Help! Fun help, I think!

[kate]

Hello there dwircle! Apologies for being absent. Life is absolutely bonkers and I shall not get into it right now because I have a task and it is a happy thing for a Saturday and a way to not think about work.

My nephew is turning 17 next Saturday. My older sister got him a poster of 100 books he should read (I think that's just a list and the poster isn't just... a big blob of text? I hope???) and 6 books off the list.

* To Kill a Mockingbird
* Grapes of Wrath
* The Shadow of the Wind
* Lord of the Flies
* The Da Vinci Code
* War and Peace

I also bought 8 books off the list.

* The Phantom Tollbooth
* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
* Beloved
* Brave New World
* The Color Purple
* 1984
* The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
* The Little Prince

And then thought... you know what? I have books that I thought were worthy and changed my life. Important books to me, books that brought insight or just taught me new ways to look at things or just deeply affected me at different points in my life (as the 8 above had).

* The Lost Language of Cranes (David Leavitt)
* Blink (Malcolm Gladwell)
* Equal Rites (Terry Pratchett)
* Written on the Body (Jeannette Winterson)
* I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)
* Nop's Trials (Daniel McCaig)
* Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)

I asked my wife, her friends, my friends, and their friends.

* Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer)
* Passage (Connie Willis)
* Wicked (Gregory Maguire)
* The Alchemist (Paulo Coehlo)
* The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
* The Folk Keeper (Franny Billingsley)
* The Art of War (Sun Tsu)
* The Dogs of Babel (Carolyn Parkhurst)

And now I am asking you fine folks. What books would you add here? Books that brought you joy, challenged you, taught you something, or made you feel something? He loves to read, so while he might not read everything, he will try, and I want to give him as wide a variety of authors and subjects as possible. Your help is GREATLY appreciated. Also, wax lyrical about your fave books, fam, I want to hear it. <33333

Comments

[lomedet]

I LOVE this game!

In no particular order, books that shook me or charmed me or educated me and/or that I find myself re-reading (or even re-buying) over and over again.

He, She and It, Marge Piercy

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

The Bone People, Keri Hulme

The Wood Wife, Terri Windling

The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey

The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell

36 Arguments for the Existence of God Rebecca Goldstein

[kate]

Ooooh, I don't know any of these and I love they're all by women! Thank you!!

Oh, I do of course know Pride and Prejudice. The rest of these sound really interesting, though, I look forward to reading them myself!

[lomedet]

You are most welcome!

and I forgot one: Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein

(for my own sanity, I'm trying to read mostly works by women/non-cis-men these days, so I'm not entirely surprised that this was the list I came up with)

[lomedet]

and of the list:

I have read Pride & Prejudice, The Wood Wife, and The Daughter of Time so many times that the books have fallen apart.

36 Arguments...is the novel I recommend when people/students ask me for a good, thinky read

I read The Sparrow at the start of grad school and it deeply shaped how I think about grief and accountability


He, She and It is Jewish mysticism + chosen family + reflection on the responsibilities and dangers of technological advancement, and a compellingly drawn near-ish future

The Bone People was assigned in my first year of college. It was deep and challenging and amazing and I have never been able to bring myself to re-read it.

Code Name Verity is both an exercise in having your expectations turned on your head, and a powerful meditation on friendship.

[kate]

Thank you thank you! These all sound amazing, I have added them to nephew's list but will likely pick up a few myself!

[silverflight8]

Gaudy Night, Nine Tailors - Dorothy Sayers
-> these are the culminations of a dozen detective novels. The prose and the many layers of allusions are so enjoyable, but Nine Tailors has this atmosphere and feeling of the small town England that Wimsey is in. And Gaudy Night really is the culmination of the series, set in a women's college in Oxford - the first, this is 1930s, when women who become scholars choose to give up the ideal of marriage and family in order to pursue it. It's a good book and underlying the whole thing is the question of principle - what it means to have them, to pursue them, etc.

A Wizard of Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K LeGuin
-> Wizard of Earthsea, I mean it was just formative. But as an adult, reading it later, too, LeGuin wanted to write a book with a fantasy protagonist who was not great because his strength or his fighting, it's entirely devoid of that. Left Hand of Darkness is both amazing for its anthropological exploration of an 'alien' species, as well as a truly epic glacier journey (think South Pole expedition!) One of the most amazing things about LeGuin is she explores alien viewpoints in a way that is very nuanced and interested; some fiction treats aliens by putting a head tentacle on and doesn't think about social aspects (or mildly changes a few things - and that's OK, they're telling stories about the struggles of running a spacecraft or whatever) but it matters a lot to LeGuin and her books reflect that.

Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie
-> About AI, what it means to be part of a big ship AI and its human bodies which are part of its mind, and what happens when it is just you left. It's very unusual and fresh and also plays with translation convention, as the Radch (main imperialist culture) has one gender and the text refers to everyone as "she" (though the people of the Radch are not female, or women)

Among Others - Jo Walton
-> Epistolary written as a diary of Mori Phelps, who after her twin dies, is sent to an boarding school in England (she is Welsh). The car crash that killed her sister injured her badly and she can't walk well, and feels really isolated from her classmates, so she writes a lot about the SF/F she's reading. There's this amazing joy and reflection I see in her, regarding the books - it's like a love letter to SF/F from the 1970s and 1980s, and it's also in itself sort of low fantasy (you can believe in the magic or not - it's ambiguous).

The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
->An imperial power took over Baru's land utterly; she remembers it happening, and decides that she is going to succeed, so she studies very hard, passes the civil exam with flying colours, and is posted to a different, also annexed land with an imperial post (an accountant). Thereupon she gets embroiled into the local rebellion there. It's very twisty and plotty.

Conrad's Fate - Diana Wynne Jones
-> Diana Wynne Jones has the most incredible writing, it's all just such a pleasure to read. This is secondary fantasy, where magic exists; Conrad starts a job as a footman/valet in a big castle on the hill and gets drawn into an adventure when Chrestomanci (character from the series) shows up. Really, DWJ is just a delight.

The Sky is Falling - Kit Pearson
-> England evacuated thousands of children not just out of London to the the countryside during the Blitz, but some were sent overseas, including to Canada. Nora and her younger brother Gavin (they're like 10 and 5 or so) get sent to Toronto, where they are taken in by a very rich older lady. I've never read anything quite so good at capturing what it felt like to be that age, Pearson absolutely nails the scared and angry and confused feelings about being moved, the way you can love your younger sibling (but not realize) and hate them for hanging around you all the time being drooly and needy, the beginnings of wanting independence and exploration, etc. It's just so well done.

Hawk of May - Gillian Bradshaw
-> Arthurian literature about Gawain. It's got a little touch of fantasy in it, but mostly I really love Bradshaw's characters - very much noble but not in the way that it's sometimes interpreted (raw power, elaborate courtesy), but an inner goodness, I guess. It's just really relaxing to read. More grounded in Wales/England also.

Most of these gave me joy and also left me with very strong feelings/I revisit them. Definitely a major bias towards female authors and fantasy, but that's only to be expected :) Also I have a different list for the kid lit that shaped me, but since he is sixteen maybe he's not as interested in those - I kinda got caught at the right age for em, and I am not sure they're as influential later on. But these ones I listed, most of them I read once I was an adult and I felt like a slightly different person afterwards. It's a lot rarer to have that happen as I get older (I think I have gotten pickier over the years, inevitably - and I've hit 100+ books read a year sometimes, so I have read a lot, and stuff that is revolutionary or novel at age 8 with 20 books under your belt, is somewhat different a decade or more later.)

Anyway. I hope your nephew enjoys the books. I know there is a poster with scratch off detailing so you can visually chart the progress, but while it was cool, so many of the titles were just meh (the standard classical lit, a lot of which I've read, and which leans very hard on some demographics and not other, and also tends to be a bit joyless) so I passed on buying it. But I think about it sometimes! :P It was a very cool poster and I love the concept.

[kate]

Oh, thank you so much! I meant to include Ursula LeGuin, so thanks for that reminder. I've also read the DWJ one, thanks for that reminder too! So much good stuff here, thank you thank you!

[silverflight8]

Always happy to ramble about my favourite books!

[jjhunter]

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, in particular 'Memory', which taught me more about how to recover from grave, life-changing mistakes in a way where I can live with myself afterwards than most books more explicitly about ethics and morality that I have encountered

Seconding the strong rec for the Ancillary Justice trilogy, which may have sprouted from a seed of 'but what if Octavian/Augustus didn't have to find a worthy successor but could keep being emperor forever?? IN SPACE' but has far, far surpassed that. (See also bironic's extraordinary Ancillary Justice fan book trailer.)

I'm really surprised not to see anything by Octavia Butler on the list already - I would put her books as having a really strong, lasting impact (with a major resurgence right now, in fact!) in a way that's now eclipsing works like 'Ender's Game'. Hard to pick just one, but I've been thinking about 'Parable of the Sower' a lot lately, as well as 'Kindred'.

The Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear is a fictional mystery series set between WWI and WWII in Britain (and eventually further flung locals) featuring a psychologist and investigator who also happens to be a young woman carrying her share of war trauma who goes about not only solving but helping the community resolve tragedies that are often rooted in past war trauma. The research is impeccable (the author grew up in a family heavily impacted by both world wars), the characters change and grow over time in very compelling ways, and I absolutely adored the voice: the author has the kind of insight into how humans tick and what can heal them that befits a character of Maisie Dobbs' skills, and it's a genuine pleasure to share in that POV and learn from it over the course of the series. There are also fantastic audiobooks available, and the cover art is by an engraver who really knows his craft, so both physical and digital variants are a delight.

ETA: also seconding Le Guin, DWJ, and Dorothy Sayers! I've been meaning to do a full Le Guin reread soon, actually - I read (and reread) all of her works relatively young, and I'm very curious how they'll land for me as an adult. They've been so formative that it feels a little peculiar to think there are people who have never read her works yet?

[kate]

You know I had a bit about Ender's Game in there - it was one of my first sci fi experiences, and so very formative for me, but I am so torn about it now, because Orson Scott Card is a shithead. So I debated whether or not I wanted to make that one of the books I bought. Octavia Butler as a substitution is a great idea, thank you for that!

And all of these sound very excellent, thank you so much! (I've always thought I'd make my way to Vorkosigan and just haven't got there yet. Maybe soon!)

[worlds_of_smoke]

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot -- Okay, you didn't ask for non-fiction books, but this is one of my most favorite books of all time, so :P

"Chime" by Frannie Billingsley -- such a completely perfect representation of the inner landscape of someone who's been abused. The hopeful ending broke my heart and put it back together again, but I still end up sobbing every time I try to read it.

"Three Parts Dead" by Max Gladwell -- amazingly well-written non-European fantasy. *____* This book is the first written, but "Last First Snow" is the first chronologically, afaik.

"The Goblin Emperor" by Katherine Addison -- such a quiet, comforting read. <3 <3 <3

[kate]

Oh man, I thought I DID say 'yes definitely include non-fiction' (some of my own are non-fiction too!) and the Henriette Lacks book is SO GOOD - an excellent suggestion, thank you! Thanks for all of these, much appreciated!

[dungeonmarm]

I was going to add "Dogs of Babel" but I see it's already there! My contribution, then, shall be two books of poetry:

"The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai", translated by Bloch and Mitchell
Amichai's poetry, translated by this pair, opened my eyes to poetry for the first time. 'The Diameter of the Bomb' and 'From the book of Esther I filtered the sediment', both in this collection, were in a textbook I was issued in 10th and 11th grade, one of those massive literature texts with more than could be properly taught in just two semesters. I read the whole text in the first couple months of 10th grade, if i recall correctly, and these two poems by Amichai were the standouts. The language was easy to access, the soul of the author was on display, the messages were profound. I sought out more of his work and was not disappointed.


"Delights and Shadows", Ted Kooser
Kooser uses simple but extremely evocative language to paint humble images of real life with exquisite attention to detail? And it makes every little gesture a beautiful important thing. The washing of hands, the tying of a tie, a jar of buttons, he magnifies them by describing them with loving attention. And a whole collection of these poems sends the message that maybe everything is beautiful, everything is important.

[kate]

Hahahaha yup, added that from slack, so of course!

Thank you SO MUCH for the poetry recs! I have been debating whether to include poetry; it's not Gabe's thing, but he does like to read, and he likes words, so I think if I could find the right intro material it might be right up his alley. I'll give these a shot, thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

The two specific Amichai poems I mentioned were among the most accessible poems, for sure, the rest of the book isn't as easy-entry, at least for me when I was a poetry noob.

Kooser is super accessible, I find.

[jesse_the_k]

• How to suppress women's writing (Joanna Russ). Demonstates the uses of rhetoric -- both against a group and by that group to fight back. Written 38 years ago and still exceptionally relevant. An exceptionally useful prequel to any higher education, as Russ shines a bright light on the bullshit industry.

• The Periodic Table (Primo Levi). A chemist, inspired by 21 elements, meditates on life and science. A prisoner of Auschwitz ponders how he and how his torturers survived. Swerving between memoir and fiction, humanities and science.

• Beloved (Toni Morrison). Magical realism demonstrates how chattel slavery destroys humanity, and how some people can survive even so.

[kate]

Oh, excellent, thank you! Beloved is one of the books I have bought, yes! I am really interested in the Russ, I will probably get that for myself and pass it along, heh.

Thanks so much for the recs!

[grammarwoman]

Hi hi hi!

Several of the ones I would rec have already been listed (The Goblin Emperor, the Vorkosigan series, Ancillary Justice).

I would add:

Terry Pratchett's Discworld - it's a loooooong, delicious series that switches POV focus amongst different character types, so at least one is bound to please.

Connie Willis, "Bellwether" - a comic novel about corporate "productivity", management crazes, and creating/monetizing fads that is still relevant 25 years later.

Diane Duane, The Tale of the Five series - a beautiful fantasy series about power, grief, finding your purpose, and coming to terms with trauma, with found family all over the place.


ETA: Oh! I almost forgot Martha Wells' "Murderbot" series - a grumpy (and fannish) cyborg hacks their governor control module to gain freedom from their corporate overlords' commands, and proceeds to discover feelings and loyalty and other icky humanish attachments.

[kate]

Oooh, thank you! I did get him Equal Rites, which is a discworld novel; I thought about which part of the series might interest him because once you read one, you're generally hooked.

I also got him Passage by Connie Willis (that was my wife's suggestion), so I'm happy to see another recommendation from her on here.

Also I ADORE Diane Duane and am upset at myself for not thinking to include something by her, so thanks for the reminder!

I have heard much about the Muderbot series but not read it, so that's a good reminder for me, too!

Thanks so much!