I’m reading Radio Blues some no-name book by a no-name author from the 80s. It was in the “mystery bag” I got from the used book store last fall, so I’ve decided to give it (and the others that were in with it) one last hurrah before I give it a proper Viking funeral.
I just started Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin on Libby….unfortunately an abridged version (which I usually avoid), but I really wanted to hit a biography and this was the most interesting one available. My wife has the full paperback version, so I can read that one if I want to get the full picture.
I think sci-fi ages poorly. The pretend technology loses its sheen. The political and philosophy takes look shallow and naive in hindsight. And you yourself grow older and more skeptical. And meanwhile the classic authors often suck at writing prose, characters, and plot because it’s just not their thing.
There’s a few books that really hold up. Others with some choice ideas or characters. And a lot of hot garbage. Where the whole world is going to literally explode if teen genius spaceman spiff can’t reprogram the kill bots with his libertarian diatribe.
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LOL
Finished Everything is Tuberculosis (audio) by John Greene (The Fault in Our Stars). Informative history of the disease and discussion on its continued devastation in poor countries.
I recently realized I haven’t read many classics by women and am trying to change that. Just started Jane Eyre yesterday.
I liked Jane Eyre.
Got me thinking of what Female authored classics I have read
Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Emma, Pride and Prejudice, The Color Purple, Frankenstein, lots of Agatha Christie (And Then There Were None, Witness For The Prosecution), Their Eyes Were Watching God, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Bell Jar, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, To Kill A Mockingbird, Wuthering Heights, Diary of Anne Frank, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, My Cousin Rachel, Atlas Shrugged
House of Mirth, The Thornbirds, The Fountainhead, My Life In France, A Raisin In The Sun are on my bookshelf
What I am really missing is Classic Female authored Sci-Fi
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Ursula Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness
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Of your list, I’ve unfortunately only read: Frankenstein, And Then There Were None, To Kill A Mockingbird and Wuthering Weights.
Also Beloved and Left Hand of Darkness
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The Bronte sisters wrote several books and my wife said this was by far the best one.
I haven’t read any of them but I have seen several adaptations of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and I’m pretty sure the 90s BBC series on the Tennent of Wildfell Hall. I can’t say I was a big fan of any, but my wife likes that stuff so compromises are made.
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I found another series of shorts of There Is No Antimemetics Division. A quick search of youtube turns them up.
Finally got my library card again. So I read Jane and Dan At the End of the World by Colleen Oakley and Fever Beach by Carl Hiaasen.
I added Jane and Dan to my list based strictly on the top 5-star review on goodreads:
“I gotta say, I loved it. Not only is it Colleen Oakley’s best work to date, but it will absolutely go down in history as a classic with the likes of War and Peace and Pride and Prejudice, and high school lit classes will be studying the genius of it for years to come. Oh, wait. These reviews aren’t anonymous? - Colleen Oakley”
I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t a great book. Too much character driven angst written with internal dialogue. It felt like she was trying to write a book that would later be turned into a movie and we’d all wonder “How are they going to do that when so much of the book is the character’s thoughts?”. It would make a good movie though.
Here’s a list of female Pulitzers. Bolded are ones I’ve read, which I also strongly recommend. Apparently I need to read a lot more.
1921–1942: Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence), Willa Cather (One of Ours), Margaret Wilson (The Able McLaughlins), Edna Ferber (So Big), Julia Peterkin (Scarlet Sister Mary), Margaret Ayer Barnes (Years of Grace), Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth), Caroline Miller (Lamb in His Bosom), Josephine Winslow Johnson (Now in November), Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind), Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (The Yearling), and Ellen Glasgow (In This Our Life).
1961–1989: Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), Shirley Ann Grau (The Keepers of the House), Katherine Anne Porter (The Collected Stories), Jean Stafford (The Collected Stories), Eudora Welty (The Optimist’s Daughter), Alice Walker (The Color Purple), Alison Lurie (Foreign Affairs), Toni Morrison (Beloved), and Anne Tyler (Breathing Lessons).
1992–2024: Jane Smiley (A Thousand Acres), E. Annie Proulx (The Shipping News), Carol Shields (The Stone Diaries), Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies), Marilynne Robinson (Gilead), Geraldine Brooks (March), Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge), Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad), Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch), Louise Erdrich (The Night Watchman), Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead), and Jayne Anne Phillips (Night Watch)
For older books, I liked Shelley, Austin, George Elliot, and Virginia Woolf.
I particularly recommend To the Lighthouse by Woolf.
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I don’t know much classic female sci-fi. You coudl add-- Ursula Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, and CJ Cherryh.
Interestingly? Female authors have basically dominated the Hugo Awards for the last decade: Leckie, Jemisin, Kowine, Martine, Wells, T Kingfisher, Tesh…
Of which I am in the middle of the Murderbot Diaries, which are hardly literature, but are great pulp fiction.
I’ve heard good things about Octavia Butler but haven’t read any of her books yet.
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Oh right, I read the Parable of the Sower when I was young, and would say it was fun and well written, but nothing very special. Which is true of a lot of “classic sci-fi”
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My wife’s favorite was CJ Cheryh’s Cyteen. I don’t know if it still is.
But I’m going to recommend her, because it’s more classic SF. By which I mean less like clever gender-bender aliens and anarcho-socialist ideas, and more like “what if Aasimov or Herbert could write from a slightly more female perspective?”
One thing I like about Cyteen in particular is that it plays fast and loose with ethics. Things like “cloning an army of servants” and “molesting a teen boy to awaken his latent genius” are just part of the story according to the pragmatic scientist.
Of the authors listed (I guess I read the wrong books) and I haven’t mentioned before: Geraldine Brooks - read (listened) to People Of The Book, Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible and Jhumpa Lahiri the Namesake. Would definitely try more of theirs.
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Hyperbole and a Half with the kid. Not actually kid appropriate. Still basically hilarious after all these years.
Someone you can build a nest in with the wife, from the perspective of a bloodthirsty monster that falls in love. Sometimes gets more clever/poetic, but mostly silly satire and sweet romance.
Recently finished The witness for the dead, which is follow-up to the goblin emperor. Very cozy, murder mystery fantasy. Not as original, but obviously readable.
Also currently rereading the GEB and for some reason the 4th book of His Dark Materials, which so far feels like a clone of the golden compass, in case you are hangering for another golden compass for some reason.