Red's Reading Recommendations
Well yesterday a bunch of my library orders just came in, which about doubled my year's numbers in UF so far (^_^) but I'll start with the ones from before. Because I read primarily YA fiction (in any genre), likely you won't know many of these.
The Wall and the Wing (Laura Ruby)
This story had me hooked from the cover art.
I was holding out, I swear, but then I read the jacket, and the flap, and the first page... Think quirky. If you like odd combinations of elements, this is it. For instance, it opens with The Professor--an old, old man in a housedress, with cats everywhere and an antipathy to people that means grocery order days are the only time he ever touches the door knob. ...No allure for you? I just don't understand that, but fine.
This YA (or even middle grade?) read to me as very inventive, an urban fantasy world that didn't seem to come out of anything but wild imagination. It might be my ignorance, but I've never read anything quite like it.
The Keys to the Kingdom Series (Mister Monday, Drowned Wednesday, etc.)
These are by Garth Nix. I liked his Sabriel pretty well (for world concept), but these are absorbing. Also YA. While it's kind of "formula" and characterizations aren't wonderful, there's a tug to the world-concept and a real cliff-hanger-series pace. No, my library does not have all of them yet. I'm not sure they've all been written. *is in agony, when she thinks about it, though tries to avoid that*
Also, coverart concept...I'm a bit of a cover junkie.
Magic or Madness and Magic Lessons (Larbelestier)
No need to explain these, I don't think. Beautiful, reality-drenched fantasy-but my favorite is that Justine Larbelestier understands about cultures, and being between them. The heroine Reason is a fully fleshed-out bicultural, raised outside the mainstream, with all the set-backs as well as the strengths her specific experience of that entails.
M.or.M won the Norton, opposed to one of my most favorite books ever (The King of Attolia) and I wasn't even sad.
The ones I just got are:
Tattoo (Barnes) which I finished this morning.
What I love about Jennifer Lynn Barnes is that she writes stories just for me, to relax with. (^_^) I like some aspects of normative teen-girl fiction, but have read very little because it generally seems pointless, under all that voice. Fluffy restfulness with world-saving? I'm there. Not that it was exactly "fluffy". But it had that ambience that I reread a very few silly (regular) chick-lit novels for.
And honestly? I loved Zo for being the intense tomboy I always wished to be, and never got to be very good friends with.
I'm reading Finder (Emma Bull) and wondering how the heck it escaped me that whoever wrote War for the Oaks had to write a pretty good novel despite the cover? I just don't know. Anyway, I'm glad I saved it for now, cause I'm enjoying it very much. [Okay, the cover up on Amazon would have had me at hello; the old library copy was just not like that...]
And I don't know if it was a good idea to "cut" this, but...I don't know how to fix it. So there.
The Wall and the Wing (Laura Ruby)
This story had me hooked from the cover art.
I was holding out, I swear, but then I read the jacket, and the flap, and the first page... Think quirky. If you like odd combinations of elements, this is it. For instance, it opens with The Professor--an old, old man in a housedress, with cats everywhere and an antipathy to people that means grocery order days are the only time he ever touches the door knob. ...No allure for you? I just don't understand that, but fine.
This YA (or even middle grade?) read to me as very inventive, an urban fantasy world that didn't seem to come out of anything but wild imagination. It might be my ignorance, but I've never read anything quite like it.
The Keys to the Kingdom Series (Mister Monday, Drowned Wednesday, etc.)
These are by Garth Nix. I liked his Sabriel pretty well (for world concept), but these are absorbing. Also YA. While it's kind of "formula" and characterizations aren't wonderful, there's a tug to the world-concept and a real cliff-hanger-series pace. No, my library does not have all of them yet. I'm not sure they've all been written. *is in agony, when she thinks about it, though tries to avoid that*
Also, coverart concept...I'm a bit of a cover junkie.
Magic or Madness and Magic Lessons (Larbelestier)
No need to explain these, I don't think. Beautiful, reality-drenched fantasy-but my favorite is that Justine Larbelestier understands about cultures, and being between them. The heroine Reason is a fully fleshed-out bicultural, raised outside the mainstream, with all the set-backs as well as the strengths her specific experience of that entails.
M.or.M won the Norton, opposed to one of my most favorite books ever (The King of Attolia) and I wasn't even sad.
The ones I just got are:
Tattoo (Barnes) which I finished this morning.
What I love about Jennifer Lynn Barnes is that she writes stories just for me, to relax with. (^_^) I like some aspects of normative teen-girl fiction, but have read very little because it generally seems pointless, under all that voice. Fluffy restfulness with world-saving? I'm there. Not that it was exactly "fluffy". But it had that ambience that I reread a very few silly (regular) chick-lit novels for.
And honestly? I loved Zo for being the intense tomboy I always wished to be, and never got to be very good friends with.
I'm reading Finder (Emma Bull) and wondering how the heck it escaped me that whoever wrote War for the Oaks had to write a pretty good novel despite the cover? I just don't know. Anyway, I'm glad I saved it for now, cause I'm enjoying it very much. [Okay, the cover up on Amazon would have had me at hello; the old library copy was just not like that...]
And I don't know if it was a good idea to "cut" this, but...I don't know how to fix it. So there.