rec me books, o reading page?

[fiachairecht]

I like disastrous obsessive girls and unreliable narrators and settings-that-are-characters and psychological horror, among other things. non-dude authors preferred. the last book i finished was the haunting of hill house (shirley jackson), am currently reading the bear and the nightingale (katherine arden), next will probably be the traitor baru cormorant (seth dickinson).

also if you're wondering if i type the vast majority of my book-question posts on my phone while lying on the floor of my favourite indie bookshop you would be correct, excuse the typos my screen is too small to show me and autocorrect may catch and may make worse.

(the problem, you see, with dreamwidth moving so quickly these days, is that i keep forgetting who mentioned excellent-sounding books and then because i am bad at remembering to add them to my memories, i also forget where they are! and the last four pages of my reading page are all today!)

ETA: wow yes you all have super great taste and also apparently strong feelings on twin peaks? i have never seen the show but i am delighted by that spinoff discussion. i am definitely set for my next few library trips now :D

Comments

[breathedout]

Michelle Tea's Black Wave is pretty funny on the disastrous obsessive girl front and also on SF and LA as characters. Also Chavisa Woods's short story collection Things To Do When You're Goth in the Country.

[fiachairecht]

Ooh I suspected you'd have great recs! I am. Historically bad at finishing short story collections, but I will definitely give that one a try! And oh man, Black Wave looks incredibly much my thing, will definitely have to get my hands on it. Thank you so much!

[tellitslant]

Try Tana French, The Likeness. She has a series of mystery novels that are loosely interconnected; that's the second one, but I think it's more like your favourite things, and you can go back and read the first/any of the others if you decide you like it.

[fiachairecht]

I keep seeing her and never knowing where to start, or seeing one that looks like a book I'd like to start with and then realising it is Probably Not A Place To Start, so this is excellent advice, thank you!

[tellitslant]

You can read any of them without having read the rest, but they do inform each other. If you like this one I'm happy to list out the others based on which I think you'll like most!

[fiachairecht]

Wonderful! I will report back soon :D

[slashmarks]

It sounds like you might really like The Red Tree by Caitlin Kiernan, a psychological horror novel about a haunting by a red oak tree, who is its own character, of an unreliable narrator who is a lesbian alcoholic whose partner recently killed herself and a bi professional artist who rents the attic above her. The Drowning Girl is by the same author with similar themes and a protagonist who lives (not a spoiler, it's revealed in the prologue of the first one).

In a wildly different tone, Among Others by Jo Walton is fantasy, not horror, but contains moments of horror, and checks all of your other boxes. It's about a traumatized teenage protagonist who has just survived the death of her identical twin in a battle against their evil witch mother, with the aid of fairies who are in some ways the personification of the landscape and obscurely connected to it.

[fiachairecht]

Oooh, I've actually read and loved both Among Others and The Drowning Girl, but Kiernan had definitely fallen off my radar recently and this is a delightful reminder, thank you!

[maplemood]

You might have already heard of/read this one, but The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin is EXCELLENT on the settings-that-are-characters and disastrous obsessive girls fronts.

[fiachairecht]

I am, like, shockingly poorly-read when it comes to Le Guin, I will bump that one up higher on my list for SURE.

[vae]

For settings-that-are-characters can I recommend ALL of Aliette de Bodard's Xuya universe (especially The Tea Master And The Detective) and also anything by JY Yang?

and I do have a written-by-a-dude rec, sorry - White Rabbit Red Wolf (called This Story Is A Lie in the US) by Tom Pollock is a psychological thriller with an unreliable narrator that is one of the best treatments of mental illness I've seen in fiction.

[fiachairecht]

Whoah, yes, de Bodard's alternate-history everything looks super great! And not-by-a-dude is definitely a preference, not a rule, I'll check them out if I am recommended them!

[vae]

I love love love her disaster angels in post apocalyptic Paris as well, and the Xuya universe novellas are a great introduction to her writing and incredible immersive so I tend to rec those to people first unless they're someone I know is really into angels.

I try to stick to not-by-a-dude because most of them seem to forget that anyone not-a-dude exists, but Tom is one of the good ones.

[fiachairecht]

Angels can be kinda hit-or-miss for me depending on setting and author, so I think I'll start with the Xuya ones to get a feel for her!

[ruuger]

Have you read any Gillian Flynn? Because her books tick a lot those boxes: I think all her main characters and obsessive and disastrous and very unreliable narrators.

[fiachairecht]

Yess, I have read and loved all of her books! I think the 'in the vein of Gillian Flynn' label gets tossed around too often, but things that genuinely follow her themes are wonderful.

[havocthecat]

I have no recs, just wondering how you like The Bear and the Nightingale seeing how our reading tastes are often fairly similar?

[fiachairecht]

With the caveat that I'm only about 50 pages in, I'm really loving it! It is v vivid and fairytale-ish and incredibly grounded in it's own world, and the characters are well drawn.

[thatyourefuse]

Do you know about Megan Abbott? Because The Fever most of all for DEAD LAKES THAT WANT TO EAT YOU, but really, all of it.

[fiachairecht]

YES, Megan Abbott's everything is also My Everything, Queenpin was an Oh! This is what stories can be! revelation years ago and I've never looked back.

[thatyourefuse]

:D :D :D

I don't know how anyone learns to charge every single damn detail with that specific kind of nerved-up sensuality, but like is there a course I could take or something? (Also, it still cracks me up that I would have called her as a Twin Peaks person -- specifically the kind who can appreciate parts of late S2 and really never got over Laura/Donna! -- way before someone linked me the piece she wrote about it, but that felt too much like projection.)

[havocthecat]

I've been tracking for recs, so excuse me for interrupting, but I've always thought half of the problem Audrey and Donna had with each other was their unspoken and sublimated sexual rivalry for Laura.

Okay, and so also, why did Nora and Shelley just never have sex after hours at the diner, because they were way more healthy with each other? I mean, seriously, was doomed, abused Laura Palmer the only bisexual woman in Twin Peaks? David Lynch did not have a healthy idea of women's sexuality.

[thatyourefuse]

I mean, I know what YOU mean, but I don't think healthy sexuality of any variety has ever really been... on-brand, for him. Not to mention that I think they were really right up against the limit of what you could GET past the censors and/or anyone's agent in the early 1990s as it was. (Wasn't that around the time various directors were making a lot of noise about the MPAA telling them to do things like cut 1.5 seconds of thrusting out of their sex scenes, if they wanted an R rating and therefore any distribution ever?)

(Guess how often we yell "JUST RUN OFF TO VERMONT!" during Shelley/Norma bits in this household, though, go on, guess.)

[havocthecat]

Given how much Lynch I've seen, you're not wrong, and that heterosexuality he shows is pretty unhealthy too, so you have a very good point. I mean, there are zero healthy relationships on that show. Or I think even in any of his movies.

(RIGHT? Ed and Leo and Bobby were not prizes, not in the least. VERMONT.)

[thatyourefuse]

I'm very FOND of Bobby Briggs in an "oh god, this is you trying, isn't it" kind of a way, but... yeah, nah, honey, do not be guided by a boyfriend who's skipping Econ for the third time this week like right now.

[havocthecat]

He was trying so hard, he really was, but look at those role models! I mean, really, what kind of role models did he have to learn from?

[thatyourefuse]

Not to mention that, like, he's the obvious case of "you're not actually going to get very far on any of the other issues until the ADHD is under control" out of that cast. Or any cast. Of anything. Ever.

[havocthecat]

Like, I really wanted to tell Admiral Scully General Hammond Major Briggs to get his son some treatment for whatever his problem was? But back in the 90s, I wasn't that up on ADHD symptoms, because my girlfriend hadn't been diagnosed, she was just self-medicating with a whole lot of caffeine. I mean a LOT a lot of caffeine. Now, though, yeeeeeah, ADHD, you are so right.

[thatyourefuse]

And like eight other things, but really you've just got to watch him try to sit in a chair for two consecutive minutes. (I genuinely don't know why Dana Ashbrook didn't have a much bigger subsequent career -- he just occupied space in the most exuberantly fantastic way.)

[havocthecat]

I feel like everyone from Twin Peaks who wasn't already a name should've been bigger after the show than they were. Though, wow, looking at IMDB, he did work a lot more than I realized (and was, surprisingly, in two eps of Psych, not just Dual Spires, the Twin Peaks homage episode).

I still need to watch the 25 years later sequel, because it was on a pay channel and I wasn't going to pay for Showtime for one series. But I think it hit Netflx?

[havocthecat]

Also do you happen to have a link to this piece? Because that sounds relevant to my interests.

[thatyourefuse]

La.

[havocthecat]

Thank you!

Also, frankly, this entire post has helped to reassure me that the character in my original fiction who is utterly terrible and manipulative (uh, because she cares?) should be allowed to be utterly terrible and manipulative.

I've spent two scenes shoehorning her into being a better person (after she blackmailed someone) and why am I bothering? WHY?

Let her keep the news that her girlfriend's entire livelihood has burned down to herself because it would mean more time with them. Obviously, she's doing it "to keep them safe," not for any other, more selfish reasons. (She's totally doing it for more selfish reasons.)

[snickfic]

If you like disastrous obsessive girls and unreliable narrators, then you absolutely have to read Social Creature, by Tara Isabelle Burton. It's the story I thought A Simple Favor was going to give me, except then A Simple Favor wussed out in about five different ways.

[fiachairecht]

....Oh. Yes, I absolutely do have to read that, thank you!

[chestnut_pod]

Recommend Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree highly for disaster girl, nightmarish plants, and creepy islands.

I also recommend Lara Elena Donnelly's Amberlough, which, while not horror by genre, certainly felt horrifying to me. Unreliable narrators galore, all of whom are disasters and hella obsessive, though they are variously gendered. It's also set in a gorgeous city.

And a little YA-y, and full of Horror Terror Horses, Personified Islands, and the obsessive disaster girl who loves them, is Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races, which I loved despite rage-quitting her Raven Boys series before the end of the first book.

[fiachairecht]

Ooh, I hadn't heard of the first two but now I Need them! I read the first ... two? I think? Raven Boys books and can't remember why I never finished the series. Got bored waiting for the next book, probably. I always meant to check out her other stuff and never got round to it, I'm glad it comes well-recommended :3

[vae]

Seconding the first two there! I love anything by Frances Hardinge.

Amberlough is gorgeously written with great worldbuilding but it very closely mirrors rise of the Third Reich, so if that's a triggery thing for you, go into it with care and being prepared. It blindsided me a bit because I wasn't expecting it.

[fiachairecht]

Ahhh yeah that's not triggery for me but it is a very nice thing to know going in, ty!