What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

tumblrfriends I need book recs

shwetanarayan:

fozmeadows:

shwetanarayan:

I’ve had a really bad few days, I have a health condition that means I can’t cope with stress, and I’ve found several attempts at light-reading (which is all I can manage atm) quite triggering.

I need fluffy/lighthearted/low-stress fiction, any genre, for any age range. I need it to not erase or be hideous towards or demonize, etc, characters w/ marginalizations. Ideally I’d like work written by POC, though certainly a lot of what I mention below isn’t. (Which is part of why I want more work by POC…)

Context for my tastes/stress levels: Several of Nnedi Okorafor’s books fit, Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo (so much love); I LOVE Nisi Shawl’s writing but I’m not sure I’d have the reader-brain to parse her stories right now, though rereading may be okay.  Hm. What else. Kate Elliott’s Spiritwalker series also exactly hit my sweet spot. I mostly really like Ben Aaronovitch’s books but cannot deal with their level of stress & gore right now.

Almosts include Terry Pratchett (I love most of his books but there’s a racist running gag in that last Guards book) and Frances Hardinge (so much of her work is note-perfect wonderful, which is probably why a casual slur at the end of Gull-struck Island/The Lost Conspiracy upset me a lot.)

Recs? Does it exist? Surely I didn’t read them all already. & I am so tired of authors trying to strongarm me into sympathy for protags who would despise me or pretend I don’t exist. 

I’d recommend Dinotopia by James Gurney - he’s not a POC author, but the illustrations are gorgeous, it’s a multicultural cast handled well and an awesome story with shipwrecks and dinosaurs and mysteries, and also a city on a waterfall.The sequel book, The World Beneath, is equally as awesome, and also has a major plotline about a female character making a spiritual connection to her maternal ancestors.

Also recommended: Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince (POC authored SHEER AWESOME YA set in a matriachal future Brazil, with art and politics and romance); Martha Wells’s Raksura trilogy, beginning with The Cloud Roads (again, not POC authored, just highly awesome, original and non-stressing); Y. S. Lee’s The Agency series (POC author and protagonist, a fun YA about a biracial female spy in Victorian London); This Is Shyness by Leanne Hall (POC author, gentle/awesome YA with a vague SF element set in Melbourne), Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe (POC-authored, humerous-but-touching and very meta SF story about a time-machine repair man stuck in a time-loop); Karen Healey’s The Shattering (not POC authored, but POC protagonists, thoughtful and awesome YA with supernatural themes, but possible TW for suicide); Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens (non-POC authored, but diverse female cast, eccentric/savvy/comic YA about teen beauty queens stuck on an island discovering themselves); Michael Pryor’s The Laws of Magic series (not POC authored and no POC protags, but severely excellent steampunk YA where one of the main characters is both a suffragette and a ninja); everything ever written by Tamora Pierce. 

Other POC authors whose stuff I’ve either read, or who are on my radar: Cindy Pon, Malinda Lo, Julie Kagawa, Sarwat Chadda, Sherri L. Smith, Kat Zhang, Helen Oyeyemi, Chibundu Onuzo, Marjorie M. Liu, Tahereh Mafi, Randa Abdel-Fattah.

Would tentatively suggest Erick Setiawan’s Of Bees and Mist, too, (POC authored, semi-SFnal story about women and families), but it depends on what your triggers are - there’s no sexual violence, racism or overt sexism, but there are some darker plot elements around familial strife, pregnancy, guilt, bad husbands and the like; it’s not so light, is what I’m saying, but it’s still a great book. If nothing else, it’s worth keeping in mind for when you’re feeling up to something non-fluffy. 

Anyway - hope that helps, and that life improves soon :)

Thank you for the list, but frankly I’m really disturbed by this recommendation of everything ever by Tammy Pierce, made to a POC, especially one with a chronic health issue. Especially getting it twice.

Look, even if you can’t pick up on it yourself, it’s not hard to find discussions of the racefail in her earlier books. Because said racefail is EPIC. And while she’s improved, the Aly books have white saviour problems seven ways to hell. And while I haven’t seen a discussion of psychophobia in the Circle Opens books (no spoons to look), surely there is one to be found? She thought it was a great idea to pick villains who were, quote, criminally insane, in all four books. Because people with mental illnesses need more stigma amirite? And then she played with caste systems in one of them just to add to the fail.

And look if I’m triggered by one slur at the end of an otherwise fantastic and nuanced book, that’s going to be too much for me. If I hadn’t actually read them when healthier, and drawn my own conclusions, and I had trusted your rec on them, I’d be hiding under the table for the next three weeks.

And y’know, it makes me hesitate over the entire list.

*winces at own fail*

I’m really, really sorry for that. I’ve read about and agreed with analyses of the racefail/problematic stuff in Pierce’s work - have noted it myself on recent rereads, even - but I still tend to blank on it when it comes to book recs, because most of her stuff (with the notable exception of the Lioness quartet, which I tend to forget about, and the Trickster duology, whose race issues made me uncomfortable the first time around, and which are the primary reason why I’ve never reread it) falls into the category of personal-nostalgia-comfort-reading, and so I tend to default to thinking well of her whole canon on balance for the sake of a few particular works (predominantly the Protector of the Small and Beka Cooper series). And also, if I’m honest, there’s the Pratchett factor: that like him, she’s written so much that I tend to just give her name rather thanlist my favourite stuff, because it’s quicker. Which is obviously a bad habit, and one I need to break. So, yeah. I totally understand if you choose not to take the other recs on that basis. I’m just irritated at myself for having undermined all the other stuff I put actual thought into by the addition of one careless sentence. ><

(via shwetanarayan)

  1. readandbookmarked reblogged this from fozmeadows
  2. ekebolou reblogged this from fozmeadows and added:
    reblogging for the ‘holy shit, that was not the way I expected this to go’ factor.
  3. fozmeadows reblogged this from shwetanarayan and added:
    *zips lips, rescinds commentary, steps away from the internet*
  4. madamethursday reblogged this from shwetanarayan and added:
    I know you know what’s good to read out there, Tumblrverse. Come on. What’s on your shelf that would be good for...
  5. crossedwires reblogged this from maganayakare and added:
    “Even if the book flags this stuff up as racist, it is still said, and that’s enough to be hurtful.” – Yes. I’ve read...
  6. maganayakare reblogged this from alexdallymacfarlane-blog-blog and added:
    I think this is a necessary conversation.
  7. shwetanarayan reblogged this from alexdallymacfarlane-blog-blog and added:
    just reblobbing for stuff I didn’t know right now. and going back to bed. Complete out of spoon error.
  8. alexdallymacfarlane-blog-blog reblogged this from fozmeadows and added:
    There are problems with other authors on that list as well. Let’s look at Libba Bray. She’s written some books involving...
  9. blackwolfchng reblogged this from fozmeadows
  10. persephonesorchids reblogged this from kateelliottsff
  11. kateelliottsff reblogged this from shwetanarayan and added:
    Signal boosting
  12. kateelliottsff said: I haven’t read it yet & it may not fit your criteria as it is a near future environmental thriller, but Tobias Buckell’s ARCTIC RISING.
  13. andreablythe said: How about Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan, which is a really light YA romance set in a semi-utopian town.