5x5

[robinturner]

(Pinched from wouldprefernot)

Five books you're always on the lookout for:

1) Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
2) Inversions by Iain M. Banks
3) Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
4) The next in A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
5) Back Story by Robert Parker

Five books in a subject or subjects that you know a thing or two about, and that you would generally recommend:

1) Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: what categories reveal about the mind by George Lakoff
2) The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand
3) Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: the use of reason in everyday life. by Howard Kahane
4) The Tantric Way by Ajit Mookerjee and Madhu Kanna
5) Applied T'ai Chi Ch'uan by Nigel Sutton

Five out of print books that someone should reprint, already!:

1) The Skeptical Feminist by Janet Radcliffe Richards
2) Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare by Kenneth Grant
3) Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber

Damn, I couldn't finish this section - all the other books I thought were out of print turn out to have been reprinted already!

Five books about which you said, upon finishing, "Hmmm, that was a waste of trees.":

1) Capital by Karl Marx ;-)
2) I am the Gate by Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh
3) Anthem by Ayn Rand (I'm sure Atlas Shrugged wasted far more trees, but I couldn't face reading it)
4) Caring and Sharing in the Foreign Language Class by Gertude Moskowitz
5) The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope

(actually I'm cheating here, since I didn't finish all of them)

Five ripping good reads:

1) Neuromancer by William Gibson
2) The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
3) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
4) Lonesome Traveller by Jack Kerouac
5) The Medusa Frequency by Russell Hoban

Comments

I'm an Iain Banks fan too...

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

I've only read "The Wasp Factory", but it left a very deep impression on me. (I found it wonderfully icky and visceral. )

Kenneth Grant made up most of what he wrote about Spare.

Re: I'm an Iain Banks fan too...

[solri.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, The Wasp Factory was one of his I wasn't too keen on. The weird (and delightful) thing about Banks is that his books are so different they seem to be written by several different people (to the extent that he changes his name to "Iain M. Banks" when he's writing science fiction, explaining "Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks are the same person, but not the same author"). Even in novels which have some continuity, like the "Culture" SF series, each has a different mood (e.g. Use of Weapons is as grim as they come, while Excession is just whimsical fun).

Given your political leaings, I think you'd really enjoy Complicity!