I’ll probably give this one a shot.
Keep them coming! And don’t just recommend for me, recommend anything that you’ve read that you’ve enjoyed, and think other Dopers will like.
Dangit! Oaky, maybe I don’t get to be the first to recommend it, but at least I can be the first to recommend it with the author, link, and the correct title: It’s Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell: A Novel, not “Mr. Norris: a Kung Fu Fighter.”
And it’s wonderful. It starts a little slow and a little pedantic, but it quickly becomes totally fascinating, with a deadpan humor that had me cracking up more than any other fantasy comedy I’ve ever read. Best book I’ve read in awhile.
If you like anthropology and science fiction, you could do worse than to check out Ursula K. Le Guin’s strange and beautiful Always Coming Home, an anthropologist’s study of a civilization that lived in the Bay Area a couple hundred thousand years in the future.
Daniel
Daniel
I just watched Supersize Me a few weeks ago, so I felt compelled to re-read Fast Food Nation.
I’m also reading Sea Glass by Anita Shreve.
If you’re into biology or paleontology at all, I can’t recommend Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale highly enough. Basically it’s The Canterbury Tales , but with humanity’s ancestors instead of pilgrims. Very, very entertaining.
I’m reading American Pastoral by Philip Roth. It’s a beautifully written, intensely sad story of the American Dream gone bad, and the pain of loving a child who has committed an unforgiveable crime. It is heralded as one of his finest books. I haven’t read all his work, but it is one of the best books I’ve read in ages.
I’ve received “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” in the mail from scout1222 and it’s next on my list. Anyone read this?
No, but I did read another book by the same author, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. I wanted to like, it truly did, but it was kind of, well, boring. For new spins on old works, I like John Gardner. His Jason and Medea was absolutely beautiful.
Made it three quarters of the way some years ago. Either it was slow, or I really wanted to be reading something else. Still a good take on “history’s” villains. There are also ones about Cinderella, Snow White and Scrooge. Whose next?! 
I wanted to like it, I truly did.
One of these days I’ll learn to proofread my posts.
I liked it okay. A friend of mine who’s a major Oz buff (as in, has read all of the Baum books, not just seen the movie) loved it.
From another thread on the same subject:
I’m still working on The Crimson Petal and The White, by Michael Faber. I like it, and it’s interesting, but it’s just slow going for some reason. I keep reading other books at the same time that are quicker reads.
I just started The Time-Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. It’s very good so far.
I just finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. A quickie. I’d heard a lot about here and from some friends, and bought it with a Christmas gift card. I liked it a lot.
I want to buy Collapse by Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel. The premise sounds interesting and a good complement to G,G & S.
I just got *Guns, Germs and Steel * from the library. I’ve had it recommended by a few people.
As you may have seen from some of my posts, I have decided to try some Lovecraft and the whole Cthulhu Mythos, since it seems to be popular around here, and I want to understand the references. Holy shit, this stuff is fantastic! I’m normally a ghost story* fan when it comes to horror, but I am seriously loving the Mythos, and the short stories by Lovecraft I found online.
Oh, and the usual Star Wars and Mercedes Lackey books. And I’m re-reading Lord of the Rings, and Quidditch Through the Ages.
*I also checked out Turn of the Screw by Henry James and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, along with Dracula.
I just finished reading Set This House In Order: A Romance Of Souls by Matt Ruff, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It’s quirky fiction with a protagonist who has multiple personality disorder. But it’s not just some rewrite of Sybil; it is written in such a way that the various souls in the protagonist’s ‘house’ might as well actually exist–in a weird way, it somewhat resembles fantasy because of this.
It is thought-provoking, occasionally quite funny, takes unexpected twists, and is vividly characterized. And you can get it used at Amazon for under five bucks, which is what I did.
Check it out!
Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini – WOW is all I can say–very powerful book
Devil in the White City by Erik Larson – very good book about Architecture and Serial Killers. What–you don’t think that is a good combination?
Both excellent books–I would highly recommend them both
Lessee. Right now I’m re-reading Stephen King’s The Gunslinger series, because I’ve forgotten many of the details in the earlier stories and wanted to see how it all fit together in one quick reading, rather than over many years (as previously). Pretty well, actually.
I second Shadow Divers - it’s really good.
Polar exploration has been mentioned - if you’re interested, there’s a number of books on Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen, and Peary that are really good. The Last Place on Earth by Roland Huntford is good, as is A First Rate Tragedy, by Diana Preston. Check your library.
I’m also a wild fan of Everest, especially the Mallory/Irvine mystery: Into Thin Air is excellent, about the 1996 climbing season and its related deaths (many); as is Ghosts of Everest (by Jochen Hemmleb, I believe), about Mallory and Irvine’s disappearance on Everest in 1924, and the subsequent discovery of Mallory’s body by Conrad Anker (renowned climber) in 1999. Excellent stuff here.
Last year I read The Perfect Mile, about the efforts of three men to be the first man to run a mile in faster than four minutes (which was said to be impossible) in the 1950s. Also excellent.
The correct title is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel. With an ‘&’, not an ‘and.’
I just finished reading the new P.G. Wodehouse biography (Wodehouse: A Life by Robert McCrum) and recommend it for anyone who enjoys of Mr. W’s work. I found it fascinating, especially in terms of Wodehouse’s productivity and longevity; it looks as if the man wrote pretty much every day from his 20’s right up until the last day of his life, not even letting little things like being interred in a German prison camp during WWII stop him. (Actually, it seems to me from reading this bio that Wodehouse wrote as a means of escape from harsh realities, and tended to turn out his most light-hearted work at the worst points in his life.)
Now I’ve got to settle down and write a review for it.
My sister keeps nagging me to read this. She says it’s the best book she’s read in a really long time.
Haven’t heard of it – what’s it about?