book recs please!

[fahye]

Hello, flist, hello. Part of me is sure this is a disastrous idea given the amount of unread books languishing on my bookshelves, but part of me is always up for an excuse to acquire long lists of new books, so here we go.

Last year my reading habits, so long based firmly around Novels with the occasional Play thrown in, expanded somewhat: I read a lot of poetry, and I also began to read a few more non-fiction books and memoirs. This year I would like to continue this expansion!

To that end, I am soliciting recommendations for:

- short story collections (either by single authors, or anthologies)
- non-fiction books on any subject*
- essay collections

...these being the areas in which I am very much Under-read.





*Thanks to highlyeccentric I just finished a book about the political history of modern Australian pornography and censorship laws; it was excellent! I am open to books about pretty much anything as long as they are well-written and engaging. I will also admit to a serious predilection for chatty pop-psych books by people who have given TED talks.

Comments

[skygiants]

Have you read Kelly Link's short stories? I am pretty sure you would LOVE Kelly Link. I also really liked Nisi Shawl's collection Filter House, which I read last year.

In terms of nonfiction, I am also pretty sure you would like Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art Out of Desperate Times, which I read recently (my write-up here) and loved - it's all about theater and politics and censorship and is fantastic.

[fahye]

My local libary has Kelly Link books, excellent, but no luck with Nisi Shawl or with Furious Improvisation. I will investigate buying them online, but I'm trying to be very strict with myself about spending money this year.

[agonistes]

Hm. It's pretty North America-centric (for obvious reasons) but I think you might dig Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance by Joseph Roach. It connects Restoration theater in England, indigenous rights, Elvis Presley's funeral, Mardi Gras Indians, and the philosophical nature and purpose of performance.

[fahye]

That does sound great! And the university library has a copy, which could be the impetus I need to get a non-student membership there.

[thatyourefuse]

I have no idea what the availability is, but Sarah Monette's The Bone Key and Somewhere Beneath Those Waves strike me as being potentially precisely your cup of tea -- the former is a linked collection of very elegant, eerie ghost stories, and the latter is a bit more wide-ranging but fabulously good. (My favorite story from it is here, albeit in a slightly different version than the collected one, and should give you a good idea of whether you'll like the collection.)

ETA: OH. And Angela Carter's Shaking a Leg, for essays -- whether you like her fiction or not, her critical writing is acerbic and glorious, albeit very much of its time.

[fahye]

Hmm, my local library has works by both Monette and Carter, just none of the ones you've named! But I'll keep my eye out for them, thanks.

[highlyeccentric]

You might have some luck - both good and ill luck, probably - with the Best Australian Essays [Year] series.

[dimestore_romeo]

Hmmmmmmmmmm!

Short story collections - I don't tend to read these, but I would like to draw your attention to this. It's a selection of Norse fairytales that are illustrated by the astonishing Kay Nielsen, with colour plates. :P It's free to download. I got the hardback version for Christmas. I don't think that fairytales necessarily count here, but...it's very cool.

Also, Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue is a fantastic feminist approach to fairytales, and the one collection of stories that I will read over and over again.

Non fiction books: I have heard that Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine is very good. Another favourite is Bruce R. Smith's The Acoustic World of Early Modern England. I really want to read Pronouncing Shakespeare: The Globe Experiment by David Crystal because he is such a cool writer. I also recently got Princess, Priestess, Poet about Enheduanna, the first known author in the world.

Essay collections! I'm only going to recommend one thing here, otherwise all it will be is Renaissancey stuff, but Reflections the collected essays of Diana Wynne Jones, is a very interesting read.

[themis]

I liked For Us Surrender is Out of the Question.

[fahye]

*adds to the list*

I didn't know DWJ had written essays, that's good to know.

[fahye]

A brief visit to Google suggests that I would like it also! Thanks.

[schiarire]

- Daniel Mendelsohn: How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken (essays; mostly reviews of lit/media)
- Arika Okrent: In the Land of Invented Languages (non-fiction, easy to read in sections)
- Juliet Eilperin: Demon Fish (about sharks)
- Peter Piot: No Time to Lose (memoir)

[the_grynne]

- Eliot Weinberger, "An Elemental Thing" and "Karmic Traces" (essays on many different topics)
- Francois Jullien, "The Impossible Nude" (non-fiction, art history and aesthetics)
- Norbert Wiener, "The Human Use of Human Beings" (non-fiction, cybernetics and science)
- Siddhartha Mukherjee, "Emperor of Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" (non-fiction, medicine and sociology)

[the_grynne]

And because I can't resist reccing some novels:

"vN: The First Machine Dynasty" and "The Steel Seraglio", sci-fi/historical fantasy with a feminist perspective.