Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with recommendations and fiction

I can't be running low on books already?!

titantoppler — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:36:08 -0800

MeFites, help! Need more books to read. /book-recommendation-filter I'm currently about halfway through my to-read list, and want some book recommendations. Help me out here, MeFites!

Books that I've enjoyed thoroughly:
- The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
- The Hour I First Believed, by Wally Lamb
- Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
- The Cider House Rules, by John Irving
- Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith
- The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski
- The Conscience of a Liberal, by Paul Krugman
- Freakonomics, by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt
- Hot, Flat and Crowded, by Thomas Friedman

Books on my to-read list:
- Superfreakonomics, by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt
- What the Dog Saw, by Malcolm Gladwell
- Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
- We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver

There are of course, other books that I've read and liked, but these by far are my favourites. Your input is much appreciated!

Reader's Advisory Resources

tamarack — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:06:12 -0800

[LibraryFilter] What are your best resources for (fiction) reader's advisory (children, YA, adult)?? Right now I need the most help for the YA (teens and preteens) reader's advisory. My scope of knowledge doesn't seem to extend far enough, and (who knew) teens are a little shy. I'm new on the (public library) ref desk, and in general feel I need better tools for getting beyond Twilight ('cause surprise-surprise, all the copies are out).

My library has NoveList. If I can get an author, I sometimes use Fantastic Fiction's links. There is Amazon, but c'mon...it's pretty lame.

Help me choose a book to travel with.

mosessis — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:38:48 -0800

I need a longish, interesting, well-written book (fiction) to read on an upcoming trip. Any suggestions? I'm going on a trip where I'll have plenty of time to read and not much space to pack books. I need to find a good novel-type book that could last me at least a couple of weeks. My trip is for a couple of months in non-English speaking countries, and I want something captivating to fall into as a respite from journeying.

I have read both Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder in this same situation, and those worked perfectly for my purposes. I wish I could just bring one of these again, because they were so perfect - dense, interesting, thought-provoking, lend themselves to rereading passages - but I'd really like to find something new.

My general tastes run towards late 18th Century (Burney Lennox, Austen, etc) and turn of the twentieth century (James, Wharton, Wilde, etc). I generally steer away from serializations that have been turned into novels (Dickens, Forster, etc) and overly romanticized, gothic, heroic, dramatic love type stories (Les Miserables, Goethe, etc). But of course I am completely open to trying new genres and authors that I might not yet know I love.

What book was in your backpack that kept you going through the lonely times? What's the best longish novel you've read that you wish you had had the time to just sit and read? To slightly complicate this, I'm leaving in 36 hours and will have to find this on the shelf at one of my (luckily many) local book stores.

Who's written fiction within the last 5-10 years that deals realistically with the experience of American people under 40? Please recommend!

toomuchkatherine — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:04:21 -0800

Who's written fiction within the last 5-10 years, that deals realistically with the experience of American people under 40? I studied English in school so have read a lot of classics but am less familiar with the new stuff. Now I want to bone up on recent fiction (novels or short stories) that's about, and probably by, young and youngish Americans. Bonus points if it's realist; I read 'Indecision' by Ben Kunkel and 'Everything is Illuminated' by Jonathan Safran Foer in the last couple of years, and was amused by both but not blown away by either; I think I would have preferred something less cartoonish. OTOH, I really liked 'Wide Eyed' by Trinie Dalton, and it's pretty out there. Anyhoo. Tell me who's doing the important stuff, please.

Delving into the realm of the quirky through books

reenum — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:52:39 -0800

I'm looking for books with quirky storylines or quirky characters doing strange things. I really enjoy reading books whose premises or characters are off the wall. Some recent favorites:
Petroleum Man by Stanley Crawford
Towing Jehovah by James Morrow
Gilligan's Wake by Tom Carson
Honey Don't by Tim Sandlin
A Short History of Tractors In Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole
The Undeground Man by Mick Jackson
Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

It really doesn't matter if it's fiction or nonfiction. I just want to read about outlandish situations or people. Bonus points if the book is funny.

Thanks all!

Best book series for children and young adults?

MonkeyToes — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:17:22 -0800

Book series for children and young adults? Recommendations welcome. There is I'd like to lay in a supply of some of my favorite series (Hobbit/LOTR, The Great Brain, Wrinkle in Time, Chronicles of Narnia, Foundation) for my young son. Help me figure out what else I should add to the shelves.

What were your favorite book series for children and young adults? What series have your children enjoyed? And why? (All genres considered, and yes, I have looked at this, this, and this). I'm looking for series in the hopes that he'll read the first book, and then ask for the second, and then the third... My own preferences run along the fantasy/sci fi axis, but I'm willing to look at other genres.

Bonus points for series that have come out in the last (cough) 20 years. I've read Artemis Fowl and Harry Potter, but little else as far as series go. His Dark Materials? Gormenghast? I feel like I need a little remedial education in this area. Thanks.

Books about people aged 25-35?

callmejay — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 00:28:44 -0800

Please recommend some good novels about people between 25-35. I just finished Little Children, which I enjoyed, and I realize it's been a long time since I've read something with characters who are about my age. Reading about adolescents was great when I was one and passes the time well now, and reading about middle-aged folks is fine sometimes too, but I'd love to immerse myself in the lives of (fictional) people my own age a little more often. Help me out.

hoping to find some good authors

Tuwa — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 14:21:10 -0800

I'm trying to get into reading again, and am looking for fiction authors who write well-defined characters and seem genuinely to like people. In high school I read a book or three a week, but most of it was pulp. In college I was an English major and promptly came to hate reading, mostly because I hated pinning every passing butterfly to a board with some belabored critical assessment. I wanted to read for fun, not to talk about Marxism or phallic symbolism or whatever pet topic the professor had in mind.

A couple of days ago I started, and quickly stopped, re-reading The Sun Also Rises. I'd remembered it as funny and smart; reading it now, I'm overwhelmed with the suspicion that Hemingway simply did not like people.

So. Now I'm looking for fiction again, but I don't know where to start. I want something that's entertaining, in practically any genre, but I had a couple of ideal characteristics in mind.

1) the story is not narcissistic.
2) the characters are all distinct, with strong personalities.
3) the author understands and is not contemptuous of the characters.

By this token I'd say that Their Eyes Were Watching God, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and almost anything by Louise Erdrich or Neil Gaiman are to the good. Switching to film (because I'm hard pressed to come up with more written examples), I'd say that Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke is a perfect example of what I'm looking for. I think the reasons for each character's actions are clear; they all seem to make sense; the conflict isn't caricatured and doesn't have a simple solution.

Oddly enough, the "not a narcissist" criterion eliminates most of the authors I read as an English major. (I must have had all the wrong professors.)

I'm ready to take up reading again, but, aside from reading more Hurston and Márquez, don't know where to start. What authors would you recommend?

Please recommend some extraordinary, elegiac, darkly funny, or otherwise wintry books.

killdevil — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:40:15 -0800

Melancholy fiction for a dark season: here in the Northeast U.S. we're in the midst of a particularly miserable January. I'm looking for some contemporary fiction that echoes the bleakness of the weather. What extraordinary books have you curled up with recently that are elegiac, darkly funny or otherwise wintry in tone?

Looking for Historical Fiction Recommendations (Newer is Better)

Johnny Assay — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:28:14 -0800

What are your favourite historical fiction novels? [more inside] One of my relatives put "historical fiction" on their Christmas list this year, and aside from once giving a friend a Kenneth Roberts novel that they'd asked for, I know next to nothing about the genre. Newer stuff is probably better, as he's less likely to already have such things.

And yes, I realize that this question is a pretty broad one. But that just gives y'all the opportunity to go nuts with recommendations.

Give me your reccomendations on books about the Republic and Empire.

WolfDaddy — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 18:08:10 -0800

As a lay...very lay...student of Roman Republic and Empire, and anticipating the upcoming HBO/BBC series Rome with relish, I'm reading everything I can get my hands on about both Republic and Empire. Currently I'm reading an abridgement of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I just inherited. What next? [insert Latin for "more inside" here].

Like William Gibson

andrew cooke — Sun, 20 Jun 2004 10:26:29 -0800

i'm reading gibson's pattern recognition. i'd like something the same, but better. more inside. comparing pattern recognition with cryptonomicon, i find gibson's comments on culture and technology more perceptive, and his writing rather less clunky. but i'd like to go further still. gibson finds it necessary to explain "steganography" (stephenson felt the same about "256" - in snow crash, iirc - so again gibson is at least an improvement), which bugs me. he also seems to be heading towards a thriller/action plot line - i'm more interested in how people live in the modern world, not how they beat the bad guys.

so i'm looking for something that's well written (good characters, a properly planned plot - no indestructible superhero central characters that suddenly become mortal after 300 pages, hint hint - and convincing dialogue, for example), along with an interest in modern culture and technology, but from an author that doesn't feel the need for fight sequences or those conversations in which one character carefully explains to another what the preceding long word meant.

thanks....

Fantasy novel recommendation needed

grumblebee — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 10:10:51 -0800

Please recommend fantasy novels for someone who doesn't like fantasy novels (more inside). I'm generally not into the whole swords-and-scorcery thing. But I somehow picked up George R.R. Martin's first "Ice and Fire" book and got hooked. Now I'm trying to wait for the fourth book in the series, but It's taking him a really long time to finish it.

I'd like to read more fantasy, but most of the books I find are bad Tolkein or Harry Potter rip-offs.

But since I loved the Martin books, I'm guess that my dislike of the genre is based more on lack-of-education than problems with the form itself. I just don't know how to find the good books.

In order for me to like it, a fantasy MUST be well-written. I'm talking about prose style here. I can't stomach hack writing, no matter how good the plot is.

I'm not really into jokey stuff, so I don't respond all that well to Harry Potter. I know that there's a serious side to those books, but they're a little too full of silly names for my taste.

I also don't want to read parody or allegory. I want to be transported to another world -- not reminded of this one is some clever way.

In addition to Martin, I've also read Tolkien, the Philip Pullman books, C.S. Lewis, Watership Down, and most other well-known "classics."

What books am I missing?