Book recommendations, Part 3

Once again, continuing with book recommendations. If you missed out, feel free to head here and leave me a comment to get your very own personalized recommendations :)

Jungletwins has thrown me for a loop and reported she enjoyed 5 books I've never read: The Shell Collector, The Namesake, Recipes for a Perfect Marriage, The Poisonwood Bible, and A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. Hmm, that's trouble! I figured I would have read at least one book that everyone said was a favorite!

Okay, I checked these out on Amazon to get a better idea. First, I'd recommend Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. It's a collection of short stories. They're all stories about grown children of immigrants to the US. I liked many of these stories, but honestly didn't love them.

Less well-known is China Dog and Other Tales from a Chinese Laundry by Judy Fong Bates. Similarly, it is a collection of short stories about the immigrant experience, in this book from China to Canada. There were some really great stories in this collection, and the only one I didn't like was the title story. My only complaint with this collection is that it becomes somewhat repetitive. I did enjoy it more than Unaccustomed Earth, though Jhumpa Lahiri certainly gets more positive reviews so this might just be my own personal preference.

Not to get stuck on China, but the third (and fourth) recommendations I'm going to give to you are Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, or Peony in Love also by Lisa See. I like Snow Flower better, but if you've already read it, check out the other.

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In direct opposition to jungletwins, Caitlin has very similar tastes to me! Yay! Her favorites are:

The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
A Little Princess and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede
Larklight by Phillip Reeve
Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes

She hates:

The Twilight series (with a fierce and bloody passion!!!)
Pirates! by Celia Rees
Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Caitlin, throw My Sister's Ridiculous Badly Written Keeper on that list, and we'll be book-hating best friends!

Hmm, I'm going the fable/fairy tale/stories retelling route for you! You might enjoy the Fables collection of graphic novels I recommended to Ronnica here. Or, maybe try the Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. I completely love these books, which pull from various mythologies and other sources for story ideas. LOVE these, though they are darker than the Fables books.

If you've missed it, The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley is a classic for a reason. It's a retelling of the Arthur legend from the point of view of the women involved. Very well done!

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (and the rest of the Thursday Next series) is very good. In these novels, it's possible for people, under certain circumstances, to travel between the "real" world and "book" worlds. Thursday Next, the main character, is a literary detective, trying to prevent changes to important works of literature. Funny and wonderful!

Lastly, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling edited a series of short story collections based on fairy tales. I've read a number of them, and they've been pretty strong in general. Snow White, Blood Red is the title of one of the collections, though there are others. Looks like it's out of print, but readily available on amazon used.

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So how'd I do? Having so much fun with these!