Darkschunt

It's a gorgeous day! There was a DJ playing on the lawn outside the library on campus, the market stalls are up, and the fat pigeons are roosting on the ivy-covered walls...

I've just decided I'm going to give top ten lists on my blog. Darkschunt's Top Ten. The first being... my top ten list of books to recommend! Bearing in mind that there is probably going to be more than just ten books being recommended here (they don't go in any order, but they're all fab):

1) Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen.
I love all her books so it was hard figuring out which one I preferred. They all give you such a nice feel-good feeling at the end, like how chick flicks do. My favourite used to be Northanger Abbey, with Emma coming in a strong second, but when I finally got around to reading Pride and Prejudice, it just toppled the rest. All I can say is...a good love story always wins the day! Hehe. Read it, then read the rest of the books, then read The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler.

2) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson.
This book is so crazy, it's awesome. Read it, then watch the movie. It's all about Thompson as a journalist named Raoul Duke, who takes a trip to Las Vegas with his Samoan lawyer in a fire-red convertible with a trunkful of drugs to cover the fabulous Mint 400 biker race for Sports Illustrated, and end up rampaging through Vegas in a completely drug-addled state, and ending up in all kinds of places such as a police drug convention and various hotel rooms, bars, casinos and diners in Vegas. It's excessive drugs, wild happenings, terrifying the hotel help, all kinds of crazy things, and a fab read.

3) The Chalice & The Blade by Glenna McReynolds
This is a romance/fantasy book and it's actually part of a trilogy. I actually like the second book, Dreamstone, best. The story takes place in the late 1100s, in Wales, about Ceridwen and Mychael, twins and the children of a woman, Rhiannon, the last of the Magus Druid Priestesses. Their home is destroyed and their parents murdered. The first book, the Chalice and the Blade is about Ceridwen and a Danish sorcerer named Dain. The second is about Mychael and an aetheling named Llynya, while the third leaps waaay to the future, and is about a Welsh prince named Morgan, who also appeared in the first book as a friend of Dain's and a cousin of Ceridwen's, and a woman named Avalynn. The story combines magic, dragons, priestesses, lords and ladies, grove priests, and elves as well, and they're very beautiful stories. I love the way she writes, how her words flow, the way she describes events and places, and it's obvious that she did a great deal of research while writing these books, which makes them even more enjoyable to read.

4) The Skull Mantra by Elliot Pattison.
I actually prefer the second book, Water Touching Stone, which I had read first, but it's probably better to read The Skull Mantra first, if you want to go in order. But both are fantastic, anyhow. These two books are about Shan, a former investigator for the Chinese government, who got too close to the truth and was sent to a labour camp in Tibet. In the first book, he is taken out of the camp and forced to become a detective once more when a headless corpse is found on the mountainside where the labourers in his camp break rock to build a road. In the second, his detective skills are put to used once more to find out what the Chinese government is looking for. Both stories are set in Tibet and are filled with Tibetan and Buddhist myths and lore. They are really great mysteries to read, as Shan encounters more and more questions and uncover conspiracies and leaves you guessing at who the killer really is, what they really want to accomplish, all set against the background of Tibet, which is absolutely beautiful. Also, the novels really highlight the injustices which the Chinese government has committed in Tibet with their political policies. Pattison has also written other books where Shan continues to solve other cases in Tibet, and I can't wait to get my hands on those books as well. He won the Edgar award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America for Skull Mantra as well.

5) Pat of Silver Bush by L.M. Montgomery.
These are actually more like children's books. Remember Anne of Green Gables? L.M. Montgomery is the very same author. But I would recommend Montgomery's books to any age group because they're such sweet, beautiful books. Mark Twain once called Anne of Green Gables "the sweetest creation of child life yet written".
I love all her books but my favourite is Pat of Silver Bush and the sequel, Mistress Pat. As with all her other books, Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat is set on Prince Edward Island, where Montgomery herself grew up, and of which she describes its beauty in haunting, memorable words. Pat of Silver Bush chronicles the life of a little girl named Pat who loves her home and family and P.E. Island greatly and could never imagine leaving it. She especially loves the farm on which she grows up, Silver Bush, the one place where that horrible, fearful thing "change" seems never to occur. But change does happen, from her first day in school to the arrival of a new baby sister, and keeps coming as she grows up, but with change there is also beauty and new people to love. I found Pat's story moving and beautiful and so sweet, the two books about her life are definitely two of the books in life which I can never get tired of reading over and over again.

6) Belgarath the Sorcerer by David and Leigh Eddings.
This is actually the follow-up to the Belgariad and Malloreon trilogies. It's a huge thick block of a book(which is good! because that means: more to read!), and chronicles the life of the immortal sorcerer Belgarath. It's terribly funny, at times I was just hooting and rolling with laughter, and there are some sad bits in it too, but sad bits are what makes a good story good, you know ;)
I prefer Belgarath the Sorcerer to the follow-up, Polgara the Sorceress, the second thick book which is about his daughter, the sorceress Polgara. Don't get me wrong, I love Polgara, she's really cool, but Belgarath's story is so much more compelling, probably because a lot of Polgara's story had also already been told in Belgarath's book. You should read the trilogies first, to make some sense out of some of the bits in the Belgarad, but that should be no problem at all because those other books are really good as well. :)

7) Geisha by Liza Dalby.
This is a kind of anthropological autobiography written by Liza Dalby, the only American woman ever to become a geisha. Back in the 1970s, Dalby had lived in Kyoto in the Pontocho geisha quarters while she studied geisha as part of her college thesis. The geisha had then invited Dalby to be a geisha as well to really get into the geisha experience for her thesis. This book covers a great deal on geishas, such as their history, the different kinds of geishas such as country geisha and city geisha, their rituals and ceremonies, their relationships with each other, men, and wives, and so on, which makes a really interesting read for anyone who wants to know all about geisha. I also like several of the evocative descriptions of Japan and the places that Dalby has written. Some of the reviewers on amazon.com said they found Dalby to be a little self-centred and too full of herself. Well, perhaps, but I found the book to be a really satisfyingly good read. Another reader said she found Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha struck her as a far more truer experience of a geisha's. I wonder how she figured that out, when Dalby's book was based on true experiences while Golden's was based on interviews with a geisha who later sued him for dishonesty. Maybe because it suited the reader (who probably has never met a geisha in her life)'s sense of what a geisha should be? Anyway, I've read Golden's book and it's a nice book too, but I prefer Dalby's. The book also gives you a view on traditional Japanese cultures and traditions and some of the country's history as well.

8) The Stone of Heaven by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark.
This is a sort of historical book in which journalists Levy and Scott-Clark trace the history of the jade. The amount of research which they have compiled for this book is amazing, with richly-woven, life-compelling stories of the rich, famous people in history who are obsessed with the jade stone (including millionaires like Sir Victor Sassoon, heiress Barbara Hutton, the Dowager Empress Cixi of China, and heiress Madame Wellington Koo), the stories of great excess and of love lost in which jade played a great role, the topple of kings and great dynasties and the sufferings of millions because of the beautiful green stone known as jade are amazing to read about. The tale takes place everywhere, from the imperial courts of China to Shanghai's 1930s gangster-land to London auction houses to the desperate jade-mining town of Hpakant that is filled with dying drug addicts. It's a great story and I definitely recommend it to everyone.

9) The Famished Road by Ben Okri.
This is one hell of an awesome book. As those of you who have been following this blog knows, it was the Porn Star recommended it to me. The story is a bit hard to get into at the beginning, but as you continue reading, you get drawn in further and further into the story. It's a story about Azaro, a spirit child. Spirit children are not supposed to live long in this world but Azaro decides to stay "to make happy the bruised face of the woman who would become my mother." But life isn't easy for Azaro and his parents, who are poor and live in a ghetto, especially with Azaro's spirit companions attempting to trick him into dying so he would return to the afterlife with them. There are all sorts of other characters, including a photographer and a captivating woman in charge of a palm-wine bar named Madame Koto. Because Azaro is a spirit child, he sees many things which other people cannot see, and so encounters and sees some of the most extraordinary things ever. In the middle of his wanderings and his visions, there are also occurences from the real world - the poverty which his mother and father are struggling to get through, the influence of politics in their lives, especially from the Party of the Rich who bully where they cannot influence, and their greedy landlord. It's a very beautiful book. At the back of the book is a line that says something like "Ben Okri is incapable of writing a single boring sentence" and I have to agree with that. Okri also won the 1991 Booker Prize for fiction for this book.

10) Timeline by Michael Crichton.
The same guy who wrote Jurassic Park and Congo. Congo was great, and his other book, The Great Train Robbery, was also fab. Timeline is one of my favourites though. It's about a group of historians working on a ruined French castle who are sent back in time to the very same spot they were excavating. There's a boy who turns out to be a girl, the usual bad guy, as well as the fact that they have a time limit to getting back and the quantum machine which transported them all to 17th century France has also been blown up. It's a fast-paced good adventure read.

There are tons of other good books that I can think of, but I'll save them all for more top ten book lists. In the meantime, happy reading!