The Sheila Variations

try The Uplift Wars by David Brin. Soome of the best SF ever written.

Try George Martin's A Game of Thrones. First in a series of which three are already published. Great books.

My first thought was a big hefty non-fiction looking at modernity and reshaping the landscape from a different perspective - perhaps Ed Ayers _Promise of the New South_, perhaps or Neil Cronon _Nature's Metropolis_

Much as I love Melville's _Short Story about a Little Fish_, I suspect you have already read it. And, it does not quite make a good seque out of Tolkein. I would not read Martin or Brin next - put them on your shelves for later - for while both are good neither has the substance you seem to be looking for.

I am tempted to be evil, and send you to re-read Hemingway's _In Our Time_

Feh, my mind is a blank. Dostoevsky perhaps?

I shall leave you with the blessing my EQ character used to give to small folks she helped: "Go forth and do great deeds."

Ted K.

Programmed for Love????

Betsy-

HA!

Member that funny moment with "The Girl Who Wanted a Boy" too?

Okay, people - great suggestions, all. Especially "Programmed for Love", Bets. I have taken notes of all your titles.

However - like a deus ex machina - just at this very moment I received a package from my friend Ann Marie - She has just sent me editions of the letters of Tolkien, and the biography of Tolkien by Humphrey Carpenter.

Dave J - didn't you recommend that second one to me?

Anyway - onward. Deeper into Tolkien mania.

Sheila,
I would most definitely recommend Koestler. If you're looking for deep, disturbing, poignant, etc. also check out (I think I told you about this one at Chumley's) Darkness Visible by William Golding. His use of language is just...I don't know, *daunting*. It's a terribly depressing book, but very much worth the emotional investment.

On the lighter side, if you want something easy and fun, you should read Sue Townsend's The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. It's the "diary" of an English boy ("aged 13 3/4), and it's just absolutely *adorable*, opening with Adrian being rather upset that his mother hasn't yet donned the apron he bought her for Christmas and declaring in his diary "next year she will get bath cubes".

I remember you had that Secret Diary book at Chumley's!

I feel the need, at the moment, to continue on with something heavy, large, and rigorous. The letters of Tolkien (just glanced through them) will definitely fit the bill.

I have added all these books to my "Please read one day" list.

would recomend reading Foundation Series, by Issac Asimov.

Great series, long too :)

Well, you seem interested in Central Asia, so I would reccomend Solzhenitsyn's The Cancer Ward. Fabulous book. It would be even if it didn't take place in Tashkent.

Nathan -
Read it! Any other suggestion?

If it's something substantial you're after, I would suggest Ada by Vladimir Nabokov.

It's been a great many years since I last read it - I know there are many layers I've yet to discover, but the parts I did grasp in my early readings are brilliant. Nabokov is one of my all-time favorite novelists, Ada is one of my all-time favorite novels.

Guess I need to get to work on re-reading the thing one of these days...

I read Ada long ago as well. And I remember loving it - although I'm sure a lot of it I didn't get.

For a while last year, I went through old classics I had only read on Summer Reading Lists in high school and read them again.

The Scarlet Letter, Great Expectations, Moby Dick ... It was such a pleasure! To read them for ME, and also to read them as an adult. Very cool.

Deeper into Tolkien mania? Then go ahead and read the Silmarillion. Fearful though you might be of being sucked in forever, you still know you want to. ;-)

"Darkness at Noon" is a very good book, but my complaint is that it is a novel, and there are many non-fiction, firsthand accounts that tell the same story much more powerfully. Whittaker Chambers' "Witness" comes immediately to mind. Also Victor Kravchenko "I Chose Freedom" (way better than "Witness") - I also think there is new book out based on his FBI files, which would make interesting "companion reading". There is another one who's name I cannot immediately place, but I have it at home - it's so close to "Darkness at Noon", except all true, that I always get them confused. I'll have to look on the shelf and get back to you.

I second Dave's recomendation of 'The Silmarillion' and would add 'Perdido Street Station' by China Meiville and The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett (if a series of historical novels is your thing.)

In terms of both scope and substance, I'd recommend Joseph Heller's "Something Happened." It's the Catch-22 of peace -- and while it seems to cover normal events and places and things, it is an incredible window on the late Sixties from the POV of a fellow in what we now call the Greatest Generation. Fascinating reading: it seems so normal but everything is wonderfully, sickeningly tense. It took Heller like a decade to write it -- and it shows.

As for Martin's books recommended in the 2nd comment -- I would agree, EXCEPT he's not done with the series yet. I have been patiently waiting for the fourth book in the series, but sadly, it has not yet appeared. Woe and agony.

Damn you red, I get the feeling you've already consumed all my favorite stuff.

However, it is kinda pleasant to run across someone who doesn't think The Alexandria Quartet is a group of classical musicians...