Book Resolution

[rachelmanija]

Many people are making book resolutions. Here is mine.

I resolve to read whatever I want, however I want. If I feel like whittling down the number of books that have been lurking unread for 20 years, I will do that. If I feel like reading the entire Anthony Award longlist, I will do that. If I feel like making a poll, I will do that. If I feel like diving into contemporary horror, I will do that.

Rec me a book?

Comments

[rosanicus]

I'm not sure how much non-fiction you read but I have two books I would recommend to almost anyone. First one is The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane and the second is Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain by Charlotte Higgins. Both are travelogues but one is nature-centric and the other is about archaeology.

[rachelmanija]

Thank you! I own the first but haven't read it yet, but they both sound great.

[dewline]

Seems entirely reasonable to me.

[james]

The God Box by Barry Goodyear (if you can find it used, it's old and almost no one but me seems to have read it.)

[pameladean]

There are a surprising number of books by that title, but I think you must mean Barry Longyear? He burst on the SF scene with three major awards very early on but then seemed to disappear. He wrote several stories for the Liavek shared-world anthologies, and was a pleasant presence at conventions for a while.

The God Box was fascinating, but I don't seem to have ever reread it.

P.

[machiavellijr]

Just out this last week, 'Here in Avalon' by Tara Burton. A New York cabaret troupe which may or may not be a cult, or possibly vice-versa. Gorgeously written, surprisingly funny and I devoured it overnight.

[rachelmanija]

Love the premise! Thank you!

[deifire]

This is my favorite book resolution I've seen so far.

For a rec: The Book of Queer Saints is a recent horror anthology I just read on a plane and liked a lot of.

[rachelmanija]

Oh interesting, I hadn't heard of this. Thanks!

[thawrecka]

That's a good resolution.

[hunningham]

Princess Floralinda and the 40-flight tower Not gonna win you any literary points. Wonderful.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Still reccing Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved!

[rachelmanija]

On my list!

[musesfool]

That's my kinda resolution!

I don't know how you feel about mafia stories, but I would recommend the Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee - it's about a family (in both the genetic and mafia sense) of secondary world East Asian-style mobsters with Force powers. But you definitely need to have a tolerance for mob stories.

[rachelmanija]

I love mob stories and you're the second person to rec this!

[black_bentley]

My favourite book of 2023 was In Memoriam by Alice Winn, so I'm going to recommend that one.

And that's an excellent resolution! <3

[rachelmanija]

Thanks!

[pameladean]

Oh, it's funny how reading your resolution actually made the tension go out of my shoulders for a while, even while I was giggling.

I can't recall if you have read Jessamyn West's Cress Delahanty, but I do recommend it. It's a series of linked short pieces and she rings the changes on so many kinds of fiction. It's funny and eye-opening and sad and both very shrewd and in some ways just shiningly innocent.

P.

[rachelmanija]

Haha, I'm glad.

I've actually never read anything by Jessamyn West.

[qian]

This is my resolution too! I was just thinking I might close to blurb requests for 2024. I'm terrible at doing them anyway, so all that happens is nobody gets a blurb and I feel bad, and if that's going to happen anyway I may as well skip the feeling bad part.

Have you read Miriam Toews' Women Talking? I thought it would be a sort of depressing thriller, but it's more like a play where people -- well, women -- argue about big philosophical questions, in a warm funny human way. My copy has a Margaret Atwood blurb on the cover and the vibe is not unlike hers.

[rachelmanija]

Haha,that was also me with blurbs.

I have not read it but it sounds interesting.

[sixbeforelunch]

Excellent resolution!

Have you read The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia?

[rachelmanija]

No! Is it good?

[dhampyresa]

What a lovely resolution!

If you haven't read it yet, I think you might enjoy Susanna Clarke's Piranesi.

[rachelmanija]

I LOVE Piranesi. Oneof my favorite books of all time.

[cgbookcat1]

You might like Liz Williams' Fallows Sister quartet. The first is Comet Weather and all books are out now.

This is an excellent reading resolution!

[skygiants]

Have you ever read any Christianna Brand? I read Green for Danger a while back and never got around to writing it up, but it's a golden age mystery set in a wartime hospital with some really interesting characterization and a lot of really pleasingly specific detail about life in the hospital, the V.A.D. hut, etc.

[rachelmanija]

I haven't but I saw the movie. Really interesting performance of the detective.

[nnozomi]

Since nobody ever seems to have read them: Sage Walker's Whiteout and The Man in the Tree, near-ish future SF with a dystopian and utopian feel respectively; both also sort of murder mysteries and about making family.

[aella_irene]

The Patience McKenna series, by Jane Haddam. Set in the 1980s, in the world of publishing. Book One largely takes place at the American Writers of Romance annual convention, where our heroine tries to solve a murder, and also avoid being on too many judging panels. ("We're sure you didn't do it, so we put you on the panel as a vote of confidence! Also we had no one else.") The author also wrote the Gregor Demarkian books, but these contain fewer zany romance authors, and more Church of Armenia.

Charlotte MacLeod wrote two series: the Peter Shandy mysteries, about a professor at a small agricultural college who keeps being asked to solve murders in the local community, and the Sarah Kelling mysteries, where the heroine joins a private investigation firm partly due to the murders she keeps getting involved in.

[snowynight]

It's a great resolution.

The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington is a collection of surrealist short stories. They are weird and imaginative with a dark sense of humour.

You can try one or two stories to see if you like her style.

[lirazel]

An excellent resolution! Have you ever read Freedom & Necessity? Or The Steel Seraglio? I like both of those a lot.

[rachelmanija]

I love Freedom and Necessity. What's the other?

[illariy]

Your resolution is amazing! I might just steal it. >.>

Rec me a book?

Oooh, what a great chance! My rec is this - I went through your book review tags and couldn't find it but am interested if you know it and what you think of it:
"The Center Cannot Hold: My Journy Through Madness" by Elyn Saks. It's her memoir about living with schizophrenia. It includes how she dealt with the stigma including from professionals in the mental health field and how she still ended up being a professor of law, psychology and psychiatry.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Come to think of it, I think I need to make a resolution not to make any effort to finish a book. For 30 years now, finishing books has been counterproductive for me, and for at least 10 years I've been able to articulate that...but nearly 40 years of brainwashing that finishing books is the "correct" way to read them is hard to undo.

Maybe it's resolution time.

[carbonel]

Have you read any of Anthony Price's books? He wrote intelligent Cold War spy thrillers with an ongoing cast of revolving characters. He stopped writing when the Cold War ended and only died a few years ago, in 2019.

I'm particularly fond of Our Man in Camelot, but Colonel Butler's Wolf is generally considered a good place to start.

[pameladean]

I heartily second this recommendation, with some sad caveats for a couple of bad fairies and at least one inadvertent howler because certain historical information was not known at the time the book was written; if you know it, an authority figure's rebuttal falls very flat. But, whatever you do, DO NOT begin with Tomorrow's Ghost. That one needs to come in the right order, after War Games, Colonel Butler's Wolf, and, argh, at least one more.

P.