Book rec time!

[penmage]

All right, people, I want book recs. I'm looking for good things to read over the summer.

There are 80-odd people who read this journal, and most of you read a lot. I want at least one rec (though feel free to give me more) from each of you.

I'm looking for something I've never read before. It doesn't have to be SF/F - in fact, I think I'd prefer if it wasn't (not that you can't also recommend SF/F.)

Thanks to y'all in advance.

Comments

Non-SF/F

[fireborn.livejournal.com]

The chances are vanishingly small that you haven't read Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. But if you haven't, you will be forced to at hamsterpoint. One for the Money kicks it off.

Rex Stout wrote about a gazillion Nero Wolfe books before he died. He died in the 70's; he started writing them in either the thirties or the fourties. They are all set in those decades. However, I have read almost all of them, and only encountered two which felt dated: Fer-De-Lance and Over My Dead Body. Even Too Many Cooks, which I just reread, and features the word "Negroes" a lot and the like, does not feel dated, just period. These are probably some of the best detective stories ever written. If you prefer wit instead of action, I'd go out on a small limb and say they're the best. They're also mostly stand-alones, so you could probably begin reading with any book you can find.

SF/F--I blame all errors on my exhaustion.

[fireborn.livejournal.com]

Michael Woodring Stover has written two books that ar... well, they're actually true sf/f, containing both science fiction and fantasy. It's bloody difficult to do, but he does it brilliantly, creating a bleak future earth ruled by a corporate caste system, where the primary form of entertainment is experiencing the lives of Actors--people sent through a portal to another world where magic is real, and nobody knows a world of technology even exists. It's got a great... I don't think Caine is a complete anti-hero, but he comes close some times. Dark, occasionally deeply depressing, sometimes gory and disgusting, but absolutely amazing. Heroes Die is technically the first, but I read Blade of Tyshalle, it's sequel, before that, and didn't even realize it was a sequel--I just thought it was really well back-storied.

Rakie, Rorbie, and I routinely recommend The Black Jewels Trilogy (Daughter of the Blood being the first), and if one of us hasn't already gotten you to read them, take this opportunity. Dark--though by no means as gory as Stover's stuff, though you'd never be able to tell by the opening chapter--it's a beautiful world that completely inverts your expectations of good and bad, dark and light, beauty and... well, actually, beauty runs pretty consistent. I maintain these aren't as dark as my previous recs because they have more high notes, but they definitely dwell in the shadows.

You already know about Midori Snyder, but here's a pair of my used-bookstore obscure finds. The first, Rick Shelley, has a great series called the Varayan Memoir. I can't tell you anything plot-wise without giving away a lot of the fun, and they are fun--fun as in Jim Butcher sort of fun, but with less of the hero getting beat up and more dragon-slaying. The first book is Son of the Hero, and if you ever run across copies of The Hero of Varay or The Hero King (although it might be Hero and King -- these are so out of print it's well-nigh impossible to even get titles, damnit) that you don't want for yourself, SEND THEM TO ME, DAMNIT.

(I own the first. Finding the other two is obviously not panning out.)

The other is much less obscure, although the trilogy I recommend you start with isn't easy to find. No, I take that back. I can find oodles of copies of the second book, Moonscatter. It was the first of hers I even found, for $.25 at the Goodwill. I finally located a copy of Moongather, the first book, a few years ago, but I cannot for the life of me find a copy of Changer's Moon. I can't even intralibrary-loan a copy. The second trilogy with the character is a lot easier to find, at least, but at any rate, Jo Clayton does great stuff with ideas and language so that you feel like what you're reading about really is another world, not just this world in different clothes. They can be a bit tricky to get into, but worth it.

I'll hork out some more recs tomorrow--assuming anyone doesn't beat me to them. Then again, some of these are not popular--though not as obscure as some of the ones I've already mentioned.