#ann vandermeer

[hexane-nightmares]

OOOOH city of stairs looks 👀👀 i loveeee weird fantasy. OH AND forgot to mention arkady martin's teixcalaan also. political scifi with brain ghosts YAAAAY i love brain ghosts as a trope i have so many of them in my collection. plural guy likes brain ghosts who could have GUESSED!!!

Teixcalaan!

I had these memories that had the texture of a Radch story but couldn't remember where from. Hell yeah.

Off topic, my main other obsession is weird horror. In novels, Vandermeer, China Mieville, and probably others I can't remember right now. In film, Alien, Alien, Alien, Alien, etc.

[that-dinopunk-guy]

I bought some books.

[writingquestionsanswered]

Would you point me in the direction of a list of books on the craft of writing? Thank you!

Writing Craft Book Recommendations

-- Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan

-- Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

-- Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

-- Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody -- Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin -- The Anatomy of Story by John Truby -- The Kick-Ass Writer by Chuck Wendig

-- Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer

-- Story Genius by Lisa Cron -- The Magic Words by Cheryl B. Klein -- Story Engineering by Larry Brooks -- Structuring Your Novel by K.M. Weiland -- Outlining Your Novel by K.M. Weiland -- Poetry Pauses by Brett Vogelsinger

Keep an eye on the comments and reblogs for others' suggestions!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

LEARN MORE about WQA

SEE MY ask policies

VISIT MY Master List of Top Posts

COFFEE & FEEDBACK COMMISSIONS ko-fi.com/wqa

[impishglee]

what all HAVE i read this summer?? i read quite a bit i think:

- golden enclaves - naomi novik

- lathe of heaven - ursula k le guin

- folk of the air series - holly black

- queens thief series - megan whalen turner (reread)

- the southern book clubs guide to slaying vampires - grady hendrix

- the goldfinch - donna tartt (reread)

- translation state - ann leckie

- annihilation - jeff vandermeer

- the archive undying - emma mieko candon

- uprooted - naomi novik

- temeraire series - naomi novik

- system collapse - martha wells

- long live evil - sarah rees brennan

- imperial radch series - ann leckie

that’s a respectable 32 books about. oh i read the fucking. fish mpreg danmei. 33.

[beaft]

Got any book recommendations? (Im on a hold list at my local library for the goblin emperor)

it depends what you like! here are some books of various genres that really stood out to me over the past few months:

the bee sting by paul murray (tragicomic family saga)

glass and god by anne carson (selected poetry/essays)

what moves the dead by t. kingfisher (gothic fantasy retelling of "the fall of the house of usher")

the sundial by shirley jackson (psychological thriller about a family of apocalypse preppers)

borne by jeff vandermeer (post-apocalyptic "new weird" fiction about the bond between a scavenger woman and her adopted monster-child)

strange practice by vivian shaw (1800s fantasy with some really excellent vampires)

city of glass by paul auster (detective noir with bonus surrealism)

normal rules don't apply by kate atkinson (linked short stories)

monsters by claire dederer (essay collection about great artists who were terrible people)

[riseandfallofsecunit]

#3 and #12 for the book asks?

3. What were your top five books of the year?

Okay in no particular order because I can’t decide:

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. So good, so unsettling, and the way he describes things seems simple but it really sticks with you. I’m looking forward to reading the next in the series.

Ancillary Sword/Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie - lumping these in with Translation State and Provenance, which I also read this year. I love the world that these books take place in and I miss being in it. Wow favorite series of all time, and I love Breq (main character) so much.

The Broken Earth series by N.K. Jemisin. Hurt my feelings and made me sad. Really cool world building and super well developed, well rounded fully fleshed out main characters. Chewy chewy chewy books.

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley. Time travel military tactics with a commentary on corporations as government? Yes please! The main character experiences the events of the war out of order, it was so fun piecing together what was going on.

Murderbot series by Martha Wells. Feels like a given. I think my favorite is either Network Effect or Systems Collapse, though I’ve definitely reread All Systems Red the most times. I love Murderbot.

12. Any books that disappointed you?

Ummmm okay don’t be mad but I didn’t really like This is How We Lose the Time War that much. I think in part because I’d seen it be so hyped up it made my expectations higher than they should have been. Idk I felt like the main characters just never really got a chance to be developed and I didn’t like the prose very much. I’m sorry, I can totally see how someone else would really like it.

Thank you for asking!!

[theygotbitchesinmedia]

i am, TRAGICALLY, reaching the end of the tyrant baru cormorant. since mr. seth dickinson has been so unkind as to not release the next book yet i will have to pick some new books to read. I am putting this choice in your hands. vote with your heart but feel free to engage in further pitching because i Can be swayed.

[ecohorrors]

hauntings, houses, love, and consumption of the subject.

Yellowjackets 2x09 / Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House / Joan Tierney - WHY ARE YOU HAUNTED? a survey / kittyhorrorshow - ANATOMY / Tracy K. Smith - Ash / Mark Z. Danielewski - House of Leaves / Yuan Li - Two Lives / SNAKEPOOL - Figure in the Background / The Magus Archives episode 32 / Jeff VanderMeer - Annihilation /  Anne Sexton - A Self Portrait in Letters / Various excerpts from a personal project of mine :]

[ramblings-of-lola]

I haven't done one of these polls in a little while because I'm a slow reader but I'm excited to finally do one again!

As suggested by @honeii-puff, there is a part 2 to this poll with 12 other options here. After results are in, I'll make a final poll combining the top 5 answers from each poll.

I have a tag list for when I make polls to let Tumblr decide what I should read or watch next! If you would like to be added to it or removed from it, please let me know!

Tagging: @unch4rtedwxters @leaskisses444 @queenpiranhadon @sunflxwcrs

@hijabi-flavored-nerd @typingwithmyhandstied @bookwormgirl123 @brb-on-a-quest @emilyserose

[mossyshadows]

my recs btw. the left hand of darkness by ursula k le guin and the sundial by shirley jackson and annihilation by jeff vandermeer . also ancillary justice by ann leckie for anyone wanting to get into scifi <3

[augustinajosefina]

A request

Please suggest books to me! Preferably in the glove kink/lesbian space atrocities, urban fantasy or dark academia genres but I'll happily try any SF/fantasy at least once.

So far I've read and loved:

Before 2023

The Imperial Radch (Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy) - Ann Leckie

Jean le Flambeur (The Quantum Thief/The Fractal Prince/The Causal Angel) - Hannu Rajaniemi

The Windup Girl/The Water Knife - Paolo Bagicalupi

Memory of Water/The City of Woven Streets - Emmi Itäranta

2023

The Locked Tomb (Gideon/Harrow/Nona the Ninth) - Tamsyn Muir

The Masquerade (Traitor/Monster/Tyrant Baru Cormorant) - Seth Dickinson

Teixcalaan series (A Memory Called Empire/A Desolation Called Peace) - Arkady Martine

Machineries of Empire (Ninefox Gambit/Raven Stratagem/Revenant Gun/Hexarchate Stories) - Yoon Ha Lee

The Murderbot Diaries (All Systems Red to System Collapse) - Martha Wells

The Broken Earth (The Fifth Season/The Obelisk Gate/The Stone Sky) - N. K. Jemisin

Klara And The Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro

Xuya universe (The Citadel of Weeping Pearls/The Tea Master and the Detective/Seven of Infinities plus short stories) - Aliette de Bodard

This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

The Goblin Emperor/The Witness for the Dead/Grief of Stones - Katherine Addison

Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh

2024

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab

The Craft Sequence (Three Parts Dead/Two Serpents Rise/Full Fathom Five/Last First Snow/Four Roads Cross/Ruin of Angels) - Max Gladstone

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution - R. F. Kuang

Dead Country - Max Gladstone

Hands of the Emperor - Victoria Goddard

Read and liked:

The Moonday Letters - Emmi Itäranta

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Great Cities (The City We Became/The World We Make) - N. K. Jemisin

Autonomous - Annalee Newitz

Dead Djinn universe (A Master of Djinn/The Haunting of Tram Car 015/A Dead Djinn in Cairo/The Angel of Khan el-Khalili) - P. Djèlí Clark

Even Though I Knew the End - C. L. Polk

Station Eternity - Mur Lafferty

The Mythic Dream - Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe

Shades of Magic (A Darker Shade of Magic/A Gathering of Shadows/A Conjuring of Light/Fragile Threads of Power) - V. E. Schwab

The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling

Last Exit - Max Gladstone

The Stars Are Legion - Kameron Hurley

Ninth House/Hell Bent - Leigh Bardugo

Machine - Elizabeth Bear

Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield

She Is A Haunting - Trang Thanh Tran

Sisters of the Revolution - Jeff & Ann Vandermeer

Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel

Nettle & Bone - T. Kingfisher

Monstrilio - Gerardo Samano Córdova

Was uncertain about:

Light From Uncommon Stars - Ryka Aoki

The Kaiju Preservation Society - John Scalzi

Paladin's Grace - T. Kingfisher

The House in the Cerulean Sea - TJ Klune

In the Vanishers Palace - Aliette de Bodard

Uprooted - Naomi Novik

What Moves The Dead - T. Kingfisher

All The Birds In The Sky - Charlie Jane Anders

And read and disliked:

To Be Taught, if Fortunate - Becky Chambers

A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon

The Calculating Stars - Mary Robinette Kowal

The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson

How High We Go in the Dark - Sequoia Nagamatsu

Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo

The Passage - Justin Cronin

In Ascension - Martin MacInnes

(My pride insists I add that I have, in fact, read other books as well. Just to be clear.)

[corpsepng]

Pls make a list of books you recommend to aspiring writers<3

Ok. Aspiring/burgeoning writer starter kit:

In writing anything you officially become a writer so that’s step one haha, no need to aspire too much. BUT. I’m going to soapbox for a bit using this ask as an excuse love u kissing u etc. So. This will barely be about books, but sort of the recipe of what I (personally and subjectively) think will help anyone who wants to grow their craft. (I know because I've been writing seriously for 14 years)

The act of writing is the best practice you can get but having a well from which to draw on creatively and skill wise in order to DO that practice is the trickier part. And sometimes we can be found lacking because we’re either NOT refilling that well enough, consciously enough, or only with the same sorts of things so it gets stagnant. This is a long one so I’ll shove it under the cut haha.

The recipe:

Study craft

Broaden horizons 

Diversify consumption

Consume with intention

Apply with reference

1) Study craft: this is the easiest to make sense of, right? I want to get good at writing so I read books about writing yada yada. Whatever you’re writing, it’s made up of a lot of moving parts, and you can dedicate time studying EACH PART, but figure out what you have the least experience with, or the most difficulty with, and start there. Also, before I go on to preach about why you shouldn’t solely stake your growth on some dusty old books, here’s some dusty old books I recommend:

The Elements of Style (strunk/white/kalman) (really quick and abbreviated advice, read every bit of this but remember: rules are important to know so you can decide which are worth following and which are in need of breaking for the pursuit of your goals. And nobodies perfect, or editors wouldn’t have a job)

Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott) (excellent work about fostering a process, important for everyone who finds themselves a little lost on how to just. Start)

Wonderbook (Jeff Vandermeer) (I haven’t read this one but knowing Vandermeers work this is on my TBR and I KNOW it’s going to be enlightening)

How to Read Literature like a Professor (Thomas C. Foster) (perfect for those who can see others stories working but unsure how to make their own work, I personally didn’t read much of this one but this will help people to more critically engage with what they’re consuming)

Save the Cat Writes a Novel/Joseph Campbells Hero’s Journey/On Writing and Worldbuilding/etc (all of these are on structure and craft in a concrete sense), I would recommend either choose one OR getting the abbreviated/digestible versions through YouTube because a lot of these can repeat themselves. I’m working on a playlist of writing craft/structure videos that I found helpful, so keep an eye out for that)

So. Studying craft should be a multidisciplinary process. Articles online, videos on niche media, books on craft or copying things from your favorites, looking for yourself in the movies you watch or fiction you read. Punctuation, prose, structure, rhetoric, character, world building, pacing, etc. Unfortunately, no matter how seasoned you become as a writer, you will always be learning new things about the craft itself.

It should be fun and I honestly feel like an enlightened little scientist when I see something that really cracks the open the magic for me (ex: scenes that serve more than one purpose are OF COURSE going to be more engaging that scenes with only one purpose- duh) (of COURSE magic systems should have a cost) (of COURSE the characters cant always win OR always lose)

2) Broaden horizons: consuming fiction and studying it is key to knowing how to reproduce it. We start with the training wheels of imitation before we ride away full speed into truly unique original storytelling. But the most impactful and thought-provoking stories are more than just fiction, so you need to know more than stories. Science, history, art, craft, math, music, cooking, psychology, religion, whatever!

Everyone always parrots ���write what you know”, but what you KNOW can expand to influence what you write- so keep learning new things all the time and for fun, because you never know what could help your story. Your knowledge is not limited to experience alone, and research is your best friend. ASOIAF was so loved because George RR Martin loved not only fantasy, but British history. The Folk of the Air series is so loved because Holly Blacks special interest is faeries.

Note: this does not mean the study of OTHER PEOPLES trauma and experiences in an appropriative way, rather, become worldly. Because sure, knowing what a gunshot feels like adds realism, but I don’t care about realism if I don’t care about your characters or world. Science fiction is the best example of this: so many of those stories stick with us generationally because they’re pointing a lens back at humanity, asking big philosophical questions with science, which is something that touches us all.

But it doesn’t even need to be Big and Thematic like that. My dear friend @chaylattes has a project where she’s applied her love of plants to the world building AND plot, and has INVENTED whole plant species that enriched their work with something so exclusively Chay. No one else could write Andromeda Rogue because Chay, with specific interests and knowledge, put that specificity into the story.

3) Diversify consumption: surrounding yourself with more of the same means you’re going to regurgitate the same, derivatively. To be a hater for a moment: I can tell within the first chapter if someone only reads/watches one kind of media (m*rvel, fairy smut, grim dark nonsense, etc), and it’s distracting. When I read that derivative work, I’m not thinking about THEIR story. All I can think of is the people who did it first, and better.

Alternatively, the best work draws on the unexpected. Fantasy work taking notes from horror, science fiction including humanistic romance, romance with elements of mystery. RF Kuangs work feels so smart because she’s literally a PHD candidate who’s reading of academic writing. Cassandra Clares work is so interpersonally messy and hard to look away from because she watches a lot of reality television. 

Genre is less a set of cages to lock yourself inside of and more so the sections of a great big fictional playground- and you need to start playing. Rules, again, are guidelines that can be bent for the sake of your stories. I predominantly write scifi/fantasy/horror but some of my favorite stuff is literary fiction, historical nonfiction, thrillers, and poetry.

And if you can’t bring yourself to read different genres, it takes significantly less effort to WATCH different genres. Television and film are stories too, and can absolutely be learned from. 

4) Consume with intention: this is easier said than done. I, embarrassingly, admit that I did not have any reading comprehension skills until I was at least 19. I was consuming, but I wasn’t thinking a damn critical thought, just spitting it back out in a way that sounded smart.

Critical thinking skills (I say, on the website that historically lacks such a thing) are a muscle that needs to be exercised just as often as your writing muscle. Reading new work, studying craft, learning new shit- none of it matters if you can’t APPLY it all to a story. One can take a clock apart to learn how exactly it ticks, but it won't tell time like a watch until you put it back together.

The key is asking questions, all of the time about everything. That whole “why the curtains were blue” nonsense comes to mind, but if you want to be a good writer, (edit: a writer that cares about whether or not their work is vapid imitation of better work) learning to ask WHY the curtains are blue really does matters.

Ask why in ALL stories you consume, including your own. Why do Ghibli films make me feel calm? (Motifs of undisturbed nature, low stakes plots and quiet scenes of reprieve between action, characters that care about one another and aren’t afraid to show it) Why do I fly through a Gillian Flynn novel but take 8,000 years to read other books? (Concise descriptions, realistic but evocative premise, witty voice, contained and fast paced plot, an abundance of questions driving the mystery leading up to a satisfying crash of answers at the end) Why were the curtains blue, the coffee cup chipped, and the lipstick stain on the rim red instead of purple or pink? And why did the colors matter at all when the scene is about a father at a kitchen table? (You tell me!) Answers may vary.

You can put the work into learning the answer at the source (ie: listening to authors talk about their own work), or through the external interpretations of a critic (proceed with caution here), sure. These are even good when learning HOW to think critically if you don’t even know where to start. But your growth as a writer depends on your ability to answer your OWN questions. 

(Why do I feel tense in this scene? Is it because the character says they’re sweating and struggling to breathe? Is it because I’ve been told the monsters close? Is it because the sentences are getting shorter and the author keeps repeating descriptions of that monsters massive bloody teeth coming closer? Or is it because I know the gun in her hands has no bullets because another character already tried what she’s about to try?)

(Why do I feel sad in this scene? Is it because the characters mom just died? Is it because the character can’t even verbalize that sadness to others? Is it because none of the other characters seem to care enough to ask? Is it because of the wilted flowers in the corner? Or is it because there are daisies in the bouquet, and those were the moms favorite?)

I can nod and smile at 1000 opinions about “why X did Y and the end of Z” or “why X is Y and not Z” but how I felt when I consume something, how I was affected and how it made ME PERSONALLY answer my critical questions, that’s what’s important. That’s how we manufacture gay subtext in everything, because sometimes gay is a feeling as opposed to a fact.

Also, if those subjective answers are inconsistent among readers/viewers, the writer likely had their own intentions a little muddled. So, and I know I’m getting tangential but stay with me: romance. You know how you’re supposed to feel happy or convinced that the people falling in love are like, in love? And want to put yourself in that position or whatever? I CANNOT consume most romance media because it all comes off as categorically terrifying to me. I ask myself why the characters are doing what they do, reacting the way they react, saying way they say, and none of it feels romantic. I want to file a restraining order, and that’s the failing of the author, who did not make enough conscious choices in their work and accidentally created horror while writing their color by numbers trope slop of a “romance” novel. 

5) Apply with reference: is like taking all your ingredients and finally cooking. You want people to notice and respect when you add certain literary devices, descriptions, character choices, but not to the detriment of your work. Shows like stranger things are popular but divisive because their intertextuality and reliance on nostalgia bolster an otherwise unoriginal idea. They weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel, they were writing a love letter to Stephen Spielberg, and are riding that wave into the ground. But the fairy dick renaissance doesn’t feel nearly as palatable as season one of stranger things did because a lot of times they aren’t using the ingredients in their own way, rather, following the recipe to a T and selling it as new. Food really is the perfect metaphor and sorry in advance because I’m really going to run with it here lol. 

When I eat a meal, first of all I know I'm eating food, so don't try and trick me into thinking otherwise or I'll only get annoyed. I want to be able to taste all of what’s in front of me, spice, salt, sweet, bitter, etc and know what what you said you've fed me is really actually truly what I've eaten. One ingredient, or writing choice, shouldn’t overpower another, or surprise me so much I can’t take another bite. I shouldn’t try something you call “sauced and baked yeast patty garnished with fermented milk and smoked meat” and think “this shits pizza” because you didn’t even try to jazz it up more than what the instructions on the digiorno box said. I also shouldn’t bite into something you call a pizza and only taste bread because you really like bread and forgot that a pizza is more than just bread. 

But inversely, avoiding all ingredients gets you weird, nary inedible shit like charred milk reduction with lamb mist or whatever. Show me you have knowledge in your genre by referencing it AND remixing it, show me that you studied craft by foreshadowing properly or pacing well, show me you’re more than an AI writerbot by deepening your work with your unique and human influence, show me you read broadly by adding surprising ingredients, and show me that you mean every word you write because you made the curtains blue instead of yellow, and topped your pizza with pepperoni instead of pineapple.

Congrats on making it all the way through my rambling, hope I made sense and that this helped!

[utilitycaster]

thanks for the book answer! would you share your fiction favorites in general?

Hi anon,

I'll post a few but I think to clarify - this is also kind of just going to be a list. I meant more like...are you looking for book recs? If so are you looking for specific things (eg: queer characters, fantasy and if so which subtype, sci fi and ditto, literary fiction, etc.) Or do you just like, want a list of books I have liked.

Anyway this is a list of a handful of books/series/authors that I'd count as favorites, loosely grouped, but I didn't go into any details about anything.

Fantasy I read a teen and has permanently shaped how I interact with fantasy fiction; some of this is YA

a large swathe of what Diana Wynne Jones has written

The Belgariad and Mallorean by David Eddings

The Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix

Sorcery and Cecelia by Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede (this came up on the comfort reads panel I watched yesterday and it is indeed a comfort read for me) and Mairelon the Magician by Patricia Wrede (set in the same sort of world)

Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I read some of the Patternist series by Octavia Butler as a teen but then didn't revisit it until adulthood

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (Piranesi is very different and also excellent but that came out when I was an adult, but it's still a favorite)

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley (I also read a bunch of her fairy tale-based books which I don't know if I'd call them favorites still but I do think they're an influence)

Sandman by Neil Gaiman

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Middlegrade/YA fiction I read as a kid that also permanently shaped something

Several Ellen Raskin books but especially The Westing Game

Elizabeth Enright's books but especially the ones about the Melendy family and Gone-Away Lake

Fantasy and SF I read as an adult and would consider exceptional/a favorite

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisen

The City and the City by China Mievelle

The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir

Phedre's trilogy of the Kushiel's Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey (have not read the others in the series so this isn't saying they're bad, I just can't speak to them)

The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Leguin

Arcadia by Iain Pears

The Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Night Watch books from Discworld by Terry Pratchett; I have read like, one other Discworld book and it didn't have Sam Vimes in it so I didn't really care

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delaney

Literary fiction/not sf I read as a teen or adult

(there's notably a lot less of this because I do lean heavily towards fantasy but)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

[everycorner]

what are some of your fav books tho 👀

oh hey. here's some:

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

the collected plays of Sarah Kane, but especially Cleansed and 4.48 Psychosis

Dionne Brand's long poem Ossuaries

The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer

Alan Garner's Weirdstone trilogy

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

Autobiography of Red and An Oresteia by Anne Carson

any James Tiptree Jr short story collection

every book Porpentine has released

i can give you a punch card which you can redeem once you've reached 4+ holes

[13eyond13]

Do you have any non-manga book recs? I would like to read more too, any genre

Sure! Here are 30 books I enjoyed reading sometime within the past decade or so, in order of date originally published: BOOKS TO READ (or not, 's entirely up to you):

Pride and Prejudice (1813) Jane Austen Wuthering Heights (1847) Emily Bronte Crime and Punishment (1866) Fyodor Dostoevsky The Time Machine (1895) H.G. Wells The Metamorphosis (1915) Franz Kafka The Hobbit (1937) J.R.R. Tolkien Rebecca (1938) Daphne Du Maurier Confessions of a Mask (1949) Yukio Mishima Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) George Orwell Lord of the Flies (1954) William Golding The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) Patricia Highsmith Rabbit, Run (1960) John Updike We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) Shirley Jackson In Cold Blood (1966) Truman Capote Interview with the Vampire (1976) Anne Rice The Mosquito Coast (1981) Paul Theroux Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (1985) Patrick Suskind Misery (1987) Stephen King The Silence of the Lambs (1988) Thomas Harris The Midwife's Apprentice (1991) Karen Cushman Middlesex (2002) Jeffrey Eugenides Oryx and Crake (2003) Margaret Atwood The Road (2006) Cormac McCarthy Heart-Shaped Box (2007) Joe Hill The Hunger Games (2008) Suzanne Collins Gone Girl (2012) Gillian Flynn Annihilation (2014) Jeff VanderMeer The Fisherman (2016) John Langan The Marrow Thieves (2017) Cherie Dimaline Paradise Rot (2018) Jenny Hval

[librarycards]

Book rec ask….Very interested in your fiction recs.

Borne - Jeff Vandermeer This Thing Between Us - Gus Moreno Piranesi - Susanna Clarke Embassytown - China Miéville Comemadre - Roque Larraquy

I didn't highlight it very much in the list, but I also really like sci-fi, particularly Ann Leckie and Ursula K. Le Guin :) This is so fun, appreciate you!

awesome list! fun fact - i use "embassytown" as one of a few litmus tests to see how weird/opaque of a book someone can actually handle. you've passed the test. here are some:

Jesi Bender, Kinderkrankenhaus

Tochi Onyebuchi, Goliath

Jay Besemer, The Ways of the Monster

NM Esc, Last Week's Weather Forecast Made Me Nervous

Andrew Joseph White, Hell Followed With Us

Renee Gladman, Event Factory

also: obligatory "you may like my book" link. alas, we are in Promo Mode.

enjoy!