Either of the Jasper Fforde series? (Starting with either The Eyre Affair or The Big Over Easy.) In mysteries (the epitome of plane reading, to me), maybe Laurie R King, Minette Walters, Val McDermid, Carol O'Connell? (For the first and last, begin at the beginnings of the series (LRK has two) -- they're more series-based than some other mystery writers.) Or Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, for nonfiction.
Thomas Perry, especially the early stuff is fun - try Island or Metzger's Dog. Slightly less absurd than Hiassen, but funny, well done thrillers. The later stuff is more serious, but also is a good take on the thrillers, usually with a decent twist.
On the less funny, I'm partial to Lee Child for mystery/thrillers involving a ex-military cop, but I'm not sure if its much of a step up from the Da Vinci Code. Again, earlier stuff is best. Also see Michael Connelly.
My reading tastes run heavily to mysteries and thrillers, along with a steady diet of science fiction. Doesn't sound like quite your thing from your post.
For some reason, I seem to enjoy popular history/policy books on airplanes. Recent airport purchases in that vein: Steve Coll's Ghost Wars, George Packer's Assassins' Gate, Kenneth Pollack's Persian Puzzle.
In the mystery-thriller category, Lee Child has created an interesting fantasy in the lone-man figure of Jack Reacher (former MP, now homeless man/detective/badass).
In the historical-mystery category, Barbara Hambly's series with Benjamin January, a free black doctor in 1840s (?) Lousiana is fun and decently researched.
In the Serious Fiction But Not Annoyingly So category, I really enjoyed Rick Moody's recent novel, The Diviners, which follows the inner dramas of a number of variously self-absorbed TV-type people in NYC during the 2000 elections--which of course they barely register. The ending was a little lame, though.
You might get even more ideas from this blog by a very smart lit professor who loves her some trashy novels.
The books I listed in the post were just the first ones that popped in my mind. I don't usually gravitate towards sci fi (but will make an exception if well done) but I do like mysteries and thrillers.
And pretty much everything by Carl Hiassen is entertaining. Also, if you can find a copy of Cry Me a River by TR Pearson, that's excellent airplane reading.
Also, anyone read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro? That's the last book I bought and haven't started. The plot sounds good but it might be too deep for airplane reading.
I highly recommend Life of Pi--it's great fun (and quite good, actually). Atonement is awesome, but you'll cry at the end, which you might not want to do on a plane. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (or is it the other way around?) is a great read and really long, if you have a long flight...
Oh, and Close Range, the book of short stories by Annie Proulx which includes "Brokeback Mountain" (which is, sadly, the weakest short story in the set. And not a Western.)
"More" applies to "thoughtful", too. I didn't have my brain turned on all the way when I was reading those.
Now, on the other hand, have I told you that I couldn't finish the fourth Harry Potter book, on account of my accumulated distaste for the way Rowling's magical characters treat the muggles?
19: I'm guessing that Weiner discounted the genre writers.
Thanks for the kind words, Standpipe. That post was used by Teresa Nielsen Hayden to make a larger point about sudden losses in narrative suspension---and, damn her eyes, the subsequent conversation was much broader and intelligent than anything I'd been thinking about when I wrote the review.
Helter Skelter is a real page-turner, if you haven't already read it.
For something more fun, I recommend Susan Bordo's The Male Body. It's a collection of culture-crit essays, and is pretty interesting. Some of the issues she takes on echo some of the discussions I've seen on this blog lately.
SB, how's "Enduring Love"? Any novel in which the female protagonist is named "Clarissa" is one I want to read, and yet such high standards to live up to. The only McEwan I've ever read is Atonement, btw. Which I did love, and Ikwym about flinging it, but that kind of thing doesn't make me want to fling.
Close Range is teh awesome but doesn't seem like airplane reading to me. Too heavy. If I were recommending a book of stories for an airplane it'd be Alice Munro, probably Friend of My Youth or Open Secrets.
Wodehouse, yes. And Sarah Caufield has very funny English murder mysteries; Thus Was Adonis Murdered is the first and maybe funniest. These are foo-foo puzzle-type mysteries as opposed to Hiaasen thriller-type mysteries; if you want something like that, Elmore Leonard is really good. Or Ruth Rendell's mysteries, which are sometimes puzzly but also psychologically well-observed and frequently very chilling; if you like I can name some favorites.
I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon on a couple of plane rides and it was very well suited for it, but it's probably too long for your trip. (One of the trips was a three-putt which was probably longer than your cross-country trip.)
And maybe Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog? A time-travel romantic comedy, the plot's a little convoluted but it gets explained. And it's very charming. You could read it with Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, which inspired it and is a very funny English 19th-century episodic rumination (it originated "I love work. I can watch it for hours," but Jerome's development is much better than the poster version). And Peter Lovesey's Swing Swing Together which is what got me interested in Three Men in A Boat, another funny English puzzle mystery.
29 - There are rare good chick lit books (Shopgirl comes to mind) but most of it seems to be let's-see-if-I-can-crank-out-a-book-a-month formula crap. And most of it's too girly-girl and I want to smack the protagonists upside the head. It's the same reason I can't sit through your average Inoffensive Romantic Comedy Date Movie.
My problem is that I've already read almost all of the great, easily found Wodehouse novels about seventy times.
True, my grandad managed to spend his last decade or so reading nothing but Wodehouse (and Rex Stout, weirdly), but I'm not up for a constant diet just yet.
Two challenges for the fellow Drones members here:
1) What two Wodehouse novels would you recommend for the uninitiated?
2) What writer would you consider to be Plum's true heir or heiress?
I'm liking Something Fresh, the first Blandings novel, and, to pick a fight, Psmith, Journalist in the first category.
The obvious candidates for question 2 are Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis, but they're both fundamentally too cranky; their farces are supposed to mean something important and to intervene and shit.
Jokes like the one Porky Pine tells in some Pogo strip or other ("this is where the joke would be if I could remember it") greatly influenced my sense of humor.
I'd pick Joy in the Morning and Leave it to Psmith, though Something Fresh/New would be a close second to LitPsm.
their farces are supposed to mean something important
That's really the hangup; what we want is something that's about nothing. (You think you're picking a fight.)
Eric Kraft is not a good heir to P.G. Wodehouse, for many reasons, but Little Follies would be a good book for Becks to read on the plane. Twisted faux-idyllic memories of childhood, edited retrospectively to make them better, very funny and smutty and geeky.
Actually the best heir-to-Plum book I can think of might be David Lodge's Small World, but most of his other work doesn't qualify.
You've got my recommendations, but then, I seem to prefer for an initial introduction novels that might create a desire to read the others rather than try to find a few that encapsulate the best-loved aspects and characters.
For canonical Wooster n' Jeeves, two titles might be "Joy in the Morning" and "Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves."
I say "might be" because Wodehouse often published the same novel under different titles in the US and the UK, resulting in bibliographic chaos. One reason for it is Wodehouse's canny marketing sense; another might be his horror of the income tax levels then practiced...
I dearly, dearly love Live it to Psmith; it's probably one of my favorites. I'm not entirely sure how instantly accessible it is to the neophyte, but I'd imagine rather.
Psmith, Journalist has the benefit of encapsulating Wodehouse's entire cross-continental marketing scheme--and it's also has some of the descriptions of deadening piecework writing that make Something Fresh so good. And then it also has cat-loving mobsters.
It's stand-alone fun; you don't need any of the Wodehouse universe to enjoy it.
However, you're all right that one of the two recommended books should introduce a neophyte into the most famous arena, Wooster and Jeeves. The novellas in the Omnibus are a good place to start, actually. (I haven't been able to lay hands on a copy of Joy in the Morning for years, which has started to make me every so slightly fixated on that novel.)
And Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn. I'm starting to feel sad that I've already read all these. I think I'll go over to Amazon and put everything in print by Calvino on my wishlist, and read it again. Oh, and Roberto Calasso, my book-crush.
I think it's similar to the recommended and then anti-recommended Perez-Reverte books, though I haven't read those so I can't be sure, but I quite liked The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. And though I quite liked it, I know a number of people who liked it more than that.
I know Raymond Chandler has a fanbase on thise site, and while no one else has recommened him, I will. Any of his books will do.
My favorite Chandler is probably Farewell, My Lovely but I second w/d's recommendation of all of them. (Except the one or two I haven't read.)
I think Hammett has a couple of mysteries with Bay Area settings. Maybe The Dain Curse? I'm not a fan of The Maltese Falcon, book or movie, though. Some crazy stuff happens in Red Harvest but I don't remember where that was supposedly set (robably my favorite Hammett, but very very bloody, and possibly not too light for that reason).
Brookmyre's ambition was to get a houseproud forty-something granny from a damp Scottish central-belt town into a Bond movie. Into the Riviera, into casinos, into diamonds, into subterfuge, into her long-buried dreams - and all for the fearful love of her son. The writer succeeds and rather movingly.
...This a sharp, memorable and occasionally surprisingly touching book. And if my too-simplistic summary of the plot makes it sound a tiny bit Mills & Boon - feisty dreamer lifted from a living death to impossible glamour - then all I can say is that the last Mills & Boon I read didn't also manage to squeeze into one small section jokes about punk, Catholicism, the chronology of Die Hard, link sausages, Zimmer frames, Andy Cameron and the workings of the Glock machine-pistol. Or not very good ones, anyway.
Any of his earlier novels are also excellent. The Sacred Art of Stealing -- about Dadaist bank robbers, or A Big Boy Did it And Ran Away -- mild-mannered school teacher finds himself re-enacting the plot of Die Hard -- are pretty good stand-alone novels.
Barbara Gowdy's short story collection, We So Seldom Look on Love is fantastic. Really bizarre, but funny, sad and sexy. (And she's from Canadia! Yay!)
Also: I will always, always recommend Steve Martin's novellas, Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company. It's part of my role as his future mistress.
a step up from trash. Or even trash, if it's decently done.
Have you read Foucault's Pendulum? Because it is (to me) surprisingly trashy, and an excellent read. Sort of like I envision the Da Vinci thingy being, which I have not read.
15 -- Did you read Bad Dirt (Proulx' first book of Wyoming stories)? Cause I liked it way better than Close Range -- which was quite good, yes, I just didn't think it was in the same league.
61: I think the Italian is Il Visconte in Arbore. So. But also I was confusing it with The Nonexistent Knight & the Cloven Viscount. Also v.v.g. Calvino gives his petty aristos a hard time.
Red Harvest is set in Personville, aka Poisonville, a mythical Colorado (or possibly Montana?) mining town.
Two other things come suddenly to mind: The Evolution Man, or What We Did With Father, by Roy Lewis, while it might require some tracking down, is teh awesome light read; and, I've always found James Thurber makes excellent not-paying-a-whole-lot-of-attention reading -- if you are not familiar with him you might like to look at The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze, My World -- and Welcome to it, and Thurber Country. Comic essays and short stories from the New Yorker of old.
65: First s/b second. And, I dunno, the story I've read from it, "Man Crawling Out of Trees," was singled out as the best of the collection in one review I read; and I thought it was definitely not in the league of Close Range, which contains some of the best stories I've read recently. So YMMV.
60: Spark has a lot of novels, some of which can be kind of samey (are not Loitering with Intent and A Far Cry from Kensington the exact same book, except Kensington is significantly better?) Anyways, I'd start with Memento Mori and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. And the stories. Aiding and Abetting seemed kind of mailed-in.
For Thurber you might also try My Life and Hard Times.
72: I liked "Man Crawling Out of Trees" okay, but what really blew me away was "The Wamsutter Wolf", which I think of as the central story in that collection though it is near the end. Also "The Indian Wars Refought" is very, very good. And Bad Dirt had a thread of connection running through it, where most of the stories shared settings and some shared characters, which was not really thet case as much in Close Range. A-and, it seems to me like more care was given to the ordering of the stories in Bad Dirt -- so that t.g. the emotionally devastating "Wamsutter Wolf" is followed by tho comic "Summer of the Hot Tubs" -- a similar pacing is going on throughout the collection.
73: Yeah, Cosmicomics would be fantastic for airplane reading, and also just up Wolfson's alley. Another Calvino book that makes good reading without a lot of effort is Under the Jaguar Sun, travel writings from a stay in Mexico.
(It seems kind of weird to pick "Man Crawling Out of Trees" as the best story in the collection -- I think it might be the least distinctively Proulx-y of the stories in Bad Dirt.)
I haven't read Bad Dirt. I'll agree, though, that Close Range didn't have any connecting threads or characters, unless you count Ranching sucks as a theme.
I've been trying to read more fiction or generally, just non-academic things lately. Because
1) academic writing sucks;
2) sucky writing is contagious; and,
3) it's more fun than reading philosophy.
The credit card bill suggests I should check said fiction out of the library rather than purchasing it. Why the hell are books so expensive?
I've been meaning to do a post about this book for ages, but while it's dark, and so might not be what you're looking for, it's short and a brisk read: As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As a Girl, by John Colapinto. It's sorta the nonfiction version of Middlesex. It will also make you cry, though.
Calvino is all very meta. Cosmicomics is very easy-reading meta, but it still might be too meta for the stated purposes. Our hero, Qwfwq, is around at the beginning of the universe when there's nothing but hydrogen atoms (and another kid) so they play marbles with them -- that sort of thing. I don't recommend the Castle of Crossed Destinies until you've read some other Calvino; If on a Winter's Night a Traveler was what I would have recommeded but, click the link; so maybe if you want Calvino you could go for the chivalry parodies mmf! mentioned (Nonexistent Knight/Cloven Viscount and Baron in the Trees). My favorite is Invisible Cities but I don't think you're looking for a plotless series of meditations.
In re Foucault's Pendulum, the other day one of my friends said the Da Vinci Code was just a knockoff of it, so if you want DaVC but better that might be it.
Dude, if I'm going to read a book that long, especially one that's trying to be literary, I want it to be coherent and I want to get something out of it. I don't just want to be diverted. But that's me. However, I will fight for my little piece of influence over Becks' reading material with my ounce of strength.
I loved Foucault's Pendulum -- however, it's not necessarily an easy read.
It's a cracking conspiracy thriller that's also involved with making all kinds of 'meta'-comments about conspiracies and conspiracy thrillers. Eco seemed to decide to open with the most irritatingly wordy and gratingly pretentious chapter ever though. However, once into the meat of the novel it's really exciting and wears its erudition very lightly.
Dan Brown's stuff, by comparison, is like some n-th rate imitation written by someone with a severe learning disability who's only ever had the concept of a novel described to them and never actually read one.
'The Name of the Rose' is, imho, a better airplane read. It's more concise and less discursive than Foucault's Pendulum. I probably enjoyed the latter more, though.
On the less funny, I'm partial to Lee Child for mystery/thrillers involving a ex-military cop, but I'm not sure if its much of a step up from the Da Vinci Code.
Jackm recommended these as well, and Dr. Oops likes them. They're not terrible -- I'd certainly buy one to get me through a plane ride, but they are silly -- the hero is superhuman to the point of comedy. (I'm thinking of a point where he gets shot in the chest and a doctor tells him that the bullet was deflected by his massive pectoral muscles.)
30: I'm with you on Connie Willis. If you wanted to design someone whose books I'd like, Willis's resume fits perfectly. And yet I don't enjoy reading her that much. The Domesday Book, for example? The plot just made no sense at all. and TSNOTD kind of bored me. But Three Men In a Boat is great.
This a little heavy for airplane reading, but anything by AS Byatt, or, at a slightly lighter level, by her sister, Margaret Drabble. (I find the relationship there fascinating -- you can really get a sense of them as part of the same family.)
Or what about all those historical novels by Dorothy Dunnett? Either the Niccolo Rising series or the Lymond Chronicles. Not so much great literature, but an awful lot of fun.
Cala, it's already been established on the subject of the hypothetical (or maybe imminent) Tia-Jackmormon match up that while JM *could* beat me up; I actually *would* beat her up. Consider that perhaps the same dynamic is asserting itself here.
And re "Calvino is all very meta", I haven't read all of his work; but Under the Jaguar Sun is quite down-to-earth, really. Was Calvino a journalist? Because I'm interested if there are any more similar travel writings and essays.
Another book that springs to mind as something Wolfson might enjoy reading on the plane, is "Like Water For Chocolate". Don't be put off by the wretched movie! It's a really fun book.
Ooh, Dorothy Dunnett. I really liked the first book in the Lymond Chronicles, but I had trouble getting into the second one, and I wouldn't recommend them for a plane. I did a lot of "Wait, who?" turning back to remind myself what was going on.
Also, nothing's more annoying than someone defending one of their favorite books by just saying,"Hey! I liked that book, what's wrong with you?" but:
Hey, I liked Domesday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog! I actually thought Domesday was much easier to follow, plot-wise, than TSNOTD.
92: Ack, oh no, sorry! I have evidently been laboring under a misapprehension. [Looking back at the recommendations]: I think Bad Dirt and Under the Jaguar Sun and Like Water for Chocolate stand up as recommendations I would make to Becks. Thurber and Foucault's Pendulum and Roy Lewis, more specifically Wolfson-recommendations. Cosmicomics, could go either way.
I actually thought Domesday was much easier to follow, plot-wise, than TSNOTD.
Easy to follow, sure, but it makes no sense. What's the explanation for the modern-day epidemic? They're going to send an undergrad back to the Middle Ages as one of the first uses of a new time machine? And how out of reach could her adviser possibly be -- no one has a cell phone?
Dude, you can get used books for like a buck at Amazon if you don't mind some marking up. Even if you do mind marking up, you can usually get a clean copy for no more than ten bucks, often much less.
95: Now the spoiler barrier has been breached a bit, but this is going to get a lot more so, so:
SEVERE SPOILERS for The Domesday Book
The modern-day epidemic came because the squire way back when died from influenza, before the Plague struck. When the archaeologists opened up his tomb the virus reactivated. The Indian time machine tech was working at the dig that day, that's how he got to be Patient Zero.
No one has a cell phone: Crappy forecasting by Willis here; there are no cell phones in the future but there are videophones (IIRC). In 1992 I think cell phones existed but were very rare but still, she probably should've figured that out. OTOH, hindsight is 20/20. (Call waiting seems to suck, though, IIRC.)
Is the time machine new? I don't remember that. I thought that this was just the first crack Medieval were getting at it.
I was reminded at my staff appreciation breakfast of the existence of The Lovely Bones. Okay, awfully sad for airplane reading, again cry-inducing, but also compelling and fast paced enough that you won't pay attention to your flight.
Hey, Like Water for Chocolate was the first grownup book I ever read in a language other than English. Actually, in that vein, sorta The House of the Spirits is some fast-paced fiction.
98: Well , yeah, but why is there the social apparatus for massively reacting to a new case of severe flu? If that happened in Oxford today, nothing like that quarantine would get snapped down. TDB is set in a world where severe epidemics are expected and feared on a very concrete level -- that is not this world, but she doesn't explain how things changed to get there.
On the cell phone thing --I'll give her that cell phones were uncommon when she wrote it, but the guy really was unrealistically out of touch, regardless of technology.
And while you're right about the time machine, the point stands -- the first person sent back to the Middle Ages is going to be an unaccompanied undergrad? I don't think so.
Yeah- Timeline, I think. And it was terrible, at least as sci-fi (Crichton wants so bad to have a halfway plausible time-travel plot device that good chunks of the plot turn devastatingly stupid as a result).
For light, nerdy reading, lesse- in the vein of Stephenson, Richard K. Morgan's okay- Altered Carbon was pretty good, and I've heard good things about Market Forces. Also, Ken Macleod does a real good "Communists in SPACE!" (Pick any book! They've all got 'em). China Mieville for roughly the same in a steampunk fantasy setting.
I didn't remember that Kivrin was the first person sent back to the Middle Ages; I thought I remembered that she was just the first student sent back. Somehow I had the impression that the historians had been using the net long enough to, at least, give each time period its rating.
The "out-of-touch" advisor is kind of a running gag -- most of the plot of TSNOTD is driven by the right people not communicating. It's farce, no doubt about it; all of her time travel stories (have you read Fire Watch?) have the same atmosphere of exhausted confusion.
why is there the social apparatus for massively reacting to a new case of severe flu
She talks about a past pandemic -- there's that bit where the American bell-ringers say "In America our freedom of movement wouldn't be restricted like this" and someone thinks "And in America lots and lots and lots of people died in the pandemic."
I'll give you the unrealistically out-of-touch thing, although maybe he's a 21st-century Professor Welch? There's a lot about the departmental politics about sending this girl back; I might be willing to claim that you're overestimating the rationality of academia there. (In Barbara Pym's Less than Angels, which would be a great airplane read if you like that sort of thing which you should but it might be a bit light on plot, there's a lot about undergrads trying to get funding for fieldwork in remotish parts of Africa; I think Oxford may be/have been different from American universities in this way.)
Not that I really want to go to bat for TDB in this way, I can understand thinking that these are big problems in the plot and TSNoTD was more enjoyable -- the plot of TDB seems too easy to summarize with CAPS LOCK, as I did in e-mail.
106- Really? Book length, sure, but there's nothing particularly tough in terms of structure or style. (Worldbuilding, maybe? For someone who doesn't read a lot of sf, it'd be tough- he just kinda tosses you in there, with all sorts of enticing tidbits that just suggest a deeper world, but never come up again)
Maybe that's what I mean... there's so much world-building teasing going on that I find it more enjoyable to do a lot of reflecting while reading his stuff -- you don't want to just tear through Perdido Street Station. (Or at least, I didn't.)
She talks about a past pandemic -- there's that bit where the American bell-ringers say "In America our freedom of movement wouldn't be restricted like this" and someone thinks "And in America lots and lots and lots of people died in the pandemic."
Right, this is coming back to me now... aren't all the cats extinct, for one thing?
I don't know if that's explicit in The Domesday Book but it is in To Say Nothing of the Dog. Which it is why that is A Dystopian Vision of A Terrible Future. And IIRC the cats are all supposed to die about now which is too awful to contemplate. Hodge shan't be shot!
Okay, all true: I read TDB ages ago and I'm not remembering the details properly. I still think the epidemic was underjustified, but I'm not now recalling what my basis for that was.
My favorite Chandler is probably Farewell, My Lovely
My favorite's The Long Goodbye. I don't think it gets nearly the recognition it deserves as one of the really great 20th century American novels. But maybe a little long for flight reading.
I take essay collections with me when I travel. Bruce Chatwin's one of my favorites (his long pieces are good too); so is Philip Lopate. I'd also recommend (given Wolfson's interests) Frank Kogan's new collection of music/personal essays Real Punks Don't Wear Black, Christgau's Grown Up All Wrong, or any of Christgau's Consumer Guides
Re: SF: Robert Charles Wilson's The Spin is fun. Or anything by Ken Macleod.
Yeah- his latest output has kinda gone downhill (maybe due to the worldbuilding thing, too- as he either fills in parts of the map, or just assumes bits of backstory as known, which leaves out the good desciptive bits). I kinda hope he abandons the Crobuzon setting- he really needs the room to play with new wierdness.
Actually, now that I'm thinking about what'd be good transportation reading (Train, in my case, but they can't possibly be any worse on a plane), Mieville goes off that list- you really need a book that constant distraction from the actual words on the page isn't an issue (The hidden secret to Dan Brown's popularity!).
Paul- Spin! Yeah! That's a good one. Although if it turns out to be the opening of a series or drawn out setting, then not so much.
This is a pretty broad list by now, and seems to have mutated from light, as in unsubstantial reading to now include some fairly good books that just happen to be easy to read. If we keep this up another day it'll include everything but Coke's Institutes.
What is UP with fantasy writers and series? I will not read series.* Even trilogies tend to annoy me unless they're 100% guaranteed to end, stop, cease, and desist after the last one (and really good).
Is it the fan culture that propells so many writers into this gigantically annoying serializing? Are they all just broke? Are there any good one-volume fantasy novels anyone would like to recommend?
____
*I broke this iron law recently with George Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series AND AM NOW REGRETTING having done so. That shit is so never going to end.
Light, entertaining, and thought-proving SF: anything by Charles Stross (excepting Accelerando, which is really good, but requires a lot of attention to figure out what's going on).
What is UP with fantasy writers and series? I will not read series.* Even trilogies tend to annoy me unless they're 100% guaranteed to end, stop, cease, and desist after the last one (and really good).
Is it the fan culture that propells so many writers into this gigantically annoying serializing? Are they all just broke? Are there any good one-volume fantasy novels anyone would like to recommend?
There are two slightly separate issue -- series, and reused worlds. Reusing a fantasy world has been going on as long as there's been fantasy -- you've put all this effort into explaining how the magic works and where the Fire Swamps are, and you have all these cool maps, and there was that suggestive bit you mentioned about the Duchy of Wyvernovna -- might as well write another book with the same background. If the books stand up seperately, I don't mind this at all (even with some reuse of characters, connected plots, etc. Pratchett's Discworld, for example, doesn't seem like a problem to me, because you could pick up any book in it first, and have it stand by itself.)
The series thing, on the other hand, where you're supposed to forgive some 600 page lump of nonsense as not all that exciting, but necessary to set up the next book which is going to be really good, and then the author gets old and dies before tying up the loose ends (George RR Martin should live forever, of course, but at this rate he's going to have to), drives me nuts, and I don't understand why there's so much of it either. I won't read that stuff generally, and got sucked into Song of Ice and Fire just like you did. I'm not buying or reading the current one -- maybe in fifteen years I'll check and see if he's done, and then catch up.
Fantasy/Alternate History/ Thriller/Steampunk/Pulp one-off: The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling is quite good. I'm having trouble thinking of a good stand-alone fantasy one-off, though. J.V. Jones did one a while back (The Goldenr Ring?), but it was only OK.
I thought the second half (the non-fiction) of Meet Me at Infinity by James Tiptree is excellent (the fiction is sub-par) and it's only $0.86 + shipping remaindered at Amazon marketplace.
I enjoyed Zeitgeist by Bruce Sterling but it's not for everyone.
Non-SF:
If you like sports at all I strongly recommend The Last Shot (Darcy Frey) The best sports book I've read bar none.
I don't remember if you're one of the bridge players here but The Bridge Bum (Alan Sontag) is very readable and very good. This would be my top recommendation of any of the books mentioned if you play bridge.
125: Do you mean actually good fantasy, or good airport reading fantasy? Though come to think of it, most great fantasy, most actually great, classic fantasy has a "light" quality in a sense, without being fluff.
Well, once you've put that much thought into a setting, and it's attracted an audience, why go to the trouble of making a new one? (Because it's boring otherwise, dammit!)
One volume fantasy novels- hoo boy. I'm actually stumped on this one. The only recent self contained story I can think of is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. Clarke's said it's not part of a series (in that the characters won't come back, ever), but she may not have ruled out more stuff in the setting (there's a short story or two out there somewhere, written before the book). His Dark Materials is finished, if several volumes, and Mieville's always self-contained, if with multiple books in the one setting. Pratchett's usually self contained in terms of plot, but that's pushing it.
But hey! At least you weren't conned into reading Wheel of Time!
Yeah, I'm done with Martin until I know the series is done. Same with Jordan. Of course, I did that with a recent Tad Williams' series and the Gunsinger books by Stephen King and I've never gone back.
129: Stuff like Ice and Fire and Wheel of Time isn't so much "series" as serialized 12 000 page novels. But I don't mind that at all as long as it's just engaging fluff, and it always is.
Are Engine Summer and Little, Big too old to be worth pimping? Consider them pimped. OTOH you obviously should stay away from the Aegypt series, though it's pretty clearly going to end with the fourth book unless he discovers some new Zodiacal months. (YMMV.)
I should pick up Little, Big again and give it another shot. I think I never got interested enough in it to pay close enough attention to what was actually happening and how it fit together. I thought the writing was wonderful on an episode by episode basis -- there are bits of it that are still vivid in my mind and I must have read it almost twenty years ago -- but I just didn't follow it closely enough.
Yeah, I'm now on Jackm's one-volume fantasy novel question. Though the DWJ will work for airport reading (take something else, they're very short and probably to be found in the young adult section).
Also, for Becks but not Jackm, late Moominbooks -- Moominland Midwinter, Moominpappa at Sea, the sadly out-of-print Moominvalley in November. The best kids' books, and fun for grownups too. And Jackm might actually take a plunge -- they're same-world rather than serial, limited at seven, and shorter put together than the latest Harry Potter.
I wouldn't recommend these as strongly as the ones above, but if you like film writing, Which Lie Did I Tell? (William Goldman), Holding My Own in No Man's Land (Molly Haskell) and Hello, he Lied (Linda Obst) are both quite fluffy but have there strengths.
Some of the reused-world novels stand up; I've enjoyed about 2/3 of the Prachett novels I've read, which aren't so very many because I find him to be smarter and funnier than, but essentially writing a similar kind of book as, Piers Anthony. The Mieville novels have a good stand-alone quality.
Some of them don't, however: Dune went downhill fast and has sort of become of the can't-leave-a-favorite-world novellist for me. It's like mystery writers who continue to write about their beloved detectives well past the expiration date.
Series, otoh, are almost always teh suxxor. Martin's series is disintegrating formally before our eyes. The little notice in the last published volume--"I split this volume into two because it got so unwieldy. Please buy the other half in two years!"--drove me CRAZY. I knew well enough at 13 that pursuing Robert Jordan any further than volume two was going to drive me crazy, why oh why did I ever pick up Martin?
For really good historical fiction, Patricia Finney is great.
It's classic stuff -- Jewish merchant + English thug/mercenary as unlikely duo -- in Elizabethan London. Lots of intrigue at court, street violence, religious strife, etc. Cracking plots -- she's been described as writing historical 'le Carré' style stuff.
What elevates them above the other historical spy/thriller novels is she plays with more 'literary' stuff in the actual style of writing without losing the tight plotting of 'genre' fiction. One of her novels is narrated by the Virgin Mary looking down from heaven, another is narrated by one of the two personalities of a mad beggar who is apparently peripheral to all the main action, etc.
Sherri Tepper manages consistently to build a world and put a plot into it within a single volume, so I've ended up reading a number of her novels. The only problem is that they're not very good.
The current wave of British SF seems to be good about single-volume world-building, but unfortunately for me, a lot of it is outer-space SF, and I dislike outer-space SF.
Some cyberpunk and steampunk variants tend to be good at the single-volume format, but I'm having a hard time coming up with the names. I bought one a couple of years ago that I quite liked, but I loaned it out immediately, and now it's circling Saturn.
2nd paragraph of 141 is a great recommendation, and I would expand it -- some of the early Moominbooks are excellent too. I particularly can spend a lot of time rereading the second book "Finn Family Moomintroll". But yeah, the last book in the series "Moominvalley in November" is one of my very favorite things. Out of print it may be, but both Becks and Jackmormon have access to the Scandinavia House bookshop on Park Ave. and 38th or so, which has the whole series -- perhaps they get them from England?
(Actually I think my exact words were "it's like if Beckett had written Winnie-the-Pooh." -- so not the exact same comparison but close enough for the blogosphere.)
JM- The last William Gibson was very good (and proves my theory that he's not so much a sci-fi author as just impatient waiting for technology to provide stuff needed for plot points). For some reason, I'm always a little wary of recommending cyberpunk to folks- no one ever has a neutral reaction to them (either they love them, or they hate them and devote their lives to my utter destruction).
Also- The Stars My Destination- old, but awesome.
And I'm having trouble thinking of a fantasy series (not a setting, mind) that hasn't crashed and burned by the end. Man, that's depressing. Not a one, although maybe if you ignore ones that were a finished plot and went back and filled in stuff.
TMK re: Moomin/Godot: A bunch of characters show up at a house, but the family isn't there, so they start bickering about their various conceptions of the Absent Ones. And it was the first one I read so the Godotitude was especially striking.
I don't really mean to take anything away from the early ones (except Exploits) but they're more kid-type stuff, they took some adjustment after November. IIRC Too-Ticky was based on her female life partner so her turn toward more serious stuff may have coincided with coming out.
I have not. The only non-Moomin Jansson book I have read is "The Summer Book", which I liked okay but not well enough to send me out searching for more. What is Sun City about?
I have some disagreements with Pattern Recognition, but I have a nagging feeling that my annoyance with these elements are more personal to me than formal in the book.
What about the Earthsea series? It's expanded out of its original trilogy, but the new volumes are still worth reading.
An old-age home in St. Petersburg, Florida, which must be a very strange-seeming place for a Finn. The inhabitants sit on the front porch and bicker a lot. It's better than The Summer Book.
This talk of Chandler reminds me that Nathanael West might be very fun to read on a plane -- his books repay close attention but are also great as light reading. Miss Lonelyhearts and Day of the Locust but probably the former more.
156: I haven't liked the later Earthsea books as much as the original trilogy, but the original trilogy is very, very good, and not even all that long.
I got two books into Song of Ice and Fire before calling it quits. The shameful part is that it took me nine books of Wheel of Time before realizing that I hated it. So much of serial fantasy drives me crazy: great plot, terrible writing.
Tad Williams does tend to go on, but Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is a great series (even if he did split the conclusion into two ridiculously long books). Tailchaser's Song is an enjoyable standalone fantasy, plus it's about cats!
As JM notes, the Wizard of Earthsea setting holds up.
I thought the Amber books held up all the way through (not counting the post-Zelazny stuff, which I haven't read), although the first 4 or 5 are admittedly better than the remaining few.
Steven Brust's Vlad books have continued to hold, although I'm not a fan of the non-Vlad books set in the same universe.
Hmm- does Watership Down count as fantasy? Been years since I read it. Can't even remember if it was actually good (as opposed to good after memory wears down all the exposed bits of plot). It's even single volume, I think.
The first couple of Redwall books were good, but I read those even longer ago. I remember some terribly silly accents, so maybe not.
Hey I endorse anything at all by Matt Ruff,
Most stuff by Connie Willis, Carol O'Connel, Christopher Moore, Chrisopher Brookmyre, P.G. Wodehouse,
Sarah Caudwell, Dick Francis, Rex Sout and Raymond Chandler (except The Big Sleep).
Maugham and Dunnet are good, but not airplane reading
Enjoyable Trash: Susan Howatch's Church of England stuff--Glamourouse Powers etc, Nelson Demille's Gold Coast, Susan Isaac's Shining Through, and the UK's Robert Goddard and Phil Rickman.
The Hobbit slips in as a reused-world exception. And Farmer Giles of Ham is set in a totally different world and simply rocks. But I've avoided all of the earlier Middle Earth legends. I like my fragmentary allusions to stay fragmentary allusions.
Watership Down is indeed very good. I just finished reading it to PK, and though towards the end I had to skip over some of the long descriptive passages because he was getting bored with them, he really enjoyed it. I'm all about getting him into books Mama can stand to read. Soon, I hope, A Wrinkle in Time....
Yup. That's (or rather, that's the opposite of) what burns me about all those neverending series -- they purport to be unified works, and then the authors never quite bring them to an end, they just trail on forever.
There are those who swear by the four volumes of Book of the New Sun, fewer who swear by the sequel (which I've read) and the seven prequels (which I haven't). So that's hardly a counterexample. I'm conflicted about it, anyway.
Any respect for Lloyd Alexander? I haven't read him since I was in the target audience, but people seem to think that it's fine YA fiction for all seven books. About the only thing I remember about Narnia is objecting vehemently to the ending, so that won't do.
Buckets, and not just for the Prydain books. He's written a lot of excellent children's stuff -- Sally is now working on The Cat Who Wished To Be A Man.
The only YA I ever read, aside from certain stand alone classics like Howard Pyle's Men of Iron, were Henry Gregor Felson's series about car culture: Hot Rod, Street Rod and Crash Club. Does anybody read those anymore? Has anyone here ever heard of them?
YA fantasy series might get some exemption love from me. I remember rereading Lloyd Alexander--and Susan Cooper--in recent years and remarking on how decently plotted they were. Maybe YA series can stay tightly plotted over multiple volumes because they're shorter?
LB, that's exactly it. The Martin series is just a trainwreck example of this. The first novel promised that structural unity could be maintained by following the Stark family's fortunes, but then he's killing them off and becoming infatuated with every single damned secondary character. It's like a f'ing fractal at this point--and I can't look away!
Yeah- Avoid the hell out of any Book of the New Sun beyond the initial stuff. Depending on how well you handle misogyny, maybe avoid it altogether.
A Wrinkle in Time! Absolutely the best bedtime reading. I actually would have gone with that before Watership Down. The Hobbit's a good choice, too (works well aloud, I've always thought), although best to make sure they can handle the sequels on their own before you do that, or else you'll spend more time reading than they will sleeping.
YA fantasy really seems to get through some people's filters. I think there's a lightness that a lot of "adult" fantasy loses. Writing for kids tends to keep the prose under control, too. Less florid descriptions of every damn thing that the characters go near.
A Wrinkle in Time! Absolutely the best bedtime reading. I actually would have gone with that before Watership Down. The Hobbit's a good choice, too
Actually Mr. B. started him with the Hobbit after he sat still through Charlie & the Chocolate Factory and The Tale of Despereaux; then I did Watership Down b/c I could find it, it's small animals, and I figured the El-ahrairah tales would amuse him (they did). I did modify the ending a bit to disguise the fact that Hazel dies, b/c dying animals upset him. But yeah, it's time he read something that has a girl protagonist. My only concern w/ Wrinkle in Time is that it's not especially funny; he really likes comedy in his stories.
Here's a question: good ya fiction for a bright kid who can't yet read for himself, that's funny and/or adventerous, doesn't involve tragic deaths, *and* isn't only about boys? Anyone?
You've heard this before, but Little House on the Prairie. Alternatively, not quite as good but very interesting, All Of A Kind Family. Fictionalized memoirs.
good ya fiction for a bright kid who can't yet read for himself, that's funny and/or adventerous, doesn't involve tragic deaths, *and* isn't only about boys?
Totally, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I mean there's a tragic death but it's not a real death IYKWIM.
Howl's Moving Castle? Maybe a bit too old. You can check it out online. A witch dies (oh go on it's not a spoiler) but that might not be an issue. I wouldn't swear to the gender politics.
Alternatively, not quite as good but very interesting, All Of A Kind Family.
I liked these -- turn of the century(? I haven't read them since I was a kid. Maybe later, but pre-WWII I'm pretty sure) NY Jewish family of five girls (which is why the All-of-a-Kind). I don't remember them all that clearly, but liked them.
195 -- I don't think I liked Wrinkle in Time but that may just be because it was promoted so aggressively by my mom -- I don't have much memory of the book itself.
196:
That's right, WWI era. Just like Little House, they experience historical events and processes: immigration, the pre-WWI Coney Island scene, assimilation, the Infuenza epidemic.
Ha. My mother read through all of the LoTR with us when we were kids. I was the youngest (maybe about three during the first read-through), and she figured I wasn't listening until I ran out of the room in terror during, I think, Moria.
good ya fiction for a bright kid who can't yet read for himself, that's funny and/or adventerous, doesn't involve tragic deaths, *and* isn't only about boys?
PK's too young for this but for YA fiction with female protagonists what about Athur Ransome's Swollows and Amazons series. My memories of it are indistinct, but I remember enjoying it.
Also, again for an older age, The Collected Stories of Richard Kennedy has a number of stories that are wonderful for children and adults.
That said, some good suggestions in here. I'll have to try the Little House books on him--I imagine that with his interest in how things get done, he'd be kind of into it. Are they okay re. the Indians, or am I going to have to censor?
They're honest about the fear the Indians inspire, particularly in Ma, who is terrified and has to try to hide it. Prairie has the most Indians, the Osage, and they come off very well. There is no violence. The whole tribe processes by the cabin at the end, (and the Ingalls have to leave the territory, because they've been squating and it belongs to the Osage) and Laura's description of meeting the eyes of the children is very good.
PK's too young for this but for YA fiction with female protagonists what about Athur Ransome's Swollows and Amazons series. My memories of it are indistinct, but I remember enjoying it.
Excellent kids learning to sail stories. (There's a great bit where the mother sends a telegram to the father about whether the kids should be allowed to sail on their own. The return telegram is "If not duffers, won't drown. Better drowned than duffers.")
Good re. Little House. The idea that people feared one another is just fine with me--blah blah teaching moment, blah blah history, blah blah racism. I can do that.
Yeah, on the Little House books, I'd say you won't need to censor, but you will need to explain. There's a child's eye view of terrifying, I think bad-smelling, dark-skinned Indians that I wouldn't want to let past uncommented on, but that discussed in terms of: this is how settlers felt about Indians and feared them, shouldn't be particularly harmful.
What about the Just So Stories and The Jungle Books? And Puck of Pook's Hill? There is literally one word that needs to be censored in the JSS -- a gratuitous use of the 'n' word in an otherwise unobjectionable story. I think the Jungle Books are pretty much okay without that.
i'm sorry i don't have time to read the entire thread, to check if this was already said, but a long time back the modesto kid asked if calvino wrote any other memoir-y or journalistic stuff besides under the jaguar sun...
and he did: Hermit in Paris, which actually has a lot more of his reports sent back to the einaudi offices about new york than it does descriptions of his life in paris, but it's fun...
211 - Below the Root and the rest of its trilogy was kind of weird because of the author's obsession with contraception/family planning. Slightly out of place for a children's book.
However, Below the Root the video game on the Commodore-64? BEST VIDEO GAME EVER!
195 - Nope. Hated it. Especially the follow-on books. (I kept reading out of some misguided sense that I had to discover why everyone else liked them.)
Little House should be okay. The Indians are feared by Ma, but it turns out that they aren't actually doing anything harmful, just different, and they smell because they're wearing skunk skins. And that's only in the Little House on the Prairie book. Little House in the Big Woods has a very touching scene about the father returning home from hunting empty handed, because the only deer he saw was a doe with a baby deer.
Wind in the Willows? Talking foppish English animals? The Once and Future King maybe. At least just the first part where Wart learns from Merlyn, maybe not so much with the incest.
Still thinking about books that my parents read to me; I remember enjoying both the mrs. pepperpot stories and the Italo Calvino collection of italian folktales I remember enjoying both.
Mistress Masham's Repose, also by TH White, is good -- a little girl finds a community of Lilliputians a hundred or so years after Gulliver brought them back to England.
I started out trying to explain, but as the series progressed I gained more and more respect for the narrative and desisted. My kids wouldn't stand for it and I was an impediment anyway to the voice of the author.
The Hero and the Sword is pretty good--awesome fight sequences between a feisty female heroine and a giant evil dragon--but the Blue Sword has a narrative structure too similar to a romance novel for me to recommend it without some reserve. Sure, after the heroine is kidnapped by the [Sheik], she becomes a warrior and fights mighty battle before marrying the [Sheik], but still...
The Wind in the Willows was one of my favorite books as a child but it does have some sad sections (the chapter with the sea mouse and either the preceding of following chapter are both quite sad).
I tried to wade through the comments to see if I was repeating or suggesting something that had already been shot down but I really enjoy Tom Wolfe's books, I read I Am Charlotte Simmons last year and it was extremely good, maybe too long for a plane ride though. As far as humorous non-fiction, Bill Bryson books get me rolling around laughing. He and I are alumni of the same high school (albeit he graduated close to 30 years before I did).
Rats rats rats! LB, I had just typed in a long comment about Just-So Stories, had just finished entering a couple of paragraphs, when Firefox crashed on me before I could press The Button. The gist of it was: Just-So Stories is a fabulous book and good for reading to young children; but it needs to be approached with a judicious and sometimes censorious mind because it is chock-full of nasty imperial detritus, toxic gender-relations and racism are the meat of several stories, even the good ones.
Rats rats rats! LB, TMK had typed in a short comment reprising the general content of a longer comment he had lost which concerned Kipling's Just-So Stories, but his tendency to proofread what he writes was inefficacious in this instance. The basic point is: the second-to-last comma in the comment he posted should be a semicolon.
I know how you feel about it, Cala, and won't ever correct your punctuation or grammar (again). But if you think I'm going to stop in general—I, of all people!—well, your thought is INCORRECT.
I would take issue with oh-so-clever comment #230. To my ear, the comma sounds pretty good. Could be a semi-colon; but the sentence would read different. Would not as good.
In the annals of BALB, 230 was a high point. But I'm actually interested in TMK's comment -- while my childhood affection for the Just So Stories may be leading me astray, I really didn't think they were particularly objectionable.
TMK-- What strikes you as so bad about them (defining bad as 'worse than Disney'?), beyond the one occasion of unpleasant language I noted? I suppose a lot of the stories are guilty of, I don't know how to put it, cheap exoticism, referencing Australian or Indonesian or whatever myth without really respecting or engaging it, but offenses on that level are all over children's literature and don't strike me as all that significant.
My heart weeps with pity for your future students, b-wo. For I felt that I was an evil TA, but you will wield power far greater than that which I can bear.
Death to the semicolon! Freedom!!! (I had a friend of a friend whose Lenten resolution was to give up the semicolon.)
234 makes me think I dated Standpipe in college. Weird.
He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called-nay we call ourselves and write our name-Crusoe; and so my companions always called me.
237/239 -- Orientalism (as far as I understand the term; Said is outside my reading experience) sums up pretty well my problem with the Just-So Stories. Or half of the problem; the other half is sexism. Take the story "How the Leopard Got His Spots" -- I believe this is the story you were objecting to in 210, right? Because the Ethiopian is referred to as a nigger near the end of the story? That is easy enough to edit out certainly, though it helps if you know it is coming and are not taken by surprise; but the whole premise of the story -- that animals and people were fair at first, and the Ethiopian changed his skin to camouflage himself on the hunt, just rubs me the wrong way. And the last paragraph needs editing too.
How about "The Cat That Walked By Himself"? The whole explicit point of this story is the wild, untamed Man being tricked by the wily Female into adopting the ways of civilization, and incidentally asserting his lordship over nature. A great story but it bears some thinking about.
And the two stories about the origin of writing, "How the First Letter was Written" and "How the Alphabet was Made" are, I think, trash. And if memory serves, quite sexist.
Don't get me wrong, it is a great, flawed book; I think it is Kipling's finest work. What is your favorite story? Mine (and Sylvia's) is "The Elephant's Child", also I like "How the Rhinoceros got his Skin" (which has racism problems), "How the Camel got his Hump", "The Crab that Played with the Sea", and "The Beginning of Armadillos" a lot.
Er, um, the version of "How the Leopard got his Spots" I linked to above had the "nigger" edit already made. Here is the original if you want it. I was dazzled by the pretty wildlife photos.
Either of the Jasper Fforde series? (Starting with either The Eyre Affair or The Big Over Easy.) In mysteries (the epitome of plane reading, to me), maybe Laurie R King, Minette Walters, Val McDermid, Carol O'Connell? (For the first and last, begin at the beginnings of the series (LRK has two) -- they're more series-based than some other mystery writers.) Or Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, for nonfiction.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:13 PM
Arturo Perez-Reverte, esp. The Club Dumas. (Stay far away from the one where the Pope checks his email, or whatever it was.)
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:19 PM
Thomas Perry, especially the early stuff is fun - try Island or Metzger's Dog. Slightly less absurd than Hiassen, but funny, well done thrillers. The later stuff is more serious, but also is a good take on the thrillers, usually with a decent twist.
On the less funny, I'm partial to Lee Child for mystery/thrillers involving a ex-military cop, but I'm not sure if its much of a step up from the Da Vinci Code. Again, earlier stuff is best. Also see Michael Connelly.
My reading tastes run heavily to mysteries and thrillers, along with a steady diet of science fiction. Doesn't sound like quite your thing from your post.
Posted by Brennan Griffin | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:23 PM
For some reason, I seem to enjoy popular history/policy books on airplanes. Recent airport purchases in that vein: Steve Coll's Ghost Wars, George Packer's Assassins' Gate, Kenneth Pollack's Persian Puzzle.
In the mystery-thriller category, Lee Child has created an interesting fantasy in the lone-man figure of Jack Reacher (former MP, now homeless man/detective/badass).
In the historical-mystery category, Barbara Hambly's series with Benjamin January, a free black doctor in 1840s (?) Lousiana is fun and decently researched.
In the Serious Fiction But Not Annoyingly So category, I really enjoyed Rick Moody's recent novel, The Diviners, which follows the inner dramas of a number of variously self-absorbed TV-type people in NYC during the 2000 elections--which of course they barely register. The ending was a little lame, though.
You might get even more ideas from this blog by a very smart lit professor who loves her some trashy novels.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:24 PM
The books I listed in the post were just the first ones that popped in my mind. I don't usually gravitate towards sci fi (but will make an exception if well done) but I do like mysteries and thrillers.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:26 PM
Christopher Moore, eapecially Lamb.
Harry Crews.
And pretty much everything by Carl Hiassen is entertaining. Also, if you can find a copy of Cry Me a River by TR Pearson, that's excellent airplane reading.
My third-grade son just read Holes for school.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:28 PM
Also, anyone read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro? That's the last book I bought and haven't started. The plot sounds good but it might be too deep for airplane reading.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:28 PM
Nononono, no Perez-Reverte! I used to like his stuff, but then the scales fell.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:29 PM
Christopher Moore is good airplane reading. I read his The Stupidest Angel over the course of a couple of trips to DC.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:30 PM
I highly recommend Life of Pi--it's great fun (and quite good, actually). Atonement is awesome, but you'll cry at the end, which you might not want to do on a plane. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (or is it the other way around?) is a great read and really long, if you have a long flight...
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:34 PM
4: That novelist is a college classmate of mine.
7: Definitely stay away -- if you like it at all, it's way too sad for airplane reading.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:34 PM
I also recently enjoyed a wierd little black comedy about expat culture in Tuscany, James Hamilton-Paterson's Cooking With Fernet Branca.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:34 PM
It's been a while since I read The Club Dumas and The Flanders Panel, so I'd definitely read JM's post to get a more recent, thoughtful view.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:38 PM
Wicked and Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire.
It's Oz! How can you not like Oz!?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:39 PM
Oh, and Close Range, the book of short stories by Annie Proulx which includes "Brokeback Mountain" (which is, sadly, the weakest short story in the set. And not a Western.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:40 PM
"More" applies to "thoughtful", too. I didn't have my brain turned on all the way when I was reading those.
Now, on the other hand, have I told you that I couldn't finish the fourth Harry Potter book, on account of my accumulated distaste for the way Rowling's magical characters treat the muggles?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:45 PM
Wodehouse?
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:46 PM
15: Never claimed the *story* was a western. Can't, as I haven't read it yet. So, nyah.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:50 PM
Which novelist, Weiner?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:51 PM
19: I'm guessing that Weiner discounted the genre writers.
Thanks for the kind words, Standpipe. That post was used by Teresa Nielsen Hayden to make a larger point about sudden losses in narrative suspension---and, damn her eyes, the subsequent conversation was much broader and intelligent than anything I'd been thinking about when I wrote the review.
(We all brag of our connections, I guess.)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:57 PM
Sorry, the lit professor/blogger in 4 (who is also a novelist).
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 8:57 PM
Light, non-challenging reading for me is technical non-fiction. Sort of a grown-up version of books about airplanes, ships and cars. Vroom!
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:04 PM
Atonement is awesome, but you'll cry at the end
Atonement is awesome, but you'll fling it across the room when it [does thing that irritates me]. But then you'll pick it back up and cry at the end.
You may want to consider Amsterdam, which is also awesome, more fling-resistant, and you won't cry at the end.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:06 PM
Helter Skelter is a real page-turner, if you haven't already read it.
For something more fun, I recommend Susan Bordo's The Male Body. It's a collection of culture-crit essays, and is pretty interesting. Some of the issues she takes on echo some of the discussions I've seen on this blog lately.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:08 PM
SB, how's "Enduring Love"? Any novel in which the female protagonist is named "Clarissa" is one I want to read, and yet such high standards to live up to. The only McEwan I've ever read is Atonement, btw. Which I did love, and Ikwym about flinging it, but that kind of thing doesn't make me want to fling.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:20 PM
but that kind of thing doesn't make me want to fling
Doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah.
I can't tell you about Enduring Love—I've only read Amsterdam and Atonement, wouldn't you know.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:29 PM
Close Range is teh awesome but doesn't seem like airplane reading to me. Too heavy. If I were recommending a book of stories for an airplane it'd be Alice Munro, probably Friend of My Youth or Open Secrets.
Wodehouse, yes. And Sarah Caufield has very funny English murder mysteries; Thus Was Adonis Murdered is the first and maybe funniest. These are foo-foo puzzle-type mysteries as opposed to Hiaasen thriller-type mysteries; if you want something like that, Elmore Leonard is really good. Or Ruth Rendell's mysteries, which are sometimes puzzly but also psychologically well-observed and frequently very chilling; if you like I can name some favorites.
I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon on a couple of plane rides and it was very well suited for it, but it's probably too long for your trip. (One of the trips was a three-putt which was probably longer than your cross-country trip.)
And maybe Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog? A time-travel romantic comedy, the plot's a little convoluted but it gets explained. And it's very charming. You could read it with Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, which inspired it and is a very funny English 19th-century episodic rumination (it originated "I love work. I can watch it for hours," but Jerome's development is much better than the poster version). And Peter Lovesey's Swing Swing Together which is what got me interested in Three Men in A Boat, another funny English puzzle mystery.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:33 PM
That post was used by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Envy! I bet you didn't wash that post for like, a month.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:36 PM
And chick lit can be v. good, IMO.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:37 PM
I think I may be the only person who found To Say Nothing of the Dog too precious by half. But fwiw, I did.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:38 PM
29 - There are rare good chick lit books (Shopgirl comes to mind) but most of it seems to be let's-see-if-I-can-crank-out-a-book-a-month formula crap. And most of it's too girly-girl and I want to smack the protagonists upside the head. It's the same reason I can't sit through your average Inoffensive Romantic Comedy Date Movie.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:46 PM
Sarah Caufield
No no, she wrote Thus Was A Nudist Martyred. You're thinking of Sarah Caudwell.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:47 PM
Hmmm, is Three men in a boat not as well known as I thought it was? Everyone should read it. And Wodehouse.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:50 PM
Or Emma Caulfield.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:52 PM
Maybe you don't want Sarah Caudwossname, then, since her heroine is adorably kooky. 32 and 33 both get it exactly right.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 9:58 PM
My problem is that I've already read almost all of the great, easily found Wodehouse novels about seventy times.
True, my grandad managed to spend his last decade or so reading nothing but Wodehouse (and Rex Stout, weirdly), but I'm not up for a constant diet just yet.
Two challenges for the fellow Drones members here:
1) What two Wodehouse novels would you recommend for the uninitiated?
2) What writer would you consider to be Plum's true heir or heiress?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:08 PM
My dad is a great fan of Three Men in a Boat.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:13 PM
I'm liking Something Fresh, the first Blandings novel, and, to pick a fight, Psmith, Journalist in the first category.
The obvious candidates for question 2 are Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis, but they're both fundamentally too cranky; their farces are supposed to mean something important and to intervene and shit.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:15 PM
And, I think, Three Men in a Bummel.
I think Pogo collections make for good plane reading.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:15 PM
Jokes like the one Porky Pine tells in some Pogo strip or other ("this is where the joke would be if I could remember it") greatly influenced my sense of humor.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:17 PM
Ah! "A man asks his editor, are comic-strip writers newspapermen? His boss says, Barnacles! Uhhh, barnacles! Barnacles to you, Jack, Barnacles!"
He's misremembering a different joke, of course.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:20 PM
1) What two Wodehouse novels would you recommend for the uninitiated?
Yes, recommendations please. I've been wondering how to go about decoding this thread for almost a year now.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:27 PM
I'd pick Joy in the Morning and Leave it to Psmith, though Something Fresh/New would be a close second to LitPsm.
their farces are supposed to mean something important
That's really the hangup; what we want is something that's about nothing. (You think you're picking a fight.)
Eric Kraft is not a good heir to P.G. Wodehouse, for many reasons, but Little Follies would be a good book for Becks to read on the plane. Twisted faux-idyllic memories of childhood, edited retrospectively to make them better, very funny and smutty and geeky.
Actually the best heir-to-Plum book I can think of might be David Lodge's Small World, but most of his other work doesn't qualify.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:32 PM
get the omnibus Life with Jeeves.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:33 PM
You've got my recommendations, but then, I seem to prefer for an initial introduction novels that might create a desire to read the others rather than try to find a few that encapsulate the best-loved aspects and characters.
For canonical Wooster n' Jeeves, two titles might be "Joy in the Morning" and "Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves."
I say "might be" because Wodehouse often published the same novel under different titles in the US and the UK, resulting in bibliographic chaos. One reason for it is Wodehouse's canny marketing sense; another might be his horror of the income tax levels then practiced...
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:39 PM
Mysteries: Ian Rankin. Capers: Donald Westlake. I'm assuming you've read the first couple of Hornby books; otherwise, those.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:42 PM
Wodehouse has no heir. There is none like him, none.
But Muriel Spark is good. Try The Bachelors.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:42 PM
I dearly, dearly love Live it to Psmith; it's probably one of my favorites. I'm not entirely sure how instantly accessible it is to the neophyte, but I'd imagine rather.
Psmith, Journalist has the benefit of encapsulating Wodehouse's entire cross-continental marketing scheme--and it's also has some of the descriptions of deadening piecework writing that make Something Fresh so good. And then it also has cat-loving mobsters.
It's stand-alone fun; you don't need any of the Wodehouse universe to enjoy it.
However, you're all right that one of the two recommended books should introduce a neophyte into the most famous arena, Wooster and Jeeves. The novellas in the Omnibus are a good place to start, actually. (I haven't been able to lay hands on a copy of Joy in the Morning for years, which has started to make me every so slightly fixated on that novel.)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:49 PM
Mysteries are good for casual reading. Easily one of the best is Dick Francis. Any of his are great, he's written 35 or so.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:54 PM
I read Leave it to Psmith as a near-neophyte -- I definitely hadn't encountered any of its characters before -- and loved it instantly.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 11:03 PM
oh, how about Calvino? Anything, but The Viscount in the Trees is great, and short.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 11:15 PM
And Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn. I'm starting to feel sad that I've already read all these. I think I'll go over to Amazon and put everything in print by Calvino on my wishlist, and read it again. Oh, and Roberto Calasso, my book-crush.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 11:20 PM
I read a lot of Austin's Philosophical Papers on a plane trip once. It worked out pretty well.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 11:22 PM
I think it's similar to the recommended and then anti-recommended Perez-Reverte books, though I haven't read those so I can't be sure, but I quite liked The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. And though I quite liked it, I know a number of people who liked it more than that.
I know Raymond Chandler has a fanbase on thise site, and while no one else has recommened him, I will. Any of his books will do.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 11:40 PM
Maugham is teh awesome.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 11:55 PM
My favorite Chandler is probably Farewell, My Lovely but I second w/d's recommendation of all of them. (Except the one or two I haven't read.)
I think Hammett has a couple of mysteries with Bay Area settings. Maybe The Dain Curse? I'm not a fan of The Maltese Falcon, book or movie, though. Some crazy stuff happens in Red Harvest but I don't remember where that was supposedly set (robably my favorite Hammett, but very very bloody, and possibly not too light for that reason).
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 12:17 AM
I liked the Maltese Falcon book.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 12:41 AM
I highly recommend Christopher Brookmyre -- he's a scottish writer of blackly-comic thrillers. A bit like Hiassen only, in many ways, better.
His most recent, It's All Fun and Games until Someone Loses An Eye is one of his best. Guardian review here. Quote (from review):
Any of his earlier novels are also excellent. The Sacred Art of Stealing -- about Dadaist bank robbers, or A Big Boy Did it And Ran Away -- mild-mannered school teacher finds himself re-enacting the plot of Die Hard -- are pretty good stand-alone novels.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 12:50 AM
Barbara Gowdy's short story collection, We So Seldom Look on Love is fantastic. Really bizarre, but funny, sad and sexy. (And she's from Canadia! Yay!)
Also: I will always, always recommend Steve Martin's novellas, Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company. It's part of my role as his future mistress.
Posted by girl27 | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:37 AM
benjamin kunkel's first novel Indecision is good.
also muriel spark died last week and i'm engaged in getting started in some of her novels...supposed to be dark, uncanny, and very funny.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 4:52 AM
but The Viscount in the Trees is great, and short.
That was Italo Caufield. You're thinking of The Baron in the Trees, which is indeed great. A beautiful story, one of my favorites.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 5:03 AM
Reading the post again, though, it's probably not to spec.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 5:28 AM
18: Nyah!
27: But, but... I just read Close Range on a train! Therefore it is airplane reading!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 5:47 AM
a step up from trash. Or even trash, if it's decently done.
Have you read Foucault's Pendulum? Because it is (to me) surprisingly trashy, and an excellent read. Sort of like I envision the Da Vinci thingy being, which I have not read.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 5:50 AM
15 -- Did you read Bad Dirt (Proulx' first book of Wyoming stories)? Cause I liked it way better than Close Range -- which was quite good, yes, I just didn't think it was in the same league.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 5:55 AM
61: I think the Italian is Il Visconte in Arbore. So. But also I was confusing it with The Nonexistent Knight & the Cloven Viscount. Also v.v.g. Calvino gives his petty aristos a hard time.
Red Harvest is set in Personville, aka Poisonville, a mythical Colorado (or possibly Montana?) mining town.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 6:00 AM
or maybe Arbori, I dunno.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 6:02 AM
No, I dreamed that. It's Il Barone Rampante. I should have known better.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 6:06 AM
Two other things come suddenly to mind: The Evolution Man, or What We Did With Father, by Roy Lewis, while it might require some tracking down, is teh awesome light read; and, I've always found James Thurber makes excellent not-paying-a-whole-lot-of-attention reading -- if you are not familiar with him you might like to look at The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze, My World -- and Welcome to it, and Thurber Country. Comic essays and short stories from the New Yorker of old.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 6:06 AM
I didn't really enjoy The Evolution Man as much as I was supposed to, but that's me.
Matt Ruff, Sewer, Gas, & Electric was a good plane read many years ago.
I loved Kavalier and Clay but it doesn't sound like it fits the "read in an airport" criteria. Second the nomination for Jasper Fforde.
What about Neal Stephenson?
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 6:52 AM
70:
Neal Stephenson's early stuff is a hoot, but the later stuff got a little too long, and sometimes too techy to be easy plane reading.
But Diamond Age or Snow Crash by Stephenson are very entertaining, well written, pretty quick reads.
Posted by Brennan Griffin | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:08 AM
65: First s/b second. And, I dunno, the story I've read from it, "Man Crawling Out of Trees," was singled out as the best of the collection in one review I read; and I thought it was definitely not in the league of Close Range, which contains some of the best stories I've read recently. So YMMV.
60: Spark has a lot of novels, some of which can be kind of samey (are not Loitering with Intent and A Far Cry from Kensington the exact same book, except Kensington is significantly better?) Anyways, I'd start with Memento Mori and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. And the stories. Aiding and Abetting seemed kind of mailed-in.
For Thurber you might also try My Life and Hard Times.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:10 AM
Il barone rampante,
Il cavaliere inesistente,
Il castello dei destini incrociati,
Il visconte dimezzato.
Palomar is also really good.
But if you really want airplane-reading: Cosmicomics and T con zero. short stories.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:13 AM
72: I liked "Man Crawling Out of Trees" okay, but what really blew me away was "The Wamsutter Wolf", which I think of as the central story in that collection though it is near the end. Also "The Indian Wars Refought" is very, very good. And Bad Dirt had a thread of connection running through it, where most of the stories shared settings and some shared characters, which was not really thet case as much in Close Range. A-and, it seems to me like more care was given to the ordering of the stories in Bad Dirt -- so that t.g. the emotionally devastating "Wamsutter Wolf" is followed by tho comic "Summer of the Hot Tubs" -- a similar pacing is going on throughout the collection.
73: Yeah, Cosmicomics would be fantastic for airplane reading, and also just up Wolfson's alley. Another Calvino book that makes good reading without a lot of effort is Under the Jaguar Sun, travel writings from a stay in Mexico.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:29 AM
(It seems kind of weird to pick "Man Crawling Out of Trees" as the best story in the collection -- I think it might be the least distinctively Proulx-y of the stories in Bad Dirt.)
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:31 AM
I'd like to give Wicked negative recommendation points.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:37 AM
I haven't read Bad Dirt. I'll agree, though, that Close Range didn't have any connecting threads or characters, unless you count Ranching sucks as a theme.
I've been trying to read more fiction or generally, just non-academic things lately. Because
1) academic writing sucks;
2) sucky writing is contagious; and,
3) it's more fun than reading philosophy.
The credit card bill suggests I should check said fiction out of the library rather than purchasing it. Why the hell are books so expensive?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:39 AM
I've been meaning to do a post about this book for ages, but while it's dark, and so might not be what you're looking for, it's short and a brisk read: As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As a Girl, by John Colapinto. It's sorta the nonfiction version of Middlesex. It will also make you cry, though.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:43 AM
Oh, come on. It was entertaining! The Wizard is evil and the Witch fights for Animal rights!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:45 AM
Calvino is all very meta. Cosmicomics is very easy-reading meta, but it still might be too meta for the stated purposes. Our hero, Qwfwq, is around at the beginning of the universe when there's nothing but hydrogen atoms (and another kid) so they play marbles with them -- that sort of thing. I don't recommend the Castle of Crossed Destinies until you've read some other Calvino; If on a Winter's Night a Traveler was what I would have recommeded but, click the link; so maybe if you want Calvino you could go for the chivalry parodies mmf! mentioned (Nonexistent Knight/Cloven Viscount and Baron in the Trees). My favorite is Invisible Cities but I don't think you're looking for a plotless series of meditations.
In re Foucault's Pendulum, the other day one of my friends said the Da Vinci Code was just a knockoff of it, so if you want DaVC but better that might be it.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:46 AM
I just read Indecision, and really enjoyed it. It's surprisingly fun to read, for an angsty first novel.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:47 AM
Dude, if I'm going to read a book that long, especially one that's trying to be literary, I want it to be coherent and I want to get something out of it. I don't just want to be diverted. But that's me. However, I will fight for my little piece of influence over Becks' reading material with my ounce of strength.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:50 AM
I loved Foucault's Pendulum -- however, it's not necessarily an easy read.
It's a cracking conspiracy thriller that's also involved with making all kinds of 'meta'-comments about conspiracies and conspiracy thrillers. Eco seemed to decide to open with the most irritatingly wordy and gratingly pretentious chapter ever though. However, once into the meat of the novel it's really exciting and wears its erudition very lightly.
Dan Brown's stuff, by comparison, is like some n-th rate imitation written by someone with a severe learning disability who's only ever had the concept of a novel described to them and never actually read one.
'The Name of the Rose' is, imho, a better airplane read. It's more concise and less discursive than Foucault's Pendulum. I probably enjoyed the latter more, though.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:53 AM
I could take you. *flexes*
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:54 AM
On the less funny, I'm partial to Lee Child for mystery/thrillers involving a ex-military cop, but I'm not sure if its much of a step up from the Da Vinci Code.
Jackm recommended these as well, and Dr. Oops likes them. They're not terrible -- I'd certainly buy one to get me through a plane ride, but they are silly -- the hero is superhuman to the point of comedy. (I'm thinking of a point where he gets shot in the chest and a doctor tells him that the bullet was deflected by his massive pectoral muscles.)
30: I'm with you on Connie Willis. If you wanted to design someone whose books I'd like, Willis's resume fits perfectly. And yet I don't enjoy reading her that much. The Domesday Book, for example? The plot just made no sense at all. and TSNOTD kind of bored me. But Three Men In a Boat is great.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:54 AM
This a little heavy for airplane reading, but anything by AS Byatt, or, at a slightly lighter level, by her sister, Margaret Drabble. (I find the relationship there fascinating -- you can really get a sense of them as part of the same family.)
Or what about all those historical novels by Dorothy Dunnett? Either the Niccolo Rising series or the Lymond Chronicles. Not so much great literature, but an awful lot of fun.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:58 AM
Cala, it's already been established on the subject of the hypothetical (or maybe imminent) Tia-Jackmormon match up that while JM *could* beat me up; I actually *would* beat her up. Consider that perhaps the same dynamic is asserting itself here.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:04 AM
80 -- But "if on a winter's night" is not at all light reading which our host has requested. Right? Or are you suggesting it is light?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:11 AM
And re "Calvino is all very meta", I haven't read all of his work; but Under the Jaguar Sun is quite down-to-earth, really. Was Calvino a journalist? Because I'm interested if there are any more similar travel writings and essays.
Another book that springs to mind as something Wolfson might enjoy reading on the plane, is "Like Water For Chocolate". Don't be put off by the wretched movie! It's a really fun book.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:14 AM
The credit card bill suggests I should check said fiction out of the library rather than purchasing it. Why the hell are books so expensive?
Half.com. I'm constantly surpised how cheap I can find stuff on there.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:16 AM
88: I was suggesting that Calvino is in general too meta for these purposes. But I haven't read Under the Jaguar Sun.
Libraries good! And then when you've read the book you return it to the library, and you don't have to pack it next time you move.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:20 AM
74, 89, TMK generally: This is a thread to recommend books to Becks. Lord only knows what we'd recommend for B-wo to read.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:22 AM
Ooh, Dorothy Dunnett. I really liked the first book in the Lymond Chronicles, but I had trouble getting into the second one, and I wouldn't recommend them for a plane. I did a lot of "Wait, who?" turning back to remind myself what was going on.
Also, nothing's more annoying than someone defending one of their favorite books by just saying,"Hey! I liked that book, what's wrong with you?" but:
Hey, I liked Domesday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog! I actually thought Domesday was much easier to follow, plot-wise, than TSNOTD.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:23 AM
92: Ack, oh no, sorry! I have evidently been laboring under a misapprehension. [Looking back at the recommendations]: I think Bad Dirt and Under the Jaguar Sun and Like Water for Chocolate stand up as recommendations I would make to Becks. Thurber and Foucault's Pendulum and Roy Lewis, more specifically Wolfson-recommendations. Cosmicomics, could go either way.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:31 AM
I actually thought Domesday was much easier to follow, plot-wise, than TSNOTD.
Easy to follow, sure, but it makes no sense. What's the explanation for the modern-day epidemic? They're going to send an undergrad back to the Middle Ages as one of the first uses of a new time machine? And how out of reach could her adviser possibly be -- no one has a cell phone?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:33 AM
Dude, you can get used books for like a buck at Amazon if you don't mind some marking up. Even if you do mind marking up, you can usually get a clean copy for no more than ten bucks, often much less.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:35 AM
Tia, consider that the Tia-Jackmormon match-up, in our narrative arc, may be but a prelude to the ultimate Calasmackdown of Tia.
Plus, I have a copy of Wicked. It's a pretty heavy book, and I could use that to my advantage.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:40 AM
95: Now the spoiler barrier has been breached a bit, but this is going to get a lot more so, so:
SEVERE SPOILERS for The Domesday Book
The modern-day epidemic came because the squire way back when died from influenza, before the Plague struck. When the archaeologists opened up his tomb the virus reactivated. The Indian time machine tech was working at the dig that day, that's how he got to be Patient Zero.
No one has a cell phone: Crappy forecasting by Willis here; there are no cell phones in the future but there are videophones (IIRC). In 1992 I think cell phones existed but were very rare but still, she probably should've figured that out. OTOH, hindsight is 20/20. (Call waiting seems to suck, though, IIRC.)
Is the time machine new? I don't remember that. I thought that this was just the first crack Medieval were getting at it.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:42 AM
92 - And, anyway, Ben spends his flights reading SkyMall.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:43 AM
Kobe!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:45 AM
I was reminded at my staff appreciation breakfast of the existence of The Lovely Bones. Okay, awfully sad for airplane reading, again cry-inducing, but also compelling and fast paced enough that you won't pay attention to your flight.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:46 AM
I read another time-machine archeological thriller. Was it Crichton? I remember thinking that it wasn't as stupid as I'd expected it to be.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:47 AM
Hey, Like Water for Chocolate was the first grownup book I ever read in a language other than English. Actually, in that vein, sorta The House of the Spirits is some fast-paced fiction.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:48 AM
98: Well , yeah, but why is there the social apparatus for massively reacting to a new case of severe flu? If that happened in Oxford today, nothing like that quarantine would get snapped down. TDB is set in a world where severe epidemics are expected and feared on a very concrete level -- that is not this world, but she doesn't explain how things changed to get there.
On the cell phone thing --I'll give her that cell phones were uncommon when she wrote it, but the guy really was unrealistically out of touch, regardless of technology.
And while you're right about the time machine, the point stands -- the first person sent back to the Middle Ages is going to be an unaccompanied undergrad? I don't think so.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:52 AM
Yeah- Timeline, I think. And it was terrible, at least as sci-fi (Crichton wants so bad to have a halfway plausible time-travel plot device that good chunks of the plot turn devastatingly stupid as a result).
For light, nerdy reading, lesse- in the vein of Stephenson, Richard K. Morgan's okay- Altered Carbon was pretty good, and I've heard good things about Market Forces. Also, Ken Macleod does a real good "Communists in SPACE!" (Pick any book! They've all got 'em). China Mieville for roughly the same in a steampunk fantasy setting.
Posted by Moleman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:59 AM
I didn't remember that Kivrin was the first person sent back to the Middle Ages; I thought I remembered that she was just the first student sent back. Somehow I had the impression that the historians had been using the net long enough to, at least, give each time period its rating.
The "out-of-touch" advisor is kind of a running gag -- most of the plot of TSNOTD is driven by the right people not communicating. It's farce, no doubt about it; all of her time travel stories (have you read Fire Watch?) have the same atmosphere of exhausted confusion.
Re 105: China Mieville is great... but not light.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:01 AM
why is there the social apparatus for massively reacting to a new case of severe flu
She talks about a past pandemic -- there's that bit where the American bell-ringers say "In America our freedom of movement wouldn't be restricted like this" and someone thinks "And in America lots and lots and lots of people died in the pandemic."
I'll give you the unrealistically out-of-touch thing, although maybe he's a 21st-century Professor Welch? There's a lot about the departmental politics about sending this girl back; I might be willing to claim that you're overestimating the rationality of academia there. (In Barbara Pym's Less than Angels, which would be a great airplane read if you like that sort of thing which you should but it might be a bit light on plot, there's a lot about undergrads trying to get funding for fieldwork in remotish parts of Africa; I think Oxford may be/have been different from American universities in this way.)
Not that I really want to go to bat for TDB in this way, I can understand thinking that these are big problems in the plot and TSNoTD was more enjoyable -- the plot of TDB seems too easy to summarize with CAPS LOCK, as I did in e-mail.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:05 AM
101 - Yeah, Lovely Bones was one of those rare books that you see everybody on the subway reading that didn't suck.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:06 AM
106- Really? Book length, sure, but there's nothing particularly tough in terms of structure or style. (Worldbuilding, maybe? For someone who doesn't read a lot of sf, it'd be tough- he just kinda tosses you in there, with all sorts of enticing tidbits that just suggest a deeper world, but never come up again)
Posted by Moleman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:07 AM
Maybe that's what I mean... there's so much world-building teasing going on that I find it more enjoyable to do a lot of reflecting while reading his stuff -- you don't want to just tear through Perdido Street Station. (Or at least, I didn't.)
She talks about a past pandemic -- there's that bit where the American bell-ringers say "In America our freedom of movement wouldn't be restricted like this" and someone thinks "And in America lots and lots and lots of people died in the pandemic."
Right, this is coming back to me now... aren't all the cats extinct, for one thing?
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:13 AM
110 -- egads! But that would mean no more Friday cat-blogging!
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:15 AM
aren't all the cats extinct, for one thing?
I don't know if that's explicit in The Domesday Book but it is in To Say Nothing of the Dog. Which it is why that is A Dystopian Vision of A Terrible Future. And IIRC the cats are all supposed to die about now which is too awful to contemplate. Hodge shan't be shot!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:17 AM
Save The Kittens!
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:18 AM
Well, except for those of us who have had our cats stuffed, or otherwise kept them around.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:19 AM
114 to 111.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:21 AM
Okay, all true: I read TDB ages ago and I'm not remembering the details properly. I still think the epidemic was underjustified, but I'm not now recalling what my basis for that was.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:23 AM
Mieville is light, but not very good.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:31 AM
Hrmf. I like him. Although PDS more than either The Scar or Iron Council, which is a bummer, I like to see the trend going in the opposite direction.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:35 AM
Dogs and cats, living together!
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:40 AM
My favorite Chandler is probably Farewell, My Lovely
My favorite's The Long Goodbye. I don't think it gets nearly the recognition it deserves as one of the really great 20th century American novels. But maybe a little long for flight reading.
I take essay collections with me when I travel. Bruce Chatwin's one of my favorites (his long pieces are good too); so is Philip Lopate. I'd also recommend (given Wolfson's interests) Frank Kogan's new collection of music/personal essays Real Punks Don't Wear Black, Christgau's Grown Up All Wrong, or any of Christgau's Consumer Guides
Re: SF: Robert Charles Wilson's The Spin is fun. Or anything by Ken Macleod.
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:40 AM
I take essay collections with me when I travel.
David Foster Wallace. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again is fantastic, and he has a new one out which I haven't read yet.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:46 AM
Yeah- his latest output has kinda gone downhill (maybe due to the worldbuilding thing, too- as he either fills in parts of the map, or just assumes bits of backstory as known, which leaves out the good desciptive bits). I kinda hope he abandons the Crobuzon setting- he really needs the room to play with new wierdness.
Actually, now that I'm thinking about what'd be good transportation reading (Train, in my case, but they can't possibly be any worse on a plane), Mieville goes off that list- you really need a book that constant distraction from the actual words on the page isn't an issue (The hidden secret to Dan Brown's popularity!).
Paul- Spin! Yeah! That's a good one. Although if it turns out to be the opening of a series or drawn out setting, then not so much.
Posted by Moleman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:47 AM
This is a pretty broad list by now, and seems to have mutated from light, as in unsubstantial reading to now include some fairly good books that just happen to be easy to read. If we keep this up another day it'll include everything but Coke's Institutes.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:56 AM
121 totally seconded. And the title essay for his new collection was great, though I haven't yet bought the book so don't know what else is in there.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:05 AM
What is UP with fantasy writers and series? I will not read series.* Even trilogies tend to annoy me unless they're 100% guaranteed to end, stop, cease, and desist after the last one (and really good).
Is it the fan culture that propells so many writers into this gigantically annoying serializing? Are they all just broke? Are there any good one-volume fantasy novels anyone would like to recommend?
____
*I broke this iron law recently with George Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series AND AM NOW REGRETTING having done so. That shit is so never going to end.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:06 AM
But by limiting yourself in this way you are missing out on the magic that is Xanth!
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:10 AM
[Shudders.]
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:19 AM
Light, entertaining, and thought-proving SF: anything by Charles Stross (excepting Accelerando, which is really good, but requires a lot of attention to figure out what's going on).
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:26 AM
What is UP with fantasy writers and series? I will not read series.* Even trilogies tend to annoy me unless they're 100% guaranteed to end, stop, cease, and desist after the last one (and really good).
Is it the fan culture that propells so many writers into this gigantically annoying serializing? Are they all just broke? Are there any good one-volume fantasy novels anyone would like to recommend?
There are two slightly separate issue -- series, and reused worlds. Reusing a fantasy world has been going on as long as there's been fantasy -- you've put all this effort into explaining how the magic works and where the Fire Swamps are, and you have all these cool maps, and there was that suggestive bit you mentioned about the Duchy of Wyvernovna -- might as well write another book with the same background. If the books stand up seperately, I don't mind this at all (even with some reuse of characters, connected plots, etc. Pratchett's Discworld, for example, doesn't seem like a problem to me, because you could pick up any book in it first, and have it stand by itself.)
The series thing, on the other hand, where you're supposed to forgive some 600 page lump of nonsense as not all that exciting, but necessary to set up the next book which is going to be really good, and then the author gets old and dies before tying up the loose ends (George RR Martin should live forever, of course, but at this rate he's going to have to), drives me nuts, and I don't understand why there's so much of it either. I won't read that stuff generally, and got sucked into Song of Ice and Fire just like you did. I'm not buying or reading the current one -- maybe in fifteen years I'll check and see if he's done, and then catch up.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:30 AM
Fantasy/Alternate History/ Thriller/Steampunk/Pulp one-off: The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling is quite good. I'm having trouble thinking of a good stand-alone fantasy one-off, though. J.V. Jones did one a while back (The Goldenr Ring?), but it was only OK.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:30 AM
Entering this thread way too late:
SF
The Star Diaries by Lem is quite good,
I thought the second half (the non-fiction) of Meet Me at Infinity by James Tiptree is excellent (the fiction is sub-par) and it's only $0.86 + shipping remaindered at Amazon marketplace.
I enjoyed Zeitgeist by Bruce Sterling but it's not for everyone.
Non-SF:
If you like sports at all I strongly recommend The Last Shot (Darcy Frey) The best sports book I've read bar none.
I don't remember if you're one of the bridge players here but The Bridge Bum (Alan Sontag) is very readable and very good. This would be my top recommendation of any of the books mentioned if you play bridge.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:30 AM
125: Do you mean actually good fantasy, or good airport reading fantasy? Though come to think of it, most great fantasy, most actually great, classic fantasy has a "light" quality in a sense, without being fluff.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:31 AM
Well, once you've put that much thought into a setting, and it's attracted an audience, why go to the trouble of making a new one? (Because it's boring otherwise, dammit!)
One volume fantasy novels- hoo boy. I'm actually stumped on this one. The only recent self contained story I can think of is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. Clarke's said it's not part of a series (in that the characters won't come back, ever), but she may not have ruled out more stuff in the setting (there's a short story or two out there somewhere, written before the book). His Dark Materials is finished, if several volumes, and Mieville's always self-contained, if with multiple books in the one setting. Pratchett's usually self contained in terms of plot, but that's pushing it.
But hey! At least you weren't conned into reading Wheel of Time!
Posted by Moleman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:31 AM
Yeah, I'm done with Martin until I know the series is done. Same with Jordan. Of course, I did that with a recent Tad Williams' series and the Gunsinger books by Stephen King and I've never gone back.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:33 AM
129: Stuff like Ice and Fire and Wheel of Time isn't so much "series" as serialized 12 000 page novels. But I don't mind that at all as long as it's just engaging fluff, and it always is.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:35 AM
Erm, I mean it's never anything deeper, I rather doubt they're all engaging.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:38 AM
Are Engine Summer and Little, Big too old to be worth pimping? Consider them pimped. OTOH you obviously should stay away from the Aegypt series, though it's pretty clearly going to end with the fourth book unless he discovers some new Zodiacal months. (YMMV.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:38 AM
Also, Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle (bears a somewhat limited resemblance to the movie of the same name) and Archer's Goon.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:43 AM
Well, Little Big's not airport reading.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:44 AM
I should pick up Little, Big again and give it another shot. I think I never got interested enough in it to pay close enough attention to what was actually happening and how it fit together. I thought the writing was wonderful on an episode by episode basis -- there are bits of it that are still vivid in my mind and I must have read it almost twenty years ago -- but I just didn't follow it closely enough.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:47 AM
Yeah, I'm now on Jackm's one-volume fantasy novel question. Though the DWJ will work for airport reading (take something else, they're very short and probably to be found in the young adult section).
Also, for Becks but not Jackm, late Moominbooks -- Moominland Midwinter, Moominpappa at Sea, the sadly out-of-print Moominvalley in November. The best kids' books, and fun for grownups too. And Jackm might actually take a plunge -- they're same-world rather than serial, limited at seven, and shorter put together than the latest Harry Potter.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:50 AM
I wouldn't recommend these as strongly as the ones above, but if you like film writing, Which Lie Did I Tell? (William Goldman), Holding My Own in No Man's Land (Molly Haskell) and Hello, he Lied (Linda Obst) are both quite fluffy but have there strengths.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:53 AM
Arrggggh -- Also s/b "their"
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:54 AM
Actually it looks like Moominvalley in November is back in print in the US! This book is so, so awesome. Like Godot for kids.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:01 AM
Some of the reused-world novels stand up; I've enjoyed about 2/3 of the Prachett novels I've read, which aren't so very many because I find him to be smarter and funnier than, but essentially writing a similar kind of book as, Piers Anthony. The Mieville novels have a good stand-alone quality.
Some of them don't, however: Dune went downhill fast and has sort of become of the can't-leave-a-favorite-world novellist for me. It's like mystery writers who continue to write about their beloved detectives well past the expiration date.
Series, otoh, are almost always teh suxxor. Martin's series is disintegrating formally before our eyes. The little notice in the last published volume--"I split this volume into two because it got so unwieldy. Please buy the other half in two years!"--drove me CRAZY. I knew well enough at 13 that pursuing Robert Jordan any further than volume two was going to drive me crazy, why oh why did I ever pick up Martin?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:02 AM
For really good historical fiction, Patricia Finney is great.
It's classic stuff -- Jewish merchant + English thug/mercenary as unlikely duo -- in Elizabethan London. Lots of intrigue at court, street violence, religious strife, etc. Cracking plots -- she's been described as writing historical 'le Carré' style stuff.
What elevates them above the other historical spy/thriller novels is she plays with more 'literary' stuff in the actual style of writing without losing the tight plotting of 'genre' fiction. One of her novels is narrated by the Virgin Mary looking down from heaven, another is narrated by one of the two personalities of a mad beggar who is apparently peripheral to all the main action, etc.
These are three novels:
http://www.patricia-finney.co.uk/books/gloriana.html
http://www.patricia-finney.co.uk/books/unicornsblood.html
http://www.patricia-finney.co.uk/books/firedrakeseye.html
the latter two are particularly good.
She ought to be a million seller with more money than Dan Brown.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:08 AM
I liked the Bruce Sterling one-volumes I've read.
Sherri Tepper manages consistently to build a world and put a plot into it within a single volume, so I've ended up reading a number of her novels. The only problem is that they're not very good.
The current wave of British SF seems to be good about single-volume world-building, but unfortunately for me, a lot of it is outer-space SF, and I dislike outer-space SF.
Some cyberpunk and steampunk variants tend to be good at the single-volume format, but I'm having a hard time coming up with the names. I bought one a couple of years ago that I quite liked, but I loaned it out immediately, and now it's circling Saturn.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:13 AM
2nd paragraph of 141 is a great recommendation, and I would expand it -- some of the early Moominbooks are excellent too. I particularly can spend a lot of time rereading the second book "Finn Family Moomintroll". But yeah, the last book in the series "Moominvalley in November" is one of my very favorite things. Out of print it may be, but both Becks and Jackmormon have access to the Scandinavia House bookshop on Park Ave. and 38th or so, which has the whole series -- perhaps they get them from England?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:13 AM
To piggyback on 146, Iain Pears's Instance at the Fingerpost is also a good multiperspectival historical mystery: some very neat narrative tricks.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:15 AM
And wow, 144! I have made the exact same comparison when recommending Jansson to my friends!
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:16 AM
(Actually I think my exact words were "it's like if Beckett had written Winnie-the-Pooh." -- so not the exact same comparison but close enough for the blogosphere.)
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:18 AM
re: 149
Yes, it's excellent.
Fun for me too as I'd not long moved to Oxford when I read it, so could wander about and check out the locations.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:22 AM
JM- The last William Gibson was very good (and proves my theory that he's not so much a sci-fi author as just impatient waiting for technology to provide stuff needed for plot points). For some reason, I'm always a little wary of recommending cyberpunk to folks- no one ever has a neutral reaction to them (either they love them, or they hate them and devote their lives to my utter destruction).
Also- The Stars My Destination- old, but awesome.
And I'm having trouble thinking of a fantasy series (not a setting, mind) that hasn't crashed and burned by the end. Man, that's depressing. Not a one, although maybe if you ignore ones that were a finished plot and went back and filled in stuff.
Posted by Moleman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:27 AM
TMK re: Moomin/Godot: A bunch of characters show up at a house, but the family isn't there, so they start bickering about their various conceptions of the Absent Ones. And it was the first one I read so the Godotitude was especially striking.
I don't really mean to take anything away from the early ones (except Exploits) but they're more kid-type stuff, they took some adjustment after November. IIRC Too-Ticky was based on her female life partner so her turn toward more serious stuff may have coincided with coming out.
Have you read Sun City? It's very good.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:28 AM
Have you read Sun City? It's very good.
I have not. The only non-Moomin Jansson book I have read is "The Summer Book", which I liked okay but not well enough to send me out searching for more. What is Sun City about?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:32 AM
I have some disagreements with Pattern Recognition, but I have a nagging feeling that my annoyance with these elements are more personal to me than formal in the book.
What about the Earthsea series? It's expanded out of its original trilogy, but the new volumes are still worth reading.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:34 AM
An old-age home in St. Petersburg, Florida, which must be a very strange-seeming place for a Finn. The inhabitants sit on the front porch and bicker a lot. It's better than The Summer Book.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:36 AM
I am reading Rip It Up and Start Again and it is going super fast.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:44 AM
Sounds nice. Thanks! -- I will keep an eye out for it.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:44 AM
Zeitgeist is distinctly not Cyberpunk. I'm not sure how I would describe it.
It is the novel of Sterling's that comes closest to capturing what I like about his prose in some of his shorter essays (e.g., his CFP speeches).
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:45 AM
My favorite's The Long Goodbye. I don't think it gets nearly the recognition it deserves as one of the really great 20th century American novels.
This is my other favorite, but it's been so long since I read it that I don't know if I like it more than Farewell, which I read more recently.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:50 AM
This talk of Chandler reminds me that Nathanael West might be very fun to read on a plane -- his books repay close attention but are also great as light reading. Miss Lonelyhearts and Day of the Locust but probably the former more.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:54 AM
Er, uh, I meant "probably the latter more".
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:58 AM
156: I haven't liked the later Earthsea books as much as the original trilogy, but the original trilogy is very, very good, and not even all that long.
I got two books into Song of Ice and Fire before calling it quits. The shameful part is that it took me nine books of Wheel of Time before realizing that I hated it. So much of serial fantasy drives me crazy: great plot, terrible writing.
Tad Williams does tend to go on, but Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is a great series (even if he did split the conclusion into two ridiculously long books). Tailchaser's Song is an enjoyable standalone fantasy, plus it's about cats!
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 12:43 PM
As JM notes, the Wizard of Earthsea setting holds up.
I thought the Amber books held up all the way through (not counting the post-Zelazny stuff, which I haven't read), although the first 4 or 5 are admittedly better than the remaining few.
Steven Brust's Vlad books have continued to hold, although I'm not a fan of the non-Vlad books set in the same universe.
After that, I'm a little stumped.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 12:48 PM
Hmm- does Watership Down count as fantasy? Been years since I read it. Can't even remember if it was actually good (as opposed to good after memory wears down all the exposed bits of plot). It's even single volume, I think.
The first couple of Redwall books were good, but I read those even longer ago. I remember some terribly silly accents, so maybe not.
Posted by Moleman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:06 PM
Multi-volume fantasy: Some people seem to like this.
Watership Down = actually good.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:08 PM
I haven't liked the later Earthsea books as much as the original trilogy, but the original trilogy is very, very good
I liked The Left Hand of Darkness, so I thought I'd try A Wizard of Earthsea. And try again, and again. But oh, that first page:
don't do it Ursula! noooooo
Game over.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:12 PM
Hey I endorse anything at all by Matt Ruff,
Most stuff by Connie Willis, Carol O'Connel, Christopher Moore, Chrisopher Brookmyre, P.G. Wodehouse,
Sarah Caudwell, Dick Francis, Rex Sout and Raymond Chandler (except The Big Sleep).
Maugham and Dunnet are good, but not airplane reading
Enjoyable Trash: Susan Howatch's Church of England stuff--Glamourouse Powers etc, Nelson Demille's Gold Coast, Susan Isaac's Shining Through, and the UK's Robert Goddard and Phil Rickman.
Posted by quartz | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:13 PM
Weiner, that clearly falls under my trilogy exemption.
And yes, I'm one of those people who refuses on principle to read the non-LoTR material.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:23 PM
Wait! Caveats!
The Hobbit slips in as a reused-world exception. And Farmer Giles of Ham is set in a totally different world and simply rocks. But I've avoided all of the earlier Middle Earth legends. I like my fragmentary allusions to stay fragmentary allusions.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:27 PM
168: Oh, don't be so closed-minded. You don't stalk out of a movie at the first cliche, do you?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:29 PM
BTW, when we acronymify "Lord of the Rings", why do we capitalize the T but not the O?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:30 PM
No, but by the time the first cliche happens I've already paid.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:31 PM
Wasn't LOTR written as a single, stand-alone book, then later chopped into three for printing/publishing/marketing reasons?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:31 PM
175--I think that's right.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:34 PM
Watership Down is indeed very good. I just finished reading it to PK, and though towards the end I had to skip over some of the long descriptive passages because he was getting bored with them, he really enjoyed it. I'm all about getting him into books Mama can stand to read. Soon, I hope, A Wrinkle in Time....
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:35 PM
Yup. That's (or rather, that's the opposite of) what burns me about all those neverending series -- they purport to be unified works, and then the authors never quite bring them to an end, they just trail on forever.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:36 PM
There are those who swear by the four volumes of Book of the New Sun, fewer who swear by the sequel (which I've read) and the seven prequels (which I haven't). So that's hardly a counterexample. I'm conflicted about it, anyway.
Any respect for Lloyd Alexander? I haven't read him since I was in the target audience, but people seem to think that it's fine YA fiction for all seven books. About the only thing I remember about Narnia is objecting vehemently to the ending, so that won't do.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:37 PM
Loved Lloyd Alexander, yes. Fun stuff.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:38 PM
Any respect for Lloyd Alexander?
Buckets, and not just for the Prydain books. He's written a lot of excellent children's stuff -- Sally is now working on The Cat Who Wished To Be A Man.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:39 PM
Don't forget Time Cat. Prydain and cats. Respect.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:43 PM
The only YA I ever read, aside from certain stand alone classics like Howard Pyle's Men of Iron, were Henry Gregor Felson's series about car culture: Hot Rod, Street Rod and Crash Club. Does anybody read those anymore? Has anyone here ever heard of them?
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:44 PM
YA fantasy series might get some exemption love from me. I remember rereading Lloyd Alexander--and Susan Cooper--in recent years and remarking on how decently plotted they were. Maybe YA series can stay tightly plotted over multiple volumes because they're shorter?
LB, that's exactly it. The Martin series is just a trainwreck example of this. The first novel promised that structural unity could be maintained by following the Stark family's fortunes, but then he's killing them off and becoming infatuated with every single damned secondary character. It's like a f'ing fractal at this point--and I can't look away!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:45 PM
Yeah- Avoid the hell out of any Book of the New Sun beyond the initial stuff. Depending on how well you handle misogyny, maybe avoid it altogether.
A Wrinkle in Time! Absolutely the best bedtime reading. I actually would have gone with that before Watership Down. The Hobbit's a good choice, too (works well aloud, I've always thought), although best to make sure they can handle the sequels on their own before you do that, or else you'll spend more time reading than they will sleeping.
YA fantasy really seems to get through some people's filters. I think there's a lightness that a lot of "adult" fantasy loses. Writing for kids tends to keep the prose under control, too. Less florid descriptions of every damn thing that the characters go near.
Posted by Moleman | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:04 PM
Prydain! Oh, wow, memories. I wonder if those are still in the basement?
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:07 PM
A Wrinkle in Time! Absolutely the best bedtime reading. I actually would have gone with that before Watership Down. The Hobbit's a good choice, too
Actually Mr. B. started him with the Hobbit after he sat still through Charlie & the Chocolate Factory and The Tale of Despereaux; then I did Watership Down b/c I could find it, it's small animals, and I figured the El-ahrairah tales would amuse him (they did). I did modify the ending a bit to disguise the fact that Hazel dies, b/c dying animals upset him. But yeah, it's time he read something that has a girl protagonist. My only concern w/ Wrinkle in Time is that it's not especially funny; he really likes comedy in his stories.
Here's a question: good ya fiction for a bright kid who can't yet read for himself, that's funny and/or adventerous, doesn't involve tragic deaths, *and* isn't only about boys? Anyone?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:18 PM
Judy Bloom?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:22 PM
Junie B. Jones?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:22 PM
E. Nesbit? Five Children And It, and the sequels?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:23 PM
You've heard this before, but Little House on the Prairie. Alternatively, not quite as good but very interesting, All Of A Kind Family. Fictionalized memoirs.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:29 PM
good ya fiction for a bright kid who can't yet read for himself, that's funny and/or adventerous, doesn't involve tragic deaths, *and* isn't only about boys?
Totally, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I mean there's a tragic death but it's not a real death IYKWIM.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:31 PM
Howl's Moving Castle? Maybe a bit too old. You can check it out online. A witch dies (oh go on it's not a spoiler) but that might not be an issue. I wouldn't swear to the gender politics.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:33 PM
And of course there is The Wizard of Oz.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:35 PM
Am I the only person who didn't like A Wrinkle In Time growing up?
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:35 PM
Alternatively, not quite as good but very interesting, All Of A Kind Family.
I liked these -- turn of the century(? I haven't read them since I was a kid. Maybe later, but pre-WWII I'm pretty sure) NY Jewish family of five girls (which is why the All-of-a-Kind). I don't remember them all that clearly, but liked them.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:37 PM
195 -- I don't think I liked Wrinkle in Time but that may just be because it was promoted so aggressively by my mom -- I don't have much memory of the book itself.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:40 PM
194: And all the sequels -- particularly the first one after TWWOO, The Marvelous Land of Oz, for a truly peculiar gender moment by modern standards.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:41 PM
(She liked Xanth a lot, too. So now I've got Piers Anthony and Madeleine L'Engle mixed up together in my head forevermore.)
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:42 PM
196:
That's right, WWI era. Just like Little House, they experience historical events and processes: immigration, the pre-WWI Coney Island scene, assimilation, the Infuenza epidemic.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:44 PM
Ha. My mother read through all of the LoTR with us when we were kids. I was the youngest (maybe about three during the first read-through), and she figured I wasn't listening until I ran out of the room in terror during, I think, Moria.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:44 PM
I'm also a fan of Lloyd Alexander.
good ya fiction for a bright kid who can't yet read for himself, that's funny and/or adventerous, doesn't involve tragic deaths, *and* isn't only about boys?
PK's too young for this but for YA fiction with female protagonists what about Athur Ransome's Swollows and Amazons series. My memories of it are indistinct, but I remember enjoying it.
Also, again for an older age, The Collected Stories of Richard Kennedy has a number of stories that are wonderful for children and adults.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 2:52 PM
195: You may be, but I'm surely the only one who hated the Narnia stories and the Wizard of Oz.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:11 PM
That said, some good suggestions in here. I'll have to try the Little House books on him--I imagine that with his interest in how things get done, he'd be kind of into it. Are they okay re. the Indians, or am I going to have to censor?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:13 PM
They're honest about the fear the Indians inspire, particularly in Ma, who is terrified and has to try to hide it.
Prairie has the most Indians, the Osage, and they come off very well. There is no violence. The whole tribe processes by the cabin at the end, (and the Ingalls have to leave the territory, because they've been squating and it belongs to the Osage) and Laura's description of meeting the eyes of the children is very good.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:19 PM
A Wrinkle in Time was no A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:21 PM
PK's too young for this but for YA fiction with female protagonists what about Athur Ransome's Swollows and Amazons series. My memories of it are indistinct, but I remember enjoying it.
Excellent kids learning to sail stories. (There's a great bit where the mother sends a telegram to the father about whether the kids should be allowed to sail on their own. The return telegram is "If not duffers, won't drown. Better drowned than duffers.")
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:22 PM
Via google I notice a page of contemporary reviews of Swallows and Amazons.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:22 PM
LOL drowned duffers.
Good re. Little House. The idea that people feared one another is just fine with me--blah blah teaching moment, blah blah history, blah blah racism. I can do that.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:23 PM
Yeah, on the Little House books, I'd say you won't need to censor, but you will need to explain. There's a child's eye view of terrifying, I think bad-smelling, dark-skinned Indians that I wouldn't want to let past uncommented on, but that discussed in terms of: this is how settlers felt about Indians and feared them, shouldn't be particularly harmful.
What about the Just So Stories and The Jungle Books? And Puck of Pook's Hill? There is literally one word that needs to be censored in the JSS -- a gratuitous use of the 'n' word in an otherwise unobjectionable story. I think the Jungle Books are pretty much okay without that.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:27 PM
if you like lloyd alexander, try...
robin mckinley: the blue sword; the hero and the crown. zilpha keatley snyder: below the root, the eqypt game.
Posted by anonymous | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:27 PM
i'm sorry i don't have time to read the entire thread, to check if this was already said, but a long time back the modesto kid asked if calvino wrote any other memoir-y or journalistic stuff besides under the jaguar sun...
and he did: Hermit in Paris, which actually has a lot more of his reports sent back to the einaudi offices about new york than it does descriptions of his life in paris, but it's fun...
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:33 PM
211 - Below the Root and the rest of its trilogy was kind of weird because of the author's obsession with contraception/family planning. Slightly out of place for a children's book.
However, Below the Root the video game on the Commodore-64? BEST VIDEO GAME EVER!
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:35 PM
195 - Nope. Hated it. Especially the follow-on books. (I kept reading out of some misguided sense that I had to discover why everyone else liked them.)
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:37 PM
211 - I'll second Anon re the Robin McKinley.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:39 PM
Little House should be okay. The Indians are feared by Ma, but it turns out that they aren't actually doing anything harmful, just different, and they smell because they're wearing skunk skins. And that's only in the Little House on the Prairie book. Little House in the Big Woods has a very touching scene about the father returning home from hunting empty handed, because the only deer he saw was a doe with a baby deer.
Wind in the Willows? Talking foppish English animals? The Once and Future King maybe. At least just the first part where Wart learns from Merlyn, maybe not so much with the incest.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:39 PM
Still thinking about books that my parents read to me; I remember enjoying both the mrs. pepperpot stories and the Italo Calvino collection of italian folktales I remember enjoying both.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:39 PM
Geez, you leave this place for a couple of days and catching up on the comments is like climbing Everest.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:40 PM
Mistress Masham's Repose, also by TH White, is good -- a little girl finds a community of Lilliputians a hundred or so years after Gulliver brought them back to England.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:41 PM
I started out trying to explain, but as the series progressed I gained more and more respect for the narrative and desisted. My kids wouldn't stand for it and I was an impediment anyway to the voice of the author.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:41 PM
Oh yes, Wind in the Willows, B. PK will love it.
Posted by mcm | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 4:30 PM
The Hero and the Sword is pretty good--awesome fight sequences between a feisty female heroine and a giant evil dragon--but the Blue Sword has a narrative structure too similar to a romance novel for me to recommend it without some reserve. Sure, after the heroine is kidnapped by the [Sheik], she becomes a warrior and fights mighty battle before marrying the [Sheik], but still...
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 4:39 PM
The Wind in the Willows was one of my favorite books as a child but it does have some sad sections (the chapter with the sea mouse and either the preceding of following chapter are both quite sad).
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 5:00 PM
221: You'd think! But I tried it and he said it was boring, the little ingrate.
Maybe I'll try it again in a few months.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 5:50 PM
I tried to wade through the comments to see if I was repeating or suggesting something that had already been shot down but I really enjoy Tom Wolfe's books, I read I Am Charlotte Simmons last year and it was extremely good, maybe too long for a plane ride though. As far as humorous non-fiction, Bill Bryson books get me rolling around laughing. He and I are alumni of the same high school (albeit he graduated close to 30 years before I did).
Posted by Mike | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 6:37 PM
Thesis: American Idol contestants should not be allowed to perform ballads, ever.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 6:55 PM
Thesis: American Idol contestants should not be allowed to perform
ballads, ever.Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 7:14 PM
227: Them's fighting words. Do you not fear Tia's wrath?
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 7:27 PM
Rats rats rats! LB, I had just typed in a long comment about Just-So Stories, had just finished entering a couple of paragraphs, when Firefox crashed on me before I could press The Button. The gist of it was: Just-So Stories is a fabulous book and good for reading to young children; but it needs to be approached with a judicious and sometimes censorious mind because it is chock-full of nasty imperial detritus, toxic gender-relations and racism are the meat of several stories, even the good ones.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 7:47 PM
Rats rats rats! LB, TMK had typed in a short comment reprising the general content of a longer comment he had lost which concerned Kipling's Just-So Stories, but his tendency to proofread what he writes was inefficacious in this instance. The basic point is: the second-to-last comma in the comment he posted should be a semicolon.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 7:53 PM
Thesis: American Idol
contestantsshould not be allowedto perform ballads, ever.Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 8:35 PM
Dude, punctuation commentary is beyond the pale.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 8:39 PM
I know how you feel about it, Cala, and won't ever correct your punctuation or grammar (again). But if you think I'm going to stop in general—I, of all people!—well, your thought is INCORRECT.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 8:57 PM
230 made me laugh out loud. But, I am evil, like the fruwits of the devill.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:01 PM
I would take issue with oh-so-clever comment #230. To my ear, the comma sounds pretty good. Could be a semi-colon; but the sentence would read different. Would not as good.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:05 PM
;
Don't bait me, Kid.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:07 PM
In the annals of BALB, 230 was a high point. But I'm actually interested in TMK's comment -- while my childhood affection for the Just So Stories may be leading me astray, I really didn't think they were particularly objectionable.
TMK-- What strikes you as so bad about them (defining bad as 'worse than Disney'?), beyond the one occasion of unpleasant language I noted? I suppose a lot of the stories are guilty of, I don't know how to put it, cheap exoticism, referencing Australian or Indonesian or whatever myth without really respecting or engaging it, but offenses on that level are all over children's literature and don't strike me as all that significant.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:10 PM
Wolfson's right; it should be a semicolon. The semicolon earlier in the comment, however, could be replaced by a comma.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:11 PM
I don't know how to put it
Orientalism, perhaps?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:12 PM
My heart weeps with pity for your future students, b-wo. For I felt that I was an evil TA, but you will wield power far greater than that which I can bear.
Death to the semicolon! Freedom!!! (I had a friend of a friend whose Lenten resolution was to give up the semicolon.)
234 makes me think I dated Standpipe in college. Weird.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:12 PM
Maybe you did. How many fingers am I holding up?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:15 PM
I should spend the summer brushing up on my editing marks.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:15 PM
Maybe you did. How many fingers am I holding up?
Three, in one group of two and one group of one? If there be "group" in a group so small.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:19 PM
He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called-nay we call ourselves and write our name-Crusoe; and so my companions always called me.
Posted by defoe | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:20 PM
Four?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:23 PM
Wolfson!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:25 PM
Shocking.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:28 PM
It was three.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:31 PM
237/239 -- Orientalism (as far as I understand the term; Said is outside my reading experience) sums up pretty well my problem with the Just-So Stories. Or half of the problem; the other half is sexism. Take the story "How the Leopard Got His Spots" -- I believe this is the story you were objecting to in 210, right? Because the Ethiopian is referred to as a nigger near the end of the story? That is easy enough to edit out certainly, though it helps if you know it is coming and are not taken by surprise; but the whole premise of the story -- that animals and people were fair at first, and the Ethiopian changed his skin to camouflage himself on the hunt, just rubs me the wrong way. And the last paragraph needs editing too.
How about "The Cat That Walked By Himself"? The whole explicit point of this story is the wild, untamed Man being tricked by the wily Female into adopting the ways of civilization, and incidentally asserting his lordship over nature. A great story but it bears some thinking about.
And the two stories about the origin of writing, "How the First Letter was Written" and "How the Alphabet was Made" are, I think, trash. And if memory serves, quite sexist.
Don't get me wrong, it is a great, flawed book; I think it is Kipling's finest work. What is your favorite story? Mine (and Sylvia's) is "The Elephant's Child", also I like "How the Rhinoceros got his Skin" (which has racism problems), "How the Camel got his Hump", "The Crab that Played with the Sea", and "The Beginning of Armadillos" a lot.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:33 PM
It was three.
Grouped how, though?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:37 PM
Er, um, the version of "How the Leopard got his Spots" I linked to above had the "nigger" edit already made. Here is the original if you want it. I was dazzled by the pretty wildlife photos.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:38 PM
Grouped how, though?
Oh, banally.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 9:41 PM
Down with thumb and pinky; up with index, middle, and ring.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate |