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Books, books, books!

Chally

I’ve read fifty-five books so far this year; I’m going to see how many more I can fit in by year’s end. The plan is rereading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, then reading Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox. (Yes, I am a woman of widely varying reading interests.)

I’m going to pick a few of my recommendations from what I’ve read over the past year, and then you can have a go in comments! There can never be too many reading recommendations.

Small World by David Lodge is a really funny and engaging look at academia. It’s full of clever literary theory play. There are, however, issues, shall we say.

I love everything that comes out of Karen Joy Fowler’s mind, and The Sweetheart Season was no exception. It’s set post-war, about a group of women who work at a cereal factory in a small town in Minnesota. They form a baseball team called the Sweetwheat Sweethearts. If you’ve read any Karen Joy Fowler, you’ll be anticipating the beautiful turns of phrase that will mark her slightly surreal plot and exactly right insights into the way people work.

Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is about a Dominican family who immigrate to the Bronx, and how the four daughters live their lives. It’s told sort of backwards, which really worked well, and I wish it had gone on for much longer than it did!

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is a classic, of course. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, and is about the workings of 19th century New York society, duty, and a really moving love story. The Martin Scorsese film is well worth watching, as well.

How to Ditch Your Fairy is my kind of YA, from Justine Larbalestier. It’s set in New Avalon, where everyone has a fairy. Charlie is not happy with her parking fairy as she can’t drive and people keep borrowing her so that they’ll get good parking spaces. She swaps fairies with a classmate, and it goes very, very wrong. It’s a great premise, but, more than that, I’m pleased to see YA where queer characters are a norm! Also, Larbalestier is that rare white writer who writes main characters of colour – and well – and doesn’t feel a need to make whiteness a default characteristic.

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire could have been so much better than it was. It rehabilitates the image of the Wicked Witch, for sure, but, well, the disability politics of Wicked are appalling and the racial politics are so close and yet so far. A real pity that I couldn’t just sit back and enjoy it, because there was some very well done characterisation and world-building.

And, lastly, I read a tonne of Tamora Pierce, whose writing I have adored for years. You want feminist fantasy heroines? She has you covered, time and again.

50 thoughts on Books, books, books!

  1. Tamora Pierce is probably the reason I’m a feminist–well, her and Robin McKinley and Patricia C. Wrede and Madeleine L’Engle and any number of other YA fantasy writers. Which of her series did you tackle? I grew up inhaling the Tortall books, but as a twenty-something now I am obsessed with the Emelan titles. I find that they tackle issues of race and sexuality with a bit more reach than the Tortall books.

    If you liked Justine Larbalestier, you might try Karen Healey’s debut novel, Guardian of the Dead. It has a Maori myth base, an asexual character, and a female protagonist who’s not model-sized.

    I love Edith Wharton too, but I prefer The House of Mirth to The Age of Innocence.

    I don’t read much paranormal romance, but I did pick up Dianne Sylvan’s new novel Queen of Shadows. Definitely smarter, funnier, and sexier than the average vampire tale! Bonus points for Buffy and Serenity shout-outs. 😀

  2. Wow, if you’re really going to read three books in 2.5 days, I – a total bibliophile and heavy reader – bow to you 🙂

    Non-new rec: I’m currently reading Bleak House by Dickens and just loving it. I adore Dickens and basically any book by him that I pick up, I’m immediately enchanted with – the writing style and the super-clear imagery and the awesome names, it just all grabs me. This is well known as one of his best and it’s living up to that for me.

    New-ish rec: Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. It’s not like a monumental staggering work or anything, but it was pretty damn thorough and entertaining, especially for me since I was just a bit too young to have really been a part of or aware of the Riot Grrrl stuff when it was happening. A few years older and I probably would have been right smack in the middle of it. Lots of interesting details and stories about the well-known and lesser-known women (and men) involved with the scene.

  3. “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake” by Aimee Bender about a girl (later woman) who can taste what people were feeling when they cooked.
    Johannes Cabal (2 so far) by Jonathan L Howard – a necromancer who is always in trouble. A little steam punk ish eventually in the 2nd book.
    Robin Hobb’s Dragon Keeper (there’s a 2nd in this series now.. Dragon Haven)

    The Charlaine Harris books that are the basis for True Blood. Wait, no, that’s not a recommend, it’s a guilty pleasure!

  6. Non-Fiction:

    Loyal To The Sky: Notes from an Activist by Marisa Handler – great life story of a globe-trotting journalist/activist. Amazingly inspiring.

    Demon-haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan – this was a reread, but it was the first book that got me interested in skepticism, back in high school.

    Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan – I’ve got pet ratties, and it’s really a fascinating look at how rats live, and how years of rattie experience has served them well.

    Fiction:
    Cosm by Gregory Benford and Rocheworld by Robert Forward – I read both of these for my Science through Science Fiction class. They’re both hard-science sci-fi written by real, honest-to-goodness physicists. They weren’t bad, especially for the science parts, but the character development left something to be desired. Still, not bad for light reading.

    Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood – dystopian future story, and a follow up to Oryx and Crake. Both are amazing books, if you like the dystopian-future thing; she’s my favorite author ever, so really, anything by her is good.

    Other:
    Just about every issue of The Nation magazine, Mother Earth News, Sociological Perspectives, a huge list of blogs, and textbooks galore.

    I know there were plenty more, but it all becomes a mishmash in my brain with all the studying I’ve been doing. o_O

  7. N.K. Jemisin’s new series, starting with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, has been fantastic.

    I read the great anthology Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys (ed. David Henry Sterry). Loved it.

  8. It’s funny because I read Wicked a few years ago before I started really thinking through these issues and liked it enough. I think at the time, the point was to continue to draw a picture of how close-minded the society was. I may need to re-read it with this new lens and see how the book has changed for me.

    Thanks for the suggestion!

    I’m reading classics that I didn’t get a chance to read growing up. Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are both on my short-term list.

    Did y’all know Frankenstein’s monster talked? It might be a dream that Frankenstein is having. If so, don’t ruin it for me, haha.

  9. Currently reading “Reality Bites Back: The Truth About Your Guilty Pleasure TV” by Jennifer Pozner and its fantastic. Great addition to feminist scholarship on media images.

  10. Ooh, if you haven’t read anything by Catherynne M. Valente yet I’d heartily recommend it. She likes to rewrite and extrapolate from fairy-tale type narratives, but with an overtly feminist themes. Very beautiful prose, and very woman/LGBTQI/POC friendly.

    Another really good feminist fantasy/sci-fi writer I’ve been getting into this year is Nalo Hopkinson. The work I’ve read by her takes place on extraterrestrial worlds peopled by Caribbean refuges from Earth. A lot of exploration of race and gender oppression, as well as a preponderance of strong and complex female characters taking care of themselves despite hostile environments.

  11. @nonskanse – I loved “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake”.

    My recs are- ‘Room’ by Emma Donoghue, ‘Her Fearful Symmetry’ by Audrey Niffenegger, ‘Winter Garden’ by Kristin Hannah, ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ and ‘The Bean Trees’ by Barbara Kingsolver, ‘The Book Thief’ by Markus Zusak, ‘Push’ by Sapphire, ‘The Thirteenth Tale’ by Diane Setterfield, and ‘Triumph’ by Carolyn Jessop and Laura Palmer.

    I also finally got around to reading the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy by Phillip Pullman, the Harry Potter books, too much Jodi Picoult stuff (I know, I know – but it’s like sitting down to watch Timmy Time after a hard day, makes my mind a clean slate!) and ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ by Arthur Golden.

    The one book I read that I wouldn’t recommend is ‘The Slap’ by Christos Tsiolkas, if only because the many (all straight) sex scenes consisted of “He thrust his cock into her cunt”. They are apparently the only two genital descriptors he knows, seriously. I’m tempted to send him a copy of the Profanisaurus so that he can widen his vocabulary a little. Also, despite being roundly praised by critics, I honestly found it tired and stuffed with cliches.

  12. I recently became addicted to the “Hunger Games” trilogy which, among many other strong points, feature a strong and interesting female protagonist and a clear message decrying inequalities of wealth. The books even have characters with both physical and mental disabilities, though admittedly this is something of a mixed bag.

  14. Alison: It’s 30 December here, so more like 1.5 days! :S I hope I can make it.

    DianaH: This year’s been a mix of Tortall books for me, though I really like the Emelan stuff, too. Also: Karen Healey is made of win.

    Paraxeni: Have you read Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife?

    So many books to add to my to read list, everyone….!

  15. Chally: Go for it! I’m sending mental images of pots of tea and plates of cookies to keep your energy up 🙂

  17. Karin Lowachee writes some pretty damn good sci-fi with queer-positive characters. Mercedes Lackey writes fantasy with a cast of of diverse characters, of all races and sexuality, with several strong women. I love Tanya Huff as well for her urban fantasies, queer-postive themes, and strong women, and lastly, Sarah Monette for her literary series Melusine, with a gay main character, and is just so great to anyone who likes not just a story, but the words that tell it.

  18. I second Karak’s suggestion of Sarah Monette. Her work is dark, and looks at sexual and psychological abuse pretty closely, but it’s also darkly lovely.

  20. Last year I decided to read Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum back-to-back with Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy (not really a trilogy as the books flow directly into one another) and found the experience to be really great. They’re both great for not only being really unique books in terms of construction, pacing, and execution but for screwing with your assumptions about people and values.

    Foucault’s Pendulum is probably best known as the book that The Da Vinci Code ripped off after stripping the subtle satire, historical fiction, semiotics out. Its about three editors at an academic press who engage in a thought experiment in which they try to connect unconnected events in history to create a patently ridiculous conspiracy theory that other people begin to believe. It plays with the nature of truth, the ways in which human beings relate to their symbols, and the tension between what we know and what actually gives us meaning.

    The Illuminatus! Trilogy is gonzo sci-fi set in the 1970s that switches between viewpoints and stubbornly refuses to commit to any given character’s sense of reality. It deals with a lot of the same themes of conspiracy and how we figure out whats real and what isn’t.

  21. I LOVE Tamora Pierce! She’s got a new selection of short stories coming out that I’m going to start reading. I second the recommendation of The Hunger Games. And as far as YA fiction goes, my little sister has me reading the Maximum Ride books. I know it’s James Patterson, and his co-written adult books hurt me, but the eponymous main character in the Maximum Ride books is actually pretty kick-ass. Even if the writing is so-so and the plot predictable, I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of such a powerful female protagonist.

    As far as “adult” books go–The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood was quite intriguing. As is She May Not Leave by Fay Wheldon, if you want an interesting twist on the conventional nanny-moves-in-and-tries to displace-wife story. Oh, and Jane Austen’s Lady Susan is good for kicks.

    And also, if I may, advice on books you plan to read already: read Jane Eyre before Wide Sargasso Sea. Once you read the latter, you’ll never see Mr. Rochester in the same way again… (okay, so maybe WSS doesn’t really point out anything that can’t be inferred as true in Jane Eyre, but it is still rather depressing)

  22. Just read Mary Roach’s Bonk and Mission to Mars. Love her style.

    Also just read At Home by Bill Bryson. Equally entertaining.

  23. Scyntillating: I’ve read them both before, and in that order, and that is definitely the way to do it! 🙂

    Thanks very much, Alison, I’m about halfway through Jane Eyre and definitely am in need of some sugar about now!

  24. Lynn Flewelling’s Tamir Triad is a terrific fantasy series that deals with gender politics, cultural misogyny and the price that must be paid to set the world right. Her other series, the Nightrunner books, focuses on a pair of adventurer/spies/male lovers set in the same fictional world a few hundred years later. The supporting characters in both series are particularly strong, with plenty of strong, kick-ass women and non-stereotyped gay men.

    I second the recommendation for Catherynne Valente, who won the Nebula for a book that started out as a serialized novel on her website. I also liked the Hunger Games series. And when it comes to sheer enjoyment, the “In Death” series of mysteries by J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts never fails.

    Non-fiction…I particularly enjoyed The Poisoner’s Handbook, about the establishment of the coroner’s office in New York. I also reread Backlash and found it just as good as the first time I read it, back when it first came out.

  26. I’ve been re-reading pretty much all of Kelley Armstrong’s books. Her worldbuilding almost as fantastic as her female characters are, and the feminism in her books never fails to make me smile. The Nadia Stafford series talks extensively about how ridiculous and wrong-headed rape culture is; the Women of the Otherworld series, especially Elena’s books, deal with being a woman in a world designed by and for men; her YA series deals with ableism and features characters of colour who are introduced by their personalities, not their skin. Oh, and she’s a phenomenal storyteller.

    And yay for Tamora Pierce! She made middle school livable for me. Other awesome YA I’d recommend: anything by Kristin Cashore, who, imho, writes the strongest female characters in older YA; Kody Keplinger’s debut, The DUFF, which has some first-book pacing problems, but more than makes up for them by having teenagers who swear and enjoy sex, and a fat female protagonist who self-identifies as feminist and fights against slut-shaming; Raised by Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes deals with the concept of ‘ownership’ of females, and has a female protag who wants to replace the current patriarchal system, not with a matriarchy, but with something totally egalitarian and comfortable for everyone. All of these authors also tell interesting and entertaining stories, too.

    Also, Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. It’s one of the most believable and realistic romances I’ve ever read, and given that I read several hundred romance novels a year, that’s saying a lot. Not only does it revolve around a romance, it’s incredibly romantic, but doesn’t use annoying gender stereotyping!

  27. Oh, I have so many for you!
    – We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
    – I second the Hunger Games recommendation
    – The Old Kingdom Trilogy by Garth Nix
    – Anything at all written by Jennifer Fallon
    – The Mortal Instruments books by Cassandra Clare
    – Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon
    – Graceling by Kristin Cashore

    And I share your love for Tamora Pierce. She’s amazing.

  28. I think I alluded to this before in a prior thread. The biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay I read recently is called Savage Beauty and is written by Nancy Milford.

    Millay was a famous Feminist for a time in her day, and much of her behavior would still be considered subversive and unusual for a woman. Openly bisexual, she had affairs with both men and women, for starts. Without meaning to sound needlessly salacious, one anecdote that sticks with me most is how she once wrote a letter to an acquaintance, a man she wanted to sleep with, describing in exacting detail precisely what she wanted from him. He refused to reply, and it was later discovered that he did so because he was, in fact, gay.

  29. Here are My Top Feminist Books of 2010

    1. Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election That Changed Everything for American Women – Rebecca Traister. I finished this book in one sitting on the 12 hour flight from Chicago to Beijing. Traister discusses her odyssey from being a lukewarm Edwards supporter indifferent between Obama and Hillary to being moved to tears by Hillary’s concession, as well as what Michelle Obama and Sarah Palin mean for feminism. Various controversies including the backstory about Gloria Steinem’s infamous NY Times editorial and the facetious “generation divide” are discussed. I thought this book was going to be really depressing but Traister argues that 2008 was a breakthrough year for feminism and had me agreeing vigorously with her by the end.
    2. Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society and Neurosexism Create Difference – Cordelia Fine. This is a systematic discussion from a scientist about popular writers who claim to use science to ‘find’ inherent differences between men and women, showing how scientific studies get misinterpreted, distorted and otherwise misrepresented to exaggerate sex differences.
    3. Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth about Reality TV – Jenn Pozner. I am still going through this one… Pozner watched 1,000+ hours and Reality TV and transcribed a good portion of it. The result is a thorough discussion of how Reality TV distorts the truth to promote regressive cultural assumptions with regard to gender, race and class. She makes it explicit that she is not ‘judging’ us for watching Reality TV, but wants us to take a more critical eye to it and wants networks to change how they approach the format. This is a very important book, IMO.

    As for other books, well, All the Devils are Here is probably the best book on the financial crisis so far. I don’t have much fiction to recommend.

  30. Chally, thank you so much! I’m so honored you feel this way, and really appreciate the good snaps you and the others have given the Emelan books! I work hard to write the books I wanted to read so badly (and still do) as a teen, and have plenty of fun doing so.

    I second or third the votes for Karen Healey’s, Suzanne Collins’, and Kristin Cashore’s books, and add Elizabeth Bunce’s STAR CROSSED, Elizabeth Bear BONE AND JEWEL CREATURES, Michelle Zink, Sarah Beth Durst’S ENCHANTED IVY, Esther Friesner current Nefertiti book and a book about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, Bruce Coville’s THE LAST HUNT (he winds up the Unicorn Chronicles after 13 years!), Barbara Hamilton’s THE NINTH DAUGHTER (an alias for Barbara Hambly), and Leona Wisoker’s SECRETS OF THE SANDS for some of my favorites that I’ve read recently with strong female heroes. (I’ll be doing my own list soon–I love sharing good books!)

  31. Seconding Paraxeni’s rec for The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. I just reread it a couple months ago and it’s just as great as I remembered it (I have to pick up some more Kingsolver and Atwood in the coming year).

    Neon Angel by Cherie Currie. This is the book the movie The Runaways was based on. Major trigger warning for rape though.

    For absoute fluff, the Scott Pilgrom versus The World series, if for no other reason than the classic video game references and the great female friendship that blossoms towards the end of the series.

    Filament magazine for an “adult” magazine that focuses entirely on the female gaze.

    And a shameless plug for a friend of mine, if anyone is interested in reading (or has already read and wants to talk about) The Ethical Slut, my friend Kit is hosting a read-along at his blog. He’ll be talking about the 1st chapter sometime today so it just started. Trigger warning for those who need it for BDSM topics.

  32. I know it’s bad taste to disagree with book recommendations, but I want to strongly warn against The Education of Little Tree. The portrayals of the Cherokee characters play directly into white stereotypes of generic Indians.

    If you’re interested in fiction involving Native characters, absolutely anything by Sherman Alexie (who is Spokane/Coeur d’Alene) is worth a go. Indian Killer even includes a brief conversation about Education of Little Tree.

  33. What about Virginia Woolf? A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN is a brilliant declaration of women’s rights–as is THREE GUINEAS. In addition, MRS DALLOWAY and TO THE LIGHTHOUSE are two of the finest novels of the 20th century and Woolf is certainly one of the greatest writers of all time.

  34. Ooh, books! My tastes run toward the playful, usually more (post)modern than classic, and in that vein I offer the following

    Everything by Thomas King. He’s one of my favourite authors of all time. Novels and short stories, fiction, hysterically funny, bitingly witty and political as well as personal. Green Grass Running Water and A Short History of Indians in Canada are my current favourites of his.

    Helen DeWitt wrote one of my favourite novels of all time, about clever, interesting people leading frustrating, mundane lives (and also about boyhood, motherhood, and being the person you want to be in the place you want to be it): The Last Samurai. It has nothing to do with the unfortunately named Tom Cruise film.

    Chip Kidd’s The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters, a semi-autobiographical novel about a guy going through his first year of art school, taught me more about how people think than four years of psychology undergrad. It’s also a book written by a man who made himself famous as a graphic designer for book covers – the book itself is a playground of clever design quirks and “easter eggs”.

    Minister Faust is another fabulous Canadian author, more sci-fi and fantasy, and I recommend both of his books, The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, a funky, nerdy fantasy-mystery in the Edmonton of the near future, and From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain, a satirical poke at the problems and politics of dysfunctional superheroes.

    Jasper Fforde has written loads of amazing books, including the Thursday Next series (“Books for people who love stories and stories for people who love books.”) and the Nursery Crimes series. Both series play with altered universes and book-verses and just slightly different takes on reality, with amusing consequences. Loads of classical literary references and fun mystery themes. He’s also just written a new novel called Shades of Grey that’s also really lovely, and an entirely different setting and approach from the first two.

  35. @chally – I love The Time Traveler’s Wife. Bought it with my last ten euros in a branch of Hugendubel in Berlin in 2004. I was going through a terrible time, and my Berlin friend was working up North and offered me the use of her flat to help get my head together. I had no money, so I read books in parks and beauty spots all over the city for entertainment. I ran out of reading material and was starting to think – never good! So I bought TTW in lieu of food.

    That’s why I squeaked with sheer joy when Her Fearful Symmetry landed on my e-reader this summer. It’s as breathtakingly bizarre as TTW.

  36. @Ellen–

    Are you at all aware about the controversy surrounding the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare?

  37. Chally / other mods,
    I’ve had a comment stuck in mod for a couple hours now… is there something problematic about it or did it just get lost in a shuffle?

  38. I’ve been quite enjoying Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series. The main character is a young girl who works her way through all sorts of problems via cunning and logic.

  40. I third the recommendation for The Hunger Games trilogy. Not free of problems, but also pretty good as far as YA goes.

  42. Ha, I also just remembered that I used to follow along with that online book club, I’ll have to check out the discussions you had on The Ethical Slut there too.

  43. Chally:

    I read Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea back-to-back a while ago — I very much wanted to see more of Bertha, who is kind of a cipher in the original work. Wide Sargasso Sea actually kind of disappointed me in that I never really felt like I knew much about who Bertha/Antoinette was in that book, either … it filled in a lot of the gaps in where she comes from, and the culture shock she must have felt moving from the Caribbean to England, but I never really felt like I got a sense of her personality.

    Glenna – I love Sherman Alexie! I’ve read two of his short-story collections now, and he’s wonderful. I’d recommend him to anybody.

    I’m currently reading two books about the science (and the “science,” ifyaknowhattimean) of gender difference: Delusions of Gender, which I see Tony has already mentioned, and Rebecca Jordan-Young’s Brain Storm.

    Paraxeni – LOL@ the Profanisaurus! I wish that book really existed — I could use it.

  44. Tamora Pierce is amazing. I could read her stuff all day, and now I would like more, please.
    I just read the Hunger Games back to back, really fast, and they were terrific. Compulsively readable and great feminist heroine.
    I’m about to put a best books post up on my blog!

  45. For something short, a quick read the first time through, but which needs many re-reads, try “Journal of a Solitude” by May Sarton. It is, just as the title says, a journal written over the course of a year, by a woman living by herself just outside of a small town in New Hampshire.
    Also recommended are the Emma Graham books by Martha Grimes. I’ve read, and loved, the first two, “Hotel Paradise” and “Cold Flat Junction”, and had the third “Belle Ruin” recommended to me. The books, posing as a murder mystery, are actually an examination of the life of a lonely eleven-year-old girl, as narrated by herself. Funny, sad, beautiful and scary, and very evocative of what it feels like to be a pre-adolescent girl.

  46. I enthusiastically endorse the recommendations for Catherynne M. Valente and Dianne Sylvan. Love them both.

    Here are a few recs off the top of my head:

    * “Kindred” by Octavia E. Butler – It’s a classic for a reason! It sucks you in from the first page and is incredibly moving.

    * “Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang” by Joyce Carol Oates – I’ve read this one about a million times, it’s one of my go-to “comfort food” type books. Not only does it have great female protagonists, it’s also a scathing critique of classism, sexism, and racism set in the ’50s.

    * “A Year at the Movies: One Man’s Filmgoing Odyssey” by Kevin Murphy – Kevin Murphy, of MST3K and Rifftrax fame, saw a movie a day for a year and wrote a book about it. It’s not about the movies themselves, so much as the movie going experience, everything that goes into it, and how that affects the audience. Like, he’s got a chapter on food, chapters on different types of theaters, festivals, Imax vs. regular films, and so on. It’s hilarious, but you can also tell how much he loves movies, which made me love movies!

  47. DianaH: Tamora Pierce is probably the reason I’m a feminist–well, her and Robin McKinley and Patricia C. Wrede and Madeleine L’Engle and any number of other YA fantasy writers. Which of her series did you tackle? I grew up inhaling the Tortall books, but as a twenty-something now I am obsessed with the Emelan titles. I find that they tackle issues of race and sexuality with a bit more reach than the Tortall books.

    Thank you for so many things–for saying I helped you to become a feminist, for including me in such august company, and for the good props for Emelan! I’m slowly finding places in the more Euro-centric Tortall universe where I can deal with sexuality, if not as much with race as I’d like, but Emelan is where I first really broke out on those topics.

    Wishing you a 2011 full of cool books,
    Tammy Pierce

  48. to add some more canadian authors into the mix:

    – anything by alice munro. i love her. anything i have read by her i have loved, had numerous moments with (oh my god it’s like she KNOWS me!”), etc. all time favourite.

    – UNLESS by carol shields

    – THE UNDERPAINTER

  49. i don’t know what just happened there…

    – THE UNDERPAINTER by jane urqhart

    i’ll also second the poisonwood bible by barbara kingsolver.

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