May I nominate my entire Sagan collection? I actually like Billions and Billions the most - perhaps because of the poignancy of the last chapter.
My other nominee: English Passengers by Matthew Kneale, a darkly humorous historical fiction, in the voice of some 20 different narrators, written against no less than the backdrop of the genocide of the Aborigines of Tasmania.
That’s a favorite of two other Dopers – koeeoaddi and twickster – you’re in good company. Great book.
I, JFK by Robert Mayer. An ‘autobiography’/memoir written from purgatory, 25 years after Kennedy’s assassination.
I’ll throw in a recommendation for two novels of scientific research, mindless bureaucracy, and high comedy: Michael Frayn’s The Tin Men (computing and artificial intelligence) and David Langford’s The Leaky Establishment (nuclear weapons).
I’ve read this book, and I still have a copy of it in my library! I even got my husband, the history buff, to read it. Very well done, very different from Patricia Anthony’s other books.
Yes you may, and I have read most, if not all. The last chapter is one of very few that brought me tears.
I do agree, and you are right LANmom, sad as that is.
Okay, of the books mentioned thus far in the thread, I’ve read
Towing Jehovah
The Sot-Weed Factor
Cryptonomicon
Under the Skin
Time is the Simplest Thing
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
I Know This Much is True
Invisible Cities
the Bartimaeus Trilogy
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
I didn’t like them all, but I read them all (okay, sorry, but I couldn’t finish Towing Jehovah despite being 4/5 through).
I heartily recommend Rats, Lice, and History: Being a Study in Biography, Which, After Twelve Preliminary Chapters Indispensable for the Preparation of the Lay Reader, Deals With the Life History of Typhus Fever, which while not the most up-to-date book on disease transmission is perhaps the most affectionate and elegant.
I love Sagan, and I have most of his books. Billions and Billions is also among my favorites.
I have never met anyone else who’s read this book: Memoirs of a Ghost Brother, by Heinz Insu Fenkl. It’s the story about a young boy growing up in post-war Korea, and in my opinion is one of the most under-rated books in the history of Asian-American literature.
Anything by Keith Roberts but especially The Chalk Giants and Kaeti and Company.
When the Lights Go Out by Tanith Lee
Since this thread’s been resurrected, I just wanted to add that I’m in the middle of Flanders now and it’s fantastic. Thanks for the recommendation.
A few more . . .
Hiero’s Journey by Sterling E Lanier. An excellent book set centuries after a massive worldwrecking nuclear war. The protagonist is an agent for an emerging civilization which is besieged my mysterious forces. It’s set in what used to be Canada, and he’s a telepath who rides a mutated moose ( Sounds silly ? Only until it stomps a few bad guys into jelly ), and acquires a sentient telepatic bear for a companion. A quest across an unexplored Northeast, filled with all manner of mutants and weirdness.
The Island Worlds series by Eric Kotani and John Maddox Roberts. A good but dated series, especially in the first book Act of God - the Soviet Union is central to it, and the USSR didn’t survive that long. That can be overlooked in the later books, however. It’s about a future where the near-anarchic Belt society is trying to stay free of the ever-more tyrannical and extreme Earth. In the final book Delta Pavonis they have escaped the Solar System and are exploring the stars. Interesting characters, and some imaginative details. One of my favorites is the cat with a hologram around it that makes it look like a Chinese dragon, zipping around in zero-g.
Traveller in Black by John Brunner. A collection of shorter stories detailing a few of the journeys of “he who has many names but one nature”, a “quiet man dressed in black who carries a staff made of light”. He lives in a timeless world of magic and chaos, and he slowly is imposing order upon it. Among other things, he grants the wishes of those he overhears ( usually without them realizing that’s what has happened ), which seldom turns out the way they wanted of course.
Threshold and Emergence by David R Palmer, a good author who never wrote anything else, unfortunately; no one even knows if he’s alive. Emergence is the diary of a 12 year old girl after almost all of humanity is killed by a bioweapon; she and a few others survived because they are the first members of homo superior; with improved immune systems, among other things. Threshold is about a character who’s been bred as the apex of a centuries-long secret plan to breed a superman who can Save the Galaxy from Doom - almost. Problem is, the breeders screwed up; it’s his offspring who’s supposed to be the savior, but they need help now, and thanks to a mistake in timing his intended mate was born years too early and is still a little girl.
I’ve read Rats, Lice, and History, and highly recommend it. (It has one of the great footnotes of all time. IIRC, you follow the asterisk down to the bottom of the page, and the footnote reads
* Look it up.
I’ve also read Hiero’s Journey. A pretty good book, by a Chilton’s editor IIRC. I even have a calendar from the 1970s with one month being an illustration for this book. I think there was a sequel.
Little, Big by John Crowley.
Hands down, no argument.
The most amazing book I’ve ever read. Imagine a literary fusion of William Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Lewis Carroll’s “Sylvie and Bruno” and “Alice” books, and Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine,” written by the love child of Benoit Mandelbrot and Umberto Eco (if there was one).
Seriously.
I wish to reproduce with this book.
Hello from a newbie! I always recommend Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm. It’s one of the funniest novels ever written. I own a bookstore, and I subtly sold 13 copies of it last year: “Hey, you! Jogging Shorts! Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, bub. Get over here and take a look at this cool book.”
“A babel broke out, in which Aunt Ada could dimly be discerned beating at everybody with the *Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide * and shrilly screaming: ‘I saw it . . . I saw it! I shall go mad . . . I can’t bear it . . . There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort. I saw something nasty in the woodshed . . . something nasty . . . nasty . . . nasty . . . .’”
I also love The Stuffed Owl: an Anthology of Bad Verse, selected and arranged by D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee.
A fly that up and down himself doth shove.–Wordsworth, “To Sleep”
Thank you all for the suggestions. I’m glad to be here.
I read Flanders because of this thread also, and I also enjoyed it.
Now, will somebody please read “The Last Unicorn” by Peter S. Beagle, 'cause the high school kids I keep recommending it to won’t. They pick up crap like “Eragon” instead. Sigh.
I just purchased this from an eBay seller in the UK. The price was a bit lower than Amazon’s. But the seller also had some tempting R A Lafferty stuff, so I saved no money.
However, we all know that books will get you through times without money better than money will get you through times without books.
Of course, you known that this is now back in print: www.amazon.com/Adventures-Unhistory-Conjectures-Factual-Foundations/dp/076530760X/sr=8-1/qid=1170184382/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6060729-8091140?ie=UTF8&s=books
I bought the two books in the OP and I really can’t afford to read any further.
The Unforsaken Hiero. Good, but not as good I think. Hiero Desteen is an omnibus volume containing both.
The Riddle Master trilogy by Patricia A McKillip. Set in a world where scholarship and prophecy is set in the form of riddles, so a Riddle Master is quite knowledgeable. It’s kings and such are called “land-rulers”, because they have a mystical connection to the land. They can sense what happens there to a degree, and often have other abilites. The ruler of An, for example binds the warring ghosts of the Three Portions of An; if he leaves too long they will continue their ancient wars and feuds, making life hellish for everyone.
It begins when Morgan of Hed, Riddle Master and land-ruler of Hed wins the crown of the ghost Peven of Aum in a riddle game that’s fatal if lost. That sets of a sequence of events, including attacks by shapechangers. Morgan was also born with three stars on his forehead, and neither he nor anyone else knows what they mean, even after finding a harp and sword with three stars on them. So, he sets out to met the High One, the mysterious and reclusive land-ruler of all the lands who has lived for millenia. Morgan wants to ask the High One, what do the stars mean ? What are these shape changers, and what do they want ? Why hasn’t the High One done or said anything about this ?
The Daughters of the Sunstone trilogy by Sydney J Van Scycoc ( her stuff in general is good ); consisting of Darkchild, Bluesong, Starsilk. It’s mostly set on the world of Brakrath, whose settlers have mutated somewhat in the harsh environment. They hibernate during the winter, for example, and their rulers are long lived women called barohnas who have an inborn ability to manipulate sunstone, an exotic mineral that stores and concentrates the energy of the sun; the barohnas use it to keep their valleys warm enough to grow food in the summer, and to fry criminals and external enemies, like the greedy offworld culture that would love to take the planet over.
As the ol’ OP, I’m curious as to your opinion. Do share.
I have lost track how many times I’ve read this book since the very first time in 1968. It is my favorite book of all time. I’ve read it so much that it’s shaped the way I think about lots of things.
I worship at Peter S. Beagle’s feet.