Reading Mixes and a Rec

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From the userinfo of dracula1897:

Dracula is an epistolary novel (meaning that it's written as a series of documents; usually letters, here everything from letters to diary entries to newspaper clippings). On this community, they'll be appearing on the day they're dated, starting with Jonathan Harker's first journal entry on the 3rd of May. The novel finishes in November, so we've got about six months.

Dracula is more picturesque than I expected it to be. I mean, I knew it was mostly journal entries and letters, but I thought it would be Gothic all the way through. You know? But instead it's a turn-of-the-century travelougue complete with colorful local history and gastronomical asides -- and it's scenic, I can imagine the blossoming fruit trees behind peasants in quaint clothing as the sun sets on the mountain as a postcard or something. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the rest of the novel.

From obakesan (again): Reading Mix Challenge. I have a couple in mind, but I'm having trouble filling them in from memory (all of my books are at home). Some help? Suggestions? Comments or questions?


British YA Fantasy VS The Arabian Nights
Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword (for a very warm-fuzzy version of Bristish imperialism)
Richard Burton, The Arabian Nights (the inspiration)
C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy (third in Narnia series, a standalone)
Dianna Wynn Jones, The Castle in the Air (style + content)
Patricia C. Wrede, Dealing With Dragons (fisherman's tale inserted into a book that subverts european fairytales)
Tanith Lee, The Black Unicorn (very much a fusion sort of book)
Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand (inspired by C.S. Lewis, among other things)
John Faulkner, Moonfleet (Sindbad the Sailor)

This list is about cultural appropriation. Listed authors write primarily very British fantasy (although Faulker is an American), but all of them read the Arabian Nights and were inspired to set at least one book or part of a book in that setting. For Dianna Wynn Jones and Patricia Wrede that meant playing off of European and Middle Eastern fairytales; for McKinley, Lewis and Stroud it means that there is literally a meeting between British and Arabian people and magic. Faulkner doesn't really fit into the list just like the voyages of Sindbad don't really fit into the Nights.

Some of these books are part of a series, but they can all be read on their own.

EDIT: Or should American writers be allowed too? Hmmmm.

Turn-of-the-Century Travelogues and Memoirs
Mary Wortley Montagu, Letters
Emily Ruete, Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar
Edith Durham, High Albania
George Gissing, By the Ionian Sea
Henry James, Transatlantic Sketches
E. M. Forster, Pharos and Phirillion


Sometimes travelogues and memoirs from this time are neat because there is an underlying anthroplogical bent to them. They aren't just personal accounts intended for public consumption, they're personal accounts that were intended to instruct the public about the peculiar habbits of such-and-so remote location. This was, ah, partially a reflection of the way science was being applied to social ideas (particularly ideas of race and culture) at this time, and partially a way to distinguish these works from the "superficial tourist guides" that'd been swamping the market since about 1820. Or something like that anyway. So you get people like Mary Montagu and Emily Ruete who belatedly try to convert their personal appearances into instructional texts, and amateur anthropologists like Durham.

And then there are novelists like Gissing and Forster and James who, being writers, were probably more self-conscious than your average travelouger; they try to give depth through richness of detail and psychological nuance. Maybe. I don't know, actually I am not very well-read in this field, but I wanted to make up a list of accounts of foreign places published in Europe that are fun to read even if you aren't an historian. Accounts that are entertainingly written, in other words, rather than accounts that define the genre or were influential in it (I'm not qualified for that). Some of these I read for class, some I read on my own.


You're in the Army Now -- In the Future
Robert Heinland, Starship Troopers
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
Gloria Skurzynsky, Virtual War

You can read these books on two levels. One is the level the author intended, as either critique or praise of militarism and the military mindset. The other is pure cool factor. Awesome, we have laser guns and Strategy! That kind of thing. This works differently for each of the books on the list, but all of them are ultimately much more popularly read for the Cool factor than for the author's original message.

Poetic and Heartbreaking
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Arunhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Anne Green, Fugitive Pieces
Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
EM Forester, A Passage to India
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

I'm not sure how to order this one. Anyway, they are books written by auhors who are also poets or who write poetically (Murakami is an exception to this); they deal with psychologically dark themes, often mental with illnesses, in realistic ways; many are autobiographical or semi-autobiographical.


There are also some mixes that I want someone else to do, since I haven't read widely enough to do them myself.

UP FOR ADOPTION, with 2-3 books given for each as suggestions/examples:


It's Fun to Make Fun of Religion
Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel Acoording to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett, Good Omens
Douglass Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Robert Zalazny, Lords of Light

Julie says Moliere and Voltaire should be on this list. I haven't read them, so I don't know. The goal isn't just humor about religion, it's a certain kind of humor: a kind that is deeply into religious trivia while rejecting traditional religious values. (falxumbra, I am looking at you.)

My Teen Love Affair is Interspecies But Harmless!
Delia Marshall Turner, Of Swords and Sorcery (adroid/girl)
Vivian Vande Velde, A Small Enchantment (cat/girl)
Vivian Vande Velde, Dragon's Bait (dragon/girl)
Meredith Ann Pierce, The Darkangel (angel/girl)
Meredith Ann Pierce, The Woman who Loved Reindeer (do I have to spell it out?)

Needs: werewolf/girl, vampire/girl, alien/girl, unicorn/girl, etc. It's my understanding that Tanith Lee, LJ Smith, and Annette Curtis Klaus might also belong on this list. The basic idea is, a kink pairing for every occasion! Said kind pairing should
1) involve a girl and something that looks like a boy, but isn't, and
2) not be overly dark or overly sexual -- the target audience is preteen girls.

War is Absurd
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse Five
Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Mothers and Daughters
Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
Celestine Vaite, Frangipiani

Airport Reading
(A list of mainline political/historical thriller/espionage novels from mainstay authors like Travarian, John le Carre, Martin Cruz Smith, Michael Crichton, and Tom Clancy. I haven't read enough of these to make this list.)

Napoleonic or Victorian Fantasy (written by modern authors, hence no H.G. Wells, Robert Luis Steveson, etc.)
Susanna Cooper, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel
Patricia C. Wrede, Mairelon the Magician
Naomi Novik, His Majesty's Dragon (not content-wise, but it's a decent imitation of the style)
Philip Pullman, The Ruby in the Smoke
Tim Powers, Anubis Gates

School or Mystery?
JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Victoria Silver, Death of a Harvard Freshman (and sequel, Death of a Radcliff Roomate)

This is a list of books where the protagonist must both solve a mystery and attend classes; the attending-classes part is just an important as the solving-the-mystery part. Being a student is not just a day job, in other words. For some inexplicable reason, I've been having trouble finding these (although pretend-students are everywhere).

Truly Alien Aliens
Octavia E. Butler, Dawn
C.J. Cherryh, 40,000 in Gehenna

Humans make contact with aliens who are so different that they are incomprehensible. On the fantasy side, I guess H.P. Lovecraft fits this category.


Right. So. SUGGESTIONS PLZ THANK YOU.

Or if you know someone else who you think could suggest something, please point them toward this post! I am also willing to maybe adopt someone else's list, as long as it's in a genre I'm reasonably familiar with.