The Good Bits Version

[bcholmes]

What was the last fiction book that you finished and felt really uplifted by? Not just intellectually engaged or feeling like "that was a good yarn." I mean, the story makes you feel great, like it's a new day or sumpthing.

Comments

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

I just finished reading Suzette Haden Elgin's Ozark Trilogy. I must have read the first book, Twelve Fair Kingdoms, a dozen times when I was thirteen, but I couldn't find the next two (rural area, tiny mostly-useless libraries). I eventually forgot about them, but when the author turned up on LJ I remembered and went to the TPL for it.

I don't know why it's that kind of book, but it is.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

Hrm....The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini made me feel that way, but I still can't figure out why because the story itself is quite depressing.

To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis.
Time travel, Victorian England and kittens. No really! It's an well-written story that is entertaining and delightful in every way. I was grinning like a fool by the end of it.

[northbard.livejournal.com]

The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon.

[mathbabe.livejournal.com]

For me, Russell Banks' "Rule of the Bone".

[witchicist.livejournal.com]

Sitting Practice (http://www.thomas-allen.com/ThomasAllenPublishers/catalogue/0-88762-129-5.htm)

I put this down and said, "What a thoroughly satisfying read." It was a random pull off the library shelf.

[gisho.livejournal.com]

"Mirror Dance" by Lois Mcmaster Bujold. But then, I have a pretty sick sense of humour.

[onalark.livejournal.com]

"The Sharing Knife: Beguilement" by the same.

Lois is good.

[poetheather.livejournal.com]

"The Fortune Quilt" by Lani Diane Rich was really good. It made me feel real good and I laughed out loud several times. Quasitodo was awesome...

[firecat]

Walter Mosley, 47

[shara.livejournal.com]

War and Peace. If you don't read the epilogue. :P

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

Sixty Days and Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson.

(Sequel to Forty Signs of Rain and Fifty Degrees Below)

[xthlcm.livejournal.com]

This is an incredibly bad time to ask me this, since I just finished The Phantom Blooper (http://www.gustavhasford.com/PB.htm) (the sequel to the book (http://www.gustavhasford.com/ST.htm) that Stanley Kubrick made into Full Metal Jacket (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Metal_Jacket)) and right now I can't remember anything that doesn't involve emotional burnout and existential horror.

Still, that's a good book that you should eventually read, if you're OK with gore.

[cinnamyn77.livejournal.com]

Fiction... the last fiction book I remember being uplifted by was, oddly enough, The Red Tent (http://www.amazon.com/Red-Tent-Anita-Diamant/dp/0312195516). It got me thinking about the power women were able to wield, even in challenging circumstances. I was also heartened to think of the people all over the world who have managed to hang on to aspects of their culture even as they are being conquered.