Why hasn't Amazon or B&N come up with an algorithm for book recommendations yet? You know, something a la Netflix? Grr.
I'm out of stuff to read, and I'm tired of exhaustively searching Amazon and failing to find anything. So, if anyone stumbles on this list and tends to like the same books I do, I'm all ears.
I tend to like books that are either multiple genres, don't fit neatly into a genre, or perhaps subvert the expectations of a genre. Which means that it's pretty difficult for me to find books anymore unless they have a giant marketing arm behind them, sigh, because I just don't have six hours per week to spend looking for things all over the bookstore.
Anyway, these are some of my favorite books off the top of my head:
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
The Secrets of Jin-Shei, by Alma Alexander
Til We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis
Turtle Moon, by Alice Hoffman
Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The Bonesetter's Daughter, by Amy Tan
Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad
The Sunne in Splendour, by Sharon Kay Penman
The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
The Virgin Blue, by Tracy Chevalier
I'm not sure that this is a great representative list, as it seems to be biased towards fantasy/magical realism/etc., when I've liked a lot of weird genre benders in all sorts of permutations, but it's what I can come up with. Anyway, I'm less concerned with "does this book succeed at every level of craft" than "is this book in some way unlike every other book that's ever been written." (Like, I enjoyed The Passage even though it had a lot of narrative problems, just because it was weird and unexpected. But not stylistically weird; that's a no-go for me.) I'd particularly love to hear of some lesser-known gems that I may not be exposed to otherwise.
I'm out of stuff to read, and I'm tired of exhaustively searching Amazon and failing to find anything. So, if anyone stumbles on this list and tends to like the same books I do, I'm all ears.
I tend to like books that are either multiple genres, don't fit neatly into a genre, or perhaps subvert the expectations of a genre. Which means that it's pretty difficult for me to find books anymore unless they have a giant marketing arm behind them, sigh, because I just don't have six hours per week to spend looking for things all over the bookstore.
Anyway, these are some of my favorite books off the top of my head:
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
The Secrets of Jin-Shei, by Alma Alexander
Til We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis
Turtle Moon, by Alice Hoffman
Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The Bonesetter's Daughter, by Amy Tan
Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad
The Sunne in Splendour, by Sharon Kay Penman
The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
The Virgin Blue, by Tracy Chevalier
I'm not sure that this is a great representative list, as it seems to be biased towards fantasy/magical realism/etc., when I've liked a lot of weird genre benders in all sorts of permutations, but it's what I can come up with. Anyway, I'm less concerned with "does this book succeed at every level of craft" than "is this book in some way unlike every other book that's ever been written." (Like, I enjoyed The Passage even though it had a lot of narrative problems, just because it was weird and unexpected. But not stylistically weird; that's a no-go for me.) I'd particularly love to hear of some lesser-known gems that I may not be exposed to otherwise.
