Let's recommend books to each other!

One of the things I've found most personally validating about this community is a strong commonality of tastes and interests.  My mind cranks up all of its gears to contemplate and try to comprehend parralel realities, karmic sequences and on & on.  My hearts wellspring flows feeling shared past life bonds, telepathy and resonances deeper than mundane reality.

 

I really dig a good book, especially now that I'm with my parents for maybe a few months and am kinna isolated in small-town new england. I don't have really any established friendships in 50 miles so I want to keep company with the ghosts of authors.  I feel like y'all probably are into really fascinating, engrossing, tasteful literature.  I am too!

 

Yesterday I finished reading Phillip K Dick's The Man In The High Castle and was so into !! Dick explores a parralel reality where the axis powers have won world war II, have divided North America into vassal states, the I-Ching is ubiquitious and there's much tension between the nazis and japanese.  All the while the main characters own internal realities are beginning to disintegrate.  so horrific & beautiful!

 

I got some other Phillip K Dick books I'm going to get through and then maybe some Octavia Butler.  I read Age of Reason in new orleans and loved it, so more Sartre too.  Blah blah blah, enough about what I've been reading, what have you been reading and think other people would dig reading too??

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Permalink Reply by Bobby on September 28, 2011 at 9:12pm

Jondalf, speaking of Tim Leary, have you ever heard of or even know of something called "The League"?

Jondalf Thrasher said:


Christian, Dick was doing a LOT more than just Acid.  I knew and supplied him with some of his 'stuff'.  He lived close to the Hog Farm (Wavy Gravy's Crew) for a while, on San Pablo in West Berkeley, so he was right on my way. My 'crew', Tim Leary's son Jack, the CIA and assorted Psychedelic Missionary types 'ran' Berkeley and most of Nor Cal, from '72 to about '85. 

Permalink Reply by Elaine on September 29, 2011 at 2:29am

Hey Violet

 

I have been doing a ton of reading my whole life, and recently more than ever. I'm especially trying to broaden my tastes, and trying out books I've not read before. I recently Joined www.goodreads.com to keep track of what I read, and it also gives really cool recommendations, based on what you enjoy as well as on what your friends are reading. So maybe we can all hook up there. Would love to get more input on various books from everyone.

 

As for Dick, some of his books I loved, some I can't bare to read. LOL 

Permalink Reply by Evelin on October 14, 2011 at 2:40pm

Hi Violet and all,

 

The little I've read of Philip K. Dick can be very interesting, philosophically, but indeed creepy.

There's one story where the world is taken over by ants or some other insects, and a human, panicking in a house about to be invaded, is having a discussion with a spider. The spider says its species gets along well with birds, so the spiders will try to negotiate a deal with the birds, and says to the human, "So maybe we can save you." The human already hears the ants coming in and asks the spider nervously, "Are you sure you can help? They're here already." The spider replies, "Oh, I didn't mean you in particular, I meant your species."

To me this helped to illustrate the difference between sentient souls and hive souls! I know it's more complicated than that, but hell of a good image.

 

The only other sci-fi I've ever read is Ursula K. Le Guin.

She has been accused of being really a philosopher and only disguising that with sci-fi. But that's why I like her, and the universe she describes is very well constructed, thorougly thought through and ethically sound (unlike that of Harry Potter, for instance...).

To me, her Earthsea Trilogy is very much about an Old Soul battling one's inner demons, learning the big picture balance and how to interfere only when absolutely necessary, even if you are a very powerful wizard.

Permalink Reply by Kathryn on October 14, 2011 at 8:20pm
I won't go into the long list of books I have enjoyed but I just finished 'Drawing in the Dust" by Zoe Klein and it completely mesmerized me! Superbly written, a fascinating premise very well explored, and beautifully told. Here is a link to the book: http://www.zoeklein.com/zklein-dust-synopsis.htm It is about an American archaeologist working in Israel who follows what appears to be her intuition to excavate in the basement of a haunted house. She risks the ridicule of her colleagues and her professional career but the discovery is as significant as the Dead Sea Scrolls - the real tomb of the prophet Jeremiah containing the coffin with his bones and the bones of a woman in an eternal embrace, plus 3 jars of scrolls - one written by this formerly unknown woman.

The author herself is a Rabbi and she has a wonderful sensitivity to the 3 religions in Jerusalem - Christian, Jew and Arab and one of the more positive perspectives of the Israeli-Palestinian situation I have ever seen. She has written one other book - the predecessor to this one in many ways - called the Scroll of Anatiya - Anatiya being the identity of the woman buried with Jeremiah.

There is a haunting touch of mysticism and essence contact throughout this book. I highly recommend it. In many ways it turns out to be a romance - but a very different romance than any formulaic novel out there.
Permalink Reply by Janet Elam on October 15, 2011 at 11:38am

I'm reading the latest installment in the George R R Martin series -- have been hooked in until midway through this book but now -- please finish it already George! 

I'm also reading Neil Stephenson's Reamde. I have enjoyed all of his books also even though they are so complicated at times that I really have to concentrate to follow all the plot lines. 

(I have different books on different devices and at various locations so I always have something to pick up wherever I am.)

I have been hooked on the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series for what -- 20 years now? More? -- and it should finally conclude next year. Once Brandon Sanderson took over writing the conclusion of that series after Robert Jordan died, I looked into Sanderson's books and I like them quite a lot.

But I have to say that the very best books I've read in the last couple of years have been the Stieg Larsson Millenium Trilogy, beginning with the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It is a shame that Larsson died after the last one was published because I would have read anything he wrote after that.

Permalink Reply by Maxim on October 15, 2011 at 7:43pm

Janet, did you say Stieg Larsson and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?  Passion mode coming on.  I read all the books in the Millenium Trilogy and read them again, then went back and savored certain passages. And I also saw the movies a couple of times.  I was absolutely enamored, infatuated and enraptured by Lisbeth Salander, the main character, and saw her as an archetype representing our society  as it moves from young to mature:  She was tough and would take on anyone, was technically proficient, sexually liberated yet wounded in the heart and had quite the time sharing her love, and so kept herself isolated as she kept her eye on others.

Others have commented that the journalist Michael Blomqvist who was not only an idealistic and competent investigator but a magnet for women represented Larsson's alter ego.  Noomi Rapace who played Lisbeth Salander in the movies thought that Lisbeth also represented his alter ego.  She also said she had arguments with the director who wanted her to "show" more of Lisbeth when in fact her simple silence alone might be more in character.  With that in mind it did seem like she over acted at times though I loved her just the same.

Being that the original title of the book was Men who Hate Women, it can be seen that Larsson was very much a feminist and created several strong women... giving one the privilege to being married to one man while having a lover that her husband approved of. There is one scene where Lisbeth turns the tables on a rapist in a very graphic way.  Maybe the original title should have been A Man who Loves Women.

Rating: 4 galaxies

Permalink Reply by Violet on January 28, 2012 at 6:41pm

before leaving new orleans i read suttree by cormack mccarthy and his prose stylings blew my mind like a tumbleweed all over streets of his semi-autobiographical universe.  reading mists of avalon right now which i'm kinna embarassed to be enjoying as much as i am cuz it's totally cheesy and stuff but also i'm like "why haven't i been reading more fantasy over the past 15 years?  why did i allow the FANTASTIC aspects of my imagination to WITHER on the vine???" so i've began inadvertantly taking a sci-fi writing class at uc berkeley (more of an elective or club) and am gunna try mentally doodling more starting w/ a single image and fractaling story around it, also going to libraries and researching demons & fairies.

Permalink Reply by Maxim on January 28, 2012 at 7:04pm

Love hearing from you Violet.  Maybe we'll stumble into each other as I am just across the bay.

Permalink Reply by Martha on January 28, 2012 at 8:02pm

OMG I adored the Mists of Avalon.  I even kinda named my daughter Morgan after Morgaine. :)  I have not reread it in a long time. The sequels were not nearly as good.

Permalink Reply by Kathryn on January 28, 2012 at 9:22pm

Oh, I'd forgotten about this thread!  I just finished a book that I wanted to tell people  - Michael people - about because I thought you would 'understand it' best.  Early January we visited a bookstore in Atlanta that had on sale some of the  'not for sale' Advance Reader's Editions of books that are scheduled for publication and these are the 'proofing' copies.  I picked up this one that is scheduled to go to print in February  - a first novel by Jodi Meadows called "Incarnate".  It is a Young Adult book but satisfying enough for an adult reader.  It is the first in a series that will eventually be published. Anyway, here is the blurb from the back:

"ANA is NEW.  For thousands of years in Range, a million souls have been reincarnated over and over, keeping their memories and experiences from their previous lifetimes intact.  When Ana was born, one of those souls vanished - and no one knows why.  This was the first time Ana had been born.

"Even Ana's own mother thinks she is a 'no-soul', an omen of worse things to come, and has kept her isolated away from society.  To escape her seclusion and to learn whether she will be reincarnated, Ana travels to the capital city of Heart, but its citizens are suspicious and afraid of what her presence means.  When dragons and sylph attack the city, many believe Ana is to blame.

Sam believes that Anna is a new soul, good and worthwhile. Can he love someone who may live only once?  Will Ana's enemies - human and creature alike - let them be together? Ana needs to uncover the 'mistake' that gave her someone else's life, but her quest for information seems to threaten the peace of Heart and many fear her discovery may destroy the promise of reincarnation for all".

So, I thoroughly enjoyed this book!  I ended up reading it until the wee small hours of the morning even when I knew I needed to be up early - and it was worth it!    I highly recommend it.  It will apparently be available as an ebook as well at www.epicreads.com  and will be published by Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publisher.  http://www.amazon.com/Incarnate-Jodi-Meadows/dp/0062060759

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