Reading Mix Challenge, Part One

[sub_divided]

Partial mixes for obakesan's reading mix challenge, very hastily done because I still have a paper to write.

Many of these lists I don't think are good enough/complete enough to really be lists, but for posterity:

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

General notes:
Mixed bag. Some of these are personal accounts intended to instruct the public about the peculiar habits of such-and-so remote location, this was 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 for the authors to distinguish them works from the "superficial tourist guides" that'd been swamping the market since about 1820. 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.

Specific Notes:
No time no time no time, will add in later.

It's Fun to Make Fun of Religion
The goal here 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. Think Dogma. These are well-known books, since I'm not too widely read in this area.

Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel Acoording to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal (What if Jesus knew Kung-fu?)
Tells the the story of Christ's "missing years," from the perspective of his best-friend-who-isn't-mentioned-in-the-bible. Biff, brought back to life in the present day for this purpose, is kind of sort of mostly an irreligious smartass, but also a good friend. Jesus not only learns Kung-fu, but also magic and herbology from the three wise men, as part of his "training" to become the Best Messiah Evar. Joking aside: Jesus as described by Biff is a genuinely likeable character, both as a person and as the son of God. Lamb combines modern concerns with real religious belief with just plain coolness and a great sense of humor.

Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (Ultimate Angel/Demon Snarkfest)
To be honest, I did not particularly like this book. There were, I thought, too many inside jokes. But I love Azriphale/Crowley fanfiction and you should ideally read the one before you can read the other so... it's hard to imagine that anyone who would like this book hasn't already read it, but just in case: it's about a demon who is not precisely evil, and an angel who is not precisely good, and Adam the supposed destruction of the world who is not precisely destructive either. And it is full of kitsch.

EDIT: Terry Pratchett, Small Gods (thanks tarigwaemir!)
Gods running around everywhere in this book. Basically it's about how religions change and become institutionalized. Pratchett is okay with religiosity but he hates self-righteousness and intolerance. This is a Discworld book, which means it's a parody of our world, very clever.

Douglass Adams, Long Dark tea-Time of the Soul (Where old Gods go when their services are no longer required.)
This book is not like the others, because Douglas Adams does not believe that religion is anything but completely ridiculous. (This explains why the religions in his Hitchhiker books are full of things like people who worship a giant nose.) He appears to have a soft spot for the old Norse gods, however. In this sequel to Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, "detective" Dirk Gently stumbles upon a vast and seemingly impenetrable conspiracy. To spoil the ending: young, souless lawyer-types are taking advantage of Odin & Co.'s inability to move with the times, not for any grand nefarious purpose but merely for material gain.

Neil Gaiman, American Gods
I didn't want to include this book because I'm sort of bleh about Gaiman (writing style that calls too much attention to its own cleverness) but it does fit the theme perfectly. Another manipulation-of-powerless-outdated-gods storyline. This is swarming with divine cameos, which is sort of fun.




My Teen Love Affair is Interspecies But Harmless!
Needs: vampire/girl, alien/girl, unicorn/girl, etc. 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.

Vivian Vande Velde, A Small Enchantment (cat/girl)
Modern girl Deanna, on vacation in France, falls into a well with her cat who is conveniently transformed into a handsome young man. The cat is natually the highlight of the book -- he acts like a cat, even though he looks like a human (and speaks like one). It's been a while since I read this one.

Vivian Vande Velde, Dragon's Bait (dragon/girl)
Alys is falsely accused of witchcraft. The sentence: death-by-dragon. The dragon? The wonderfully ambiguous Selenedrile, who can assume human form. He agrees to help Alys get revenge on her village, mostly because he thinks the whole situation is amusing. This is my second-favorite book by Velde. (My favorite book is actually A Hidden Magic, but that's one of the few books of hers that doesn't fit the theme so uhh.)

Delia Marshall Turner, Of Swords and Spells (adroid/girl)
Actually, the romance is secondary in this one. ^^; but I really like it, so I put it on the list. Malka, the girl, has a particularly strong narrative voice, which is good since the entire book is told from her perspective. A small girl with a permanently lost temper, her goal is to become a fantastic swordsman so that she can hit people with impunity (and so that people will be forced to take her seriously). On the run from the Imperial paramilitary, she runs into the crew of a very odd ship. The Empire, though gigantic and powerful, is one of those sprawling bureaucracies where the left hand doesn't always know what the right hand is doing. Roder, captain of the ship and android, is one of those right hands -- his official job is to protect the rights of minorities within the Empire, a goal the Empire itself could care less about. Anyway, the interesting thing about their romance is that Roder's programmed personality makes him the Ultimate Cult Leader ("power, attention, sex") and his crew adores him to an almost scary degree -- but Malka is not affected. She likes him for him.

Suggested by canis_m and/or silvermuse89 and/or lacewood, but I haven't had time to read them myself:
Meredith Ann Pierce, The Darkangel (angel/girl)
Meredith Ann Pierce, The Woman who Loved Reindeer (do I have to spell it out?)
Edith Pattou, East (polar bear/girl)
Alice Borchard, The Silver Wolf (werewolf/girl)
Holly Black, Valiant (troll/girl)
Vivian Vande Velde, Companions of the Night (vampire/girl)


Truly Alien Aliens
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.

Octavia E. Butler, Dawn (woman bretrays hew own people? but it's complicated)
First in the Xenogensis series. The aliens in this series are not incomprehensible, but they are alien. The oankali survive by assimilating the most genetically useful pieces of the races they conquer, and scraping everything else. In Dawn, the conquered race is humans. One woman, helpfully named Lilith (after Adam's first wife), makes the difficult decision to help the Oankali, who have after all "saved" the Earth from its previous post-apocolyptic state. Complicated interaction between human and alien morals, no clear right answer.

C.J. Cherryh, 40,000 in Gehenna (colonial society rapidly disintegrates under onslaught of sentient alien lizards)
See this post. Unlike the rest of Cherryh's books, this can be read as a standalone.

Suggested by apintrix/seconded by canis_m, but I haven't had time to read them myself:
Iain Banks, Excession
Larry, Niven, The Mote in God's Eye
Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
Sharri Tepper, Grass
Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter-house 5 (I have read this, but I don't remember the aliens)
;China Mieville, Perdido Street Station (lacewood; includes both comprehensible and incomprehensible aliens)


Being Normal/Being Weird
The writing level on these is 9-12, but actually most of them are better for an older audience, because the themes are complex and the books are pretty out there. Teens struggle to be normal even though their families aren't, but what they don't realize is that the world is full of even stranger things.

Ellen Raskin, Figgs and Phantoms (antique bookstores, left-handed piano)
Everyone in the Figg family has some unusual talent or genius, except Mona Lisa Figg. She works in her uncle Florence Figg's antique bookstore. Although she enjoys the work (binding, pricing, cataloguing) she does not actually like reading, much to his dismay. When Figgs die, they go to a special Figg heaven called Capri, and when Florence dies she follows him there (actually, she sneaks in). A series of totally surreal scenes follow, as she meets a procession of dead Figgs every bit as weird as the ones who're still living. A very funny, clever book.

Mary James, The Shuteyes (falling asleep is a crime)
Chester Dumbello, who also just wants to be normal, runs away from his fortune-telling mother to a world where no one ever sleeps, and the ones that do are jailed as criminals or else put on display as oddities. Chester spends the majority of the book on display. Very, very strange book with strange formatting and stranger characters. Also somewhat psychadelic.

E.L. Konnigsburg, Journey to an 800 Number (prep school boy and deadbeat dad)
Max is forced to spend the summer traveling the country with his father, who owns a camel. Naturally, he resents this, particularly as he will be going to a fancy private academy in the fall, not giving rides to six years old for a dollar each at county fairs. Some moral lessons here, but nothing too onerous, and there are some wonderful secondary characters like the telemarketer and daughter whose idea of a vacation is crashing hotel conventions. One of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction books.


I am posting these even though they are woefully inadequate because I'm secretly hoping that at least a few of the people redirected from tin's journal will take pity on me and suggest additions.

Second batch coming up.