apple_pathways | Book Rec Meme

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Book Rec Meme

How does a book rec meme work?

5 EASY STEPS TO REC SUCCESS:

Find the genre/type of book you're looking for in the comments! The following genre/types are listed in alphabetical order:

Chick Lit
Children's and Young Adult Lit
Classics
Contemporary Literature
Fantasy
Historical Fiction
Horror
Manga, Comics, and Graphic Novels
Mystery/Detective/Crime
Non-Fiction
Romance
Science Fiction
Thrillers
and "Other" (For any genre or type not already listed.)
Click 'reply to this' on the comment with the genre you're looking for. If you're recommending a book, type "RECCING" in the Subject line of your comment. If you're requesting a recommendation, type "REQUESTING".
Either copy, paste, and fill out the handy forms provided, or describe in your own words the book you're recommending or looking to read.
Browse the other recommendations that have already been left. Read the rec requests other participants have left, and make suggestions for books you think they might like.
Share the love! ♥ Copy and paste the following code into your journal to send your friends to the meme:

<a href="http://apple-pathways.livejournal.com/76281.html"><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/apple_pathways/pic/000akqeh"></a>

It's that easy! ;)

Just remember:

* Keep it civil, or suffer the consequences! (Consequences TBD, but may include deletion, bannination, or unsightly rash.)
* DO NOT "Post a new comment"! To keep things tidy, please post all comments as a reply to an existing comment. Misplaced comments will be removed: it doesn't mean you're a bad person. :P
* If you need to ask me something or get my attention, either PM me or post a reply under the "Questions" thread, otherwise I may not see it.

Happy Reading! ♥

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Get to know your reccers! (Share your book cred here. :P)

Fill out the profile provided, or make your own.

Name/Pseudonym: Amy
But you can call me: ...Amy!
My favorite genres: Historical fiction, fantasy (more contemporary than sword & sorcery), science fiction, contemporary lit; I love anything humorous.
Classic or contemporary?: Both! Though I often feel woefully under-read when it comes to the classics. But I love classic romance! Jane Austen, the Brontes, etc.
Non-fiction?: Yes. Usually if I'm in a slump where I can't find a novel to read, I'll turn to non-fiction. I especially love cookbooks and anything to do with gardening and herbs.
The five books I own I'd save from a fire: The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes, Collected Novels of Jane Austen, my well-worn copy of A Room With a View from high school English, hardcover copy of Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, and...oh jeez. Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger, also owned since high school. (Nostalgia, yo!)
My favorite character(s) from a book: Sherlock Holmes, Elizabeth Bennett, Anathema Device, Hercule Poirot, George Emerson, Faramir, Eowyn, Miss Marple, that tree from The Giving Tree, Ford Prefect, the protagonist from "The Robber Bridegroom"...
Wherein I wax poetic about my love for books: Even as an infant, I preferred my books to all my other toys. I love to read: there's nothing better than a good book! I visit my public library once a week, and I'm always trolling used bookstores. I do find it gets harder to find a good book to read, though: hence this meme!

Anthologies! You ~~cheater~~ genius!

I actually changed the category from "books I would save from a fire" to "books I own I would save from a fire" just so I include the anthologies I own without cheating!

I did, however, stop myself from including box sets. I'm not that shameless! (Even though they're all neatly packed together and could so easily count as one book...)

Name: Cecilia
But you can call me: Whatever you like, just tell me you're going to do it first or I'm not going to answer, am I?
My favorite genres: Fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, romance, historical... you know what? Just put down 'all' except contemporary YA which gets on my nerves like nothing else ever.
Classic or contemporary?: Classic, by a long way (I do try to read contemporary, but I spend a lot of time thinking 'I liked this book better when it was called X' and then I quit. Mostly I read really awful contemporary so I can mock it.)
Non-fiction?: Hellz yes. Have you seen my collection of cookbooks, historical reference, gardening, art history and miscellaneous others?
The five books I own I'd save from a fire: D: FIVE? As in, only five? Forget it. I couldn't pick them.
My favorite character(s) from a book: Oooh. Sherlock Holmes, Boromir, Arthur Dent, Moist Von Lipwig (and just about every other character who lives on the Discworld, but I'm keeping this short), Sirius Black, Algernon Moncrieff (are we counting plays? We are now), Bertie Wooster, Donald Farfrae (of The Mayor of Casterbridge), Sebastian Flyte, and I realise these are all male character and I'm going to stop now because I am drawing a blank for female ones and I feel silly. Can I count Giant Girl? Because I like her.
Wherein I wax poetic about my love for books: When I was younger, we weren't a family who owned a lot of books (other than a great set of the Encyclopedia Britannica from some time in the 1970's, a children's bible, and one picture book that was given to me as a baby because I was born on some sort of literature day). I was never really encouraged to read; mum and dad have always been a bit oddly of the opinion that you only really need a handful of books and you can just read them over and over again, or something. And libraries were mystical places that we never visited unless it was with Grandma who totally gets reading. So having been deprived as a child, I now collect books like mad. I've just discovered that I have three copies of Minority Report and I don't even particularly like it (I liked Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep much better). Bibliophile is a completely apt term for me. I am running out of places to store books, and a lot of them have started living in disorganised piles about the place. Also, I'd much rather have a second-hand book than a new one, because I like the way they feel and I always feel guilty cracking the spine of a new book. Ahem.

MOIST? MOST IS COMPULSIVELY AWESOME.

You know, I just ran into this recently. A friend and I made a challenge to write our lists of fictional crushes. "Girl crushes too!" I cried. "Maybe a whole separate list. That way we have pick twenty characters instead of ten."

"Why? What female characters do you like as much as...' [points to our preliminary scribbles]

"Er... uh... "

Either I fail or all the writers of the world do.

I tend to think it's largely an author thing. Aside from a few Discworld characters (none of them are not awesome in their own way, so I have hope), female characters that don't annoy me immensely are in very short supply, and of those who don't actively annoy me, I tend to be not overly impressed with their existence.

I think it's a case of authors trying too hard to make good female characters. Because heaven forbid a girl would have a serious, honest flaw and therefore become an interesting human being without turning into an arsehole.

I guess I'm reading the wrong fiction or something.

OMG, I love your list of favorite characters. Mostly because it looks JUST LIKE MINE ~~would have, if I'd been using my brain a moment ago.~~ Well, except for Sirius Black. He makes me break out in hives, lol.

I stopped paying attention to Harry Potter when Sirius died, honestly. And now I have to know why you don't like him (I know plenty of people didn't, I've just never been sure why).

Name: Jessica
But you can call me: Jess
My favorite genres: Science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, contemporary lit, poetry, YA
Classic or contemporary?: I like both, but I'm waaay behind on my classics. *hangs head in nerd shame*
Non-fiction?: Yes! Historical reference (particularly Victorian England), science-y stuff, biographies or memoirs of interesting people, anything to do with travel/foreign countries...
The five books I own I'd save from a fire: Oh god, I couldn't pick. I'd end up burning with them because I'd be standing in front of my bookshelves going, "I can't, I can't decide..."
My favorite character(s) from a book: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, Harry Potter, Crowley, Jane Eyre, and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head...
Wherein I wax poetic about my love for books: I cried after the first day of kindergarten was over because I hadn't learned how to read yet.

Name: Something no one uses unless I don't like them enough to bother telling them my nickname
But you can call me: Jobey (Congrats! You are very likeable)
My favorite genres: Mystery/Detective/Crime, Classics, and probably "Other". I read a lot of YA for work as well.
Classic or contemporary?: Probably classic... ish.
Non-fiction?: When I'm punishing myself
The five books I own I'd save from a fire: I'd probably spring for them again no problem, but, in the spirit of the question, let's say: The Man Who Was Thursday, Till We Have Faces, The Green Mile, Hrotsvitha's plays in helpfully emended Latin, and No More Dead Dogs (hey, it's signed by the author). Of course, in the middle of the night I'm sure to wake up and wonder why I forgot to put such-and-such title on this list.
My favorite character(s) from a book: Do we really have this much time?
Wherein I wax poetic about my love for books: Stories can keep you alive, brother. And books are the portable version of this life support.

Name: Eleanor
But you can call me: Let's go with Switch
My favorite genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Slipstream, Pop Nonfiction, Ethnographies.
Classic or contemporary?: Contemporary. I like my sentences to be 100 words or fewer.
Non-fiction?: Yes!
The five books I own I'd save from a fire: The Portable Dorothy Parker, The Dispossessed, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes (volumes one and two), and my nook.
My favorite character(s) from a book: I don't know, guy. I really don't know.
Wherein I wax poetic about my love for books: My family believes that the best place to meet someone is in a bookshop. Or if you have about fifteen minutes to waste-get to a bookshop. I was really confused when I grew up and realized that this wasn't automatic with everyone.

My grandfather worked as a special collections librarian, and was a book collector on the side. But since he wanted to avoid any sort of conflict of interest, his personal collection was filled with interesting-but-inexpensive old books: 19th century illustrations of women's tumbling exercises, two different books on squirrel hunting in the midwest, and an early 20th century get-rich-quick scheme called 'How to make $600 using only four chickens'. So it's kind of genetic.

Name: Doro
But you can call me: dori/dodo/teja/thea/doro whatever.
My favorite genres: contemporary literary pretentiousness, ha, travelogues, stuff on organic gardening, books set in other countries, short stories in general, exciting plotty things, people doing audaciously mad and cool things.
Classic or contemporary?: both, though i tend to read contemporary books these days.
Non-fiction?: yes please!
The five books I own I'd save from a fire: most of the books i consider worth saving above all i lent out, never to see them again, or read them at the library in first place. my bookshelf looks sad these days.
klaus kordon's der erste frühling (the first spring?), had i not given it to a friend,
michael ende's momo,
keri hulme's the bone people.
chingiz aitmatov's early cranes.
vikram seth's golden gate.
My favorite character(s) from a book: ronja from ronja, robber's daughter, and about a hundred others, but i want to move on to the rec section of this post...
Wherein I wax poetic about my love for books: i have roughly 15 library cards from at least three different countries. i slept at the local children's library once. as in, overnight. that was one of the most exciting nights of my childhood. :D

Ronja! \o/

YAAAAY!
She has to be the most badass person in children's lit. One day while rereading I realized she is probably the most influential literary figure in my life as well (even though Harry Potter effectively kept me from doing homework for about ten years, haha).

She really really is completely badass. A lot of Lindgren's characters are pretty damn awesome, and her books were my favourites as a child.

Name: Madeleine
But you can call me: Maddy
My favorite genres: Mystery, historical fiction, horror, classics and fairy tales.
Classic or contemporary?: Classic.
Non-fiction?: Only if it's either a history book or by Gerald Durrell.
The five books I own I'd save from a fire: The Alienist (Caleb Carr), The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Dinosaur Factfinder, The Umbrella Man and Other Stories (Roald Dahl), My Family And Other Animals (Gerald Durrell)
My favorite character(s) from a book: Mary (from Nabokov's Mary), Buran (heroine of Seven Daughters and Seven Sons, which is YA but I don't even care), Sherlock Holmes, Bartimaeus (from another YA book, a truly fabulous trilogy by Jonathan Stroud), oh god this list.
Wherein I wax poetic about my love for books: Home is where my books are.
(also, this is not terribly poetic, but I found my lj-name in Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, which I adore.)

I love all the Sherlock Holmes fans. And Grimm's Fairy Tales? GOOD CALL! (I should totally change my answer to include my hardbound copy of not only Grimm's Fairy Tales, but Hans Christian Andersen's folk tales as well! LOVE fairy tales. ♥)

Feel free to jump in: rec a book, or make a request for one!

oops I just realized I put six books. But yes! Fairy tales are the absolute best.

and I totally will. There are definitely some books I need to shamelessly promote in here.

Name: I like to pretend no one knows my real name on the internet (it's not true)
But you can call me: evilhippo, hippo, whatever you want
My favorite genres: Sci-fi/fantasy (and all their sub-genres), historical fiction, histories, travelogues
Classic or contemporary?: I have this awful divide that got drilled into me in university, where classics are for studying and contemporary is for fun. I need to fix this.
Non-fiction?: Oh, absolutely. Just not like, star-of-the-moment biography.
The five books I own I'd save from a fire: I'm going to just assume that this isn't some kind of "and these are the only five books you will get to read for the rest of eternity" question and go with the ones that have the most sentimental value:

The Hitchhiker's Guide omnibus
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Slang and Euphemism (Japanese translation)
Ratio (Yes, I would save a cookbook. I regret nothing)

My favorite character(s) from a book: Oh geeze. To keep the list short, most of my favorite characters are based on either the mad-but-with-method-to-it Hamlet archetype, or the I-know-everything-the-author-does-and-am-basically-a-plot-device-turned-awesome Holmes archetype. The best ones are a bit of both (I-know-everything-the-author-does-and-it-has-driven-me-mad). I was going to give a list of outliers, but I've managed to retcon most of them into those two categories. Either I have very predictable taste in characters or my categories are way too broad.

Wherein I wax poetic about my love for books: Here's where I confess to being kind of bad at books. I don't have enough space for my books, but I also only have one proper bookshelf. But, lack of cred aside: I like books that surprise me. Which is why I wander into the library and pick things out based on their covers (bright colors, interesting-looking-authors, well-worn spines, odd stains)... it's possible that I just do this because whenever I walk into a library or bookstore I automatically forget what I was looking for. I feel like I'm not nearly as well-read as I should be, and there's just so much out there.

I'm going to just assume that this isn't some kind of "and these are the only five books you will get to read for the rest of eternity" question and go with the ones that have the most sentimental value:

Yep, you got it: it's more about physical books you own that you couldn't bear to part with than your five favorite stories. Hence, why I chose to rescue the cheap, scribbled-and-highlighted-in Dover Thrift Edition of A Room With A View I used in high school English rather than the nice hardcover edition I bought years later.

And OMG, I am coveting that cookbook HARD: math and cooking? *starts to hyperventilate* If I didn't have less than $20.00 in the bank at the moment I'd be on Amazon.com right now... (Instead I'm going to check to see if my library has it, to tide me over.)

I could go on and on about why those five have sentimental value, but I figured I should keep it short. But it's so hard not to want to explain...

I am just completely in love with that cookbook. It has the recipes upon which all other recipes are built, which is something I was searching for forever. It also has the best from-scratch pancakes recipe I have ever encountered, and I searched everywhere (they're properly fluffy, it's wonderful). Actually, I should probably just go add it to the Other list. ^_^

Re: Introductions

apple-pathways.livejournal.com - 2011-06-18 03:05 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Introductions

evilhippo.livejournal.com - 2011-06-18 03:35 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Introductions

apple-pathways.livejournal.com - 2011-06-18 04:16 (UTC) - Expand

Name:

nahara
But you can call me: J
My favorite genres: Literary fiction, children's/YA, magical realism, pop non-fiction, fantasy, science fiction.
Classic or contemporary?: Contemporary mostly
Non-fiction?: Yes please!
The five books I own I'd save from a fire: ONLY FIVE??? An academic book my dad wrote and dedicated to me, my original copy of the The Giving Tree, big book on photography that I won at A-Levels -- honestly not sure what else. I would die a little inside at leaving any of my books. :(
My favorite character(s) from a book: Cassandra Mortmain, Lennie Walker, Salamanka Tree Hiddle, Mrs de Winter, Humbert Humbert (for his sheer charm and creepiness), Thursday Next, Rae "Sunshine" Seddon, Lyra Silvertongue, Captain Haddock, Death (from The Book Theif).
Wherein I wax poetic about my love for books: Where to even begin? I did my undergraduate studies in Literature and currently work with children's publishers and librarians promoting the best new books for you children and young adults. I read a lot of things. I love my job, love being a part of the world of books beyond simply being a reader.

Name: Hema
But you can call me: Tired! ;)
My favorite genres: historical fiction, fantasy, mystery, contemporary lit
Classic or contemporary?: Both? I used to classic literature almost exclusively, but I realized that I was probably missing out on what everyone else was raving about. I still probably have a small preference for the classics, but some contemporary stuff is AWESOME.
Non-fiction?: Yes, and in fact, sometimes more than fiction. I like histories and biographies. Oh, and cookbooks, lol.
The five books I own I'd save from a fire: Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, and the constant companion of my childhood, Anne of Green Gables.
My favorite character(s) from a book: Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables, Toda Mariko from James Clavell's Shogun, and Philip of Gwynedd from Pillars of the Earth.
Wherein I wax poetic about my love for books: You know that image of the lonely child who visits her grandparents in the summer, and spends all her time in the attic surrounded by dusty books? That was literally me as a child. I'm a book troll. I've never been able to resist flipping through a book, and I never saw a library or book store I didn't want to duck into.

Love the meme idea, btw! ♥

Name: Courtney
But you can call me: Bur
My favorite genres: Sci-fi
Classic or contemporary?: Contemporary (by default of there being much more sci-fi in it. :) )
Non-fiction?: History. So much history.
The five books I own I'd save from a fire: Only five...? Can I cheat and take my Kindle?
My favorite character(s) from a book: I'll have to get back to you on that.
Wherein I wax poetic about my love for books: [censored]

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