I was emailing Sarah with a few book suggestions earlier this morning and thought I should share the book love. We’re all nerds here anyway, right? (Right!)
Thus, without further adieu, I bring you: Books I’ve Read This Summer*, That I Think You Should Read, Too. You Know, If You Want To. (Ready? Set? Get psyched!)
Not really reading anything that qualifies as “fantasy” (and I sort of hate that genre description anyway) beyond Harry Potter before this summer, I have quickly become addicted to Neil Gaiman’s style of story-telling. Mr. Gaiman is perhaps best known as The Guy Who Wrote Coraline (which is awesome; the book, not the movie), but my favorite book of his thus far is Neverwhere.
Continuing happily on the Gaiman train, I also read Stardust, which I liked (there is a movie, too), and am currently reading The Graveyard Book and have Anansi Boys in my ever-growing “to-read” stack.
Thanks to Velma I’m also newly hooked on the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series, wherein the central premise is that all the Greek and Roman gods/goddesses we learned about in high school are still alive and well, and there are “heroes” (sons and daughters of the gods with another human parent) that are routinely required to save the world from total destruction at the hands of other heroes and the gods themselves. What’s super fun (to me!) about these books is how fast they are, read-wise, how creative the story-telling is, and how I feel like I’m being simultaneously entertained and treated to a Mythology refresher course.
(For the record, I always liked Mythology, and took college courses on the subject for my major, in addition to traditional high school mythology lessons. If you absolutely hated it, you (somewhat obviously) might not be a fan of these books.)
Another book I just read and loved (which I didn’t expect) was Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver. I picked this book up from the library after reading the synopsis on Goodreads and then picked it up again two days ago for what I intended to be just a few minutes; I just wanted to read the first few pages to see if I wanted to keep it. What I ended up doing was reading the entire book from start to finish in nearly one sitting on Sunday afternoon. Shiver hooked me from page one, which oh so rarely happens, and I admittedly loved every second of this book. It was well-written and honest, and the conflict, while clearly present, wasn’t trite or over-done. In short, the drama made sense and made the book that much better. I also loved the play on point of view, which I won’t go into too much, lest I give anything away.
For any of you who get down with vampire fiction (the well-written kind, as opposed to the porny/romance novel kind), upon another friend’s suggestion I read Robin McKinley’s Sunshine and the story is one, I think, that will stick with me for years to come. The characters in this book were quite vivid, the world in which they live memorable and self-sufficient, and the story is unlike any other vampire-centric book I’ve ever read. I will herein admit to wishing McKinley had written a sequel or seven to Sunshine, instead of writing some of her other books, a few of which I read and didn’t really like.
Last but not least, I read Danny’s heart-wrenching meets hilarious memoir you’ve no doubt heard so much about by now, Rage Against the Meshugenah. I wasn’t timely enough to get an actual post up after he came to Portland to read at Powell’s, but rest assured (you can see the pictures, here, yes, and) Danny is a genuinely amazing person, kind and funny and quite tall, and his book is well worth the purchase. Struggling with depression is something we need to shout from the rooftops, so people will stop thinking they are standing on a precipice, alone.
Thus ends Book Rant: September Edition. (Here’s where I turn the proverbial tables.)
What are your all-time favorite books? Your “must-reads”, if you will? Read anything absolutely amazing (or terrible) lately?
*And yes, I’m totally counting “September” as “summer”. It’s not “fall” until the temperature stops rising daily past 80 degrees.