Please help me kick my tail back into gear!

[beetiger]

At some point, I'm not quite sure when, due to some combination of depression and antidepressants and inertia and not having much external motivation available, I seem to have become dull. I've lost my spark. I'm not feeling very intelligent. I'm not feeling, to use postvixen's term, very flourescent. I don't know whether I'm still at all interesting to the rest of you, but I've lost track of a lot of my ability to delight and inspire myself.

I think I'd better fix this, especially if I'm looking forward to both a likely period of unemployment and a possible period of sitting in conveyances of semi-public transportation. I need to be able to use my mind to amuse myself better than I have been, of late.

Perhaps I just need some new mental food that isn't junk food. Would you all please help me? What I'd like from each of you is a recommendation for two books, one fiction, one nonfiction, that you think could get me going again. Any genre, any topic.

I'd like every single person who is reading this to answer. I'd like you really to only choose two books, though I know most of you could produce wonderful reading lists for me a mile long. I'm going to make a committment to follow up on every single suggestion I get here though, and that would be about 70 books at two suggestions from each of you, which is enough.

I'm completely serious about this.

Comments

[reive.livejournal.com]

fiction: Cyteen by CJ Cherryh

nonfiction: either The Lucifer Principle
or The Story of Mary MacLane (which can be found online at the URLs I posted in my journal last week).

[aynjel.livejournal.com]

Fiction: Caitlin Kiernan's Silk
Non-Fiction: Stephen King's On Writing

(Don't know how I managed to limit myself to two.. And I'm desperatly afraid I've picked the wrong two. Eee!)

[bookwurm.livejournal.com]

Decisions, decisions.... Ok, I'm going to go with thought-provoking rather than favorites that I re-read all the time. ;> (These are still good, don't worry.) The links are just there so that you have all of the publishing information.

Fiction: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

Non-Fiction: In Search of Lost Roses by Thomas Christophe

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Non-Fiction: The High Frontier, Dr. Gerrard K. O'Neill

Fiction: The Ill-Made Mute, Cecilia Dart-Thornton

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Roman Blood by Steven Saylor - historical fiction, Rome, mystery

Cat's Paws and Catapaults by Steven Vogel - biology & device comparison, written for non-biologists and non-engineers.

recc

[(Anonymous)]

fiction: i highly, highly recommend getting "Possession" by AS Byatt under your belt before you are lured into seeing the movie by the presence of the ever-incredible Jennifer Ehle and the scrumptious Jeremy Northam.

i also reccomend "The Iron Dragon's Daughter" by Michael Swanwick. i just reread lately and still found it incredibly disturbing.

oh, and anything by Sheri Tepper, but especially "Grass".

i give more than one, because i sense you may have read any - or all - of the things i'd recommend. :)

non-fiction: good grief. my entire non-fiction library is in storage. i'd reread my herbal books if they weren't, and i have a bunch of pagan references that i bet you've already read.

so read about Great White sharks, or watch Shark Week on Discovery. sharks are cool. ;)

chris/sirhc

Solid mental food...

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear me... What a tough decision. Both of my choices are long, but are in bite-sized pieces.

Non-fiction: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. If you haven't read it, it's still an intensely readable, fascinating book about the limits of logic.

Fiction: The Sandman collection by Neil Gaiman. Don't be put off that it's a comic: Neil Gaiman creates a full, deep mythology based on many different sources. His stories range from the macabre to the poignant.

[mike-kenshin.livejournal.com]

Books? Errr...ummm... I've found that a laptop does wonderful things for amusing one's mind :)

Fiction: "Nature's End" by Whitley Shriber.
Non-fiction (well, depends on what you term fiction): I don't have titles here @ work, but there are some great books on the Midrash and the Mishna.

One other suggestion as far as stimulating the noggin - music. Esp "folky" music, that actually says something/tells a story, and not much is of the mainstream stuff that's around now. Melissa Etheridge is my fav in this category.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Oh gods, never ask me this question... or at least don't limit me to _two_. :) This is gonna be rough.
Fiction: Nnnngh! Can't... decide! I'm going to say _Holy Fire_ by Bruce Sterling and move on before I change my mind.
Nonfiction: Much trickier. I'm a nearly incurable escapist. How about a nice anarchist manifesto? You can buy a copy of _Temporary Autonomous Zone_ or just download it and print it out.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

I've read nothing but books for class, so my suggestions are limited.

Non-fiction: The Story of Dibs (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345339258/qid=1029261786/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-0068098-9620857), which I think you at least saw lying around my room.

Fiction: Hmm, when's the last time I read any fiction? I dunno, I'm blanking. If I think of anything, I'll follow up to myself.

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

While these are a little off-the-cuff, they're perhaps appropriately coyote:

Fiction: Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver
Nonfiction: Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey

[genders.livejournal.com]

Only two? How difficult.

Fiction: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Social realism for our times.

Nonfiction: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer. See history repeat itself before your very eyes.

These are serious mental food; do not read them until the depression lifts.

Cheating...

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

...I'm going to give a couple of each. I can't help myself. But they'll all be totally distinct, and one of them I owe you from when you last visited, anyway. :-)

Fiction:

• Dreams Underfoot, Charles de Lint. A short-story collection, so they're all bite-sized; one of my favorite authors with some of his very best stories. Wonderful stuff in a wonderful setting, with a sense of place that not much can match.
  
• Finder, Carla Speed McNeil. Comic, with three graphic novels available. I have a strong weakness for stories where the setting is one of the characters, and this is another one of those. You get the feeling reading it that, if you asked, McNeil could tell you the life story of that guy who appears in the background of page 3, panel 4, issue 19; it's just that well-realized. Her art is occasionally murky, but it's very well suited to the story, and her sense of graphic composition -- especially in service to storytelling -- shines.
  

On the non-fiction side:

• The Clock of the Long Now, Stewart Brand. A fascinating philosophical dissertation on time in the broad sense, in the context of the world's slowest clock (one that can count tens of thousands of years). One of those books that may well change how you think.
  
• The Elements of Taste, Gray Kunz and Peter Kaminsky. This is that nifty book on flavor that I was showing off to you when you were out this way; well worth checking out in more detail, and possibly even professionally justifiable. :-)
  

Sorry I couldn't quite stick to two, but at least I came close! Pick one of each, if you feel you must.

[healthobsession.livejournal.com]

The two books that feel life-changing for me every time I read them:

Biographical novel: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
Nonfiction: Diet for a New Planet, John Robbins

[calicopaisley.livejournal.com]

Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh. Fiction; bbviously, about young Scottish men with smack addictions. By the end, very strangely but genuinely uplifting even compared to the movie. Besides the obvious, this book is also hysterically funny.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393314804/qid=1029270803/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-2802346-0435824

House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danlielewsky. Very very avant-guarde fiction. I'm not articulate enough with words to describe this book. Amazon does it well, however. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375703764/ref=ed_oe_p/103-2802346-0435824

hmmm.

[ayodele.livejournal.com]

I havent gotten this yet, but plan to: Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations by Michael Sells. Fiction? The Lover by Marguerite Duras is always a good read.

[aureth.livejournal.com]

Hrm. Hard to pick just one fiction book. I'll go with the Hugo-award winning A Deepness in the Sky from Vernor Vinge.

And this is where I admit that I rarely read non-fiction.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

I thought you seemed perfectly glowy and shiny at AC, but I'm happy to help anyhow...

Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart (medieval Chinese detective/romance/fantasy), and Famous Long Ago by Ray Mungo (underground journalist autobiography)

[m0nkeygrl.livejournal.com]

I've thought long and hard about choosing books. It took me a while to narrow it down to just two. I tend to read "classics" and shy away from "new" stuff. Also, I don't really know any decent non-fiction books. I'll recommend two fiction books, a "new" one and a "classic".

New: 1632 by Eric Flint. This can actually be read at the Baen Free Library.

Classic: Chances are, you've already read this, but I'll still recommend Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.

If you just want to laugh your butt off, Cats in Cyberspace by Beth Hilgartner will do the trick.

[fenton.livejournal.com]

Non-Fiction: "The Axemaker's Gift", or "Godel, Escher, Bach: the Eternal Golden Braid" if you REALLY want to excercise your brain. I had to re-read sections of that three times before I could follow them completely.

Fiction: "To Reign in Hell", by Stephen Brust. A beautiful explanation of what *really* happened in Heaven, between Yahweh and Satan, where angels and humans come from, and just who Yeshua was and how it came to pass. Guaranteed to be thought-provoking, even to those of us who find the Bible more interesting as a collection of legends and mythology and a few useful guidelines for living than anything else.

Thank you!

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you everyone for your suggestions. There's a good mix of stuff that I've read, but not lately, stuff that was on my list, and it's good to be reminded of, and stuff I'd never heard of at all.

Now I've got to use this to fill in my Amazon wish list!

Revelation

[awolf.livejournal.com]

This mayn't help, but here is.

I've never had any problems with inspiration, that I can ever recall. Only with motivation, which is a continual problem. That's why I think I'm only half a visionary. I need an S to keep me grounded, but my conjunctions with people are so ephemeral it'll likely never occur.

Trickster