Books!

[icepixie]

Quick, someone rec me a book or three. My biweekly library trip is tomorrow and I'm fresh out of ideas for things to read.

Please?

(Although I suppose I could just read fic, watch TV, and force myself to write over the next two weeks if I'm bookless...or I could delve further into my shelf of Classics I've Totally Been Meaning To Read For A While Now But Never Will Until Just This Sort of Situation...)

ETA: Most of you know my tastes, but for those of you who don't, I'll read practically anything except a straight romance. I have particular penchants for sci-fi, fantasy, quirky literary/mainstream fiction, humor of any stripe, travel writing, and historical novels or nonfiction, but really, anything goes.

Comments

[sleepingcbw.livejournal.com]

Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red. Hard to describe. Excerpt:

Outside the dark pink air
was already hot and alive with cries. Time to go to school, she said for the third time.
Her cool voice floated
over a pile of fresh tea towels and across the shadowy kitchen to where Geryon stood
at the screen door.
He would remember when he was past forty the dusty almost medieval smell
of the screen itself as it
pressed its grid onto his face. She was behind him now. This would be hard
for you if you were weak
but you're not weak, she said and neatened his little red wings and pushed him
out the door.

Geraldine Brooks, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women. WSJ journalist discusses women's rights in the Middle East, and how well they fit the Koran. It's not the kind of thing I would ever pick up myself, but an alto lent it to me, and it's really quite good.

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. A "murder mystery" novel from the perspective of a British kid with high-functioning autism. Excerpt:

"It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears's house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this."

[icepixie]

I've been meaning to read The Curious Incident of the Dog... for a while now. Thanks for reminding me.

The other two sound interesting as well.