What Novels Have You Evangelize For During Your Reading Life?

Since Go Set a Watchman was released today, I know that To Kill a Mockingbird has been a favorite for many readers over the years. I can assume that a lot of readers have become an evangelist for that novel.

It got me to thinking about my reading life and what novels have I become an evangelist for. I'm defining "evangelist" as a term used in a religious context.

The first novels I became an evangelist for in my early reading years was Little Country by Charles De Lint & The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson.

Currently, I've become an evangelist for The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber and The Book of Strange New Things, and the Retrieval Artist Series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/42246-retrieval-artist

I have bought copies of those books for friends and co-workers recently and I talk about them anytime a book conversation comes up.

What novels have you become an evangelist for in your reading life?

Marion

A couple of books that I have been trying to put in as many peoples hands as I can are The Martian by Andy Weir and Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein .

The Martian is just so much fun and features maybe the most likable protagonist I've ever read.

Code Name Verity is just so beautifully written and so utterly heart-breaking that I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it. Not only have I made everybody in the world read it, but I keep suggesting it as a Santa Thing gift for anyone who's interest is even remotely close to it.

On the literary side, I rend to recommend Nabokov, particularly, Pnin. I also tell people to read The Deptford Trilogy.

For ancient stuff, I recommend Herodotus, who is the sun, the moon and the stars, Callimachus, Artemidorus. For later stuff, I recommend Ibn Khaldun. I think I still have at least a dozen Herodotuses.

For modern history, I recommend And the Band Played On, the best oral history I've read. (I don't claim to have read widely.)

For science fiction, I recommend The Sparrow and Eifelheim. But mostly I don't recommend much. It's all bad. The Martian is not a great novel, but it's fun.

I must confess that Jack Vance is one of my favourite authors, in SF. So I DO push HIM A LOT.

When I was much younger, and having an Existential Experiences (1966) I did love Somerset Maughan

The Razors Edge was a novel I was sure was the answer to EVERYTHING

I am a bit scared to re-read that book.

Guido.

>2 tottman: "likable"? Seriously? He was an arsehole - and a two-dimensional one at that.

I have in the past pushed both The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe and Take Back Plenty, and both books are now in the SF Masterworks series. OTOH, I have done the same for Coelestis and Kairos, and they're not.

I always recommend the original 1977 novelette version of Ender's Game to be read before the re-worked 1985 novel. The original story has an elegance and emotional punch that is lost in the novel.

It used to be difficult to acquire the earlier version because it was only published in a magazine, but it's now in First Meetings.

>5 iansales: Curious. What's not to like about Mark Whatney? Who is he an arsehole to? Death?

>8 2wonderY: You don't have to be an arsehole at someone to qualify. He's just annoying and not at all sympathetic.

Over the years I have evangelised these books whenever the opportunity has arisen:

1982, Janine by Alasdair Gray
The facts of life and The limits of enchantment by Graham Joyce
The lions of Al-Rassan and A song for Arbonne by Guy Kay
The third policeman and At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
Titus Groan and Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
Little, big by John Crowley

and probably a few books that I cannot recall right now.

I did notice >10 anglemark: that you had left off Titus Alone off your selection by Mervyn Peake the 3rd novel.
I agree, It isn't that good.

Guido.

Well, I recommend that they read it, but I can't wax lyrical about it.

Let's see:

Satan Wants Me by Robert Irwin
Little, Big by John Crowley
All Souls' Rising (and its sequels) by Madison Smartt Bell
Accelerando by Charles Stross
The Chess Garden by Brooks Hansen

and many others.

Hmm, some of them would probably be :

• Dune by Frank Herbert, my own gateway book into SciFi ^^
• The Lyonesse trilogy by Jack Vance
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Tigana by G. G. Kay
• Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Janua Vera by Jean-Philippe Jaworski
• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
• The Scar by China Miéville

Some I love to recommend as well but don't end up doing it all that often for various reasons :

• Grendel by John Gardner
• The Tales of the Flat Earth by Tanith Lee
• The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson

The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay (that was the book that made me realize that Fantasy is not just sword and magic). And the original short version of Flowers for Algernon - although if all you have access to is the novel, it does work as well I guess :)

Outside of those - it really depends on what the person is already reading

Currently I'm evangelizing for The Hank Palace trilogy (even though I haven't read the last book yet). The trilogy, by Ben H. Winters, is comprised of The Last Policeman, Countdown City and World of Trouble. Countdown City won the PKD award, but that isn't very influential.

Science Fiction:
Dawn by Octavia E. Butler and Little Brother by Cory Doctorow were the most commonly recommended this last decade.

Other SFF include:
Arc D'X by Steve Erickson
Slow River by Nicola Griffith
Ghostwritten or conditionally Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Beloved by Toni Morrison

>8 2wonderY: >9 iansales:

I don't agree at all. Whatney's an asshole? He's flip, that's for sure. My $0.02 is that it can be hard to like a character in print that, in an audiobook, is likeable. Somehow I'm more forgiving of people talking than of their words on paper. Whatney's flipness falls under that category. A good characterization of him and he's likeable. On the page, I might get annoyed at his informal tone.

>18 timspalding: Totally agree. R. C. Bray did a genius interpretation of the book. I'm afraid the movie isn't going to capture the deep hidden humor, but play it just for drama.

>19 2wonderY:

Agreed. I have high hopes for the movie. But then I'm usually disappointed. I'd like to somehow disconnect myself temporally, so I can get excited about movies, books and so forth the week before they come out. The let-down would be less acute.

Pretty much unconditionally:

We have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson
Small Gods or Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
Fear and trembling by Amélie Nothomb
The Odyssey

Conditionally, depending on pre-existing preferences:

Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe
The book of the mad by Tanith Lee
The aleph and other stories by Jorge Luis Borges
The god of small things by Arundhati Roy
The dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

>18 timspalding: I read the book, I've not heard the audiobook. That may be the explanation. Though, to be fair, there are also a number of other reasons I thought the book poor.

>22 iansales: I too disagree that Whatney is an arsehole. An arsehole would have more depth. The whole book reads like an outline for a movie treatment so it figures it needs an actor to bring it to life.

Many of the novels that I number among my favorites (1984, Brave New World, Frankenstein) are already very popular, so I don't really feel the need to evangelize for them. :)

I pick up used copies of Stephen King's The Bachman Books whenever I see them so I can give them to people, so I suppose that counts (I've done that quite often with The Handmaid's Tale, too, come to think of it).

I put in a good word for Alan Moore's work whenever I can, because (a) I think it's excellent, and (b) I realize he might need the extra push because there are still so many people that "don't read comic books".

I've been pushing E.M. Forster's classic The Machine Stops (http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2073/the-machine-stops *) on people a lot for several reasons: it has a lot to say about the world we live in today (particularly for something that was written over a hundred years ago), it's short, and it's freely available on the net.

* Look, I did it again!

>18 timspalding: timspalding: I read the book, I've not heard the audiobook. That may be the explanation. Though, to be fair, there are also a number of other reasons I thought the book poor.

How so? I didn't think it was a great work of art, but I enjoyed it thoroughly and consider it perfect for what it is. What was your beef?

>23 justifiedsinner: Good point :-)

>25 timspalding: The book has been sold on its scientific accuracy, but the storm which kicks off the plot is scientific bollocks. Plus, every time something works, it then goes wrong, so Watney bounces from catastrophe to catastrophe, to a frankly unbelievable extent. The writing is competent at best, but mostly poor. The scenes set on Earth are mostly chielfy and the characterisation is non-existent. The novel is also hollow. There's nothing in the middle - it makes no point. Watney is stranded, Watney is rescued. There's no point made there, no central conceit around which the plot is based. It's basically a less-than-averagely competent techno-thriller notable only for its setting and the fact it proved so wildly successful as a self-published title.

>26 anglemark:. Um, that too...

>25 timspalding: Also, if someone hands you a perfectly-formed turd, that doesn't mean it deserves an award. It is, after all, still a turd.

Ha. I certainly wouldn't class it with great-idea science fiction. It happens in space. That doesn't make it science fiction, really. Books set their own genre terms. To read a book outside its genre is to err. King Lear is a shitty romance.

Indeed it has the characterization of a movie. I didn't find that aspect unbelievable. Whatney is basically a competent, likeable wise-cracker. They exist. The diaper-wearing Ms. Nowak notwithstanding, astronauts tend to me mentally healthy, integrated people. As a matter of basic outlook, I think we're all broken But most literary writers I know seem unacquainted with wholeness.

As for the rest, I think one can write about people doing a difficult job, such as surviving on Mars or running a department of NASA, and take it seriously, without delving into their inner psychomachy.(1) Perhaps Mindy Park's tentativeness comes from parents who fled North Korea. Perhaps Mitch Henderson is such an asshole because he secretly feels inadequate. But work is work. It has an internal logic, reality and value that can be put into a novel without shame, and without adopting a different perspective, alien to the effort and genre.

Now, I feel a little dirty making this argument. I like nuanced and character-driven literary fiction, and generally despise "beach reads." But what bothers me in, say, Michael Crichton, doesn't bother me here, in part because the psychological is so minimally approached. And, in general, I got the sense of a knowledgeable and intelligent author working out a realistic, simple Robinsonade, not cranking up a wind machine that mixes an "idea" with a lot of formulaic suspense.

De gustibus, of course.

Not de gustibus, I don't find your scientific criticisms convincing. Yes, he mentions the cold a lot, but also explains how the near-vauum prevents the cold from biting too quickly. Honestly, with peer-reviewed by mobs of nerds, and the author writing an astrodynamics program before he wrote it, not to mention many positive reviews by scientists, I think he got most of it right. Also, in contrast to basically every other writer, he gave a talk about where the science was wrong ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMfuLtjgzA8&feature=player_detailpage#t=1950 ).

Also, if someone hands you a perfectly-formed turd, that doesn't mean it deserves an award. It is, after all, still a turd.

You should head into the Maine woods some time with an experienced nature guide. There are perfect turds. It's all in the context.

>15 AnnieMod:

I have Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay on my bookshelf. I've been wanting to read one of his novels for years. I've listened to a couple of interviews from him recently and I'm looking forward to checking out his work.

>13 paradoxosalpha:

I read Chess Garden when it was published in the mid 90s. I planned to re-read it this year. It's an underrated novel that deserves a wider readership.

>1 Kammbia1: Is this IRL and unsolicited? I've given up on this. Though it feels less pushy in an online forum to say this book is great, especially on LT. It's such an imposition to be given books by people, as they seldom get it right and that's a disappointment, and turns into an obligation. On the flip side to tell people to read something, or worse, give it to them, to only find they never do read it is also disappointing.

>3 timspalding: "For science fiction, I recommend The Sparrow and Eifelheim."
Yes and yes!

>24 artturnerjr: Yeah, 1984, Brave new world are so well known you don't need to be an evangelist for them but they would be up there for me too.

The machine stops is brilliant social commentary and amazing that 100 years later is so relevant. Another one for anyone even slightly skeptical of the advertisement supported "user as product" model for internet business is Feed .The audiobook especially recommended, as it recreates the ads that are constantly blaring directly into the chips in the protagonists' heads. It was written in 2002 but feels like the author predicted Facebook.

>33 wifilibrarian:

I believe you are misreading my post. I'm not pushing any books on anyone. I just wanted to know from readers what books throughout their reading life they have been evangelists for. That's all. Thanks for reading though.

Books are something readers are passionate about and I'm curious to read what they are.

>34 Kammbia1: I'm sorry if I offended you. I'm not saying you are pushing yourself on anyone. I was only sharing my personal experiences of recommending books to others.

I love that people are passionate about books. That's why I'm here.

>35 wifilibrarian:

Not offended at all. I just thought your post misread what I was trying to say. No worries. It's all good.

Among SF books, I've recommended or given Algis Budrys' Rogue Moon, and among mainstream books, like timspalding, I've often suggested Robertson Davies' Fifth Business over the years. I was happy to see angelmark's recommendation of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, a favorite of mine.

I recommend Philip K. Dick novels to anyone who will listen to my paranoid ramblings.

>30 timspalding: I think a novel set in space about something not yet technically feasible counts as science fiction by most people's definition of the term. (And while we could certainly send people to Mars, we can't keep them alive during the journey, or during their stay on the planet's surface.)

As for Watney's likeability, I suspect that may be an Atlantic thing, because I find him hugely irritating and most of my fellow Brits I've asked agree with me.

My scientific criticisms are perfectly valid. Weir gives no real indication of what it would be like on the surface of Mars. Watney might as well be in Antarctica judging by the conditions he experiences. And when a book is sold on its scientific accuracy, I'd expect it to be right - or, at the very least, for the author to admit where he got it wrong (whether deliberately or by mistake).

Having written about missions to Mars myself - twice, in fact - I likely brought certain expectations to The Martian, most of which it failed to meet. But verisimilitude aside, I also thought the novel suffered from other problems.

I like threads like this because when you do come across shared titles that you've read you know who's recommendations are worth following, and who's are worthless. If only there was some kind of way to get the recommendation algorithm to understand this (by matching star ratings for instance!).

When it seems appropriate I push , The real story, Chanur, Red Mars, Earth, only forward, chasm city and pretty much all of their other works.

I have just as many fantasy titles and other genre titles to push too.

(And if you like eifelheim don't bother picking up any of these, because I thought it was dire, one of the very very few books I couldn't finish)

>32 Kammbia1: It's an underrated novel that deserves a wider readership.

Yeah. That's what qualifies it as an object of promotion for me.

>33 wifilibrarian:

Another one for anyone even slightly skeptical of the advertisement supported "user as product" model for internet business is Feed .The audiobook especially recommended, as it recreates the ads that are constantly blaring directly into the chips in the protagonists' heads. It was written in 2002 but feels like the author predicted Facebook.

That sounds like something I'd really enjoy. Thanks for the recommendation!

>32 Kammbia1: and >41 paradoxosalpha: This is why I read through threads like this. Every once in a while, there's talk about some book or other that seems like I should have it, and read it. Voila! I will pick it up on Saturday, from my favorite local book store.

I feel strongly about The Bug, which I read on the insistence of a friend (he actually went to the bother of buying the book, and mailing it to me). The author's a remarkable woman (I also own and liked Close to the Machine, which is non-fiction).

I'm a hermit (or close enough), and don't have anyone in real life to push books on. Perforce, I must do it here.

>40 reading_fox: When it seems appropriate I push , The real story, Chanur, Red Mars, Earth, only forward, chasm city and pretty much all of their other works.

(And if you like eifelheim don't bother picking up any of these, because I thought it was dire, one of the very very few books I couldn't finish)

Wonder what it says about me that I liked Eifelheim but also other books by the authors of those works you cite, Brin and Reynolds. I'm reading Red mars right now but I'm not getting it yet.

>40 reading_fox:

Weird I love Eifelheim and the Mars trilogy, and Only Forward and Chasm City.
Earth was flawed but an OK read. I'm not a big fan of Chanur but it is OK. Donaldson's Gap series is sitting on my TBR shelf (and has been for a few years).

I'm sort of an evangelist for a little book called Babel-17, and Vinge's The Snow Queen. The two books are utterly unlike each other. The former is short, experimental, less accessible than the author's better-known Nova but more accessible than Dhalgren. It's kind of about how language shapes reality. Also, it's a spy story. The latter is long, narrative, science fiction disguised as fantasy, more epic than adventure. A re-telling of the Hans Christian Anderson story on a different planet, with a massive Mardis Gras and folk religions.

But they are both beautifully imagined, tightly plotted, and very smart. And both ask the kinds of ethical and moral questions that is one of my favorite attributes of good science fiction and fantasy.

I'd have to list The Martian as a book I've recommended any number of times. I was aware of the "artistic license" with respect to the windstorm but I don't care - the book, as far as I'm concerned, is great chewing gum for the eyeballs. As for the character - I really liked the way he was portrayed - probably because I've known people just like him in real life.

Two other books on my oft recommended list are Woken Furies and Roadmarks. Of the three Morgan novels in the series I think Woken Furies has the best blend of "interesting idea" science fiction, setting/action, and word pictures. As for Roadmarks , I guess it is just a case of liking the concept and the way the story line developed.

>46 southernbooklady:

I love Babel-17, and Empire Star makes it that much better.

Offhand I can't readily think of science fiction I promote so boldly (although I usually suggest Dune or Foundation to a newcomer.) But I just read What Makes This Book so Great, in which Jo Walton (Hugo winner) strongly promotes a large number of science-fiction titles I'd never heard of.

>46 southernbooklady:, Babel-17 is among them, and some other work by Delany as well.

>46 southernbooklady: ff.

Delaney's fans seem to be as diverse and as legion as they come. I've recently come across various sources naming the literary critic Leslie Fielder, Neal Peart (drummer and lyricist for the band Rush), music critic Robert Christgau, and the aforementioned Alan Moore (among others) as admirers of his work. I've read a couple of his short stories, but I really need to make it a point to investigate his writing further.

>49 Cecrow:

I just added What Makes This Book So Great to my wish list (also based on a mention of it in this month's "What are you reading?" thread here at SF Fans). I really need to stop reading threads like these!

I don't evangelize for books anymore, ever since I pushed Always Coming Home on a friend I was sure would love it, who didn't understand it at all.

However, if pressed to mention my all-time favorite books that I think others would enjoy, I'm sure to mention Cryptonomicon and The Shipping News, and (depending on my audience) Little, Big and most of Douglas Coupland's novels.

Before I knew his politics, Orson Scott Card's book, Ender's Game, was one I pushed a lot.

Now... Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series, starting with Storm Front

>52 gilroy: I hadn't really liked much by him other than the original work that appeared in Analog in the seventies (1977, actually). You made me curious, and I looked him up. I am sadly unsurprised. So it goes.

I often recommend Mirrorshades, the seminal anthology that captured many of the authors at the beginnings of Cyberpunk. I now feel the need to re-read The Hacker Crackdown, which I probably haven't picked up since the early nineties, when it was first written.

Such a great thread this has been; I've found books I never heard of (such as Chess Garden) that are now awaiting reading.

>52 gilroy:

Still a great one. Also Speaker for the Dead.

>53 Lyndatrue:

The Hacker Crackdown

That one's freely available on the Internet, too (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101 and elsewhere).

In SF and fantasy, I have evangelised for Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic and Far Rainbow ,Stanislaw Lem's Eden and John Crowley's Little Big.

>55 artturnerjr: It is indeed available in multiple places. I prefer getting it from Bruce's original, however.

http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html

I especially love the Afterword (written in 1994).

http://www.mit.edu/hacker/afterword.html

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Bruce is, and always was, a class act.

>56 pitjrw:
Oh wow, Roadside Picnic must do a reread!!

>54 timspalding: Speaker for the dead so much better than Enders game, and so different. I don't think we'll ever see a film of it as as sequal to the enders game movie.

I have been an SF fan since I found a discarded copy of Analog in the 70s. Great recommendations - Roadside Picnic is now a MUST READ SOON. Must reread all of my Delany (love Dhalgren) and The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. This is a great thread, so many books I want to read now.

I don't often recommend books because I've been disappointed that others don't feel the wonderfulness that I felt with certain books - such as Earth Abides. . . .

>54 timspalding: Honestly, I HATED Speaker for the Dead. Ender's Shadow seems the only other Ender book I've liked.

>30 timspalding: Ha. I certainly wouldn't class it with great-idea science fiction. It happens in space. That doesn't make it science fiction, really. Books set their own genre terms. To read a book outside its genre is to err. King Lear is a shitty romance.

Funny, that was exactly my feeling for The sparrow. Sure, the setting was SF, but it didn't feel like that was what it was about.

>62 zjakkelien:

I'm not sure Science Fiction is an "about."