Comments | vellum: rec me a book!

vellum

rec me a book!

May 10, 2010 04:43

there's that author-of-the-week fanfic rant making the rounds, and i'm not gonna add anything to that because i think it's pretty obvious what my stance is. and now grabaldon is on the list of authors i'll now sneer at. (short list! stephenie meyer is on top. that guy who wrote 'the crimson petal and the red' is on there, too. what an awful book.) ( Read more... )

Comments 11

speccygeekgrrl May 10 2010, 16:10:34 UTC

Have you given Charlaine Harris a shot? Her novels are the basis for True Blood. I think the first one is Dead Until Dawn... and if you get hooked, there are ten books in the series. They're popcorn reading, I can get through one in a day (and usually that's how it goes.)

Or, if you don't mind non-contemporary mysteries, pick up a Sherlock Holmes novel, they're really interesting. :)

vellum May 10 2010, 20:50:03 UTC

i have that giant red holmes anthology that i finished several years ago :) i was really meh about the adaptation, mostly because rdj doesn't do anything for me (is that weird?). i will give harris a shot, thanks!

speccygeekgrrl May 10 2010, 21:27:07 UTC

If you didn't like the movie adaptation, you should give the Granada TV series a shot. I personally love RDJ but once you see Jeremy Brett as Holmes you'll find it hard to imagine Holmes as anyone else in the world. Also the adaptations are directly from the stories, unlike the movie.

hinazuke May 10 2010, 16:23:30 UTC

It's sad how short our attention spans have grown for non-electronic written media, me included. I've had Sherlock on my bedside table for months now and haven't gotten past the first five pages without falling asleep.

vellum May 10 2010, 20:51:54 UTC

the hound of the baskervilles is really gay, if that helps.

no, seriously, there's a lot of personal space violation and meaningful touches and emotional pining. my favorite.

speccygeekgrrl May 10 2010, 21:30:41 UTC

If you are a slash fan, you might find Decoding the Subtext a helpful guide/reason to pick it up again. There's an awful lot of subtext in a lot of the stories. (I think my favorite moment might be Holmes waking Watson up in The Speckled Band, which is one of the best of the short stories.)

cacklebang May 10 2010, 18:40:56 UTC

Have you tried Tana French's In The Woods? Contemporary mystery set in Ireland with an extremely unreliable narrator. I wasn't that impressed with the ending, but I loved the rest of the book.

vellum May 10 2010, 21:10:25 UTC

i have not! thanks.

brighteyed_jill May 10 2010, 19:50:41 UTC

In the "riveting narrative" category, you might consider Watership Down, which is so not a children's book, never mind that it features rabbits. It's about leadership, dammit! Er... I read almost nothing that counts as contemporary novels, so I'm pretty useless here. Persepolis?

vellum May 10 2010, 21:14:17 UTC

i will not mind the rabbits :) and i have persepolis, and the sequel, too. persepolis is probably ruined for me because i had to write a paper on it and list all the things she could have done better.

brighteyed_jill May 10 2010, 21:58:00 UTC

Ah yes. Writing papers on anything kind of rips away the ability to enjoy it as a piece of entertainment. I think it's been a loooooong time since I've read anything written after 1900... Sad. Ooo, have you read Push by Sapphire? Y'know, the one the movie Precious is based on? If you can get into the writing style (which is a bit difficult at first), it's a great story.

Ooo wait, I got one! After Dachau, by Daniel Quinn. Compelling narrative, mystery, contemporary. Look at me, I read books!