The Novice Book-shopper's Item

Nov 19 15:01 UTC 1999

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?

response 2 of 29:

Nov 19 15:47 UTC 1999

        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.

response 4 of 29:

Nov 19 17:37 UTC 1999

  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.

response 8 of 29:

Nov 20 05:19 UTC 1999

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. :)

response 10 of 29:

Nov 20 08:51 UTC 1999

   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.

response 12 of 29:

Nov 20 16:16 UTC 1999

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.

response 14 of 29:

Nov 20 23:23 UTC 1999

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...

response 16 of 29:

Nov 21 13:07 UTC 1999

        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?

response 18 of 29:

Nov 23 04:22 UTC 1999

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.

response 20 of 29:

Nov 23 18:12 UTC 1999

  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..