Fiction Book Recommendation Thread

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TarSpiel

TarSpiel

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I first discovered Zora Neale Hurston in the 90's, and just fell in love with her. I bought a poster of her and had it mounted, and it's been hanging in my living room/s for the last 30 years. Her smiling, beautiful face has been with me for a long, long time.

Back then, I read everything she wrote, but I hadn't read anything since then. Recently, I started poking again through "Mules and Men," her collection of southern black folklore under the auspices of Franz Boas at Barnard College and patronage of Charlotte Osgood Mason. That got me interested in a new biography of her, "Wrapped in Rainbows," which I'm reading right now. It's really good.

Zora is such a fascinating lady. Just bursting with life. Most around her - both black and white - wanted to discuss black people as *black* people. But Zora insisted in talking about them as black *people." The black intelligentsia like Richard Wright, WEB Du Bois, and Alain Locke attacked Zora for ignoring all the evils and inequalities of the Jim Crow south, but Zora wasn't really interested in those things. She was interested in how her people lived, loved, sang, storied, fucked, fought, danced, and worshipped *in spite of* the racism and oppression - the hugeness and heroism beating in their hearts. The black intelligentsia was embarrassed by the language and uneducated ways of poor rural blacks (to say nothing of the white paternalistic liberals and MAGA-esque klansmen). Zora wasn't. She loved the language, and wasn't so stupid as to equate education with intelligence. The people she loved were poor, uneducated, oppressed, black, and fantastically original, creative, and beautiful. She judged her people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And you know what? She judged white people by the exact same standards.

I just love Zora. After this, I think I'll read Barracoons, her interview with the last living slave who was born in Africa (Nigeria), endured the middle passage, was enslaved in Alabama, and survived into his 90's to be interviewed by Zora. After that I think I'll re-read "Jonah's Gourd Vine" (her first novel), and then probably "Their Eyes Were Watching God." Then, any and all short stories I can get my hands on and "Moses, Man of the Mountain." Last, I might go back and read "Tell My Horse" and "Seraph on the Suwanee."

Anyway, I just love Zora. If you're interested in folklore, try "Mules and Men." Novels, try "Jonah's Gourd Vine." Biographies, try "Wrapped in Rainbows."

Her vision of race, art and the human spirit is one that we all need. It's deeply healing, and truly beautiful.

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I grew up in north/central Florida, not far from ZNH’s home turf. Her contribution to the body of Florida literature and history was pretty much glossed over in HS, until I went to college at UF and took a few English Lit courses.
 
Aside from Zora, the best fiction I've read in the last 5-10 years:

Anything George RR Martin write, but if you haven't read his shot story collection Windsongs, treat yourself.

Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing (it blew up into the pop culture, but still such a wonderful novel)

Stephen Mitchell, Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness (a Zen midrash on the Genesis story)

Those are what come to mind for me for now...you have any great recommendations?
 
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabbi Alameddine.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
The Nickel Boys by Colton Whitehead
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
1913: Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts by Florian Illies
 
I’m two books into a series that starts with a book titled “One Second After”. It’s written by a professor at Montreal named William forstchen, and the book is based in black mountain NC. It’s about what happens to society after an EMP bomb is released over the US. It’s got a Stephen Kingish “the Stand” feel to it without the supernatural angle.

I also liked the Silo series (Wool/Shift/Dust) by Hugh Howey. If it isn’t obvious yet, I like the dystopian society genre. lol. 😂
 
Clt Heel said:
I’m two books into a series that starts with a book titled “One Second After”. It’s written by a professor at Montreal named William forstchen, and the book is based in black mountain NC. It’s about what happens to society after an EMP bomb is released over the US. It’s got a Stephen Kingish “the Stand” feel to it without the supernatural angle.

I also liked the Silo series (Wool/Shift/Dust) by Hugh Howey. If it isn’t obvious yet, I like the dystopian society genre. lol. 😂
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really enjoyed One Second After, especially since I know the area so well. If you like those, you should try, "Nuclear War - A Scenario" by Annie Jacobsen. Really frightening, but worth the history around our nuclear defense posture.
 
TarSpiel said:
I first discovered Zora Neale Hurston in the 90's, and just fell in love with her. I bought a poster of her and had it mounted, and it's been hanging in my living room/s for the last 30 years. Her smiling, beautiful face has been with me for a long, long time.

Back then, I read everything she wrote, but I hadn't read anything since then. Recently, I started poking again through "Mules and Men," her collection of southern black folklore under the auspices of Franz Boas at Barnard College and patronage of Charlotte Osgood Mason. That got me interested in a new biography of her, "Wrapped in Rainbows," which I'm reading right now. It's really good.

Zora is such a fascinating lady. Just bursting with life. Most around her - both black and white - wanted to discuss black people as *black* people. But Zora insisted in talking about them as black *people." The black intelligentsia like Richard Wright, WEB Du Bois, and Alain Locke attacked Zora for ignoring all the evils and inequalities of the Jim Crow south, but Zora wasn't really interested in those things. She was interested in how her people lived, loved, sang, storied, fucked, fought, danced, and worshipped *in spite of* the racism and oppression - the hugeness and heroism beating in their hearts. The black intelligentsia was embarrassed by the language and uneducated ways of poor rural blacks (to say nothing of the white paternalistic liberals and MAGA-esque klansmen). Zora wasn't. She loved the language, and wasn't so stupid as to equate education with intelligence. The people she loved were poor, uneducated, oppressed, black, and fantastically original, creative, and beautiful. She judged her people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And you know what? She judged white people by the exact same standards.

I just love Zora. After this, I think I'll read Barracoons, her interview with the last living slave who was born in Africa (Nigeria), endured the middle passage, was enslaved in Alabama, and survived into his 90's to be interviewed by Zora. After that I think I'll re-read "Jonah's Gourd Vine" (her first novel), and then probably "Their Eyes Were Watching God." Then, any and all short stories I can get my hands on and "Moses, Man of the Mountain." Last, I might go back and read "Tell My Horse" and "Seraph on the Suwanee."

Anyway, I just love Zora. If you're interested in folklore, try "Mules and Men." Novels, try "Jonah's Gourd Vine." Biographies, try "Wrapped in Rainbows."

Her vision of race, art and the human spirit is one that we all need. It's deeply healing, and truly beautiful.
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Cheers, TS. FWIW, I ordered and read Barracoon about a year ago - interestingly enough after watching The Underground Railroad on Prime Video - and I enjoyed it very much. Well, to the extent reading about actual slave stories can be "enjoyable" but I'm sure you take my meaning. I've not read Mules & Men, so I may have to give that a look soon.
 
altmin said:
The Murderbot novellas
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Second this! I just got the 7th one from the library and can't wait to tear in to it.

Also anything by Tananarive Due - especially The Reformatory and The Good House. The Reformatory came out last summer, it's about one of the horrible boy's schools in Florida loosely based on one that her uncle was imprisoned in back in the 50s, with added ghosts.

I recently read Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith and loved it, an American-born Vietnamese girl goes back to Vietnam to teach and disappears, and it's linked to a previous disappearance. Don't want to say more because it really deserves to be experienced without spoilers.
 
Disclaimer: I read of lot of crap that while I enjoy it, I just can't in good faith recommend it to others.
In Science Fiction: I like and recommend books by Martha Wells, John Scalzi, and Andy Wier.
Contemporary Fiction: Really enjoy S. A. Crosby
Non-fiction: I like and recommend books by Malcolm Gladwell, Lawrence Wright, Rick Atkinson, and Charles C. Mann.
Specific Recommendation: "Alchemy of the Air" by Thomas Hager (2008) - The story of the Haber-Bosch Process that creates ammonia out of atmospheric nitrogen and from that ammonia, fertilizers and explosives are made. The basic process is pretty much unchanged from when Carl Bosch industrialized it just before WWI started. Fritz Haber invented the underlying process in the lab. Fritz Haber also invented most of the poison gases Germany used in WWI. Haber's wife committed suicide the day after the first of his poison gases were used in WWI. Despite inventing all those poison gases, Fritz Haber was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (for the Haber-Bosch Process) in 1918, not a year known for honoring Germans. Carl Bosch was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (for the Haber-Bosch process) in 1931, once people understood how sophisticated his industrial process was.
Specific Recommendation: "Never Out of Season" by Rob Dunn (2017) - Rob Dunn is a professor in the Department of Applied Ecology at NCSU. A story about how our food supply is simultaneously abundant and fragile.
 
I don't know if it is technically fiction But I am slogging though JanesVille ,Amy Goldstein , which chronicles several families journey through the "collapse ' of sevearal Union based Factories as the result of the W's 2008-2009m Recession - as it impacted Janesville Wis
 
GeeWhy said:
I recently tackled Green Eggs And Ham. Though it's a tough read, would recommend.
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GW, have you read My Effin' Life yet? It's wonderful - and I realize I'm biased - but I found it to be very engrossing learning about Ged's family history and his influences growing up.
 
I re-read Master and Margarita for the 4th time earlier this spring on work trip in Scotland and I think now I see it as occlusive. Regardless of your take, I recommend it highly. The more I think about it, I don't know what it's about.
 
Presently working through LOTR again.

I'm revisiting books that held particular influence in adolescence, with a curious eye towards how they may influence my systems of thinking and compass, today (e.g. To Kill a …, Old Man and the Sea, Night, Of Mice and Men, Candide, amongst others). It's quite navel gazey and not executed with rigor, but has served a meditative and meta-cog practice role, both of which needed a reboot in my routine. There's also a bit more color to the various environs of Middle Earth now that I know a bit about Tolkien's WWI inspirations.
 
Limiting to one’s I’ve read in the last 3-4 years

Life After Life (Kate Atkinson)
A Gentleman in Moscow
All the Light We Cannot See
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Demon Copperhead
The Devil All the Time
Killing Commendatore
The Sympathizer
The Memory Police (Yoko Ogawa)
The Ploughmen (Kim Zupan)
The Passenger & Stella Maris (Cormac McCarthy)
 
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Since I also read a lot of horror and mysteries, in addition to quality fiction, a few shout-outs:

Horror -
The Reformatory (Tananarive Due)
The Spite House (Johnny Compton)
The Fisherman (John Langam)
Silver Nitrate (Silvia Marino-Garcia)
Wylding Hall
Devil House; Wolf in White Van; Universal Harvester (all John Darnielle)
The Only Good Indians
Road of Bones (Christopher Golden)
Thin Air; Dark Matter; wakenhyrst (all Michelle Paver)
Night Film

Mysteries
The Searcher, The Hunter, Faithful Place and Everything else by Tana French
Everything by Keigo Higashino
 
altoheel said:
Second this! I just got the 7th one from the library and can't wait to tear in to it.

Also anything by Tananarive Due - especially The Reformatory and The Good House. The Reformatory came out last summer, it's about one of the horrible boy's schools in Florida loosely based on one that her uncle was imprisoned in back in the 50s, with added ghosts.

I recently read Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith and loved it, an American-born Vietnamese girl goes back to Vietnam to teach and disappears, and it's linked to a previous disappearance. Don't want to say more because it really deserves to be experienced without spoilers.
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Loved the Reformatory, though not an easy read; reading the Good House now.
 
nycfan said:
Loved the Reformatory, though not an easy read; reading the Good House now.
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I need to read it again, it's been a while. Her recent short story collection is really good too, The Wishing Pool.

I also really liked The Fisherman, it went places I was not expecting it to just from the jacket summary.
 
"The Overstory" by Richard Powers: Mind altering view of our world and our balanced place in it. I have never read anything like it.
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"Let the Great World Spin" by Colum McCann: Multiple sub story narratives that read like walking through a perfect garden.
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"Young Men and Fire" by Norman Maclean: A book of near poetic writing about a deadly fire in Montanna in 1949. A number of Forest Service firefighters (smoke jumpers) lost their lives for a number of different reasons. The author turns those decisions and ramifications into a slow subtle exploration of life and death and the vagaries of how we move towards our end. Just a wonderfully beautiful book written by a true craftsman.
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