The murderess. http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/greece/papadiaa.htm
It's a greek book about a serial killer. The titular character is an old woman who spends most of the book killing young girls (in particular) and in the end manages to come off sympathetically. A mixture of Freudian Excuse, implied mental instability, Redemption Equals Death, awesome writing, and the fact that she actually had a reasoning for the killings, albeit a sick and distorted one. The end is a Tear Jerker.
A light summer read, especially recommended for younger children.
edited 25th Mar '11 2:37:51 PM by StrangeDwarf
"Why don't you write books people can read?"-Nora Joyce, to her husband JamesI'd like to officially note The Magic Thief here. I was quite surprised when I saw that it had a works page, although not the longest one. It ended up being one of the best YA fantasies I've read in ages, for a number of reasons.
The real thing that makes these books stand out is the characters. The main character is a great first-person narrator, since he actually has some character to him, unlike other blah protagonists. His mentor, Nevery, is full of wonderfully blended emotions, and makes you really want to get inside his head. And it really says a lot about the author's skills that Benet—a character who speaks maybe once a chapter, if that—ends up being just as fantastically characterized as the rest of the cast. He manages to do Real Men Wear Pink in a way that feels completely natural to him, and effective without going over-the-top in that "oh ho ho, look at this big bodyguard knitting" way. No; he just sits by the fire and knits, and when the protagonist decided to run away because he believes that I Have Failed You, Benet just quietly walks up to him, hands him the sweater, says something concice like "be careful," and walks away. It's pretty awesome.
"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~MadrugadaThe Book of Lost Things by John Connelly. Distaff Counterpart Down the Rabbit Hole meets Grimm's Fairy Tales, plus a hell of an Oedipus Complex, a bad case of Envy, and World War II. Roughly.
edited 7th May '11 11:29:31 PM by caroklim
I like my coffee black just like my metal.Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor. It's a really good fantasy based on Nigerian culture and folklore. I feel like it's different than the usual fantasy with a pretty white girl. I made both of those wiki links, by the way.
Has anyone heard of an author named Sean Stewart? In particular, his book Passion Play was really an amazing read for me. It's hard to find outside of libraries, but the writing is beautiful and complex, the protagonist feels extraordinarily real and multidimensional, and he has an interesting take on a dystopia where the religious right takes over, sort of like a milder, more gender-equal version of The Handmaid's Tale with some near-future advanced tech, although it's really more about the characters and their moral/spiritual dilemmas. The ending really moved me. His other books such as Galveston and Mockingbird are really good too, although they fall more into the Urban Fantasy category. Mockingbird is my other favorite by this author, and it's actually the complete opposite of Passion Play, sort of a lighthearted magical realist family story.
Well, I liked them better, personally. Which Witch and Dial-A-Ghost are my personal favorites.
Read my stories!@Doma: The Michael Flynn book? I thought it was pretty fantastic.
edited 6th Jul '11 3:15:32 PM by LuckyRevenant
"I can't imagine what Hell will have in store, but I know when I'm there, I won't wander anymore."The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler.(AKA Lemony Snicket.) It's fun, and has a total Mind Screw at the end, which makes you reread it and look at several passages differently.
At the end of the game, both the king and pawn go back in the same box.Most of the books I read tend to be ones no one else but I have heard of. Which is a shame, considering how much more original they are than the maionstrwam shit people read today. I cannot think of any right now though.
http://manbehindthecurtain.ieNaomi
better than Lolita in perversion
Everybody knows Norse mythology, but nobody knows what I'm talking about when I mention the Poetic Edda, the book whence most of the myths came.
edited 3rd Aug '11 5:14:25 PM by annebeeche
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.Thanks for that. Something about "from whence" sounded wrong, but I wasn't sure what it was.
You'd think that I out of all people would have been able to catch that!
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.The fact that it is [originally] a genitive form would explain the "from" being built in.
EDIT:
Oxford is the ultimate and final authority on everything to do with the English language except the definition of rape and by extension most other words of which double standards warp the general understanding.
edited 3rd Aug '11 5:32:08 PM by annebeeche
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.I'm finally returning to this thread to say: Chilld 44, and its sequel, The Secret Speech.
2 of many books that I cannot describe without massive spoilers.
p.s. That's how I know I'm reading a good book. I cannot describe it at all without somehow spoiling it...
edited 7th Aug '11 11:27:48 AM by KachinoOkimane
Searching for The Source Of All Heart AcheI’d say Bruce Fergusson’s books (The Shadow of His Wings and The Mace of Souls) but since I discovered them from a couple of people gushing about them on Usenet, I can’t. They definitely need more love, though.

So, I nominate Pierre Dubois' La grande encyclopédie des lutins.
It is a look at gnomes, dwarves, elves, sprites and miscelleaneous assorted fey creatures, mainly from France, but from other regions of the world too.
Rather than a dry ethnological text, it is basically a tome of beautiful Tolkienesque narratives about the little creatures (in what Wikipedia would call "in-universe style"), written with heartwarming prose — and, what's important, illustrated masterfully.
He's written other books about mythological creatures too, but I don't think any of them were even released in Poland. ;(