Let's play a game this morning
Jan. 10th, 2013 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
decemberthirtyA 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!
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!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-11 05:04 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-12 04:27 am (UTC)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.