Let's play a game this morning

[decemberthirty]

A book recommending game!

I spent most of 2012 in a reading rut. You know the sort of thing I mean--reading all sorts of books, always hoping that I would fall in love with the next one, but never quite getting there. This year, I'd like to feel passionate about my reading again. And I'd like it if you, dear LJ-friends, would help me break out of my rut.

Here's how it'll work: I'll give a general description of my taste and the sort of things I like (longtime readers probably already know more than enough about my taste in books!), and you tell me about an author you think I might like or describe the last book that knocked you head over heels. BUT! This is not a one-way street! If you'd like to receive recommendations too, post a comment that tells us about you as a reader, and if I've got any good recommendations for you I'll share them. Others can chime in too, and soon (I hope!) we'll all be sharing our favorites with each other and adding lots of titles to our to-read lists. If this sounds like fun to you, feel free to pass it around--the more the merrier!


Favorite authors: E.M. Forster, Marilynne Robinson, Virginia Woolf, Colm Tóibín, Pat Barker, Ursula K. Le Guin, Flannery O'Connor, Alice Munro, Michael Chabon, Sherwood Anderson, etc...
Preferred genres: Fiction. Fiction of all sorts: short stories, novels, novellas. I mostly read fiction of the 'literary' variety, but I am happy break out of those bounds for well-written sci-fi, mysteries, or thrillers. Very occasionally I read memoir and essay collections.
Things I like: historical settings, queer characters, queer characters in historical settings, beautiful prose, believable love stories even (especially?) when the endings aren't happy ones, dark elements, real human emotion, coming-of-age stories, tight plots but also sometimes introspective plotless rambles, books that make me work, stories about families, characters I can love.
Last book that really blew me away: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. You can read my post about here, if that would be useful.


Okay, go!

Comments

[pax_athena]

Oh, thank you! You mentioned Mahfouz in your other rec, too :D I'm definitely going to pick up his "Children of the Alley", which seems fascinating both in its subject and reception history.

Antigonick sounds amazing! A very experimental approach - I guess this will be one of those books one does not read at once, but enjoys over the course of several days or weeks. Nice, definitely on my list with it.
(Antigone itself is such a great play!)

Connie Willis has been a bit of a meh experience for me. I read her "Doomsday Book" in 2011 and for me, it was rather a disappointment. I'll give her another try, just perhaps not very soon. I'm still too sad disliking Doomsday Book so much, because award-winning science fiction by women is usually the very thing I love and be very passionate of recommending others (see LeGuin, Piercy, McHugh, Russ).

I'll keep the rest in mind, though they may be a bit too onto the historical fiction side by me. I sometimes enjoy this kind of books, but I usually need to know the author before and to know that I like them to pick a book up.

[mabith.livejournal.com]

I managed to totally space on the username of who I was replying to, so I didn't realize it was you!

Reading Children of the Alley was incredibly interesting for me. I found it incredibly hard to believe that anyone of ANY religion could find it offensive though.

For what it's worth, Most of Connie Willis' books didn't sound that interesting to me. What I think she gets most right in Blackout and All Clear is the true difficulty in understanding personal reactions to large historical events, plus I think her pacing and the balance of what she makes obvious vs what she keeps hidden (particularly in the second book) are just really perfect.

With the others (with the non-classics that is), my first reaction to them wasn't that they were historical fiction. They definitely fit that label, but the people and the relationships are definitely the main focus and the history is just the backdrop. That's why I picked out those particular ones, at least.

[pax_athena]

Oh, don't worry! It made me go and check his books a second time (and read the Wikipedia article on his work) and now they moved up my reading list :D

I usually really like it when fiction re-imagines religions and builds on it. There are so many symbols ingrained in our daily life which can be traced back to religion, so many traditions (even if one happens to be an atheist like me) - there is so much to say, so many things resonating which each other when it is done right. But it seems to mostly end with someone upset.

I plan to give Connie Willis a second try. All authors get at least two , if they got the first at all ^^"

I'll keep the books in mind, but they don't yet give me the "read now!"-feeling that Mahfouz and Anne Carson do :) I think it may be that from the book descriptions it sounds like there is a certain meta/intertextuality level - I'm not sure how exactly to put it in words, it's mainly a feeling - to both Children of the Alley and Antigonick and this is something that I enjoy a lot and heavily miss if it's not there. Now I may be absolutely wrong, but it's what makes me really excited about the first two books. And I'm aware that this is something that I did not mention in my description of myself as a reader - I just forgot, although it is an important point, that's why I end up liking "postmodern" as description for a lot of book I read and enjoy.

[mabith.livejournal.com]

I sometimes think that religious books are of more interest to me because I'm an atheist. It's nice to know about for when you get a lot of flack over not being religious, and even nicer to know more about religious tradition/books than the book criticizing you!

Definitely understand on book tastes. I'm not that much of a fiction person myself. I have things I really like and I'll never stop reading fiction, but I'm a pretty straight reader.