Random book pimp

[electricalgwen]

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but with the holidays coming up, it seemed a good time to finally get around to it. If you’re looking for something new to read and/or to give somebody during this festive season, here are a few suggestions:



The Company novels, by Kage Baker – In compiling this post, I discovered I rather suck at writing literary reviews, but this author blows me away. This series is – scifi, historical novel, romance, satire, mystery? All of the above. The books are beautifully paced, funny, clever and complex. Brief summary: the Company, Dr. Zeus Inc., has invented time travel and a limited form of immortality. They “rescue” orphans throughout history, turn them into immortal cyborgs, and set them working throughout the millennia to a) collect, protect and preserve all manner of valuable works of art, extinct species, documents etc., and b) make the Company a hell of a lot of money. However, there’s a small problem with one of their agents, the botanist Mendoza, and there’s a big mystery looming in the future: while orders constantly come back from upstream in Time, nothing is ever heard from the Company after a certain date. What happens? I still don’t know! But I’m having a great time following Mendoza’s escapades.
Note that if you are trying to figure out the order of the books by looking in the front of one of them for a list – forget it. They’re always ordered differently, and wrongly. Tor Press ought to fix that. I have managed to read three in the wrong order, and miss one. The proper timeline is available here, as well as on her own site (linked above.)
Here’s a delightful interview with Kage Baker on Bookslut.

Straight Man, by Richard Russo – Hilarious story about a particularly mad week in the life of a college professor coping with angry colleagues, departmental budget cuts, his philandering but highly academically successful father, a dead goose, and the possibility that his wife is having an affair with the dean. If you spend any time in academia, this will almost certainly contain at least one character who is recognizable, and be a very fun read.

Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt (economist) and Stephen J. Dubner (journalist) – this is an amazingly interesting book. It’s an engagingly written exploration of questions like “Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers?” and “What makes a perfect parent?”, using large-scale analysis of data that is readily available to come up with highly surprising, often counter-intuitive, conclusions. The most powerful chapter in the book (imo) outlines what is probably the main, but never discussed, reason for the drop in crime in the US in the 1990s. A reminder that the key to finding out new and useful things in the world is often asking the right questions. And they’re not always the obvious ones.

Sunshine, by Robin McKinley – Is there anyone in the BtVS fandom who hasn’t encountered this book? Go. Read it now. I adore it. My copy has unfortunately been in a box many thousand miles from me for over two years now, so I apologize if I slightly misquote or misattribute the following, but as I recall Anne McCaffrey’s dust-jacket comment was, “Before reading Sunshine, I had no idea that blood and dessert could go together so well.” (ETA several months later: Having now retrieved the book, I find I got the quotation right but yes, I misattributed it; it was actually Amber Benson who said it!) Vampires, unassuming but surprisingly (even to her, possibly mostly to her) powerful heroine, cinnamon rolls and Death by Chocolate. And I’m not doing it justice. Go. Read. This is the woman who wrote Beauty, Rose Daughter, The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown, and Deerskin. Enjoy.

The Prestige, by Christopher Priest – This has just come out as a movie, of which, given that it’s based on a very good book and stars Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johanssen, and David Bowie (as Nicola Tesla!!), I have high expectations. I haven’t seen it yet, though. The book, however, was an intriguing and fascinating story, with a rather spooky unraveling.

The Meme Machine, by Susan Blackmore – I made a longer post about this a while back, but it deserves a mention in this list. Anyone who’s spent any time on LJ will be familiar with the concept of a meme, and will notice which ones spread like wildfire and which, for some reason, not many people pick up (unless out of a sense of obligation to a friend who tagged you – which, no question, is one of the selection forces driving meme survival). This book is a careful, well-reasoned, progressive analysis of the implications of the existence of a non-genetic independent replicator, specifically its implications for the development and nature of our brains, minds, and selves.

…And I’m getting tired. So without writing too much about them, I also highly recommend Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay (anything by Kay, in fact, once you get past the first few slightly stilted chapters of the Fionavar Tapestry – and trust me, it is so worth the read, for what comes next in that stunningly, painfully beautiful trilogy), and Stardust by Neil Gaiman (also now being made into a movie, with Michelle Pfeiffer as the witch queen, and Claire Danes *hearts*).



Not a book, but if you like BSG and would like to see what the cast looks like turned into Simpsons characters – go here for awesomeness.

Comments

[shinodabear.livejournal.com]

Ooh. I'm always looking for good books to read. I've been meaning to pick up The Prestige. I never knew it was a novel/story until I saw the opening credits for the film. It was a fantastic film. I'd imagine it would be an even better book.

And the Stardust film! I so cannot wait for that.

[laisserais]

This is so great! I have to admit my bias for (usually) dead British writers, lol, so I'm not familiar with most of the books on this list. Your descriptions sound very interesting. I may pick up a few of these titles.

They're making Stardust into a movie? That's so exciting! I can't wait. Although, i did try to watch Mirrormask, and got a little lost. maybe I wasn't in the right mood. With the cast you mentioned, it sounds like it'll be pretty high profile, and easy to catch in a theater.

I loved what the BBC did with Neverwhere. They stayed true to the book, and didn't turn it into a love story, which is one of the things that, after I'd read it, I found remarkable about the novel. It was impressive to me that Gaiman can keep a reader interested, and imply so much UST, and then not follow through. lol

i've been considering drawing up a list of books I want to read in 2007. I think one or two of these will go on it. (although, between textbooks and fic, don't know if I'll get through too many of them).

thanks for the recs!

[entrenous88.livejournal.com]

I love Richard Russo, and Straight Man is quite possibly my favorite book of his. Having come fairly recently from academia, I really and truly howled with laughter during much of the story, though of course moments of it are so poignant and cutting as well. He's a fantastic writer, a master of using humor not just for it's own sake but to hint at the rifts and tensions between the characters amazingly well.