..in progress
Bruce Sterling: Islands in the Net, Distraction, and my current favorite, Holy Fire.
Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game, and sequels.
Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana
Emma Bull, War for the Oaks
everything by Katya Reimann
T.H. White, The Once and Future King
The Miss Seeton mysteries by Heron Carvic (accept no imitators! There were later Miss Seeton books written by someone else with a similar nom de plume): Picture Miss Seeton, Miss Seeton Draws the Line, Miss Seeton Sings, Witch Miss Seeton, and Odds on Miss Seeton.
Emma Bull, War for the Oaks. Emma Bull and Steven Brust, Freedom and Necessity.
Caroline Stevermer and Pat Wrede, Sorcery and Cecelia
John Kenneth Galbraith, A Tenured Professor.
Allegra Goodman, Paradise Park
New find! The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
The Wasteland, by T.S. Eliot
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende
The novels of Robertson Davies
Possesion by A.S. Byatt
Fun with Semiotics: The Name of the Rose, ("There was no plot, and I discovered it by mistake" said William, was my quote in my college yearbook. This is why I wrote that quote: I grew up assuming my life had a plot and a happy ending. It didn't. The plot and happy ending were not ordained, they probably weren't even likely, before I went to Yale. But believing in a plot, I found the real world, and the way it worked, and the way it made plots and happy endings, in the wonderful growing up that I did in four years at Yale. Thank you, Yale.) And if the breakdown of the chain of cause and effect in Name of The Rose is too easy, advanced students should try The Mystery to a Solution-- Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story by John Irwin (Literary criticism).
Speaking of lit crit, check out
The Pooh Perplex by Fredrick C. Crewes
And NEW! There's just been published
a sequel and unbelievably it is even more hilarious
than the original: Postmodern Pooh!!
I am boycotting Harold Bloom, whom I used to admire, because his latest book contains the indefensibly egregious line that none of the women novelists currently living belong among the ranks of the greats of literature. If he had said, there are no late 20th century books by women writers, that is a matter of opinion. But to condemn the present (and future!) works of all currently living women writers, while cannonizing George Sand and Jane Austen, is apalling beyond belief. And he's clearly never read Gish Jen's short stories. (For a wonderful parody of Harold Bloom, see the "Orpheus Bruno" essay in Postmodern Pooh!!)
In 2nd and 3rd grade: From Anna, by Jean Little and Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield Fischer
In 4th and 5th grade: A Room Made of Windows, by Eleanor Cameron
In 6th and 7th grade: Enchantress from the Stars, by Sylvia Louise Engdahl
and of course, Many Moons, by James Thurber.
I read the Double Helix by James Watson when I was in sixth or seventh grade, young enough not to realize it was shockingly candid about the scientific world. It also made a huge impression on me that there was a major female scientist invovled (I was too young to realize it was an unflattering portrait of her :-)
What is the Name of this Book? By Raymond Smullyan. Logic puzzles. If you have a precocious son or daughter who loves math and is anywhere from age 11 to age 50, they might like this book..
Osler's Web by Hilary Johnson.
The Structure of Scientific Revolution by Thomas Kuhn. Should be required reading for ANY scientist. Period. Osler's web might be 70% correct. This guy is 100% correct. Totally brilliant.
The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. A bit simplistic in places, but we need to be reminded about the fact that the little good things we do can have a big impact.
Cliff Stoll, The Cuckoo's Egg.
I like all these authors. In fact, I like people who like these authors. Feel free to write me..