What do I need to read?

[kennahijja]

My f-list is wise and perceptive and well-read, so here's the problem:

I'm badly out of good books. That, and my birthday isn't all that far off, so I would have an excuse for hitting Amazon. But as it is, I'm even out of books I know I desire madly. Hence, I'll ask you. What would you rec? What excited you recently?

What *do* I like? Fantasy, horror, SF if it's character-driven and not technology-heavy. Slashy, dark, unusual, stylistically beautiful, erotic. Other genres if the themes fit.

Examples that rocked my world... Carey's 'Kushiel' series, Friedman's 'Coldfire', McMaster Bujold's 'Miles Vorkosigan' series, McKillip's 'Riddlemaster' trilogy. General fondness for MZB, Guy Gavriel Kay, C J Cherryh, Octavia Butler... Storm Constantine, apart from the undisciplined plots. Liked Lynn Flewelling's 'Nightrunner' series for the slash, but otherwise it's too cliched for me... Not much into the Tolkien clone type stuff...

Suggestions will be lovingly huggled! :)

And if anyone ever stumbled across a list of homoerotic fantasy novels, I'd so love to see that :).

Comments

[oddnari.livejournal.com]

Alas, can't help you. My SF reading only comprised Star Wars and fantasy was all about Tolkein and Terry Pratchett.

If you want historicals, though, and non-European historicals at that, as well as non-European/non-American slice-of-life and stuff with magic realism, I'll be able to help you.

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

Yes, hit me :). Apart from (non-ancient-history-setting) detective stories, I read pretty much anything ;).

Edited a frillion times

[oddnari.livejournal.com]

I highly, HIGHLY recommend the following:

Orhan Pamuk: My Name is Red (16th century historical/mystery; Turkish)

Elif Shafak: The Bastard of Istanbul (slice-of-life, modern day; Turkish/Armenian/American)

Mohsin Hamid: Moth Smoke (slice-of-life, political, modern day; Pakistani)

Mohsin Hamid: The Reluctant Fundamentalist (ditto)

Kiran Nagarkar: God's Little Soldier (slice-of-life, modern day; Indian)

All the books from George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series (British; colonial; adventures of Flashman; satire; almost like fanfiction)

All the books of Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharpe series (British, Napoleonic, set in different countries featuring different adventures of Sharpe; telly series featured the delectable Sean Bean)

M M Kaye: Far Pavilions (historical - India during the Raj)

Ahmed Ali: Twilight in Delhi (historical - the death of the Mughal empire)

William Dalrymple: The White Mughals (ditto)

William Dalrymple: The Last Mughal (ditto)

Isabel Allende: Eva Luna (Chilean; magic realism; modern-day but rooted in historical incidents)

Isabel Allende: Stories of Eva Luna (ditto)

Isabel Allende: The House of Spirits (ditto; movie featured Jeremy Irons)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Columbian; magic realism; very deeply rooted in historical incidents)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Columbian; magic realism)

Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children (multiple award-winner, but highly recommended, nevertheless; Indian; based in 1940s - end of the Raj - and thereabouts)

And because you've been such a darling, Girish Karnad: Tughlaq (a play, cleverly written; set in the 1300s; political)

In case you've not started on Terry Pratchett, then read the Discworld series, starting from The Colour of Magic. You cannot go wrong with these :)

Re: Edited a frillion times

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! That's quite I've read Pratchett, and only two weeks ago finished the first Flashman novel. It's funny, when I taught my HP class it was in the context of 'Tom Brown's Schooldays', and I got to mention fanfiction before we even *got* to HP ;). The book, though... apart from the military history (which bores me), the racism in the book is an amazing slap-in-the-face that illustrates the unsubtle, unprettified face of colonialism. On the other hand... I'm anything but on the cultural appropriation wavelength for a number of reasons, but 'Flashman' came as close as anything to pissing me off because that gets almost unbearable at times. I'm still torn there :).

Your South American part of the list makes me wonder... have you read Jorge Amado (Brazil)? One of my favourite non-fantasists ;).

PS. Your thingy is copied and will be sent off tomorrow.

Re: Edited a frillion times

[oddnari.livejournal.com]

Well, much of the last two centuries of the Raj were premised on racism (1800s till 1947), so it really does not bother me that racism exists in fiction, whether American/European/Anglo-Indian... it was there, especially in the era in which Flashman is set (unlike the 1700s when many of the English were keen to integrate with Indians).

We don't get many South American writers here easily, only the wildly popular ones like Neruda, Garcia Marquez and Allende, and of course, Che Guevara and Hugo Chavez :P So my South American reading has not progressed beyond magic realism, as far as genre goes. (I am not even touching on Paulo Coelho!)

I'll keep a look-out for Jorge Amado, though. Could you recommend some stuff of his, please?

Thank you for my thingie ;)