Book Suggestions from Others

I heard a story, for her birthday a woman asked her friends to give her a copy of their favorite book, and on the inside cover to write why it is their favorite book. On her birthday she she recieved an entire box full! I have taken up asking my friends something silimar. Here is what I got:

THE READING GROUP by Elizabeth Noble
THE GREAT INDOORS by Sabine Durant
PLAY DATES by Leslie Carroll
EVERY BOY'S GOT ONE by Meg Cabot

suggestions from E.:

Sheri S. Tepper is my primary source for empowered women. She focuses on gender issues, and her characters are inevitably strong, stubborn women. I very much enjoyed Gibbon's Decline and Fall, about a group of women who meet at college and, though they end up with very different lives and values, still manage to stay together year after year. Oh, yeah, and they have to save the world from mankind.

The Gate to Women's Country is about a post-apocalyptic future in which men and women live in seperate city-spaces, meeting only to have babies. Of course the main character gets tangled in conspiracy, as well as brushing against the more traditional remnants of society (i.e. a group that considers women to be property).

The Family Tree. I looove this book. It's hilarious. Two stories proceed at once--one about a bemused (and importantly virginal) policewoman dealing with the apparent takeover of the Earth by super-fast-growing trees; the other about a post-apocalyptic society that's definitely fantasy-driven, with a quest, strange societies, and adorable characters. Of course the two stories impact each other and there's a moment of revelation I want everyone to read and laugh about.

Mercedes Lackey also writes about strong ladies. Or gay guys. It's pretty easy to tell from the cover art which sort of story it is. Just make sure you don't inadvertently pick up the middle of a trilogy or something. She had a good pair of books about two women---one a mage and one a warrior--who have to save the world etc, but I can't remember what it's called and I don't own them. I find some of her stuff hideously, senselessly, depressing though and therefore only own one book called By the Sword--a distant spin-off of the aforementioned pair of books about a warrior woman--that is NOT super-depressing.

Connie Willis has a GREAT book about a woman that has fought her way into an academic program--a program in the future that sends students back to the past to learn firsthand. The Doomsday Book (read it). She's won the very illustrious--but dangerous for ladies--position in the medieval jump. But of course something goes wrong and she finds herself many years ahead of where she was supposed to be--in the beginnings of the Black Plague. Yay! At the same time her mentor is trying to find out what went wrong and why, while the future is being assailed by a deadly outbreak itself.

She also has a super-silly (I'm not sure it's quite scandalous) book set in the same time-traveling world called To Say Nothing of the Dog (read it). A man is on a quest for an artifact's history, and meets up with a lively woman that (because of time-travel chemical effects or something) he falls obsessively in love with. It's set in Victorian Times.

Orson Scott Card's Enchantment (read it) could be scandalous--there's a jilted fiancee, medieval conventions, and strange gender issues--but anyway it's funny. A scholarly man sort of accidentally frees an ancient princess from a curse, and therefore is supposed to marry her, but she considers him a weakling and he can't deal with her medieval concepts. There's also lots of witchcraft that makes it funny, especially when his former fiancee gets access to it.

Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population amuses me endlessly. A colony world is forced to evacuate because of economic issues, but one old woman refuses to leave and hides until everyone else does. She's been a servant to other people her whole life--her husband, her children, and the company that formed the colony--and it's VERY empowering to her to finally break free of this. She deals with her new freedom in funny ways--she decides naked might be best, for instance, when other people aren't around to tell her to be embarassed.

suggestions from Jen:
The Three Musketeers (1844) Alexandre Dumas
Ivanhoe (1820) Sir Walter Scott
The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) Alexandre Dumas
Last of the Mohicans (1826) James Fenimore Cooper
Moby Dick (1851) Herman Melville
A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Charles Dickens
Robin Hood (1883) Howard Pyle
Arabian Nights (1704) Antony Galland
Les Miserables (1862) Victor HugoRobinson Crusoe (1719) Daniel Defoe
Don Quixote (1605) Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Washington Irving: Rip Van Winkle (1819), The Headless Horseman (1819)
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1883) Robert Louis Stevenson
Westward Ho! (1855) Charles Kingsley
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) Harriet Beecher Stowe
Gulliver's Travels (1726) Jonathan Swift (read it)
The Deerslayer (1841) James Fenimore Cooper
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) Victor Hugo
Huckleberry Finn (1884) Mark Twain (read it)
The Corsican Brothers (1845) Alexandre Dumas
3 Famous Mysteries: The Sign of the Four (1890) Arthur Conan Doyle, The Flayed Hand (1880) Guy de Maupassant, Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) Edgar Allen PoeThe Pathfinder (1840) James Fenimore Cooper
Oliver Twist (1838) Charles Dickens
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) Mark Twain (read it)
Two Years Before the Mast (1840) Richard Henry Dana Jr.
Frankenstein (1818) Mary Shelley
Marco Polo (1921) Donn Byrne
Michael Strogoff (1876) Jules Verne
The Prince and the Pauper (1882) Mark Twain
The Moonstone (1868) William Wilkie Collins
The Black Arrow (1888) Robert Louis Stevenson
Lorna Doone (1869) Richard Doddridge Blackmore
Sherlock Holmes Stories: A Study in Scarlet (1887) Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) Arthur Conan DoyleMysterious Island (1874) Jules Verne
Last Days of Pompeii (1834) Edward Bulwer-LyttonTypee (1846) Herman Melville
The Pioneers (1822) James Fenimore CooperThe Adventures of Cellini (1562) Benvenuto Cellini
Jane Eyre (1847) Charlotte Bronte
Edgar Allen Poe Mysteries: Pit and the Pendulum (1845), Adventures of Hans Pfall (1845), The Fall of the House of Usher (1838)Twenty Years After (1845) Alexandre Dumas
Swiss Family Robinson (1813) Johann Wyss
Great Expectations (1861) Charles Dickens (read it)
Mysteries of Paris (1842) Eugene Sue
Tom Brown's School Days (1856) Thomas Hughes
Kidnapped (1886) Robert Louis Stevenson
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870) Jules Verne
David Copperfield (1850) Charles Dickens
Alice in Wonderland (1865) Lewis Carroll (C.L. Dodgson)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) Mark Twain
The Spy (1821) James Fenimore Cooper
The House of the Seven Gables (1851) Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Christmas Carol (1843) Charles Dickens
The Man in the Iron Mask (1850) Alexandre Dumas
Silas Marner (1861) George Eliot (Marian Evans)
Toilers of the Sea (1866) Victor Hugo
The Song of Hiawatha (1855) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Prairie (1827) James Fenimore Cooper
Wuthering Heights (1847) Emily Bronte
Black Beauty (1860) Anna Sewell
The Woman in White (1860) William Wilkie Collins
Western Stories: The Luck of Roaring Camp (1870) Bret Harte, The Outcasts of Poker Flats (1870) Bret HarteMan Without a Country (1863) Edward Everett HaleTreasure Island (1883) Robert Louis Stevenson
Benjamin Franklin (1817) Benjamin Franklin
The Cloister and the Hearth (1861) Charles Reade
The Scottish Chiefs (1809) Jane Porter
Julius Caesar (1607) William Shakespeare
Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) Jules Verne
The Pilot (1823) James Fenimore Cooper
The Man Who Laughs (1869) Victor Hugo
The Oregon Trail (1849) Francis Parkman
The Black Tulip (1850) Alexandre Dumas
Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836) Captain Frederick Marryat
The Lady of the Lake (1810) Sir Walter Scott
The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) Anthony Hope (Hawkins)
The Iliad (962 B.C.) Homer
Joan of Arc (1801) Frederick Schiller
Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) Edmond Rostand
White Fang (1906) Jack LondonThe Odyssey (927 B.C.) Homer
The Master of Ballantrae (1889) Robert Louis Stevenson
The Jungle Book (1894) Rudyard Kipling
Edgar Allen Poe: The Gold Bug (1843), The Tell-Tale Heart (1845), A Cask of Amontillado (1845)The Sea Wolf (1904) Jack London
Under Two Flags (1868) Ouida (Louisa de la Rame)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600) William Shakespeare
Men of Iron (1891) Howard Pyle
Crime and Punishment (1866) Feodor Dostoevsky (read it)
Green Mansions (1904) William Henry Hudson
The Call of the Wild (1903) Jack London
Henry W. Longfellow: Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), Evangeline (1847)Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) Mark Twain
David Balfour (1893) Robert Louis Stevenson
All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) Erich Maria Remarque
Daniel Boone (1939) John Bakeless
King Solomon's Mines (1885) H. Rider Heggard
The Red Badge of Courage (1895) Stephen Crane
Hamlet (1603) William Shakespeare (read it)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1932) Charles Nordhoff & James Hall
William Tell (1804) Frederick Schiller
The White Company (1891) Arthur Conan Doyle
Men Against the Sea (1933) Charles Nordhoff & James Hall
Bring 'em Back Alive (1930) Frank Buck & Edward Anthony
From the Earth to the Moon (1870) Jules Verne
Buffalo Bill (1920) William F. Cody
King of the Khyber Rifles (1916) Talbot Mundy
Knights of the Round Table (1903) Howard PylePitcairn's Island (1939) Charles Nordhoff & James Hall
The Speckled Band (1892) Arthur Conan Doyle
The Talisman (1825) Sir Walter ScottKit Carson (1873) John S.C. Abbott
The Forty-Five Guardsmen (1848) Alexandre Dumas
The Red Rover (1827) James Fenimore Cooper
How I Found Livingstone (1872) Henry M. Stanley
Robert Louis Stevenson: The Bottle Imp (1891), The Beach at Falesa (1892)
Captains Courageous (1897) Rudyard Kipling
Rob Roy (1818) Sir Walter Scott
Soldiers of Fortune (1897) Richard Harding Davis
The Hurricane (1936) Charles Nordhoff & James Hall
Wild Bill Hickok (no author listed)
The Mutineers (1920) Charles Boardman Hawes
Fang and Claw (1935) Frank BuckWar of the Worlds (1898) H.G. Wells
The Oxbow Incident (1940) Walter Van Tilburg Clark
The Downfall (1892) Emile Zola
The King of the Mountains (1857) Edmond About
Macbeth (1606) William Shakespeare
Davy Crockett (no author listed)
Caesar's Conquests (51 B.C.) Julius Caesar
The Covered Wagon (1922) Emerson Hough
The Dark Frigate (1923) Charles Boardman HawesThe Time Machine (1895) H.G. Wells
Romeo and Juliet (1597) William Shakespeare (read it)
Waterloo (1868) Emile Erckmann & Alexandre Chatrian
Lord Jim (1900) Joseph Conrad (Korzeniowski)
The Little Savage (1848) Captain Frederick Marryat
A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) Jules Verne
In the Reign of Terror (1890) G.A. Henty
On Jungle Trails (1936) Frank Bucks
Castle Dangerous (1831) Sir Walter Scott
Abraham Lincoln (1952) Benjamin ThomasKim (1901) Rudyard Kipling
The First Men in the Moon (1901) H.G. Wells
The Crisis (1901) Winston Churchill
With Fire and Sword (1890) Henry Sienkiewicz
Ben Hur (1880) Lew Wallace
Lafitte the Pirate (1930) Lyle Saxon
Off on a Comet (1878) Jules Verne
The Virginian (1902) Owen Wister
Won by the Sword (1899) G.A. Henty
Wild Animals I Have Known (1898) Ernest Thompson Seton
The Invisible Man (1897) H.G. Wells
The Conspiracy of the Pontiac (1851) Francis Parkman
The Lion of the North (1890) G.A. Henty
Conquest of Mexico (1632) Bernal Diez Del Castillo
Lives of the Hunted (1902) Ernest Thompson Seton
The Conspirators (1843) Alexandre Dumas
The Octopus (1901) Frank Norris
The Food of the Gods (1904) H.G. Wells
Cleopatra (1889) H. Rider Haggard
Robur the Conqueror (1886) Jules Verne
Master of the World (1904) Jules Verne
The Cossack Chief (1839) Nikotai Gogol
The Queen's Necklace (1849) Alexandre Dumas
Tigers and Traitors (1880) Jules Verne
Faust (1808/1832) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe