Trying something new

[lightreads]

Trying something new to liven things up for me, as I've been feeling a bit blah about the TBR pile lately. I haven't come up with a snappy name for it yet, but here's how it'll work:

If there's something you want me to read and review, drop a comment here with title and author and anything else relevant. It can be anything – something you think I might like, something you think I will loathe and enjoy foaming at the mouth about, something you want me to read as a test run before you do, whatever. I'll pick one out of the suggestions, read it, review, and in that review open comments up for the next batch of suggestions. A few rules guidelines:

• One book per person per round, please (though feel free to repeat in a subsequent round if I don't get to it first time out)
• I'm using "book" loosely – shorter work is fine, too.
• I obviously won't read things that aren't available in an accessible format. If you want to check on something before suggesting it (not required), run it through The National Library Service, Audible, and Bookshare. I have other, more specialized sources, so I still may be able to get something that isn't in one of the big archives.

Please note: Kindle books and associated devices and apps are not accessible. Do not get me going on this, we'll be here all night.

I won't have a set schedule for these reads and reviews, so we'll see how it shakes out naturally.

…Go!

Comments

[eruthros]

Do you have any interest in apocalypses? If so, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on Colson Whitehead's Zone One, which I read last year and found interesting. So far about half of my friends have despised it and half have thought it was awesome. (Zombies, apocalypses, "literary" stylings.)

If zombies aren't your speed, I've also been reccing Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman series to basically everyone - fantasy(ish) with our hero basically a travelling reference librarian. (Buddies, worldbuilding, travel, long reads.) The first two novels are collected in an omnibus edition ("The Steerswoman's Road") that I know is available in an accessible format, but I don't know if the third book ("The Lost Steersman") is.

[templemarker]

Totally seconding Steerswoman. They are just incredible, and I will be a bit devastated if Kirstein doesn't continue them.

[jadelennox]

Well, poop. I wanted to see you foam at the mouth about David Stahler's abominable Truesight, but I can't find accessible versions of it anywhere. Not surprisingly, because it's clear the author and publisher of that book don't believe in non-metaphorical blindness.

Then I wanted to recommend the excellent Hush by Eshet Chayil, but I can't find an accessible version of that either, which is just criminal.

I see that The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks audio is narrated by Bahni Turpin, who did a fabulous job on the other audios I know, and I liked the book. I'd be curious what you think of it. So how's about that one?

[teafeather]

Truesight is available in 4-track cassette format from New York's Andrew Heiskell Library Braille and Talking Book Library. Catalog number is NN-BPH RC 5628

Of course if you don't have an NLS-type 4-track cassette player still lying around that probably won't do you much good.

[lightreads]

Of course if you don't have an NLS-type 4-track cassette player still lying around that probably won't do you much good.

I was about to say 'haha, of course I don't, that would be silly,' and then I realized oh shit, I actually do. Though not one of the giant 6-pound NLS beasts, at least.

[livingbyfiction]

Somebody, please read Horns by Joe Hill because I read it too fast and missed a dimension somewhere along the way. What can I say, the book was too entertaining. It's on all 3 platforms. Here's my review from earlier this year:

"Ignatius Martin Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things,” says the first line. When Ig wakes up with horns on his head, his girlfriend doesn’t seem to see them, yet she stares.

And then she tells him that she wants to eat a whole box of donuts so that maybe she'll get fat and Ig will want to dump her. The horns draw an unnatural honesty out of everyone who (doesn’t) see them, and soon Ig is up to his increasingly pointy chin in other people’s secrets. Grandmothers and little kids tell him their ugliest temptations, and he can’t shut them up.

Even worse, everyone tells Ig what they really think about Ig. It turns out that the whole town thinks Ig murdered his ex-girlfriend. If the menfolk here had any testicles, says Ig’s priest, they’d have lynched Ig properly. Not even Ig’s mother believes his innocence. She wants to write Ig a nice letter, on her nicest stationery, explaining that she loves Ig very much and wants him to go away and never come back.

Ig’s father says something much worse.

Horns is stabbingly funny as it flirts with the ugly and the sublime; Flannery O’Connor on acid. Someone will have to read it and tell me what Hill has repurposed the cross to symbolize, though. There’s light and dark and crosses all ticking like Morse code (and there’s Morse code too), and there’s something Hill said that I didn’t quite catch.

[readerjane]

I'll play!

For this first round, I'll toss in the non-fiction book I rec'd to you a while ago: Liars and Outliers by Bruce Schneier. Because it sounds like something you'd like. Audible has it.

[ecaterin]

*is very very interested in this thread!*

*has read precious few new books outside of light's reccs :D*

*but will try to come up with one!*

*enquiring minds want to know: does light like historical fiction?*

[outlineofash]

How about All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen? I'm curious if it's worth reading, or simply another forgettable steampunk novel.

[sibylle]

I thought "The Collected Letters of Emily Dickinson" were a really interesting read, to get to know the woman behind the poems ... .

[cyprinella]

I picked up Holley Bishop's Robbing the Bees a few years back and it's what got me interested in having bees. One of the few nonfiction titles I've actually finished.

[whazzle.livejournal.com]

You might like Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor ~ YA, has some great parts and some rushed parts and some what was that? parts. It would be really interesting to get your take on it.

(Also thanks for the reviews! I'm adding things to my TBR list now.)

[cahn]

I wasn't able to reply to this until I finished this book! So it may be too late, but whatever, thought I'd throw this out there anyway.

Five Flavors of Dumb, Antony John. It looks like it's available on bookshare. It's told from the POV of a deaf girl, and I'm interested to know whether he sticks the landing at all.

I enjoyed the book, which I thought was well and engagingly written, and I liked the narrator Piper, and John gets points for getting it betaed by actual deaf people, but every so often I thought I might be catching a vibe of "Hey I'm gonna write a story about a deaf girl who becomes the manager of a band, isn't that a neat gimmick?" which... makes me cringe a little? I dunno. Maybe I'm imagining things.