Book Rec Meme
Jun. 15th, 2011 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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:
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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CHILDREN'S AND YOUNG ADULT LIT
Date: 2011-06-16 06:47 pm (UTC)(Optional) Copy and paste these handy templates for:
RECS
REC REQUESTS
RECCING
Date: 2011-06-17 03:25 am (UTC)Title: The Frog Prince Continued
Author: Jon Scieszka
Length: It's a picture book.
Summary: The Frog Prince Continued is basically the story of what happens after the 'happily ever after'. It's about the Frog Prince, who's a human now, obviously, not being happy with his new life.
Books it's similar to: Erm. It's a lot like a sequel to The Frog Prince, really.
Why I'd rec it: It is a picture book, but as an adult who likes fairytales I think it's worth reading because it does look at 'and they lived happily ever after' and asks - "Really?" - If anyone else does read it, I'd love to know what you think of the ending.
No-one saw that.
RECCING
Date: 2011-06-17 04:24 am (UTC)Title: The Knife of Never Letting Go
Author: Patrick Ness
Length: Just under 500 pages
Summary: Set in an entirely male town where everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts, Todd and his dog Manchee (whose thoughts he can hear as well) accidentally discover a horrible secret about the townspeople and have to go on the run from the power-hungry mayor and an insane minister. They set out to find answers about his colony's true past. First in the Chaos Walking series.
Books it's similar to: Um. Are there any other YA coming-of-age novels with unwanted telepathy and talking dogs set in a dystopian space colony?
Why I'd rec it: It's a mix of a coming-of-age story about a boy and his dog, scifi adventure, and dystopian thriller all in one. The colloquial spelling and language will probably irk some people, but Todd has a great narrative voice.
RECCING
Date: 2011-06-17 05:17 am (UTC)Title: Story of a Girl
Author: Sara Zarr
Length: Two hundred some? Very respectable, solid length for a YA, but nothing that's going to overwhelm you.
Summary: The hook is that 16-year-old Deanna has a reputation with her school (and her father) as a slut because she was rumbled by said dad in the backseat of her high school senior boyfriend's car back when she was in eighth grade. Deanna spends the summer before her junior year battling immense loneliness, scheming to escape, but instead buckling down and finding that she's strong enough to right the relationships in her life.
Books it's similar to: Like nothing I've read before. There's a lot of books with similar premises, but none are as dead-on accurate and as well-written and as wise as this one.
Why I'd rec it: I don't even normally like contemporary lit, but this book--low-key, but full of suppressed emotion--manages to be so real and hopeful at the same time. The characterizations are superb, Deanna more than holds her own in the cast as a narrator, and the details of working-class family life--such as it is--are so spot on that it's downright eerie. Chris Crutcher (who himself wrote Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes) calls this "a hell of a good book." He's not wrong.
RECCING
Date: 2011-06-18 01:44 am (UTC)Title: The Bartimaeus Trilogy (the first book is The Amulet of Samarkand)
Author: Jonathan Stroud
Length: (It's ok to estimate: i.e. 'longish', 'quick read', etc.) Moderately long, but so engrossing I never even noticed.
Summary: (Three sentences or so should do it!) Two semi-protagonists, both in a morally gray area: Bartimaeus, the primary narrator, a djinn with a fabulously sardonic sense of humor, and Nathaniel, an English magician/politician who ages from twelve to I think eighteen over the course of the series and has about the same sense of humor as a doorknob. Plot is complicated, premise is that magic has always existed and magicians preside over common people, but they derive all their power from bossing spirits around. The spirits are generally not okay with this. Common people are also generally not okay with this. Set in post-Gladstone England, primarily.
Books it's similar to: Oh god, I don't know. I think of it as the junior counterpart to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke.
Why I'd rec it: It has what are possibly the funniest footnotes I've ever read. Superb character building, superb use of historical events and tensions. I cried at a point which shall remain undisclosed. Possibly my favorite YA books that exist.
RECCING
Date: 2011-06-18 10:04 am (UTC)Title: The Sky is Everywhere
Author: Jandy Nelson
Length: ~300 pgs
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Lennie Walker spends her time tucked safely and happily in the shadow of her fiery older sister, Bailey. But when Bailey dies abruptly, Lennie is catapulted to centre stage of her own life - and, despite her nonexistent history with boys, suddenly finds herself struggling to balance two.
Books it's similar to: I Capture the Castle, Walk Two Moons and Born Confused.
Why I'd rec it: Best coming-of-age novel I have read in a long, long time. Beautiful writing that makes me so envious, fantastic narrator, poetry, love, loss and hope.
Reccing
Date: 2011-06-18 01:45 pm (UTC)Title: Sabriel (aka Old Kingdom Series)
Author: Garth Nix
Length: three books long, about 1600 pages total
Summary: A young girl discovers her destiny while trying to save her father. She is a necromancer that has to protect the world from an old evil that has been awakened and is escaping death.
Books it's similar to: That's a hard one... Perhaps if Harry Potter and The Hobbit had a daughter...
Why I'd rec it: The world is so wonderful, it takes place around The Wall. One side of the wall has magic and is still a wild place, the other side is basically a 1940's Us or UK. The concept of the magic is that it's ever-present beyond The Wall, but that only certain people know how to grab it and use it.
Reccing
Date: 2011-06-18 01:54 pm (UTC)Title: Dealing With Dragons
Author: Patricia C. Wrede
Length: Fairly short, but there's 4 or 5 books in the series
Summary: When girls want to marry princes, they go get themselves kidnapped by dragons and sit back and wait to be rescued. Cimorene is having none of that, she decides to stay with the dragons.
Books it's similar to: The Book of Lost Things
Why I'd rec it: Strong female character, the female dragon leader is still called the king (and corrects people when they call her queen), and the way magic works is cool, too. It's like a grid system.
Re: Reccing
Date: 2011-06-18 06:25 pm (UTC)Also of note for anyone who likes these, Wrede has a book of short stories called Book of Enchantments that is at least as good as the DWD series, in my opinion. a bit more macabre in places, though.
Reccing
Date: 2011-06-18 06:33 pm (UTC)Title: Gullstruck Island (or The Lost Conspiracy; it goes by multiple titles)
Author: Frances Hardinge
Length: Definitely on the long side.
Summary: Hathin is the helper for her sister Arilou, who is a "Lost" - a person who can leave their mind and wander about with absolute freedom. Or is she a Lost? Is Arilou just like the grass tigers made to scare people from the village's borders?
Books it's similar to: Hell all else.
Why I'd rec it: This book has a singularly unique flavor. There's a massive cultural shift taking place on the island that is fascinating in itself. Men from across the sea have settled bringing with them their own culture, their laws, and their dead, and the native islanders have either adapted, or moved away from where they have settled. It's very interesting to watch this battle of cultural wills. But what's better is the tension this book is dripped with. It's like watching a storm build over the corse of the day, that wall cloud get bigger, and bigger, and why won't it rain yet? And then you're sorry you ever asked the clouds to let loose. The characters, the prose, the dialogue... everything's just so crisp and wonderful.
"It was a burnished, cloudless day with a tug-of-war wind, a fine day for flying. And so Raglan Skein had left his body neatly laid out on his bed, its breath as slow as sea swell, and took to the sky."
Reccing
Date: 2011-06-18 06:51 pm (UTC)Title: The Mortal Engines Quartet (first book: Mortal Engines)
Author: Philip Reeve
Length: Some are longer than others, about maybe 300 each?
Summary: Together these books pretty much chronicle the lives of Tom Natsowrthy and Hester Shaw. It takes place thousands of years in the future, when cities roam the land on massive treads and "eat" eachother for survival (Municipal Darwinism). It's hard to say more without it sounding more ridiculous.
Books it's similar to: Can you think of anything else with cannibal cities and zombie robot super soldiers from thousands of years ago? (See what I mean about it sounding more ridiculous?)
Why I'd rec it: This is everything you never knew you wanted in a post-apocalyptic book. Action, betrayal, lush descriptions, that fantastical sense of world-building that leaves everything a little familiar but so off that you know that you are far from everything you can see around you. This series is a wild ride and while you may not be happy at the end of it you will be full and satisfied.
Also, what other series has an unrepentantly evil, scarred, ugly inside and out female love interest? Bless you, Hester Shaw, just for existing.
"It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea."
Reccing
Date: 2011-06-18 07:03 pm (UTC)Title: The Larklight Chronicles (first book: Larklight: A Rousing Tale of Dauntless Pluck in the Farthest Reaches of Space)
Author: Philip Reeve
Length: These ones are fairly short, quick reads.
Summary: These books take place in an alternate setting where Newton invented space travel, physics of space are more or less as thought during the 17 and 1800s (think breathable aether), and England has taken over the solar system. They follow the adventures of Art Mumby and his sister Myrtle as they save the world from spiders, nice hats, and all sorts of over things.
Books it's similar to: Boys-own adventure books, if you're to believe the author.
Why I'd rec it: TRAINS IN SPACE. ...but really, a Victorian sci-fi written in the format of an old-timey adventure book with hilariously tongue-in cheek prose and magnificent illustrations is too good to pass up. This is another one of those "Everything you never knew you wanted in a book" kind of series.