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Book recs?
Jul. 8th, 2009 03:47 pmI am in the market for book recs at the moment. However, I'm fussy about what sort of books I want to read. I want to keep hold of my fannish enthusiasm for the Inda series until the final book comes out in a month or so, which means that I don't want to be swept off my feet by any new, upstart obsession in the meantime. This means that I don't want to read long, multi-book series. I don't even want epic single novels. What I want are one-off shortish novels, or else novels that will have a sequel one day, but still feel emotionally satisfying without one.
Young adult novels would be a good bet. I'm willing to try a variety of genres, though I'm particularly in the mood for good YA fantasy (ideally without dragons, magic jewellery, or quests to save Fantasyland from D'arkh L'hor'ds, and I can do without angst-ridden vampires), or YA novels with a contemporary setting but a lightness of touch, in the vein of Hilary McKay or Jaclyn Moriarty. Anything that would inspire a review to make a comparison to Diana Wynne Jones is, of course, a very good bet.
I would prefer books that have been published in the UK, so I can borrow them from the library.
While I'm talking about books, I read Once a Princess and Twice a Prince by Sherwood Smith over the weekend, and really enjoyed them; an LJ post inspired by them and a few other books will follow once I've got my computer back. Yesterday and this morning I read Knife by RJ Anderson, which I found rather hard to put down. I'm really enjoying all this reading. I haven't read anything like enough over the last two years, when I've been obsessively writing fanfic all the time, and much as I love writing fanfic, I'm currently feeling a huge sense of freedom, as if I've been given the keys to a wonderful world of books, and told to wallow there without any guilty sense that I "ought" to be doing something else.
Young adult novels would be a good bet. I'm willing to try a variety of genres, though I'm particularly in the mood for good YA fantasy (ideally without dragons, magic jewellery, or quests to save Fantasyland from D'arkh L'hor'ds, and I can do without angst-ridden vampires), or YA novels with a contemporary setting but a lightness of touch, in the vein of Hilary McKay or Jaclyn Moriarty. Anything that would inspire a review to make a comparison to Diana Wynne Jones is, of course, a very good bet.
I would prefer books that have been published in the UK, so I can borrow them from the library.
While I'm talking about books, I read Once a Princess and Twice a Prince by Sherwood Smith over the weekend, and really enjoyed them; an LJ post inspired by them and a few other books will follow once I've got my computer back. Yesterday and this morning I read Knife by RJ Anderson, which I found rather hard to put down. I'm really enjoying all this reading. I haven't read anything like enough over the last two years, when I've been obsessively writing fanfic all the time, and much as I love writing fanfic, I'm currently feeling a huge sense of freedom, as if I've been given the keys to a wonderful world of books, and told to wallow there without any guilty sense that I "ought" to be doing something else.
