[saktii]

I just read the book Drugs Are Nice by Lisa "Suckdog" Carver. If you were a part of the punk scene in the mid 80's-mid 90's, reading this book might feel alot like taking a stroll through your own teenaged years. Plus, it manages to be both funny, sad, and disturbing at the same time. I like, especially, the fact that Lisa always takes responsibility for the things that happened to her in her life, crazy though they may be.

[vesicapisces]

OK, in the "day late and a dollar short" department, I finally borrowed The Time Traveler's Wife from the library and DAMN I love this book. I'm going to make everyone I know read it.

[bunnyb]

Yup, it's a series, although I haven't read them all.

Mornington, very odd but I came across The Black Swan recently whilst researching the same myth mentioned before! And I LOVE Polgara, the character, (and Eddings in general). The Belgariad and The Mallorean are fantastic and my favourite light reading; I also have a soft spot for them as they were my initiation into the fantasy genre, courtesy of the boy.

[whammy_bar]

I liked Mists of Avalon but had no idea there was a SERIES. I don't know if that's a good thing or not

[mornington]

appmtnwoman - have you tried Mercedes Lackey? (might be Lackley..). I liked The Black Swan by her, a reworking of the Swan Princess story. Or Polgara by David Eddings - which isn't so centered on a love story (although there's definitely love in it) and excellent summer reading. (But I'm a sci-fi/fantasy reader so...)

[bunnyb]

ooh kittenb - sounds so good, I've just bought it! I've come across the same Celtic myth whilst working on my dissertation so this will be pleasure reading whilst still doing work (I can pretend!)

appmtnwoman, you may like the Avalon series by Marion Zimmer Bradley (or The Firebrand which is a reworking of The Iliad from the PoV of Cassandra) or Jean Auel's The Clan of the Cavebear series.

[kittenb]

I cannot recommend Daughter of the Forest, by Juliette Marillier, highly enough. It has magic, tragedy, triumph and such and intense love. I cried through so much of that book. And the best part it, it is the first in a trilogy!

[appmtnwoman]

During the end of semester crunch time when things get stressful, I always go back to Molly Jong-Fast's book Normal Girl which is trash literature about a Jewish socialite that hangs out with aged models and thinks she killed her junkie boyfriend. I finished it again today, and her bizarre problems make my life seem so much more managable.

Now that it's summer and I'm in the mindset for more whimsical reads, I'm looking for my next several books. Can any of you recommend any good kind of mystical love stories? (I saw the FLB posts below, and so if you know her, you know what style I'm trying to pinpoint not very articulately here...)
Thanks!

[whammy_bar]

ooh, maryjo -- pullman. Loved the Golden Compass series.

So similar and so different from harry potters. Note: Jarvis Cocker referred to "specters" in one of his Harry Potter movie songs, so I wondered if he read them both too and got them mixed up in his head.

Of course, the word "spectre" has been around before

[curioushair]

I just started Lisa Palac's The Edge of the Bed: How Dirty Pictures Changed My Life

Just finished: Augusten Burroughs's Possible Side Effects.

[lunasol]

i think the readers of middlesex might sometimes be a bit misled by its publicity. the gender stuff is the most sensationalistic, so it's often described as being a book about a hermaphrodite. but actually, my feeling about it was that it was actually more a book about the 20th century American immigrant experience and that the hermaphroditism is sort of a metaphor for that experience.

yet, at the same time, it never feels like a mere literary device.

also, i don't know if i've ever read a more painfully accurate depiction of awkward girlhood and young female friendship, which is even more amazing since he is a man.

[sugarhiccup81]

Slightly off topic:
Went to the local bookstore in my hometown (Huntington, Ny) and found a hardcover copy of Phillipa Gregory's The Virgins Lover for $6.95 and a soft cover copy of Phillipa Gregory's The Queens Fool for $4.95.
I read The Other Boleyn Girl a few months ago and I cant wait to read some more yummy historical (high-level) trash

[anna_k]

I liked learning about Greek history and getting wrapped up in Middlesex. However I felt worn out by the time I finished it. It was another year before I read it again.

[sesame]

Altargrrrl, you're so right. Just this morning I reached the end of Part 2, where there is a recap: (not sure if it's a spoiler, but I'll put it in white anyhow)

Lina is not only Callie's first cousin twice removed, but also her/his grandmother. Milton was his own mother's and father's nephew. Desdemona and Lefty were Callie's great-aunt and -uncle as well as her/his grandparents. Etc.

I realized that I'd been rushing it. That was the paragraph that I had been thinking could sum up the whole first two-thirds of the book, but once I read it I realized that without all the background I'd have been way lost. Callie's not just a product of genetics, but of culture, religion, superstition, human strength and weakness...and on and on.

So anyway, I'm rambling but I just wanted to let all of you Middlesex lovers know that I had my Eureka! moment with it. That said, I do hold out hope for some more gender-related stuff from this point on.

Thanks!

[anna_k]

Oates too often writes about sexual violence, poor upstate New York towns, femme fatales, bitches, stupid people, and jerky rich people. She has an outline and sticks to it. I still read her though for fun.

[bunnyb]

I've only read the two so far (the ones mentioned, back to back), curioushair, but want to read We were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. I finished The Tattooed Girl this morning after not being able to put it down. I found it quite literary; the quote from Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz blew me away although I do recognise it - probably because it's a famous quote.

Began reading Ali Smith's The Accidental and it's a fun and quirky read, so far.

Thanks, maryjo, I need to allow myself some reading for solely pleasure time or I'll go mad! It helps that it's disciplined for book group as I can schedule it around all of the other reading!

[curioushair]

bunnyb - I loved The Tattooed Girl, as I love most of Joyce Carol Oates's books. (And take hell from my more "literary' friends because of it. The Stephen King-like release schedule has a lot to do with it.)

The only problem I have is that she can get a little sloppy at times. And she recycles character types to the point where they become caricatures.

[mornington]

marjo - YA fiction has been around long enough for me to grow up with it; it's basically the new name for teenage fiction, but aimed at 14/15+. It seems to me to be more "serious" than the Point Horror/Romance etc and all the rubbish my local library seemed filled with. I loved The Sterkarm Handshake & I think I've still got it in a box somewhere... I could never find the sequel (this was before I discovered amazon).

I'm going to have to join the library - I'm itching for something new to read & my card cries when we go to waterstones. Maybe I'll try Pullman. Although I really want to get Gaiman's Anansi Boys.

[maryjo]

I haven't finished The Tiger in the Well, but previously I had read Ruby in the Smoke from the same series (I thought TW was the sequel, but there are about three books in between - ah well, they'll be next) and they are wonderful books! Victorian feminist heroine Sally Lockhart kicks some serious ass. Tiger in the Well has some interesting subplots around Jewish socialism in 1880s London that I'm looking forward to getting deeper into, too.

Vesica, Sterkarm Kiss is *wonderful* - my only complaint is that it wasn't long enough! And for everyone else, those are amazing books too - funny, switched-on science fantasy about time travel with a focus on gender and, oddly enough but fascinatingly, colonisation issues (the near future exploits 16th-century Scottish border reivers for their natural resources). Very intelligent indeed.

YA fiction is a strange marketing category, really - most of stuff I tend to read within it, at least, is about people in their 20s, and the only difference between it and 'grownup' fiction seems to be the tendency to straightforward storytelling style and focus on plot. And a tendency to the coming-of-age narrative, but even that isn't essential... It's a category only recently imported to the UK (or maybe not imported at all, I may just use it because I spend so much time talking to Americans online); when I was a teenager we had 'teenage' fiction and it was generally fiction about teenagers, which may or may not have been marketed as such on first publication (I remember Oliver Twist making it into the teenage section of my local library). I still get my YA books from the teenage section of the library, but I do have a strong sense of YA crossover as a specific genre... Anyway, I'm rambling.

[altargrrrl]

sesame- for me, the point of middlesex is that all of that background *is* the character, and the denoument happens when callie can both accept and let go of that history to become him/herself. as much as we have control over who we are, we are comprised of our history and our relationships. one doesn't transcend those limitations, but interprets and creatively combines them to become oneself. i'm not sure how far you are, but the story does center more on callie and her/his gender issues towards the end. the last third of the book i think. the story is at least as much about family and general coming of age as it is about transgender issues. i think that the book really is all about gender and sexuality, but that it's theory is that gender is affected by all of these things that we often don't consider. it isn't purely biological, or social, or a personal choice. it has a history.

maryjo- i'm itching for some children/YA stuff too, after a long semester. i loved the *lemony snickett* movie, so as soon as my last paper is written (i'm totally procrastinating right now) i'm going to read the first few. i loved the *his dark materials* series, but haven't read anything else by phillip pullman. give a report when you're done, because i'd like to know if it's just as good.