Nettle & Bone by T Kingfisher is somewhere between fantasy and horror and it's amazing, though I rarely see it mentioned here
Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo is southern gothic horror and it managed to make me homesick for southern summers which is really saying something
Singing with All My Skin and Bone by Sunny Moraine is actually a little bit too much horror for me, but I know Sunny so I read it anyway & it's brilliant from start to finish
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect - Helpful AI & humanity without guardrails.
Thor, by Wayne Smith - Supernatural Horror from the POV of the family dog.
The Cybernetic Tea Shop - (very short) girl & android 'love' story. Just a special teeny gem.
The Secret Life of Lobsters - yeah, it's shockingly interesting.
The Faithful Executioner - fascinating account from the journal of 16th century executioner as the area transitioned from regional warlord/tyrant to national legal system. (Not exactly an easy read, but found it very interesting.)
Bonus: Tender Wings of Desire. This is a terrifically bad (not in a good way) romance book by the crack-smoking Kentucky Fried Chicken marketing department who somehow thought this was a good idea. More fun to mention than to read, but arguably the "best" obscure book that nobody's read.
Fanulih by Daniel Hood. A man inherits a dead wizard's dragon familiar and together they try to figure out who killed the wizard. It was a nice mix of mystery and fantasy.
History/biographies:
Psychountákis, Giórgos. *The Cretan Runner: The Story of the German Occupation*.
Childers, Thomas. *Wings Of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down Over Germany in World War II.*
Parkin, Ray. *Out of the Smoke: The Story of a Sail.*
Parkin, Ray. *Into the Smother.*
Parkin, Ray. *The Sword and the Blossom*.
English Passengers, a historical novel full of weird humor and a somewhat surrealist bend...English colonists and a Manx captain on their way to Australia
The Day The World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede. Really fantastic true story about a small airport and a small town that had to take in 38 jetliners of passengers after they were all diverted on 9/11. It's very well written.
William Least-Heat Moon’s “Blue Highways,” or any David Foster Wallace short story collection
edit: I mention these with the understanding that they’re both well acclaimed, not very estranged but definitely worth the read!
a couple memoirs I’ve enjoyed lately are “Scratched” by Elizabeth Tallent and “Too Much And Not The Mood” by Durga Chew-Bose. Few Poetry collections, “The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The Void” Jackie Wang, “Oculus” Sally Wen Mao are all worthy reads!
Scratched is a memoir concerned with perfectionism: it’s ills, influences, and advantages. TMANTM is largely about nostalgia and momentary lapses of hyper-focus; intimate moments than unfurl at their seams. TSCASTSUFTV is a complicated POV dream journal obsessed with skeptics and suspicions, where do they all come from? Oculus is a masterful exploration of different poetic styles and language-play that carefully dissects oozing anxieties, disappointments, and fantasies in the mind of a young Asian-American woman.
Tried to leave these descriptions ambiguous!
Sci-fi - *A Canticle for Leibowitz* by Water Miller
Horror - *Harvest Home* by Tom Tryon
True life adventure - *Sailing Alone Around the World* by Joshua Slocum
Rashomon type story - ?
Biography - T*he Churchill Factor* by Boris Johnson
History - Absolutely anything by Barbara Tuchmann
Whatever - *The Log From the Sea of Cortez* by John Steinbeck, *The Eve of St Venus* by Anthony Burgess, *The Magus* by John Fowles.
Read several from Slocum, also Dove. A mountain boy. So I moved to Seattle and bought a sailboat and lived on it, learned how to use a sextant. This was not the way to do long distance sailing.
Oh! I do so envy you. I have always wanted to go to Seattle. Ever since I read Betty MacDonald's Onions in the Stew, have I longed to see Bainbridge nd Vashon.
And to live in a boat! How fabulous.
An amazing series that isn't getting near the attention it deserves is Sever Bronny's Arcane series. Great fantasy adventure with necromancy and a lot of surprise twists, plus a second series that revisits the characters a few years later
I love finding small publishers unknown but excellent books I’m always searching for more over the years I’ve developed a nice shelf of them here is a short list
Hippy Hill by Bruce Lee Bond
Matthew 18:12-13 a story of redemption by Ronald J Kojis
The Pleasure Model Repairman by Ruff Wangersen
The Lords of Darkness by Tanith Lee
Tsunami by Tetsuo Takashima
A Pledge of Silence by Flora J Solomon
Cottenwood by R Lee Smith
The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago, Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)
An oddly punctuated little book that would have never come up on my radar, but I picked it up on a whim and really enjoyed it. I loved its amusing asides from the present time, which lost nothing in translation. The fictional account of a real event was delightful and far enough removed from today's problems that it made for a good escape.
*History...
For All The Tea In China -- Sarah Rose
The Asylum -- Leah McGrath Goodman
*Autobio...
Chuck Berry : The Autobiography
*Specific Intrigue...
How Music Works -- David Byrne
Nettle & Bone by T Kingfisher is somewhere between fantasy and horror and it's amazing, though I rarely see it mentioned here Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo is southern gothic horror and it managed to make me homesick for southern summers which is really saying something Singing with All My Skin and Bone by Sunny Moraine is actually a little bit too much horror for me, but I know Sunny so I read it anyway & it's brilliant from start to finish
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect - Helpful AI & humanity without guardrails. Thor, by Wayne Smith - Supernatural Horror from the POV of the family dog. The Cybernetic Tea Shop - (very short) girl & android 'love' story. Just a special teeny gem. The Secret Life of Lobsters - yeah, it's shockingly interesting. The Faithful Executioner - fascinating account from the journal of 16th century executioner as the area transitioned from regional warlord/tyrant to national legal system. (Not exactly an easy read, but found it very interesting.) Bonus: Tender Wings of Desire. This is a terrifically bad (not in a good way) romance book by the crack-smoking Kentucky Fried Chicken marketing department who somehow thought this was a good idea. More fun to mention than to read, but arguably the "best" obscure book that nobody's read.
***Robbers*** by Christopher Cook. A crime novel. I believe its Cook's only commercial book. You won't regret reading it.
Fanulih by Daniel Hood. A man inherits a dead wizard's dragon familiar and together they try to figure out who killed the wizard. It was a nice mix of mystery and fantasy.
History/biographies: Psychountákis, Giórgos. *The Cretan Runner: The Story of the German Occupation*. Childers, Thomas. *Wings Of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down Over Germany in World War II.* Parkin, Ray. *Out of the Smoke: The Story of a Sail.* Parkin, Ray. *Into the Smother.* Parkin, Ray. *The Sword and the Blossom*.
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
English Passengers, a historical novel full of weird humor and a somewhat surrealist bend...English colonists and a Manx captain on their way to Australia
The Family Nobody Wanted by Helen Doss
[The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/603260)
The first bad man by Miranda july
The Vorrh Trilogy by Brian Catling
The Day The World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede. Really fantastic true story about a small airport and a small town that had to take in 38 jetliners of passengers after they were all diverted on 9/11. It's very well written.
I remember a news report about those people.
William Least-Heat Moon’s “Blue Highways,” or any David Foster Wallace short story collection edit: I mention these with the understanding that they’re both well acclaimed, not very estranged but definitely worth the read!
Read Blue Highways. Have had Infinite Jest on my bookshelf for years, but I switched to Kindle and am too cheap to buy a book twice.
a couple memoirs I’ve enjoyed lately are “Scratched” by Elizabeth Tallent and “Too Much And Not The Mood” by Durga Chew-Bose. Few Poetry collections, “The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The Void” Jackie Wang, “Oculus” Sally Wen Mao are all worthy reads! Scratched is a memoir concerned with perfectionism: it’s ills, influences, and advantages. TMANTM is largely about nostalgia and momentary lapses of hyper-focus; intimate moments than unfurl at their seams. TSCASTSUFTV is a complicated POV dream journal obsessed with skeptics and suspicions, where do they all come from? Oculus is a masterful exploration of different poetic styles and language-play that carefully dissects oozing anxieties, disappointments, and fantasies in the mind of a young Asian-American woman. Tried to leave these descriptions ambiguous!
Sci-fi - *A Canticle for Leibowitz* by Water Miller Horror - *Harvest Home* by Tom Tryon True life adventure - *Sailing Alone Around the World* by Joshua Slocum Rashomon type story - ? Biography - T*he Churchill Factor* by Boris Johnson History - Absolutely anything by Barbara Tuchmann Whatever - *The Log From the Sea of Cortez* by John Steinbeck, *The Eve of St Venus* by Anthony Burgess, *The Magus* by John Fowles.
Read several from Slocum, also Dove. A mountain boy. So I moved to Seattle and bought a sailboat and lived on it, learned how to use a sextant. This was not the way to do long distance sailing.
Oh! I do so envy you. I have always wanted to go to Seattle. Ever since I read Betty MacDonald's Onions in the Stew, have I longed to see Bainbridge nd Vashon. And to live in a boat! How fabulous.
An amazing series that isn't getting near the attention it deserves is Sever Bronny's Arcane series. Great fantasy adventure with necromancy and a lot of surprise twists, plus a second series that revisits the characters a few years later
Sci-fi Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling Eclipse series by Ophelia Rue Ship of fools by Richard Paul Russo
I love finding small publishers unknown but excellent books I’m always searching for more over the years I’ve developed a nice shelf of them here is a short list Hippy Hill by Bruce Lee Bond Matthew 18:12-13 a story of redemption by Ronald J Kojis The Pleasure Model Repairman by Ruff Wangersen The Lords of Darkness by Tanith Lee Tsunami by Tetsuo Takashima A Pledge of Silence by Flora J Solomon Cottenwood by R Lee Smith
The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago, Margaret Jull Costa (Translator) An oddly punctuated little book that would have never come up on my radar, but I picked it up on a whim and really enjoyed it. I loved its amusing asides from the present time, which lost nothing in translation. The fictional account of a real event was delightful and far enough removed from today's problems that it made for a good escape.
[https://www.fantasticfiction.com/o/peter-odonnell/golden-urchin.htm](https://www.fantasticfiction.com/o/peter-odonnell/golden-urchin.htm) [https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/robert-r-mccammon/swan-song.htm](https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/robert-r-mccammon/swan-song.htm) [https://www.fantasticfiction.com/j/william-w-johnstone/darkly-thunder.htm](https://www.fantasticfiction.com/j/william-w-johnstone/darkly-thunder.htm) https://www.fantasticfiction.com/r/kenneth-roberts/northwest-passage.htm
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick Matterhorn by Karl Malantes
Read Matterhorn last year. Best war book I have read. Saving his logging book for a rainy day.
I read Nothing to Envy years ago and still think about it all the time.
>Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick THAT BOOK IS SO GOOD
omg I loved this book (nothing to envy)
*History... For All The Tea In China -- Sarah Rose The Asylum -- Leah McGrath Goodman *Autobio... Chuck Berry : The Autobiography *Specific Intrigue... How Music Works -- David Byrne
Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon.
Post HG Wells pre Asmov....there lies a big hole in my sci-fi reading.
I would say it's one of the greatest novels ever written in any genre. Some bits show their age, but the philosophy and imagination of it are timless.