RE: Book Recommendations?
January 21, 2015 at 4:30 pm
(This post was last modified: January 21, 2015 at 4:33 pm by thesummerqueen.)
(January 21, 2015 at 10:08 am)SteelCurtain Wrote: I wouldn't want to subject her to that fucking Tom Bombadil...
You shut your mouth.
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Non-Fiction Guaranteed to Be Interesting Depending On What You're Interested In:
Food
Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: The movie was absolutely charming. The book is a lot more "real" about Julie's foibles and selfish nature and the effects of eating so much butter. I related to it for being nearly the same age, but also as a food lover and cook.
Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses: Whimsical but brimming with folklore, stories, and poetry. Allende discusses aphrodisiacs, orgies and the love of food not necessarily as if aphrodisiacs *actually* work, but with humor for what people *thought* worked and a generous nod to the sensual nature of food in general. This is one of my most precious books - there's something about the paperback copy that smells of spice and secrets - and if you love food it will leave you aroused and happy.
A History of the World in 6 Glasses: Spirits, Beer, Wine, Coffee, Tea, and Coke. I love looking at history through the lens of trade and how what we consume shapes our perceptions. The book was well-paced and interesting.
Botany
The Botany of Desire: I have problems with Pollan's stance on organics, but his unabashed interest in plants/food is unparalleled. He goes through four topics, Sweetness - the apple, Beauty - the tulip, Intoxication - cannabis, and Control - the potato, to discuss how humans and plants have intertwined their evolution.
The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks: Amy Stewart also has a book called "Wicked Plants" that is fantastic if you like botany, but in a more general sense this is a great resource for people who like plants OR like booze. She has a great conversational writing style.
History
Mornings on Horseback: I FUCKING LOVE TEDDY ROOSEVELT. Now that THAT is out of the way, everyone should read this book regardless because the Roosevelt family itself was fascinating. I've never encountered such energetic, boisterous 'royalty' so bent on being good people. Teddy himself is so much more a force of nature than people understand via popular culture.
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York: Do you like Sherlock Holmes? You need to read about a couple of real-life counterparts. Blume manages with a few strokes to invoke the era and the feeling of discovery as they piece together the methods to chemistry their way through murder and mayhem. I count this as one of my favorite "history of science" books.
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo: I'm one of those dorks who rereads The Count of Monte Cristo each year. This was fantastic. The book recounts the larger than life adventures of the man who inspired many of Dumas' stories, and peels through the sticky race relations on the other side of the Atlantic, which were at once both just as nasty and yet more civilized than America's.
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World: I'm going to sell this seemingly dry tome to you this way: I never knew a book about a disease that makes you shit your brains out would hold me rapt and racing through to see how the investigatory efforts resolved themselves.
Sex
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex Besides the fact that it's Mary Roach, who is a fantastic science writer, she interviews a woman who can have orgasms on demand. Do you really need further endorsement? I read this while on the elliptical. It's that interesting, and that funny.
Psychology
Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives: An even-handed approach to many of the cognitive dissonance problems we face here, as well as looking into real-life conspiracies by the tobacco industry and similar into downplaying the dangers of their products in order to keep selling.
You Are Not So Smart: A very approachable way of beginning to learn about cognitive biases. The podcast by the same name is just as nice.
General/Humor/You Should Read Because Reasons
You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News Shocking but Utterly True Facts: Cracked.com is an amazing site. This book is an amazing book. Not only is it dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt's left testicle for its magnanimity in not swallowing the earth in the black-hole-weight of its own poundage, it's also hysterical. Before we broke up, my boyfriend and I took several very long car rides together. That's two snippy people locked in a confined space for 6+ hours. He had me read out loud to him sometimes, and this was one of those books. Needless to say, we survived. You will end up laughing so hard you cry. I just about went comatose laughing over a part referencing Anderson Cooper's silver pubes. Get it.
A Walk in the Woods: How Bryson managed to weave science, history, social commentary, and some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments into this book as deftly as he did defies explanation. You don't have to like hiking or the outdoors. You just have to like hearing one man's hilarious recounting of stupid mistakes and brow-furrowing human encounters. I was depressed as fuck, post-break-up snot-crying, popped this sucker into the stereo, and was soon laughing aloud to myself in my own car driving up to my parents' for Thanksgiving. It is that universally funny.
Bitch in a Bonnet: Reclaiming Jane Austen From the Stiffs, the Snobs, the Simps and the Saps, Volume 1: I'm tired of people bitching about how boring Jane Austen is. Jane Austen was a fucking genius. Why? Because she was fantastic at capturing the human condition. Her books have inspired human foible stories in more ways than her detractors generally realize, just like Shakespeare. This guy does a fantastic job at critiquing her writing, but also highlighting just how special she and her characters are. If you think these stories should be thrown in the garbage bin for being outdated, you should also go watch The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on youtube - Pride & Prejudice TOTALLY translates to modern times (and not just in a Bridget Jones sort of way).
Fully Endorsed Fiction
The Historian: Everyone is giving you classics. I won't give you a classic. I'll give you a book based on a classic that manages to capture all the quiet slow horror of the classic, but also the wonderful dry, dusty aroma of ancient books and hunger for learning. This book makes a fantastic audiobook, especially, as it tells a story in two different timelines with clever two-person narration. Dracula never had so thoughtful a place in a novel. This is no Anne Rice novel regarding vampires. There is no glorification of him as vampire. He is not sexy. He is horrific, just as Stoker's Dracula was meant to be. But he's also compelling. What would you do, if you had nothing but time to collect libraries and libraries of learning? "My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side."
Kushiel's Dart: Hands down this is one of my favorite trilogies ever. It is an alternate history of epic scope - spanning continents and multiple court intrigues. Phaedre is the female protagonist we deserve: She is human and vain and intelligent and brave. I never met a character like her besides Leia. Also, there's a lot of kink in this book. Carey not only makes sex a beautiful thing - something that can heal, give insight, or lend grace as well as pleasure - but she brings dark desires like BDSM into the light in a glorious way. Subtly, Phaedre, and later in another trilogy, Imriel, reflect the deep understanding into human psychology and compassion I've found in people who take kink seriously. But it still manages to be enjoyably smutty in a delightfully tasteful way.
The Night Circus: Look, if you haven't seen me gushing about this yet, you're doing well avoiding me. This book is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read, and I don't understand how a book that mentions child abuse and involves heart break and cruelty manages to do that. It is suffused with the caramel salty-sweet delight of nostalgia and wonder. It is a romance that walks the line between exquisite and real and it's a fantasy story involving magic that stirs the imagination. Do you know how some books start with a simple sentence - a very simple one that somehow manages to suck you right back down into the wonderful feeling of the story despite their utter obviousness? One of my favorites is "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." I promise you once you read this book, you will get the same feels from it. "The circus arrives without warning."
The Name of the Wind: One of the smartest fantasy books to come out in a long time, Rothfuss is not only a kick ass human being (he does oodles for charity) but the story of Kvothe and his Hero's Journey is so far removed from the usual tropes and trials we're tired of reading that it's like coming to fantasy for the first time. The magic system is awesome - something bordering on quantum mechanics in some areas. The characters are lovable and relatable. And like all the best stories, it has some utterly, utterly sad moments. I can't wait to read the last book in the trilogy when it comes out.
Redshirts: Brace yourselves: I don't really like Star Trek. In fact, sometimes I hate it. When you're done being shitty nerds about it, listen up: you need to read this book. Or rather, listen to Wil Wheaton read it to you. This book is too clever by half. You start listening and think "god this is dumb" because of how simplistic the writing is, and then you realize it's because fucking Star Trek was terrible at many moments. And then the fun starts. Scalzi rips apart everything wrong and right with sci-fi series like Star Trek in the most charming, fucking funny, and intelligent way. Like, I was at work and sometimes put my head on my desk in order to laugh, because if I laughed so hard I drooled, at least no one would see it when I was in that position. That's how great this audiobook is. I don't care if you don't like Star Trek. As long as you have a passing understanding of what Star Trek is, you will enjoy this book regardless.
American Gods: If you haven't read Gaiman yet...get off your ass. If you're an atheist, and you haven't read this book yet...someone should spank you. Gaiman has one of the darkest and most sardonic understandings of mythic forms I've encountered in comics or books. The man just breathes myth and how humans respond to it. This book deals with how humans bring their gods with them, and then abandon them for new ones. What's a god to do then?
I have a billion others, but that should give you fucker a start.
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