you before, I should have. They're science fiction mysteries about scientist/adventurer Lucky Starr and his sidekick Bigman Jones (who stands 5'2" if he stretches a bit), and they were a formative adolescent experience for me.
Tales of the Black Widowers, More Tales of the Black Widowers, Banquets of the Black Widowers, Puzzles of the Black Widowers, and The Return of the Black Widowers by Isaac Asimov. Connected short mysteries. I'm fairly certain the first three are available in paperback, but I don't know about the last two.
I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore, Buddies, Everybody Loves You, and Some Men Are Lookers by Ethan Mordden. Connected short stories about a group of gay men living in Manhattan. Think Tales of the City only funnier and less soap opera-esque.
Pass the Butterworms by Tim Cahill. Travel literature, also very funny. (Apparently he's written other travel books, which I'm thinking of checking out myself.)
And, on that note, some books that I've been meaning to read and that probably fit your criteria, but I haven't read them yet to be sure:
Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille by Steven Brust
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead! by James Kirkwood
Practical Demonkeeping: A Comedy of Horrors by Christopher Moore
Anything by Daniel Pinkwater
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Anything by Amy Tan. Anything by Tracy Chevalier. Anything by Pearl S. Buck. Certain books by Jane Austen also fit that bill for me - specifically P&P and S&S.
I'll let you know if I think of anything else.