It occurred to me recently that, apart from school, I hadn't done any reading
in a long time.  When last I was reading for pleasure regularly, I had a
pretty good idea of what The Books To Read were: _everyone_ read "A Wrinkle
In Time" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and then later _everyone_
read Tolkien and Asimov, and so on.  But I stopped liking science fiction much
at around the time when all my reading started being for English class, and
now that I have the time and the inclination to read for myself again, I'm
realizing I haven't paid attention in too long and I don't know _what's_ good.

What are (recent, non-school-type) books that you'd consider must-reads?

How do you decide what looks like a book worth buying?

29 responses total.

My favorite author for pleasure reading is Ferrol Sams. I buy anything of
his as soon as it comes out, then I later but the paperback. He makes me
laugh out lous while I'm reading.

        Fiction or nonfiction?

        Sometimes I pick up an author because I've heard they're worth reading,
sometimes because the cover or dust jacket looks interesting or reads well,
and sometimes because I'm just intruiged.

  I only read what Oprah tells me to..

  No, no, just kidding!

  I generally go on word-of-mouth.  I've got a large family (7 siblings)
  about half of whom are compulsive readers.  If any of us find something we
  particularly enjoy, we pass it around among the reading half of the family.

My book tastes tend to be pretty eclectic, but focus on SF, fantasy, stuff
about Japan, and history.

Usually, I just find a book that catches my eye, or by word-of-mouth from
friends. I also found the Library of Alexandria to be a useful guide for book
suggestions. The URL is:

http://www/alexlit.com

After you enter the names of several books you've read, and rate them, it'll
offer you a selection of recommendations.

This response has been erased.

  It occurs to me tht my book recommendation list hasn't changed much
  lately, as the things it occurs to me to recommend are the same things
  I'd've recommended a year or two ago.  Ever since I gave away the TV
  I've been reading a lot, but nothing seems particularly memorable..
  I gues I need to stretch out a little more..

Visit the library, not the book store; the choice is better.  If you like
mysteries: Sue Grafton, but start at A.  I like Robert Parker's Spencer
stories, but again I prefer reading them in order of writing (I've got a
list somewhere).  Dick Francis.  Dave Duncan's Saga of the Seventh Sword
(a trilogy) was good.  I liked the Uplift series, but I can't remember
the author's name, nor the second title: Sundiver, _____, The Uplift War.

Unfortunately, you said "recent"; very little of what I read is recently
published.  Except Harry Potter, of course. :)

I just saw a mention of Ed Beach, which reminded me of _Run_Silent,_Run_Deep.
Not new, but still good.  And somehow, that reminded me of Jared Diamond's
_Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel:_The_Fate_of_Human_Societies_.  (Probably because
the mention of Beach was on MilHist-L, a military history mailing list.)

   I'm lusting after "Angela's Ashes" by frank McCourt, Amazon.com just gave
me 2 $10 gift certs to use any way I want. I hope to start it when it arrives.

  re #8:  I do visit the library on a regular basis -- I don't buy many
  books these days, partly for budgetary reasons, mostly because I've
  learned over the years that any books I accumulate must be stored and
  periodically moved..  

  The "Uplift" series is by David Brin and the second book is "Startide
  Rising", which I think won either a Hugo, a Nebula, or both..  I also
  liked the second series ("Brightness Reef", "Infinity Shore", "Heaven's
  Reach")

I stopped by the Library of Alexandria site, and thought it looked like a good
idea....heavier on the sci-fi/fantasy than I'd like, and I thought it was
interesting to see their choice of non-sci-fi/fantasy authors -- Dr. Seuss,
Robert Frost, Bill Waterson, and T.S. Eliot seemed to be the main ones.

  So can you be a little more specific about what kinds of books you like?
  If you're hoping to get useful recommendations, it'll help enormously to
  narrow things down a little bit..

Well, unfortunately, the last time I was doing any amount of reading on my
own, I _was_ reading a lot of sci-fi, but since then I've kind of gotten sick
of it.  I went back to Lord of the Rings a little while ago, and I thought
that was okay; I made an attempt at Dune and couldn't wade through it; other
than that, all the science fiction I've seen recently struck me as kind of
boring.  Ursula LeGuinn's "Always Coming Home" was good, but I'd count
that more as fantasy, and pretty atypical fantasy at that; I didn't like
her Earthsea books at all.

It also doesn't help much that most of what I've really liked reading in class
recently has been epic poetry - The Odyssey, The Inferno, The
Metamorphoses....   Don't suppose anyone's writing much of that anymore.

As far as novels go,... my parents are big Dickens fans, so I've made a
few stabs at Our Mutual Friend and Great Expectations (their two
favorites).  I got the impression that if I were reading them in weekly
instalments in the newspaper, I would have liked them a lot, but they
weren't the sort of thing I felt like just sitting down and reading.

I read "Duplicate Keys" by Jane Smiley (I think that was her name anyway)
over the summer, and got a short ways into "A Thousand Acres," both of
which I really liked.  Also a collection of short stories by Ethan Canin,
whcih I thought was pretty good.  Those are the only things I've read
recently that have really grabbed me...

  What things do you like most about the books you like?  Story?  
  Use of language?  Narrative voice?  Oddball humor?  Weepy melodrama?

  Do you have any particular prejudices against mainstream stuff,
  considering genre fiction too lowbrow?  Do you avoid "classic" books
  because they're too highbrow and you just want something entertaining?

  There're books for all kinds of tastes (and many kinds of tastelessness..)

        I've found that I look for different things out of different authors.
There's no analogy I can offer but to say I have different tastes in Dadaism
than I have in the Hudson River school, and different tastes in fiction than
I do in fantasy or allegorical fiction.

        The common ground between the best books I've read:  concisety, the
ability to say much with a few carefully chosen words, strong narrative, vivid
storytelling, and a fair amount of depth of thought.  That is to say, on the
last item, that I've found in all of my favourite books small threads or
sub-themes, that, when followed elsewhere, lead to interesting new trains of
thought.

        Anyone else?

I guess more what I wanted to ask was, how do y'all decide what's worth
reading?  Book reviews usually make everything look good, doubly so for the
ones on the backs of the books themselves, and when I hear an author
reccomended as similar to someone I've liked in the past, it's usually for
irrelevant reasons.

I pick up the book and skim through it.  If I like what I see, I keep
going.

Exceptions: Spenser, which I started reading because I liked the television
series.  Uplift, and several others, which I read because a friend recommended
and loaned them to me.

Most of what I pick comes from friend's recommendations. Sometimes I read
something because it's a classic. I've enjoyed most of the classics I've read
(The Peral by John Steinbeck being a notable exception.)

Oops. I meant The Pearl.

  I tend to read, roughly in order of preference:

     1)  stuff by authors whose previous works I have enjoyed..
     2)  stuff that's recommended by friends and family
     3)  stuff that looks interesting, from either cover, blurb, or review..

  Any way you slice it I still wind up reading a fair amount of mediocre
  stuff but I consume enough that that's not especially dire. 

  I'd certainly be more choosy if I only read one or two books a year,
  but I've usually got at least two or three going at a given time and
  if I get one that's a particular stinker it just gets bumped down in
  my priority queue until it either (a) is due back at the library,
  in which case it more likely than not never gets finished, or (b)
  is the only thing left to read in the house, in which case I grit my
  teeth and finish it anyway because I'm the sort of compulsive reader
  who will read product packaging or Jehovah's Witness literature if
  there's nothing else in the house..

I usually buy books that indicate to me by
certain signals that they are members of the
Order.  A kind of knowing wink of the dust
jacket, or a "Psst, over here," inaudible to
everyone else.  I wish I could be more
specific.

Re resp:20 - I'm with you on all of that.  I could almost have written
that.

Unless I'm going after a known author I'll give it the three
page test.  If I don't want to know more after reading three
pages near the middle of the book I don't buy the book.

  Who said anything about buy?  

  I'd never read half of the things I take a chance on if I had to shell
  out $7-$30 for the privelege..  I mostly borrow from the public library
  or from friends..  If I *REALLY* like a book I'll buy a copy and then
  give it to someone I think would enjoy it..

  (I used to hoard books, but one or two floods and many, many student-era
  moves convinced me that I don't really need to hold on to a large
  collection of anything that's that fragile or that heavy..)

I just noticed that this was the item orinoco had started to ask for advice
on what to try.  So I've a suggestion: _Master_and_Commander_ by 
Patrick O'Brien.  If you like a good novel, good history, and a good war,
check it out.  It's Napoleonic era, based on contemporary reports.

I said "buy".  Right there.  In response #23. ;-)

ROFL!!!

I would give a big recomendation to Leslie marmon Silko.  She a native
american writer who lives in Tucson Arizona who writes lyrical (almost
like poetry) stories about people in the area.  Ceremony is shorter
(a novella really) and a good introduction to her work, Alamanac of the
Dead is long (like 700 pages) and a really intense book, almsot too intense.

        Oddly enough, I just picked that up when I was last in Phoenix.

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