Books for the Middle of Nowhere

March 30, 2009 5:11 PM

Novels/ book series suggestions?

I'm going to be in the middle of nowhere with limited internet access for six month. I would like to hear your suggestions for (hopefully paperback) books that I can bring with me.

I like historical fiction like the Outlander series and Pillars of the Earth. I really like interesting non-fiction such as The World Without Us and The Omnivore's Dilemma. I like time-travelly and post-apocalyptic sci-fi.

I have read and enjoyed His Dark Materials, the Harry Potter series, and Tracy Chevalier's novels.

I would especially appreciate suggestions of series, because I'll have a lot of down time. Outlander was what kept me sane during some lonely, boring, tv-less times a few years ago. I'd love to find something comparable.

posted by jschu to writing & language (46 comments total)

TWILIGHT!!111

no, but really, I definitely recommend Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game series. The order is kind of confusing, but don't let that deter you.
posted by DeltaForce at 5:16 PM on March 30 [2 favorites has favorites]

I'm a skipping record this way, but hey, the Aubrey/Maturin series sounds perfect.
posted by fleacircus at 5:18 PM on March 30

I recommend The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood for dystopian sci-fi
posted by ashaw at 5:24 PM on March 30 [2 favorites has favorites]

Peter Watts, Blindsight. Any of the last fifteen years of The Year's Best Science Fiction, edited by Dozois, which are legion at pretty much any used bookstore.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 5:25 PM on March 30

Pat Barker's "Regeneration Trilogy" are great historical novels about World War I and its aftermath.

Have you read the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin books? Or just some of them? Because if I was going to be in the middle of nowhere, I'd welcome the chance to read the whole series straight through. Magnificent historical adventures.

On the speculative fiction front, Kage Baker's "Company" series--immortal cyborgs traveling through time! For a shadowy megacorporation!--are fun reads.

If you like hard-science-y science fiction, Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space series is absorbing. Also on that front, Nancy Kress's Probability trilogy.

For good old-fashioned space-opera shoot-'em-up (with a postmodern, multicultural flair), you can't go wrong with Tobias S. Buckell's Nanagada trilogy.
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:25 PM on March 30

Time-travelly and (post?-)apocalyptic sci-fi: try Gene Wolfe. I read "The Book of the New Sun" (actually up to 4 books, depending on the edition), and loved it, and there's a bunch of other books in the same universe. You could buy the whole set and be busy for weeks.
posted by grobstein at 5:27 PM on March 30

U.S.A., by John Dos Passos. Never more relevant than now.
The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money, a trilogy that should keep you busy.
Then there's always Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe. not a series but takes
as long to get through and worth it, if you're ready. Good luck.
posted by emhutchinson at 5:48 PM on March 30

The Earthsea series by Ursula K. LeGuin might be to your liking - fantasy series sort of similar to (but a lot less bubblegum than) Harry Potter. Madeline L'Engle (A Wrinkle In Time) would be great if you were interested in stuff similar to "His Dark Materials". "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger is very good. "Slaughterhouse Five" is a classic time travel book by Kurt Vonnegut.

Trying out the Doctor Who television series might be right up your alley, the newest incarnation of the series has been highly entertaining and engrossing. Lots of time travel there.
posted by lizbunny at 5:51 PM on March 30 [1 favorite has favorites]

Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy.
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:53 PM on March 30

As a fellow lover of the Outlander series, I have often lamented why there isn't something else just as good. I love historical fiction and I highly recommend the mystery slanted series by Ariana Franklin, the first one is Mistress of the Art of Death. There are two more in the series, although the third just came out in hardcover. I also recommend Into the Wilderness by Sara Donati, also first in a series. Unlike the Gabaldon books, there is no time travel aspect, but there is a similar feel and attention to detail. A third historical fiction recommendation is the Josephine Bonaparte trilogy by Sandra Gulland, the first is The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.

For great dystopian SF, I second Handmaid's Tale, and also recommend Oryx and Crake also by Margaret Atwood. I also adored SF dystopian books by Sheri Tepper, particularly The Gate to Women's Country. I also recommend her award winning bizarre time travel, sf/fantasy Beauty.

For post apocalyptic reading, I recommend Into the Forest by Jean Hegland and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

For something fun and if you happen to be in the mood for something different, I highly recommed the Spellman series by Lisa Lutz. The first is The Spellman Files, available in mass market pb - I laughed out loud several times while reading all of the books. The third in this series also just came out in hardcover.

To check the order of any series try the KDL What's Next Database, you can get a list of nearly every series in order and you can search by title, author, or series title.
posted by TrickyLib at 5:57 PM on March 30

I would go with Jewell Parker Rhodes' historical novel about the life of 19th century voodoo queen Marie Laveau, called Voodoo Dreams. There are sequels that follow Laveau's lineage to present day New Orleans, called Voodoo Season and Yellow Moon.
posted by hermitosis at 5:58 PM on March 30

If your interest in historical fiction includes mysteries, Boris Akunin's Erast Fandorin series is quite fun, centered around a 19th-century Russian sleuth. The first 6 or 7 have been translated into English; I believe all but one should be in paperback.

Also in the historical mystery vein: I haven't read them (yet), but I've heard great things about Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy.
posted by scody at 6:12 PM on March 30

All of Neil Stephenson's recent stuff. Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle (3 books, 900 pages each) and Anathem all fit the bill. Together that is about 4500 very enjoyable pages for you to get through.
posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld at 6:13 PM on March 30

The Hyperion Series (4 books all together) is fantastic! You won't miss TV or the internet with the plot the characters and the author's ability to paint a picture. Spectacular! Three out of four were Hugo winners or nominees.

Time Ships is a spectacular time travel tale! Written 100 years after the H.G. Wells classic "The Time Machine" (remember the morlocks and eloi?) it picks up where the classic left off. The science (Dyson sphere, nanotechnology etc.) is very well developed--very "hard" science.

I learned more about the Battle of Gettysburg from The Killer Angels than I did in any text book.
posted by Lord Fancy Pants at 6:14 PM on March 30 [1 favorite has favorites]

Dorothy Dunnett? The Lymond Chronicles consist of six volumes of dense, intricately plotted, swashbuckling, occasionally operatic political and social drama (and, in the last volume, immensely satisfying romance) in 16th century Europe, Eurasia, and North Africa. The series focuses on Francis Crawford, Lord Lymond -- a far smarter James Bond than James himself.

The first volume is Game of Kings, which features, near the end, the best sword fight EVAH.

Warning: this series can be difficult to get into at first, thanks to Dunnett's characters' copious usage of quotes and allusions in foreign languages (mostly Latin, medieval Italian, and arcane French), none of which are footnoted or translated. And her writing style itself also requires a period of adjustment. This stopped me, at first, from completing the first book, but when I finally decided to have faith and take the plunge, I was sucked in. I finished the next 1500+ pages in probably six weeks. Amazing experience; the series haunted me for several weeks thereafter.

I also loved Outlander. Like Jaime, Lymond is larger than life, and so, in the end, is his romance with... well, I won't spoil that for you. :)
posted by artemisia at 6:19 PM on March 30

For a great mix of historical fiction with the fantastic, I really enjoyed the Temeraire series. It's set in an alternate universe where intelligent dragons exist. So the Napoleonic Wars are being fought with an air force. The first four books are in paperback, and the fifth will be out in May.
posted by weathergal at 6:27 PM on March 30

The Sparrow and its sequel Children of God were surprisingly very good.

On the (much) lighter side I enjoy reading Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series. I find them good for escaping from an otherwise stressful day.
posted by silkygreenbelly at 6:38 PM on March 30

David Wingrove's epic Chung Kuo: The Middle Kingdom; The Broken Wheel; The White Mountain; The Stone Within; Beneath the Tree of Heaven; White Moon, Red Dragon; Days of Bitter Strength; The Marriage of the Living Dark.
posted by Nanukthedog at 6:42 PM on March 30

Since you like Pullman and Rowling, you might enjoy a more adult book about magic: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It's not a series, but it is a very long book.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:50 PM on March 30 [2 favorites has favorites]

I second silkygreenbelly's suggestions, great books!
posted by TrickyLib at 6:52 PM on March 30

Hitting the more historical than the fantastic, any of the Bernard Cornwells might do. Sharpes' the main draw, but more engrossing is his take on Arthur interesting. Come to think of it, it might be exactly what you're looking for. Different, for sure. Definitely check it out. (Check out Aubrey Maturin before going- some find him beguiling, I find him a snooze, and lord knows I wanted to like him.)

For something different, then the Flashman books might appeal. They tend to get less good the longer Fraser wrote, alas.
posted by IndigoJones at 6:52 PM on March 30

Seconding Earthsea (or any of LeGuin's work; The Dispossessed is one of the great utopian novels) and Temeraire.

This question is made for one of my favorite book suggestions: Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars). The Martians is a book of related short stories. I've heard his Wild California series is also excellent but I haven't read it yet. KSR also wrote a series about climate change which was decent but not quite as fantastic as the Mars books (Antarctica, the prequel, was the best). He also wrote The Years of Rice and Salt, which is an alternate history of the world.

Marge Piercy has written a lot of books you might like. None of them are series, but check out He, She, It, or Woman on the Edge of Time, or Dance the Eagle to Sleep, which all have utopian/distopian themes. She's also great, really even better, on historical fiction, particularly Gone To Soldiers and Braided Lives. I think you'd really like her if you like historical fiction and Chevalier.
posted by min at 6:59 PM on March 30

Seconding Dorothy Dunnett. I spent most of a six-month sabbatical reading the Lymond and Niccolo series.
posted by dfan at 7:04 PM on March 30

I'd recommend James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet and American Underworld series. Both books use historical characters from the 40's through the 70's as characters and are fantastic reads.
posted by tylerfulltilt at 7:12 PM on March 30

Sherlock Holmes! You can get the Bantam Classics volume I and II-- 2 paperbacks for under $20 -- with the complete collection of novels and stories. It lasted me a good long time this winter, and I'm definitely a fast reader. Before that I read Will Thomas's Barclay and Llewellyn mysteries, and afterwards I read Laurie King's Mary Russell Holmes books. Especially with the latter two series, the mysteries were kind of secondary for me to just immersing myself in the time and place (England in the Victorian and Edwardian/1920s eras, respectively).
Classics are great for their density -- if you've got lots of time to fill, a Jane Austen novel will take you longer to read than a modern book of the same page length. Plus Jane is just wonderful.
If you like children's fantasy novels like Harry Potter, then I'd suggest pretty much anything by Diana Wynne Jones (the Chrestomanci books being my favorite) and Patricia C. Wrede.
posted by katemonster at 7:16 PM on March 30

Not SF/Fantasy, but worth a look:

- Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time (12 novels about Britain from the 20s through the 70s)

- Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet - the same story told from four different points of view in four novels

- seconding the Aubrey/Maturin series recommendations.

- John Myers Myers - Silverlock is fun because you can spent a lot of time racking your brain for the literary allusions. The Moon's Fire-Eating Daughter is less successful but still engaging.
posted by brianogilvie at 7:18 PM on March 30

Iain M. Banks is pretty interesting. His earlier work appeals more than his later, but it's all good and usually fairly long. Consider Phlebus, The Player of Games, and his latest (which I haven't yet read) Against a Dark Background are all recommended.

Vernor Vinge writes hard sci-fi space opera type stuff and won a Hugo doing it. A Fire Upon the Deep was very awesome as was A Deepness in the Sky.

Somebody upthread mentioned Gormenghast. I haven't read that but I have read China Mieville, who might have been slightly influenced by that trilogy. His novel Perdido Street Station is very readable but almost completely out of the norm for sci-fi or fantasy. It's very hard to categorize (alien Steampunk?) but is immensely enjoyable.

Must second Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon et al. Great books and long. Dan Simmons Hyperion series blew my mind and is definitely worth reading more than once. And I thoroughly enjoyed Olympos and Ilium as well.
posted by ashbury at 7:44 PM on March 30 [1 favorite has favorites]

Hmm... I think I'll do a theme of east meets west.

you might enjoy The Historian which is a complicated interlaced series of stories about Vlad Tepes, aka Dracula, and his possible survival into modern nights as a vampire, as told by a girl, through her father's memories as relayed to her, her father's professor's notes, etc. It's densely detailed and rich with history, and delves into the historical conflicts between Islam and Christianity.

There is also The Asian Saga which is complex historical fiction regarding the European presence in the Far east, especially Japan and Hong Kong. I haven't honestly read all of it, but King Rat is a classic, and Noble House was great. Heck I just found out they made the latter into a tv mini series, and I'm going to go see if Net flix has it after I finish.

Since good things come in threes, I'll also add something from my true passion, science fiction. The Chronoliths is about giant monuments to victories sent back through time from the future by an asian warlord, Kuin. I can't really explain it better without potentially ruining it, except to say it's good.
posted by gryftir at 7:47 PM on March 30

Nthing the Kim Stanley Robinson stand-alone, The Years of Rice and Salt. I did like his Mars series, but his trilogy that starts with Forty Signs of Rain knocked me out.
posted by rtha at 7:51 PM on March 30

ashbury - Ian M Bank's lattest is Matter, one of his Culture series... he's published a lot since Against a Dark Background, though I'll agree some of his earlier works are easier to get into.

Also China Meville's Perdido Street Station could be considered part of the New Weird movement.
posted by gryftir at 7:55 PM on March 30

Robin Hobb's trilogy of trilogies. Kept me up nights for weeks when I read it a couple of years ago.
posted by not that girl at 8:11 PM on March 30

Stephen King's Dark Tower series. It's both time-travelly and post-apocalyptically sci-fi and very very good.
posted by katyggls at 8:18 PM on March 30

I was going to bring up Sara Donati too (she references Gabaldon's Frasers in the book, which is kind of a nice little shout-out), but if you love Outlander, Into the Wilderness is a bit of a let down -- I think Diana Gabaldon is freakin' fantastic at what she does and it's hard for others in the genre to compete with her. I've only read the first in Donati's series though, so YMMV.
posted by pised at 8:21 PM on March 30

Seconding Cornwell's "Arthur" series (you might also consider his Grail Quest and Saxon Stories). Cornwell can be a bit formulaic at times but I keep coming back. I'm just finishing the second of Scott Lynch's "Locke Lamora" books, pretty decent overall but the first is much better than the second.
posted by MikeMc at 9:18 PM on March 30

If you prefer paperbacks due to their smaller size/weight, have you considered a digital reader? In addition to books you can buy, there's plenty of out-of-copyright stuff (and some new open-source-published stuff) at Project Gutenberg, Feedbooks, etc. And of course you could read any of those on a computer as well... though in either case I'm assuming you'll have electricity.
posted by ecsh at 10:04 PM on March 30

I really like the Arcady Renko series by Martin Cruz Smith, and I'm generally not much of a mystery reader. Gorky Park is the first one, but I've read them all out of order and I don't think it's affected my enjoyment.
posted by small_ruminant at 10:32 PM on March 30

Have you read Galbadon's Lord John mystery spin-offs?
posted by brujita at 10:44 PM on March 30

brujita, I don't think they stand up to the Outlander series at all. (I wish they did!)
posted by small_ruminant at 10:48 PM on March 30

Let me anti-recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Wild California series, or at least the first two. I had high hopes. My friend and I both read them, and only I made it through even the second.
posted by salvia at 12:34 AM on March 31

Julian May's Pliocene Exiles series is 4 Books long and eminently escapist. Her writing is crazy and new agey at times, but the concept (Prisoners in the far future are exiled through a 1 way door time machine to prehistory where they discover aliens living there with shapes and cultures reminiscent of creatures from folk tales) is a glorious mashup of fantasy and Syfy tropes.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:31 AM on March 31

I love, love, love historical fiction and Outlander is one of my most favorite books ever. Last year I discovered Deanna Raybourn's Silent in the.... series and Tasha Alexander's Lady Emily Ashton series. Victorian mystery historical fiction with strong women leads and dashing Victorian dudes. I keep recommending these books lately, but they really fit the bill.

Interesting nonfiction: Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and William Manchester's "A World Lit Only By Fire."
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 6:11 AM on March 31

some long reads I'll never be without are; Frank Herbert's Dune series, The full collection of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a few of Graham Hancock's books, such as The Fingerprints of the Gods (fact? fiction? entertainment!) Steven King's collections of short stories; Skeleton Crew and Night Shift, Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus Trilogy, and the fattest collections of H.P. Lovecraft and Calvin and Hobbs that I can find
posted by Redhush at 6:12 AM on March 31

If you like post-apocalyptic sci-fi, (and sorry for the self promotion here, but it really does seem warranted), you should check out JamesAxler.com.

There are two ongoing series published under the Axler house name. The first is Deathlands, which is a straight up post-apocalyptic warrior survivalist storyline with a sprinkle of science fiction tossed in. The quality of the books varies greatly, but has tended to be much better in recent years than it was a while back. The website has reader reviews for each book so you can gauge which ones you might like. I highly recommend the latest two books Plague Lords and Dark Resurrection.

The other series is Outlanders (no relation to Outlander), and it is set roughly 100 years after Deathlands. The series has a much more science fiction tone, with a healthy dose of high adventure. There is also quite a bit of historical mythology worked into the storyline. Again on the website you can find reader reviews to identify the best ones.

I also highly recommend David Weber's Off Armageddon Reef as being both science fiction and historical at the same time. I didn't like the second book quite as much, but I absolutely loved the first one.
posted by Lokheed at 6:22 AM on March 31

If you like the magical series you can't get much better than The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.

Also, if you are buying enough for 6 months (and have electricity), you might look into the cost effectiveness of the Kindle. Depending on which model and where you buy it, it costs between $240 and $360, but many of the books are discounted. So if you have enough books you might be able to make up the price of the device, and it will save space. But if you have access to a library or good used bookstore, you should be fine without it.
posted by CoralAmber at 12:13 PM on March 31

SM Stirling and the "Emberverse series" - Great Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi, although he gets a "little" fantasy in the last couple of books. I really loved his 'what if' treatment of the future, and the characters are great!
posted by krieghund at 2:25 PM on April 3

Robertson Davies's The Deptford Trilogy is endless engaging and is available in a single softcover volume.

Amazon.
posted by tapesonthefloor at 3:34 PM on April 3