Man, I'm liking me that "Blog about this entry" button. Saves all that copying, pasting and linking.
Weekend Assignment #113: Travel Books : "Weekend Assignment #113: Someone you know is traveling. Suggest a book or two for them to read on their trip. If at all possible, pick a book from the last couple of years. Also, keep in mind that it's meant to be a recreational book; i.e., they're not really reading to change their life, here, just to have fun."
Boy, if that ain't an assignment just MADE for me. I'm heading off on a trip tomorrow (home from work packing -- or procrastinating about packing -- right now). And Amazon just sent me the two books that will be entertaining me while on planes, trains and buses for the next two weeks:
First, we have Ilium, by Dan Simmons. It's a Hugo-nominated science fictiony thing that owes a lot to Homer's Iliad. I hope it's as good as his Hyperion (which owed a ton to Keats, among others). Science fiction that gets its smarts from literature rather than techno-geekery. I like it.
And the other book (which, in a broad sense, is in the same general family) is The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde. It's the next book in a series that began with The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book, featuring a "Literary Detective" in the Department of "Jurisfiction," who can pop in and out of books. It's definitely "genre" fiction, but hard to pin down in any particular genre. Sort of an alternate-universe-comic-detective-novel-with-a-literary-bent thing.
Now... to pack.
2 comments:
Well that last paragraph hooked me in. I'm going to have to check out Jasper Fforde and that series.
Lori
I LOVE the Thursday Next series. I prefer classic literature to contemporary fiction, but Jasper Fforde has become one of my favorite authors. His books have everything -- war, love, Shakespeare, vampires, time travelers, a wacky inventor, and very, very bad villains.
-Cosette
http://pandorasbazaar.blogspot.com/2006/05/weekend-assignment-113-travel-books.html
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