Recommendations, and Thoughts on Being a Chucker

A few things to say.  First, recommendation from Another Matt:

* The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages by Norman Cohn

* Hyperion by Dan Simmons

* The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

* The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Second, I have decided to put Guns, Germs and Steel back on the shelf for a bit.  While I am enjoying it a lot more now, it's just taking me way too long, and as a result the blog is lying fallow.  Since Rule #1 of having a blog is: Post, stupid, I feel like I need to get going on some other books in the meantime.  I do fully intend to come back to Guns... in the not-too-distant, but right now I need something a bit more portable (much of my reading time occurs on buses and in random stolen moments).  I'm awaiting directions from J, and will let you know when she has assigned me something new.

In the meantime, here's what I would say about Guns...: it's an important book, and more people should read it.  There's a lot of great information in it that sheds light on human development around the world, and Diamond goes a long way toward his goal of beating the crap out of those my-people-won-because-we're-just-better arguments.  But the problem is that the book is pitched too high: the people who are able to get through it (and I don't just mean people who are able to comprehend the information, but people who would are devoted enough to read the entire thing) are almost certainly going to be the people who already agree with him and are looking to back up their own arguments.  Which isn't to suggest that the book is wasted, because Guns... is, as far as I know, the first book to collect all of the data and present it in one place, and that makes it very useful indeed.  But it's hard going, and I can't pretend otherwise.

So my verdict (for now) on Guns, Germs and Steel is this: Read it, by all means - it's certainly worth the effort - but expect to have to put some work in.  I would also advocate dipping into it over an extended period rather than trying to do it as I have.  It's too much information to take in all at once, for me at least, and trying to cram it all in over a short time just means that I'd have ended up missing important pieces of the puzzle.

XOXO

Further Recommendations

Two more lists have come in.

Matthew suggested:
* Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
* To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
* The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
* Atomised by Michelle Houellebecq
* Life of Pi by Yann Martel
* Vernon Goodlittle by DBC Pierre
* True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
* Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

Toby suggested:
* His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
* The Accidental Buddhist by Dinty Moore
* Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

These lists of recommendations are starting to make me think of Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller... in which books are classified as follows:

- Books You've Read
- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You've Been Planning to Read For Ages
- Books Dealing with Something You're Working On At The Moment
- Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer
- Books You Need to Go With Other Books On Your Shelves
- Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
- Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered
- Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
and (my favourite)
- Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too.*

On reflection, that last was the real impetus for this little project. There are so many books I feel I've semi-read, having listened to friends and family rave about them over the years. And here's my chance to reshelve some titles from the last to the first category.

Better get on with it, then.

xoxo

*This is not the full list but you get the drift, yeah?

Nice one, Tamara.

So J just texted me asking if I could pick a new book for her to grab at lunchtime, as she's in for Jury Duty and has almost finished The Fran Lebowitz Reader.  I suggested Maximum City by Suketu Mehta or, if she couldn't find that one, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.  I haven't read either myself, so it was just luck of the draw.  We'll see what comes of it.

You'll note that I've changed our header per J's last post (LOVE).  I also want to note Anthony's remark about the need for 'a book club for sophisticated ladies of a certain disposition'.  I suspect that might find its way into the header at some point as well.

In other news, I'm enjoying Guns, Germs and Steel heaps more now that I'm into the section about human evolution and diseases and their contribution to the whole mess.  I like my life sciences, what can I say.  It's good, though, because I no longer despair of finishing the damn thing.  I will get there, and I'll even enjoy it.  More to follow.

XOXO

You Guessed it: More Recommendations

Tamara suggested:
* Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
* The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
* The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
* Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and then ...
* The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Tam's summation of the first was "trashy but with a literary bent" which I heartily endorse as the LitGirls' new tag-line.

A review of The Fran Lebowitz Reader will follow in a day or two, promise.

xoxo

Still more recommendations

Sorry, but I kept forgetting to post this.  Uncle Mr Bill (thanks!) sent through the following:

* The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

* Incident at Twenty-Mile by Trevanian (a Western!)

* A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I'm getting antsy to be finished with Guns, Germs and Steel and move on to whatever comes next.  I'm not sure if we've explained this to you-all yet, but J and I decided that the easiest way to split up the books would be for us to switch off picking books for ourselves and picking books for each other, so since I chose Guns for myself, J will pick my next book for me.  (And because there are enough books on here that neither of us knows, this will end up being more random than it seems at first glance.)  I'm hoping for something a bit more plot-heavy than this one has been, and that's not something I'd normally say, so I must be struggling with it even more than I'd realised.

XOXO

Yet More Recommendations

They're coming in thick and fast now.

Paul suggested:
* The Master and Margarita or Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
* The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
* Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Melanie suggested:
* A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
* Almost French by Sarah Turnbull
* Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
* Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
* A Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Lynn suggested:
* Bliss by Peter Carey
* The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
* Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

I have to say, there are many goodies there I've not read so I'm keen to get them on my list.

Keep 'em coming, people. This is fab!

xoxo

More Recommendations

Yay!  More recommendations have come in.  Caitlin has posted in the comments (thanks!); others have come back via e-mail.

My Dad suggested:

* Any books by Elizabeth George, Dennis Lehane or Dick Francis (mystery/crime)

* Agony at Easter: The 1916 Irish Uprising by Thomas Coffey

* Sarum: The Novel of England, London: The Novel, The Princes of Ireland: The Dublin Saga and The Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga by Edward Rutherfurd

* 700 Sundays by Billy Crystal

* W.C. Fields by Himself: His Intended Autobiography by W.C. Fields

* Cagney by Cagney by James Cagney

Bernie suggested:

* And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (1980-1985) by Randy Shilts

* The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

* A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Paula suggested:

* Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi

* The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

* Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen

* The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

Auntie Fran suggested:

* A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

* Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Rein

* The Other Queen: A Novel by Philippa Gregory

Irena suggested:

* Shopgirl by Steve Martin

* To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

* Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Harry suggested:

* Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas L. Fredman

* Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

* Contents under Pressure by Edna Buchanan

* Never Let Them See You Cry by Edna Buchanan

So many to choose from!  I'll post more as they come in.  And while I mentioned that J and I have agreed to draw straws on who reads what, I plan to start right into PT's suggestion of Guns, Germs and Steel, as it's on my shelf already (borrowed-into-stolen from a former next-door neighbour, and I feel guilty every time I look at it because I still haven't read the damn thing).  I'll let you know how I go.

xoxo

Recommendations

A few people have already submitted recommendations!  Tim posted his in the comments section for the first post; other people sent theirs along to me by e-mail.

Anthony suggested:

The Double: A Poem of St Petersburg by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (oy vey)

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall by Spike Milligan

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

PT suggested:

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Factory Girl by Leslie Chang

Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years by Jared Diamond

Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta

Cath suggested:

Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine and South America's Strangest Jail by Thomas McFadden and Rusty Young

The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison by Warren Fellows

(Cath notes: 'All the books I read relate to life in a foreign prison or people who get busted for drug smuggling and then end up in a foreign hellholle.'  Make of this what you will.)

XOXO

The gauntlet is thrown.

So that we're not sitting around waiting too long (and so that there's something up here for people to read), J and I have decided to give each other three books to start with.

And I'm kicking it off.  I've toyed with this for a while, but I've finally narrowed it down to:

* Perfect Skin by Nick Earls 

* The Fran Lebowitz Reader by Fran Lebowitz

* A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

There are a heap of others I'd like to foist upon her, of course, but this seems like a good start.  I'm going with light-ish stuff to start with for a bunch of reasons, key among which is that I want us to be able to get through these fairly quickly and onto your suggestions.  Assuming, that is, that we get suggestions from you, which I really hope we will.

Over to you, J.  Give me something to fill my time.  And in the meantime, I'll check back in shortly with my own brief reviews of these books.

XOXO