We're always on the lookout for great book recommendations and readers/bloggers who have wells of information and recommendations to give to others. One such person is Michelle from Chronicles of a Book Evangelist, and we are ecstatic to welcome her for an edition of "If You Like This, Maybe That," where we give book recommendations based on interest in certain movies, television shows, love of characters, songs, and just about anything else you can think of.
| If you are part of the 32% of American young adults who like to get your news from The Daily Show or The Colbert Report rather than traditional news outlets, you've got to read Melissa L. Rossi. With titles such as What Every American Should Know About the Rest of the World and What Every American Should Know About Who's Really Running the World, Rossi combines humor, satire, statistics and historical facts in such a way that world politics and corporate machinations suddenly become entertaining and easy to grasp. Her books are like Cliff's Notes for life; sometimes fun, sometimes shocking, but always helpful in understanding how America (and its politics) fit into the larger global picture. |  |
 | If you have been enjoying the recent outbreak of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic literature to hit the shelves, you should try George Stewart's Earth Abides. First published in 1949, Earth Abides is one of the grandfathers of modern day apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic literature. However, unlike many of its contemporaries, Earth Abides has held up surprisingly well over the years. George Stewart was a scientist, a geographer, and a studier of human nature. Rather than rely on fantastic otherworldly catastrophes or elaborate technological failures, Stewart's apocalyptic tale depends on a simple, natural virus and normal human behavior. It is how the survivors react to each other and the changing social, biological and physical landscape that makes Earth Abides so fascinating. |
| If you enjoy watching Grimm or Once Upon a Time or both (Tor does a great Battle of the Fairytales recap of both each week), and you've read and loved Beastly or Kill Me Softly, or you are waiting on Shadow and Bone, perhaps you should try some time-tested retellings. In Enchantment, Orson Scott Card weaves together Jewish, American, Russian and Ukrainian culture and literature, religion and myth, to create an incredibly unique and vibrant blending of fairytales from the east and west into one fabulous story. Another great fairytale retelling is Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. This wonderfully twisty version of Cinderella is perhaps one of my favorite retellings of all time - please don't judge the book by its movie. |  |
 | If, like Bria (or me), you were completely captivated by Starling in Kirsten Hubbard's Wanderlove, you should try J. Maarten Troost's The Sex Lives of Cannibals. It is the sometimes sad, sometimes gross, mostly funny and always true story of his and his girlfriend's experiences as global vagabonds out to save the world... one tiny Pacific Island at a time. |
| Are you thrilled by all of these wonderfully strong, smart, resourceful and independent young heroines defying the odds and taking to the skies? Do you want more of Maddie Brodatt from Code Name Verity, Ida Mae Jones from Flygirl, or Deryn Sharp from the Leviathan series? I suggest the memoirs of real-life pilot Beryl Markham, West With The Night. She was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from East to West, spent most of her years adventuring in Africa, and wrote so that Ernest Hemingway described her memoirs like this: "As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers... I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book." That was Ernest Hemingway, need I say more? |  |
 | My final recommendation has a lot of ifs, but, oh! if those ifs are met, then it is a really wonderful then! If you love the darkly humorous tone and language-heavy literary bent of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief; and if you can stomach some serious amounts of violence, blood and gore (no, really, serious amounts); and if you like your blood and gore to be accompanied by a little bit creepy, somewhat relatable and always cerebral hero (think House from House, Dexter from Dexter or Bones from, well, Bones then Rick Yancey's Monstrumologist series is probably the series you've been waiting for most of your life. Yancey's writing is beautiful and dark and literary and organized and so hard to describe but very, very worth the read. |
Well I don't know about you guys, but my to-be-read list has just gotten a little longer. If you liked any or all of Michelle's recommendations, don't forget to visit her blog at Chronicles of a Book Evangelist.
