Reading Recommendations

I've listed all of the reading recommendations from everyone who commented on my previous post, which you can find here for the lists of stupid things and stuff people didn't like reading.I've added my own comments below where applicable.Right--back to cleaning the house. I hope everyone has a great Friday.JeffjmnlmanKilling Hitler: The Plots, The Assassins, and the Dictator Who Cheated Death by Roger Moorhouse superb history.Matt StaggsWe Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson. This didn't have to be a *new* book, did it? It was a new edition with an introduction from Jonathan Lethem.Eric SchallerThe Arrival by Shaun TanI second this rec, after a scond reading of this remarkable book.John Klima Says:I really liked ONE RED PAPERCLIP by Kyle MacDonald. I almost never read nonfiction, but this story of how MacDonald went from a red paperclip to a house through a series of trades was just inspiring.Linda LindsayEnder's Game - Orson Scott Card. So well written that I didn't notice how well written it was.David de BeerLucius Shepard - Softspoken.GirlinWolfsClothingRiver of Gods by Ian McDonald. Simply an amazing book.Jasmine HammerEarth Logic by Laurie J. Marks. She is the master of making you care about the world by making you care about the characters.Kelly ShawBrittle Innings by Michael Bishop, for its beautiful writing and heartbreaking story.Another one I've read and definitely second this recommendation.BeckyA Princess of Roumania by Paul Park –I can't wait to read the sequels!Andy WolvertonTHE IMAGO SEQUENCE AND OTHER STORIES - Laird Barron, an incredible collection that really creeped me out.I like Barron a lot, and blurbed this collection.Ennis DrakeFight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, tied with Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry PournelleVegaDune by Frank Herbert. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card comes a close second. I'm finally reading them (still wondering why I didn't get to them for 8 years), and discovering why they are so popular and such big names in SF.EricBest book was Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz. Simply amazing. After a bit it starts to get a little tedious, but then there is a dead cat and things just get better and better from there.HankLint by Steve Aylett (been wanting to get around to this one for some time)A favorite--surreal insanity, absolutely hilarious.Jess NevinsJason Goodwin's Lords of the Horizon, a superb history of the Ottomans.ConsEugene Onegin, translated by Nabokov. Loved the narrator's digressions. But if you're looking for something more current, then Soldier of Sidon. After the Wizard, which left me a bit cold (though I thought the Knight was brilliant), it was great to get back into Wolfe.Yes--I've got a couple editions of the Onegin translated by Nabokov, and it's really wonderful stuff. I also thought the Wizard was oddly inert next to The Knight.JamesI might have read it a bit more than six months ago, but The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano was superb. It seems at first to be merely episodic and unstructured, but it's got so much narrative verve it just relentlessly drives you through to the end. I just finished The Brief & Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which also kicks some serious ass. Given time to reflect, it might get my vote.Tess in JapanIs it sad that I had to go rummage through my blog archives to jog my memory about what I've read this year? Seems to have been a lackluster year of reading. Only one of the titles I dug up has stayed with me as being ‘wow, awesome', and I suspect you've already read Peter Watt's Blindsight.David MolesThe Yiddish Policeman's Union.DaveI had to think about this one but I'm going to have to say Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman.One of my favorite books of all time. Everyone should seek this one out.Alex D MIt's a toss-up between the Tiptree/Alice Sheldon biography, VIRICONIUM, CSM, and Elizabeth Bear's NEW AMSTERDAM. (I've never been good at choosing favourites.)Steve DempseyThe Professeur Bell series by Joann Sfar, graphic novels of how the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes becomes enmeshed with a two headed alchemist, devils and angels in Jerusalem and a giant ape.I love Sfar--even more so when he teams up with Trondheim, however.Dave LarsenIt's been more than six months, but The Terror still sticks with me. I think that's one of my favorite books, ever. The book I've gotten the most from recently is Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End. Pretty unsettling from this oldster's perspective. But I never did figure out the missing apostrophe.The Terror's an amazing book. M. CallowayThe Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano. Hippie poets in the 70's, what's cooler than that? Favorite image -- Ulysis Lima reading poetry in the shower.Anne SydenhamBest book: A toss up between The new Gibson "Spook Country" and John Crowley's Aegypt sequence.Edward DuffGAST by Edward Lee. Couldn't really get into Lee's writing before, but this one actually had a great plot and nicely thought out characters (with the requisite extremely nasty stuff).Hannu Blommila SaysThe Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron. Creepy, corgeous and utterly fantastic book. Mr. Barron is a prose stylist par excellence and his opening lines are the best ever. ("Then he bites off my shooting hand.")Divers HandsMove Under Ground by Nick Mamatas: The prose in this novel is spectacular; an attempt to capture that mad and maddening off the cuff stream of inebriated consciousness that made Kerouac so popular that actually just ends up demonstrating how superior a stylist Mamatas is. More importantly, its Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Bill Burroughs FIGHTING FUCKING CTHULHU! How in the hell can you go wrong?Steve BuchheitMagic for Beginners by Kelly Link. Yeah, I'm probably the last person in the world to read it.Adam RakunasOut on Blue Six by Ian McDonald. Yeah, it's filled with outdated SF ideas (arcologies and Gilliamesque distopias), but it was such an unbridled joy to read that I didn't care. It was the latest in a long line of books that reminds me why I write SF: because it is awesome.This was a big influence on Veniss Underground.Samuel TinianowAn Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek.Nicole Kornher-StaceHrm .. it's been a slow six months reading-wise. One that comes to mind is The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea, which started out gorgeous and paled only a bit as it progressed, not meandering anywhere near so much as some other novels of its length and scope. Fun overall!MiramorProbably The Scar. Though Ian McDonald's Terminal Cafe (Necroville in the UK) is way up there - McDonald is IMHO and extremely underrated writer.