Book Recommendations

Reverend Mother, whose blog I recently discovered in the Salon blog suburbs, recently asked for some fiction recommendations. While I share them with her, I thought I'd share them with others. In no particular order, then:

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (some metafiction cotton candy)
American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Speaking of cotton candy, a friend and I were recently discussing the Lord Peter Wimsey series, by Dorothy Sayers. One of the best literary mystery series, ever. The Nine Taylors not only has a nifty mystery, but more information on bell-ringing than you thought you'd want to know.

Rev. Mother doesn't mention poetry, or essays, but here's a couple:
Writing the Australian Crawl (Poets on Poetry) by William Stafford
Toward a New Poetry by Diane Wakowski (0472063073)
Both of the above are from the Univ. of Michigan's "Poets on Poetry" series. I've been reading the Stafford off & on, and have found it inspirational (though I have mixed feelings about Stafford's poetry). I recently recommended the Wakowski title to Katey, and now think I need to re-read it.

The book of poetry I've been spending the most time this past year is Stephen Mitchell's edit of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. Whitman is good for the soul, especially right now. As I've mentioned before, Mitchell's edit takes what he considers the best of the various versions Whitman did from the first, 1855, to the "Deathbed Edition."

I may soon take a page from Michael Wells' blog and post links to other recommendations in my side-bar. Let me know if you'd be intereseted in seeing that addition to this space.