Isn't Gabriel Amazing??? Have you read One Hundred Years of Solitude? If you liked Love in the times of cholera, you will love this one!!
wasn't it CJ Cherryh that wrote Chanur's Pride?
I have not read 100 years of solitude, I have it but for some reason it never caught my attention once I started to try reading it! I might give it a second try...but I am a sucker for either romance or mystery or some sort of supernatural element...If one of those is missing it is super hard for me to like a book..I'm soo critical lol!!
Oh.... you like the romance and the magic.... You've GOT to read "Like Water for Chocolate" then.... It's awesome, and it has PLENTY of romance and even more magic!Originally Posted by ut0pia
I have not read 100 years of solitude, I have it but for some reason it never caught my attention once I started to try reading it! I might give it a second try...but I am a sucker for either romance or mystery or some sort of supernatural element...If one of those is missing it is super hard for me to like a book..I'm soo critical lol!!
But reading from the wikipedia description of the house of the spirits, I am sooo intrigued!! I am most definitely going to check it out, probably in spanish to practice my language skillsBeing completely fluent and comfortable in speaking spanish is my dream so maybe reading more spanish literature will help me get to it...
She got better, but her first few books can only be described as "clunky".
I dunno but i really love Phillip K Dick even tho he's so vague haha sorry I totally contradicted myself there..I guess he isn't vague the way I meant it. He just leaves a lot up to interpretation but that's not what bothers me with sci fi. "Do androids dream of electric sheep" is one of my favorite books because there are soooo many social implications you can think about!! Like the human vs. machine element and what makes one human..There is such a thin line with Philip K Dick, it's almost blurred and it's hard to see his non human characters as non human..Originally Posted by strange_wings
She got better, but her first few books can only be described as "clunky".
As for why some sci fi and speculative fiction is sort of vague, it depends on the era it's coming out of and the author. There's the "pulp era" - 20s-30s, the golden age - late 30s-50s, and the new wave that was during the 60s and 70s (and to some degree early 80s). Any newer authors after that tended to write more hard sci fi. You also get cyberpunk around this type.
I prefer the 60s and 70s sci fi. This era was dominated by the speculative fiction writers who did keep the technology side of the stories more downplayed and focused on the social (and political) aspects and consequences.
You get authors like Matheson, Ballard, Dick, Ellison, Moorcock, Silverberg, Farmer, Aldiss, Tiptree/Sheldon, etc from the new wave era.
My bookshelves are filled with as much as I can get a hold of from these authors.
Anyone who doesn't like the technology focused hard sci fi should try this sub-genre. A nice starting point is an anthology called Dangerous Visions - if you can find it.
As I said, that's hard sci fi. I don't really like it, either.
Originally Posted by Kiwideus
Books that don't have vampires that sparkle are good.
I must admit that I did read the books, only because I love almost anything vampyre! However, I have to agree with the sparkly vampyre thing. That is just soooo wrong on so many levels!Originally Posted by strange_wings
On that subject. I don't care what the current trend is, I've read at and beyond a college level since I was 9-10. I do not want to read a book wrote for and intended for children or young adults (Twilight series, Harry Potter, etc). Too much drama, especially teeny drama, and my mind wanders off to think about more interesting things..
You will have to look a little for it, but my favorite along that line is "Little Fuzzy," by H. Beam Piper. Animals that you can truly love! It lead to about 4 more books, not all of them by Piper (he committed suicide, I believe, before the third of the series was published).
No I haven't read those but I know he was really suffering from schizophrenia or some other mental illness plus he was high all the time and wrote a lot most of his stuff while he was high so I am not surprised!! The whole story around him is pretty spooky because he also died of a stroke, combined with his mental illnesses it makes me wonder what was really going on in his life. I guess we'll never know...I used to be so obsessed but then moved on to a different phase and forgot all about him. I know there was another book by him that I liked that had to do with people committing something like thought crimes and technology was used to find out what they're thinking, I can't even remember the title but I really liked it. Now that I remembered about him I am probably going to go get some more of his books...Originally Posted by strange_wings
As for Phillip K. Dick - have you read Ubik or Martian Time Slip? Those books will mess with your mind a bit (as do many of his), there was a part in Martian Time Slip where he repeats a scene that makes you think you've lost your place..
Minority Report. He has a lot of books and short stories, a good portion are not in print in the US.
Those two were excellent! I prefer nonfiction, and read a lot of true crime or biographies. Every once in a while I come across something like The Hot Zone that I recommend to everyone I know, and which causes me to look for other books on the subject, like Ebola.
One of my favorite books is one where you know exactly what's going to happen from the very beginning - a character is murdered. But it's so interesting how they get to that point. It's called A Secret History by Donna Tartt. Excellent book!
