Good books...hmmm. Good books are like old friends and you keep wanting to
re-visit them, so my list would contain some older books as well. Perhaps
I'll start with some home-grown authors. My all-time favourite Canadian
author has to be W.O. Mitchell. When he was resident author at our
University we used to go and listen to him reading from his books, his voice
was gravelly and peppered with the bestest cuss words :) Anyway, of his
books, I liked "Roses are Difficult Here" like most of his books it's about
small town prairie life. Nothing much happens but the characters are fun. If
you are fortunate enough to obtain his audio books too they are well worth
it.
Next, I loved the "English Patient'. The movie wasn't a patch on the real
story. For light, short, but connected stories there's Stuart McLean's book
"Stories From The Vinyl Cafe". Pauline Gedge wrote a series of historical
novels (using artistic license quite freely) her best was "The Eagle and the
Raven" ..about the Celtic fight against the Romans She leaned more to the
romantic version of known facts but tells a rivetting good yarn in any
event. I can't abide Margaret Attwood, I only ever tried to read one of
them, and it was one of the handful of books in my life I have never
finished. That book was The Handmaidens Tale, a very clumsy attempt at
speculative fiction. She almost got in a fist fight with the well known
sci-fi author Ursula leGuin when le Guin pointed out that it was, in fact,
sci-fi :) Sci-fi is my first choice in reading and there I recommend Orson
Scott Card's "Lovelock" it's not space opera, and has some brilliant
characterisations. Nancy Kress is a newcomer to sci-fi and for the first
time I have to say I've found a female author who truly writes from a female
point of view about females, and not jazzed up heroines who really act like
men. Anything about her is worth reading. On the historical non-fiction
front my latest book is "The Illustrated History of the Housewife". This
book contains more than you'd think and is very readable. One old classic I
like to re-read is Three Men in a Boat by Jerome Jerome. It's still as
funny for today as when it was written in 1889. My all-time favourite
author is Terry Pratchett and I'll keep banging away about him forever.
He's the greatest satirist in the world. There, that's long enough. Sharon
on sunny Vancouver Island
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