Book recommendations?

[rowyn]

I biked to my local library yesterday. For a few years, Lut and I used to go to the library regularly: we'd go online, request  books to be delivered to the nearest branch and placed on hold, then pick them up when we were emailed that they were in. The interlibrary loan system was sufficiently good that it was rather like ordering books on Amazon, except that you didn't have to pay and you had to go a few miles to get them instead.

 

I am not sure why we stopped going. Maybe we exhausted the backlist of books we knew we wanted to read. But as I was biking past the library a few weeks ago, I thought Hey, maybe I should check out some of the books I'm too cheap to pay  $9.99 for from Amazon.

 

So yesterday, I finally brought my ID with me on a bike ride and acquired a new library card.  I promptly went through and placed holds on the books I could remember being interested in, which was largely "Books by howardtayler's Friends". I am not sure why those are the books I could recall off the top of my head.

 

But I am looking for more book recommendations!  Recommendations for inexpensive e-books not likely to appear in the library are also welcome; I don't mind paying a few dollars for a book.  And classics that are in the public domain are also good: I finished rereading all the Austen novels, which is part of why I am jonesing for more books. For genres, I like sf, fantasy, and romance. I am happy with the various sub-genres of those (urban fantasy, supernatural, etc.)  I prefer books that are generally upbeat -- I am okay with the occasional pivotal character who gets killed or horribly traumatized, but I like stories that have protagonists with whom I sympathize and who get mostly-happy endings.

 

Any suggestions?

Comments

[terrana.livejournal.com]

For science fiction/space opera, anything by Iain M Banks, but especially Look to Windward. His writing manages to be grand and whimsical at once. (The aforementioned title includes a conversation between two unnamed characters holding a mock-argument using only the names of starships as their points.)