Recommendation Post

[rachelmanija]

I am working on a boring task which requires me to be planted at my computer for a while. Let's play an amusing game so I don't go mad while working on it.

Recommend something to me that you think I'll like. It could be a book, a movie, a TV show, music, food, a place to visit, or an activity, and tell me why you think I'll like it. (If it's a book or show, please check my tags to see if I'm already familiar with it.)

In turn, I will recommend something to you. It can either be the same sort of thing (ie, also a food) or something you ask me to rec (ie, "Please recommend a YA fantasy novel with a female protagonist who isn't a warrior or a wizard. Ideally, she will have an animal companion who isn't magical and doesn't speak.") Obviously, the better I know you, the more likely I will be to rec something which you're not already familiar with, and which will appeal.

Comments

[mildred_of_midgard]

If you don't already know it, my advisor took me to the Sunnin Lebanese Cafe on Westwood near Santa Monica a couple weeks ago. We both got the lamb kabob and shared baba ganouj, and she got Greek salad and I got spiced potatoes as a side, and we agreed it was really good.

Can you rec any books, fantasy and/or YA, in which the protagonist is in school, and the focus is on learning and the learning process, rather than the tiresome rivalry with the rich/spoiled kid and the hateful teacher? To give you an idea of books that have failed me in this respect: the academy scenes in Name of the Wind tried to be about learning but got distracted by Ambrose, Pamela Dean's Tam Lin initially acted like it was going to be about studying literature and folklore but wasn't, Robin Hobb's Second Son trilogy* had hints of learning things but was mostly about group dynamics (including the tiresome rivalry with Caulder), the school scenes in Gaiman's Graveyard Book are about defeating the bullies, etc. I haven't read the Worst Witch series, but gather from the discussions of spoiled rival and hateful teacher that it's got the Harry Potter dynamic going on.

What I want is what the Harry Potter books would have been if he weren't in them, and Hermione were the viewpoint character, i.e. arithmancy instead of Voldemort and Draco Malfoy.

Any hope for me of finding such a book?

[rachelmanija]

I have not been to that cafe! Pink Orchid (Persian) on Sepulveda between Pico and Santa Monica is good.

Hmmm. I can think of very little school-set fiction that doesn't have rivalries and hateful teachers. I'm going to have to rec ones where that's at least not the main focus.

Battle Dress is my best contender. YA about a young woman at West Point, by an author who went to West Point. Virtually the entire story is about the process of learning to become a soldier.

A Wizard of Earthsea
has a rivalry, but also a major focus on learning.

Finally, this is mostly set away from the college, but if you want books with a strong focus on learning and the value of study and thought, you cannot do better than Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman series: The Steerswoman's Road

[sam_gardener]

I saw you had recced Peking Opera Blues which is one of my all time favorite movies. I'm kind of a fan of '80s, early '90s Hong Kong cinema, (not that I don't like Hong Kong movies from other time periods), so I'll rec some others that I like. They're all classics so you may have already seen them, but if not -

Once Upon a Time in China directed by Tsui Hark who also wrote and directed Peking Opera Blues I saw this when it was first released at a film festival, having never seen any Hong Kong movies, with no previous knowledge or expectations, and fell in love.

A Chinese Ghost Story is one of the movies Tsui Hark produced, directed by Ching Siu-tung, it has 2 sequels, both good in IMO.

Swordsman II another movie directed by Ching Siu-tung and produced by Tsui Hark, has both Brigitte Lin and Jet Li in it. I also liked the first Swordsman movie, III was too crazed for my taste, but YMMV.

[rachelmanija]

I have seen and adore all of these. ;)

Have you seen So Close? Modern Hong Kong action film with three female leads.

[sam_gardener]

I'll try again with some slightly more obscure recs ;)

Yang & Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema Documentary by Stanley Kwan, I really liked this, but it might be hard to find.

Painted Faces Directed by Alex Law, a fictionalized account of the Peking Opera School that many of a generation's martial arts movie stars and directors started at, including Sammo Hung, who plays the master that the movie focuses on. I should warn that the kids are treated harshly though not as badly as in Farewell My Concubine IIRC.

[snowynight]

Have you watched/read Kino's Journey or Kieli? They're wonderful fantasy anime/manga that has a sense of wonder and exploration.

Are there post-apocalyptic fiction that the survivor are not only white males?

[sam_gardener]

For post-apocalyptic fiction with others than white men Hayao Miyazaki is your guy. Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke are both post-apocalyptic. I like them a lot, but my favorite Miyazaki films are Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Spirited Away. Huge Miyazaki fan here :).

[mildred_of_midgard]

A month later I finally have a book rec for you! (Please don't already have read it. ;-) )

Making Sense of Japanese, formerly entitled Gone Fishin', until confusion got in the way and they had to change the title.

It's very short, 128 pages in my copy, and amazingly manages to explain points of Japanese grammar in a manner accessible to people with no Japanese background, while being funny, witty, hilarious, entertaining, and a host of other such synonyms.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

You probably already know this, but Kaoru Mori's BRIDE'S STORY. I've only had a chance to glance at it, but it's wonderful so far.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I heard of it, but I haven't read it yet. It looks wonderful.

I recommend the anime Princess Tutu, a charmingly meta-fictional fairytale about a little duckling who turns into a girl studying ballet, whose alter-ego is the ballerina Princess Tutu, whose magic power is dance. If you're interested, I have it.

[skygiants]

The broad-rangingness of this request makes it difficult to fulfill! I will play it safe and begin with an author: Frances Hardinge, whose books (I've read two so far; she's published four) remind me more than anything else I've read of the darker end of Diana Wynne Jones. Fly By Night is the first book of hers I read, and if I shelved my books by plot-themed association I'd put it next to Dalemark and Westmark. It's witty, intelligent, complex, interesting in worldbuilding, highly concerned with the character development of a suspicious and angry child among scheming and untrustworthy adults, and occasionally too proud of its own cleverness but given it's a first novel I forgive it that. Well Witched, her second book, looks by the cover as if it ought to be more twee, but is in fact significantly creepier and much less interested in its own cleverness and even more interested in the complex character development of highly flawed children and adults. It's about three kids who are given the responsibility of granting other people's wishes and specific creepy powers with which to accomplish this. Everything, unsurprisingly, goes very wrong very fast, but the real emphasis of the story is on the ability that passive, damaged, or unlikeable people have to change and strengthen themselves.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Oh, I read (but never reviewed, apparently) Well-Witched. I liked it. (AUGH THE CREEPY EYES!) I've been meaning to check out her other books.

Have you read Rosemary Kirstein? I just recced her in comments on the DW post. Extremely well-thought-out, well-characterized, and fun adventure sf about a woman scientist trying to logically figure out what appears to be a non-logical world, and her heterosexual life partner, a "barbarian" swordswoman. The Steerswoman's Road

[pseudo_tsuga.livejournal.com]

Teppu, a manga about an arrogant girl afflicted with the ennui of perfection that finds challange in MMA. All of the main characters are women skilled in MMA, including the former world champion and a cheerful Brazilian girl who is one of my favorites for how cheerful she is, even when kicking your ass. It's only in scans now, but it's worth tracking down (and I can provide links if you want).

Curse my lack of an edit button

[pseudo_tsuga.livejournal.com]

I forgot to say what I'm looking for! I'd love to read fantasy that pays attention to the logistics of things as well as the grand quest or one that is also concerned with slice-to-life things.

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

William Bell's YA books- all of them, but especially Stones and the sequel, Fanatics. He's the only male author I've ever seen do feminism well.

And what I'm looking for . . . hmm. Social history (fiction and nonfiction), and historical/contemporary fantasy with female protagonists? I'm especially fond of stories about old world versus new and the relevance/influence of ancient belief in modern life.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Virgin: The Untouched History, by Hanne Blank, a witty, thoughtful, impeccably researched cultural history of the concept of virginity in the western world.

Marie Brennan's Midnight Never Come has two protagonists, one male and one female, but deals with the issues you mention. Though it's historical fantasy, so it's more old beliefs in a (more modern) time.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Bunny Drop, a manga series about a man who discovers his grandfather had a small child with an unknown woman, and, discovering this at his grandfather's funeral, turns out to be the only one in the family willing to take the child in. It's got Small Child Cuteness, but also a fairly steady, realistic view at the upheaval it causes in the life of a mid-twenties salary man who's suddenly got full-time custody of a preschool child.

Having taken a look at your list of interests, I'm now wondering if you could recommend another musical group in the same vein as Vienna Teng, October Project, and/or The Decemberists.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs. Dave Carter and Tracey Grammar, or Tracey Grammar's solo albums. Possibly Thea Gilmore, though her music is a little hit-or-miss for me. "That Girl" is brilliant. Linda Thompson. Possibly Emmylou Harris's recent albums, like Wrecking Ball or Red Dirt Girl. Neil Young's Sleeps WIth Angels. Suzanne Vega.

I like Bunny Drop - I reviewed the first volume under "manga."

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

I think you would enjoy this recipe for goi ga:
http://wanderingchopsticks.blogspot.com/2006/11/goi-ga-vietnamese-chicken-salad-this-is.html

It's got many lovely flavors, but I recommend it to you especially because it's the sort of salad that is easy to toss together but wonderfully yummy and because the author of that blog also loves California. There's many fun recipes and restaurant reviews over there.

I would enjoy a recommendation for a recipe or a food you think I might like!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

http://innatthecrossroads.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/goat-with-sweetgrass-firepods-and-honey/

The modern marinade. I did it with lamb chops rather than cubed goat, and substituted ground pepper for pepper pods, left out the raisins, and I think we used balsamic instead of lemon grass. (It was a bit impromptu.) It came out utterly delicious.

The recipes on that site that I've tried, even with my habit of making random substitutions, have all come out quite well.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

Trey Shiels (actually Linda Nagata)'s THE DREAD HAMMER. Well written (naturally) short fantasy novel with a hero who is truly charming but also a ruthless murderer in a rather disturbing way, and yet (for me) it works, and also contains a scene so emotionally fraught at one point that I almost lost it and put the book down and walked around the house hyperventilating and decided that despite everything I wasn't going to finish the book and peeked at the ending and then decided after all to finish the book and it was really good. Loved it.

I want a rec for a YA novel with female lead that is 1) well written 2) not based on angsty-angst plus me me me self centeredness that can have a 3) sweet or believable romance angle as long as the romantic interest isn't also angsty, in which the girl is competent and there is adventure and possibly a fantasy element. Can be modern day. [fyi, Graceling was a DNF for me, and while I did read all of Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Angel and think she's really good at some things, I found the world and characterization a bit thin for my taste.

[renesears.livejournal.com]

Have you read Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis? It's Regency-era and Kat is more into adventures than angst. The romance focuses on her sisters, not her. Also, it's funny.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

If you haven't already seen it, Summer Days With Coo is one of the most deeply touching and enjoyable feature-film anime I have seen in the last few years (and really one of my favorite *movies* of the last few years, period, animated or live-action); I find it more than a little reminiscent of Miyazaki in terms of its obvious affection for the natural world and the charming realism of the family dynamics and child characters:

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I will check that out.

[kitewithfish.livejournal.com]

Tarte Cosmetics' Natural Cheek Stain in Flush. http://tartecosmetics.com/tarte-item-natural-cheek-stain-flush It's a lovely sheer tint and smells faintly of fruit. (Can you tell that I've spent a large amount of time today in Sephora?)

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the documentary Protagonist? It's very unconventional and really fascinating; it follows four men who took very different paths (martial arts fighter, ex-gay evangelist, thief, terrorist) and how they escaped those paths. It can be clunky at times but I thought it was well worth watching.

[raykat.livejournal.com]

Puella Magi Madoka Magica. If you haven't see it yet, it's an anime series that's a dark deconstruction of the magical girl concept. Two ordinary teen girls encounter a strange little creature who offers to grant any wish they desire in return for making a contract with him to become a Puella Magi, a magical girl who fights against evil witches who feed off despair and secretly cause suicides and murders. Things are not what they seem. I would recommend it to anyone who liked Princess Tutu (which I saw you rec to someone above) and also probably Revolutionary Girl Utena fans.

Rec me either a TV show or another anime series, if you would, please.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Where can I find this? (I can't do bit-torrent.)

Have you seen Mushishi? Gorgeous, strange, wistful, beautifully animated series about an itinerant dealer-with-nature-spirits.

[sisterjune.livejournal.com]

Hi longtime lurker, this is my first time commenting. I saw you have a cha song joo icon upthread, do you watch korean dramas? I dont see any tags nor remember any posts about them so thats why I ask. If so I have a few I could rec with some links. if you are interested.

Coffee Prince - a girl who is a tomboy and kinda poor wants to work in a coffee shop as a barista. she ends up getting hired as one in a shop called coffee prince but problem is its a shop thats just supposed employ good looking men the boss guy just assumed she was a boy on first glance, so she plays along in order to get the job. the rest of story is about her working at the shop as boy, the other colorful characters are the other boys working there and the boss guy who is this young rich guy that has been tasked with running the place by his tough grandma. also there is romance, the main one being tomboy girl eun chan and coffee shop boss han kyul.

Sungkyunkwan scandal - this is another one about a girl who dresses as a boy and she does so so she can get work, this is in joseon era whereas coffee prince was in the present day. this one is very different though, it has political intrigue a scrappy intelligent heroine and two dishy romance interests. yoon hee is the heroine and she's gifted in writing and literature in a time when women weren't taught to read and write. as for the guys. one is moon jae shin, he's kind of a rebel character and spends his days blowing off classes and acting like a slacker but his nights he writes poetic notes criticizing the government and goes around tying them to arrows and shooting them near city officials. the other guy is the super upright rules oriented and kind of stuffy Sun Joon he's the son of one of the most powerful ministers in the government/palace but he's a really good guy and wants to do good for the people but because of his sheltered upbringing doesnt really have the right foot in place yet. the story is about these 3 and fourth guy gu yong ha relationship with each other. gu yong ha is this flashy merchant's son. he's a real laugh.

I could rec more but I dont wanna overwhelm. I also have recs for japanese dramas if you prefer that. I've seen alot more jdramas than i have kdramas but kdramas is my current obsession. places to watch the dramas (with subtitles of course!) are:
http://jdramas.livejournal.com/3394664.html
http://jdramas.livejournal.com/2419401.html#cutid1
http://www.dramacrazy.net/ if you want to watch streaming
http://www.mysoju.com/ also streaming site

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you! I've only just started watching K-dramas, hence the lack of write-ups. But I've enjoyed the hell out of what I've seen so far.

[larryhammer]

Since someone has already rec'd The Bride's Story, I'll have to try something else. Hmm.

7 Seeds, a post-apocalyptic josei manga by Yumi Tamura (of Basara). It's an multiple-ensemble cast, with a couple of strong (and differently strong) female leads and some heartbreaking drama, as well as some really sweet moments. And the post-catastrophe world is interestingly creepy. Only available in scans, alas.

I'm pretty sure you haven't mentioned this before. On the off chance you've tried it, my backup plan is some of the early novels of Angela Brazil.

Rec me something entertaining from Netflix. We just watched A Little Night Music and need something better.

---L.

[newsboyhat.livejournal.com]

Franny Billingsley's YA novel, Chime. Briony is a great protagonist, full of contradictions--pride and self-loathing and murky memories. set in Edwardian England in a swamp. really atmospheric, beautiful language, bits of folklore sprinkled in. I loved it so much that I bought a copy.

not a good book to skim, though... it won't make sense in the first hundred or so pages if you keep starting and stopping. (at least it's not like Jellicoe Road.)

[cat-i-th-adage.livejournal.com]

I would recommend The Luck of Brin's Five by Cherry Wilder. Young Adult SF.

http://www.amazon.com/Luck-Brins-Five-Cherry-Wilder/dp/0671416375/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308458526&sr=1-2

So there's a planet inhabited by human-like marsupial people, who frequently marry in Fives - three able-bodied adults, an oldster, and a Luck. Lucks are defined by being odd: they might just have odd-coloured eyes, or have survived a very bad accident, or be an albino, or... you know.

As it happens, a simple family of mountain spider-silk weavers are mourning the imminent death of their beloved Luck, when a human scout crashlands nearby. They marry him immediately! (I don't think he ever got asked his thoughts on the matter, but he seems content through the rest of the book.)

Alas, some of the nearby Powers That Be are unpleasantly interested in the new Luck of Brin's Five, so the family takes to the road to keep him safe.

What follows is a travelogue, a slice-of-life family story about the baby on the way and the child narrator's dealings with his younger sister, Granny's stories of when she was young and sought-after, a few risk-to-life-and-limb bits, and a society where psychic powers sometimes happen and sometimes don't but are fully integrated and accepted into the culture - while metal and fire are creepy.

Oh, and they stop to participate in an air race. They found the plane chassis, just lying there waiting to be rebuilt. Wouldn't you?

**

Please recommend to me a foodstuff beloved in your childhood.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Have you heard of Genevieve Valentine's Mechanique yet? It's amazing! (And so is her blog, where she writes hilarious reviews of bad movies.) One of the best books I've read in a long time.

And I've had the impression that you seem fond of "everything but the kitchen sink" type books - Camera Obscura by Lavie Tidhar. Steampunk with a cold, badass gunslinger lady, wuxia, zombies, alien machines, alien lizard beings (THAT RULE ENGLAND - Queen Victoria is a lizard!), portals to other universes, cyborgs, creepy self-aware automatons that secretly run things behind the scenes, vintage pop-culture and historical references out the wazoo (even the main character is based on Lady de Winter from The Three Musketeers), and also serial killers! This book is part of a series that begins with The Bookman, but it's fully standalone (I haven't read the first one yet, and I had no trouble following).

Recommend me any form of fantasy fiction (anime, YA books, adult books, etc.) with hardass warrior women protags.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

(Oh, I guess I should mention that I already read Graceling and enjoyed it?)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Webcomics! The three I currently follow, and a classic favorite:

Gunnerkrigg Court (www.gunnerkrigg.com) is The Best Fantasy Comic running-- it starts off as a fairly standard magical-school plotline with decent art, and then the art and the originality quotients both become spectacularly better pretty quickly. Great sense of humor, wonderful friendship between the protagonist and her best friend (one's a socially awkward psychopomp! the other's a roboticist with a bird fetish! they fight crime!), and at this point the art has gotten to the point where I want to frame bits of it and hang them on the wall.

The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal (http://tjandamal.com/). Adorable beautifully drawn slice-of-life gay romance comic about Amal, who loses parental financial support when he refuses to go through with an arranged marriage and consequently decides Road Trip, and TJ, the drifter he finds in his kitchen making eggs the morning after the night he decides on the road trip and gets drunk to commemorate the decision. Despite the fact that the author promises they are eventually going to be thrown out of a Goodwill together, this is a surprisingly delicate, melancholy, nuanced piece full of unexpectedly lovely watercolors, while still being funny as hell.

Freefall (http://freefall.purrsia.com/). Hard SF, actual plotline, consistently funny... and it's in comic strip format. I don't even know how you do that. The protagonist is a bipedal bioengineered wolf, whose combination of pragmatism (she's an engineer herself) and predator makes me happy. Also, the entire sequence with the French restaurant ninjas is, well, epic.

Narbonic (http://www.narbonic.com/), of course, is in the running for greatest webcomic ever written. I cannot even vaguely attempt to explain why. Gerbils! Burning Man! Antonio Smith, Forensic Linguist! Catchphrases I still use in daily conversation six years later! And a plot which is actually incredibly absorbing. More mad science per square inch than anything else has ever had.

I devoutly hope you've heard of at least one of these, but your tags are not illuminating on the subject of webcomics.

In return, I would like a recommendation for something, anything, enjoyable that will exacerbate neither my eyestrain nor my RSI.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

My library has some downloadable audiobooks. If yours doesn't, I could pretend to be in Texas briefly.

[m00nface.livejournal.com]

When you next visit Kanazawa there is a shop at the bottom of the street heading up to the castle. The ground floor is just selling typical omiyage, but if you go upstairs they have a sweet-making workshop for about 1500 yen. You make four different seasonal, traditional wagashi and go home with the lot. It's all in Japanese, but there's an instructor demonstrating and there isn't much of a language barrier for something so physical. It's a lot of fun, a great insight into how these sweets are made, and you go home with some truly delicious treats. I think you'd like it a lot.

I have other tourism recs for Kanazawa, but I thought making Japanese sweets might be something you might be able to do in LA if the sound of it appeals to you, I don't know what facilities you have there. Either way, it's a fun thing to keep in mind for the future!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I will find out! I would certainly love to do that the next time I'm in Kanazawa.

[fileg.livejournal.com]

I myself only found out today that the Horrible History books were made into BBC programs - with music. You could amuse yourself for hours looking at some of the music videos --

here, for instance, the 4 Kings George as a boy band... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPtYmq5qFVA)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I just read a fantastic book you might like. It's called "The Great Indian Novel" by Shashi Tharoor, and it's a mash-up of the Mahabharata and modern Indian history. For instance, Bhishma's role in the narrative is played by Gandhi (which sounds weird, but it actually works really well). It's very good, funny and moving. It was written in 1989, so it's a little out of date in the modern Indian history part, but I still loved it.

I've just started to get my girlfriend into anime. So far, I've only shown her Yami no Matsuei and a few episode of Ouran High School Host Club. What's a good introduction series? She likes military themes, competent characters (the Tatsumi or Hakkai archetype), explicit GLBT themes. She's more into serious stuff than humor.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I am pretty sure I recced The Great Indian Novel to you some time. ;) It's an absolutely no exaggeration work of genius.

Your girlfriend needs to see Fullmetal Alchemist. It doesn't have explicit GLBT themes, but otherwise fits her to a T.