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

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Heh. Gwendel has been on a reading kick for the longest time, but the only books I ever hear about from her seem to be the BAD ONES. :D (Even worse, bad ones that seem to come highly recommended in whatever dubious circles she's been following online. I keep telling her to stop taking Amazon comments/reviews SERIOUSLY. ;) I'd far rather take the word of a reviewer whose opinion I can grow to respect after following up on a couple of his or her recommendations, rather than the vast horde of the nearly-anonymous.) I'd elaborate, but then I would fill this comment box with a big rant about books that I haven't personally read, filtered by what I've gleaned from Gwendel's sharing of her frustrations, and that wouldn't likely help anyone.

Anyway, she's been reading some Austen titles, too (though those haven't been the source of her complaints). She said something about how she's going to pick up "Emma" next, because she heard that "it's the one that everyone dislikes." I'm not sure what she means by "everyone" in this context. She's also been reading "World War Z" recently as an eBook, and has taken time to share her frustrations over it with me (some of which I can sympathize with -- Max Brooks seems to have some peculiar ideas about disease vectors that strain credulity for me, even when we accept "zombies" as a price of entry). With that sort of range of reading material, I would joke that she might read "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," but I'm sure she'd throw something at me for it.