Book Recommendations

[lillibet]

I've just spent a couple of hours scrolling through this post on Charles Stross' blog, getting book recommendations from answers to his question of what's the most important novel of the past ten years (given his audience, there's a strong SF bent to the answers). He followed up with this post, narrowing the field to eliminate men.

My to-read list is burgeoning and I'm excited to know about many books I'd never heard of and have others I've glanced at bumped up the queue.

Enjoy!

Comments

[jelazakazone.livejournal.com]

Interesting that so many of the recommendations are books by men. The last book I read by a man was in March! In fact, only 3 of the 19 books I've read this year are by men.

I think Rebecca Skloot's book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks should be on that list. That's on my top 10 of best books ever read.

[jillbertini.livejournal.com]

I think some of it is skewed by his readership. He attracts a very particular kind of reader. I wonder what percentage of his readership is male.

Most of my favorite sf is written by women, although I was having a tough time coming up with a title in the last 10 years. Connie Willis is amazing, I have to agree.

lillibet, did you see the lists on NPR this summer, too?

[jelazakazone.livejournal.com]

My favorite sf novels are written by a married pair. I was wondering what he makes of that.

Is this list of books supposed to be just sf/fantasy? I thought it covered all genres.

[jillbertini.livejournal.com]

It wasn't clear to me about genre.

There aren't that many books that are co-written.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was supposed to be just SF/F, but the results were skewed by his readership's taste.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I didn't see the NPR lists. One of the things that I liked about this list was the genre-skew. I tend to dislike most mainstream fiction for its celebration of unhappiness. I do read non-fiction and the occasional mainstream one that sounds interesting, but most of what interests me tends to be SF/F or historical mysteries.

[jillbertini.livejournal.com]

NPR had listeners submit lists of their favorite SF titles! Here it is (http://jillbertini.livejournal.com/836944.html).

It's funny, because another friend of mine just posted basically the same question on FB - can you name a literary (I guess that means non-genre) novel from the last 3 decades that isn't sad or depressing? I couldn't think of any. and that's why I don't care to read them, either!

I love SF and historical fiction and then all variety of YA, although that skews toward fantasy, too :P.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Immortal Life was AMAZING.

[jelazakazone.livejournal.com]

I've been telling everyone I meet that they should read it. It was AMAZING.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

What did you find amazing about it? I've just finished it and found it mildly disappointing--probably because everyone says it's AMAZING and I found it just good.

[shanghaibex.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. I read and enjoyed it last year, and found it was worth my time. Yes, I would recommend it to others, yes, it's an important story to tell for many reasons. But my world, it is un-rocked
.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

That's it, exactly. Good book, glad I read it.

[jelazakazone.livejournal.com]

I loved how she interwove the personal with the bigger story. I thought it was an incredibly ambitious project and I felt that she succeeded. I had never heard of Henrietta Lacks before this. I mean, I thought it was profound that her family didn't even know the story of what a huge impact the HeLa cells had on science and also that they weren't benefiting at all. I thought Skloot told the story in a way that was interesting, personal, compelling and that she tied in to a bigger picture as well.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I think one of the things that made it have less of an impact on me was that Skloot kept writing as if it were this big secret that was kept from the family, when people had been writing about Henrietta Lacks in major, mainstream publications for over twenty years by the time she started her book, and the family had participated in a documentary about Henrietta several years earlier. She made it seem as though no one had ever explained it to them, when it was pretty clear that people had been explaining it again and again, just as she did--over and over--without the Lacks family being able to grasp what was being said. The whole idea that Henrietta Lacks had never been honored appropriately, when the way Skloot found them in the first place was through the guy who had organized an entire conference around her...

Anyway, I'm really glad that you enjoyed it so much and that you encouraged me to read it.

[jelazakazone.livejournal.com]

I can see where those would be issues for you. I also think that even though Lacks had been honored by the scientific community, her family wasn't aware of it and if they were, it didn't mean honor to them in the same way.

Anyhow, I'm glad you enjoyed it and don't feel like it was a waste of your time.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

I seem to have a somewhat skewed shelf of SF/F books, in regards to proportion of male to female authors. (In that I have a pretty good selection of female authors.) I got to about comment 100 or so of the second post, and I still hadn't seen a lot of authors that I have mentioned at all. (Although Stross did mention S. L. Viehl, so that was nice.)