The Author/Book Recommendation thread

[Free]

I'm not sure why, but we don't have a thread for recommending reads. Let's try one.

First, I'd like to focus on authors who started publishing in the last decade or so. I mean, you can suggest books by Dickens or Melville if you wish, but...

I'll be leaning heavily on fiction, because that's my regular groove. But recommendations of non-fiction works/authors are good, too.


First up for me is the novel A Girl Called Samson, by Amy Harmon. It's a story of a woman born during the American Revolutionary War, her upbringing as an indentured servant, and near improbable efforts to enlist and fight in the Continental army. It bogs down a bit for me towards the end with a romantic entanglement and its happily ever after ending, but never failed to keep me interested - especially the parts where she tries to maintain her secret identity under very difficult conditions.

Into sci-fi, Arkhangelsk by Elizabeth Bonesteel is a somewhat low-key but fairly hard sf interstellar colonization story. No aliens, no far out science, just humans being human, no matter what planet they find themselves on. About half-way through I found the plot slowing a bit, but it all comes out in the end with some deft twists using an interesting story telling trope.

More sci-fi: The Chosen Twelve by James Breakwell is...weird but fascinating. A blurb labels it "Lord of the Flies meets Philip K Dick," and I find that a very apt, and yet a bit confusing, description. I plan to start on the newly published sequel to it, soon.

Finally, some fantasy: Amy Harmon again (this is how I happened on A Girl Named Samson) with The First Girl Child and The Second Blind Son (The Chronicles of Saylok). This is a cool and I found unique mixing of purely made-up fantasy geography and concepts with Viking/Northern European mythology. Amy's writing carried me through it with very few bumps along the way.

 

[Noodles]

I have ready and enjoyed most of the books by Daniel Suarez. And would recommend them. If you want some Metaverse reading go with Daemon and it's sequel FreedomTM.

Kill Decision is an interesting thriller involving a swarm of drones.

Influx I read but don't remember a ton about it, it's probably my least favorite.

Change Agent was an interesting take on CRISPR gene manipulation.

I have not yet read the newer two books, Delta-V or Critical Mass.

All of the books are basically "Near future Sci-Fi thriller speculative fiction." Suarez really knows his stuff or does some good research on the subject to make it all feel fairly "believable".

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

I think I posted about this on the other book thread but I really found My Body interesting. It's a bit sad in many ways but is a great perspective. It helps humanize people who many dismiss out of jealousy. For me, reading some of the bad reviews on good reads and amazon helped reinforce why I found the book interesting. A lot of people dismiss women like her because of their own insecurity that they think is a moral point. Many attack her for benefiting from objectification while being critical of it. I think what they aren't seeing is that women like her often get boxed into such modeling jobs for a variety of reasons the book touches on but could go further on.

 

[Rose Karuna]

Lately I've been reading local Florida authors for some light hearted comedy and mystery. I ran across Margaret Lashley and I'm on her first book "Glad One".

Glad One: Crazy is a Relative Term - Margaret Lashley

Being broke, jobless and divorced at age forty-five is bad enough. But when Val Fremden’s only friend ends up dead, it’s hard not to think the world’s out to get her. Maybe it is…. The sugar-white sands of St. Pete Beach attract weirdos like mosquitoes to a bug zapper. So when the heir to Val's...

margaretlashley.com

The description of it in Amazon does not do it justice. It turns out to be a solid and poignant story about a women's life, who in the early 1960's became pregnant and like most women in that era, had very limited choices. The protagonist meets her on the beach in present day, assumes she's homeless and forms a mother/daughter friendship with her. The whole book is about the protagonist's relationship with this woman and the mystery of how she peeled away the layers of her life, looking for her child after she died. I'm still reading but close to the end of the book. Apparently there are more books in this series "Val Fremden Midlife Mysteries" and after reading this book, I'll probably move on to more books in the series. I enjoy the author's style of writing and it's a great story.

Also read a series of books by John Grisham called "Camino Island" which had great characters and was heart warming and funny.

Then there are the usual Florida based books by Carl Hiaasen including his most recent, "Bad Monkey". I read the book first and now I'm watching the Apple TV series, which I'm surprised to say, is as good as the book was.

Normally I lean toward horror and sci-fi, but I don't know, since the pandemic, I just want to read some light hearted stuff that I don't have to think too hard about and makes me laugh.

 

[Essence Lumin]

I lost most of my book collection in a move and what I have left I haven't looked at for this post but here's a few.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson (most well known for her short story The Lottery)

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Ice - Anna Kavan or most of her books

Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse. The first 100 pages or so were slow to go through then it blew my mind.

Miss Macintosh my Darling - Marguerite Young. This is a very long novel, over a 1000 pages and definitely not for everyone. It is all about the characters' stream of thought. The plot is less important. Every sentence is meticulously poetic and sometime one sentence can span two pages.