geekyBecause every group is essentially a sociological tide pool, shifting slightly whenever the tide comes in but still cross-contaminating itself at a remarkable rate, we also tend to have a somewhat distorted view of "everybody." I bet if you polled a sample size of, say, the readership of this journal, you'd discover that Rosemary and Rue was one of the best-known books of 2009. Why? Because I wrote it, and talk about it constantly, and you read this journal, hence exposing you to it on a constant basis. I'm a literary pathogen!
On a more localized scale, we loan books to our friends, talk books up to our friends, and constantly infect each other with our literary passions. In the last year, I have caused my friends to read I Am Not a Serial Killer, Mr. Shivers, A Madness of Angels, the complete works of Kelley Armstrong, The Mermaid's Madness, The Enchantment Emporium, and Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded. These aren't the only good books I've read in the last year; they're just the ones new enough to still be available, and to have excited me with their sudden existence.
So here is today's challenge: Infect us with books we may not have heard of, but which are so damn AWESOME that it verges on a crime that more people don't know about them. Go for out-of-print things (that's why libraries and used bookstores exist), or the first books in series that started eight years ago. Bring enlightenment to the heathen, in the form of literary smallpox.
I'll start with five of my favorites, books I honestly think everyone should read (whether you enjoy them is up to you):
Hellspark, by Janet Kagen.
Mermaid's Song, by Alida Van Gorres.
Emergence, by David Palmer.
The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, by Tim Pratt.
Paper Moon, by Joe David Brown.
Authors, feel free to pimp your own work here; just get the word out, and let's see what we're not reading!
May 23 2010, 08:22:03 UTC 7 years ago
The Amazing Vacation, Dan Wickenden
Children's fantasy, post-Eager but pre-Norton, involving a brother and sister who find another world on the other side of a window in the house they're visiting one summer. Lots of clever wordplay and high adventure, a Fretful Porpentine, a friendly witch, and a rhyming spell that's stuck in my mind ever since:
Entry, kentry, cutry, corn
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock,
A witch and griffins in a flock....
Terror Wears a Feathered Cloak, Thelmar Wyche Crawford
This one's mystery/suspense rather than fantasy; it would be called YA nowadays, being a thriller in a mode halfway between Nancy Drew and Madeleine L'Engle. A young woman and her friends are on a tour of Yucatan when they get tangled up in a conspiracy whereby denizens of a lost Mayan city hope to secure a place in the modern world. This sounds way over-the-top, but the execution is remarkably convincing both as thriller and as lost-city yarn. I didn't learn till long afterward that the author wrote several other books featuring the same core characters, but I've never seen copies of any of the others.
May 28 2010, 17:35:49 UTC 7 years ago
http://www.paperbackswap.com/book/detai
You can either swap books to build up credits or buy credits.