Recommend a library book

[dreamshark]

Please recommend a library book available in audio or ebook format.  I have finally mastered the technical aspects of downloading and consuming library books, but still have not found a good method for finding a book I might want to read.

However, occasionally I do stumble on something. I recently finished "The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D," an astonishingly good first novel by Nichole Bernier. It's a subtle, thoughtful story about how little we truly know about the people closest to us. It's a novel I think would only have been written by a woman, and its most likely audience is other women, but it certainly doesn't deserve a dismissive categorization like "chick lit."  It's just a really good book about people who seem so real that they practically walk off the page.

Anybody else found something good to download from the library?  

Comments

[mle292.livejournal.com]

I am most recently infatuated with the author Joe Hill. He is principally a horror writer, but I think that the stories in 20th Century Ghosts would appeal to any taste. "Pop Art" is not a horror story at all, and is one of the best short stories I think I will ever read. Skip to that story first if you're on the fence about reading all of the stories in the book.

If that story does not appeal to you, then you're crazy and wrong, but you also might want to try your luck with Hennepin County's recommendations page. I think I found Joe Hill that way.

(unhelpful link removed)

Hennepin County's ebook only search is found by going to their home page, then "Bookspace," then "Ebooks," then "Overdrive Digital Library," then signing in, then picking a genre. I have found good recommendations there, but it's a bit of an internet trek to get there.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Okay, I found "20th Century Ghosts." Like every other title in the goddam library it is "unavailable" so I put it on hold. Any other ideas?

I have tried browsing the science fiction/fantasy genre and found it to be 95% paranormal romance schlock and endless fantasy series. There is some good science fiction hidden in the cracks, but the ratio is so low that I've only had luck searching on individual authors. So I'd be interested in anything you'd recommend in that category.

Here's what I've found and enjoyed from that category and how I consumed them

Audiobook
The original Foundation series (Asimov) - excellent as an audio book
"Tunnel in the Sky" (Heinlein) - extremely well suited to audio book
"Little Big" - (John Crowley) - I love Crowley, but I think this one would have been better as an Ebook - just moved too slowly in audio format.

Ebook
"Jim and the Flims" (Rudy Rucker) A hoot. Great airport reading.
"The Sparrow" (Mary Doria Russell) - loved it.
"Jitterbug Perfume" (Tom Robbins) - anything by Tom Robbins is great.
"Fledgling" and "Bloodchild" (Octavia Butler) - she's a wonderful writer, but kind of creeps me out. Two Butler collections at once was a little too much. Didn't finish the final stories.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Everyone seems to like David Sedaris (not science fiction, just humor essays), and it appears that a few of his titles are currently available.

I'm going to keep looking for a few minutes. I bet some novel length thing will come to mind.

I've only heard good things about Octavia Butler, I'll have to read those.

***************and then later, I added***********

By clicking rather randomly and landing on recommendations of recommendations, I finally landed at what I would read if I weren't already in the middle of two other books.

"How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe" looks like it might be promising. It has a low rating on the library site, and very mixed reviews on Amazon. People like it or don't like it, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of "meh."

If you've already read that (and if you did, please let me know if you didn't care for it) I see that there are several Terry Pratchett books available right now, along with a Roger Zelazny that I haven't read but looks very promising.

I really enjoyed Robert Bloch's "Psycho," and that's currently available. It's very similar to the movie, so it's predictable enough, but I'm finding that it is actually very tough to find books that I have read, and are also currently available.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Actually, David Sedaris totally creeps me out. I suffer through his segments on "This American Life" but rarely enjoy them. His kooky family of origin is several notches beyond charmingly eccentric and well into the uncomfortably crazy.

I think you might like Octavia Butler. Her imagination is intensely science fictional, but has a considerable dark side that probably would appeal to you as a horror fan. I like that aspect, but sometimes it's a little too much for me. I was looking back at my notes on what I have checked out from HCLIB in the past year and see a note-to-self not to make the mistake of checking out two Butler story collections at the same time. I just couldn't make it through the second one.

Looking at what I've already read reminded me of what I like. I just plowed my way through the unfamiliar new user interface on the library site (cause it's a new year and time to completely derail all the users that had finally figured out how to use the old one) and downloaded another Tom Robbins and another Crowley.

I also downloaded an audio book version of the Joe Hill collection, but I might just wait for the ebook. I was not happy with the way ODB packages short stories for audio book.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

I agree entirely about the audio book issues. It was like breaking into Fort Knox to get the goddamn thing to play, and then there were still issues with starting where I left off.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

ODB is a huge pain in the heinie to use, but I have a more specific complaint about the short story collection. First of all, ODB divides its books into equal-sized files for download rather than breaking them into logical chapters. That's not so bad when it's all one book that you are going to listen to from start to finish anyway. But short stories really should be packaged in individual files so you can listen to them one at a time.

The Bradbury collection was also recorded awkwardly, with a narrator that did not even pause for a breath at the end of one story before plowing right into the next one. This was a terrible combination with the ODB format.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"Midnight Riot," by Ben Aaronovich. And the two sequels.

B

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Well, okay, if you say so. The description sounds like a list of genres I don't care for, but if you ask for recommendations you should be willing to take a chance. I've put it on Hold.

I just realized one of the horrible "improvements" that have been made to the interface since last year is that you can no longer tell whether there is a waiting list for a book until after you click "Borrow" and you can't tell how long the waiting list is until you actually put it on hold. In fact, that isn't enough. You have to put it on Hold, then click a link to go LOOK AT YOUR HOLD LIST to discover that you are 6 of 6 on the list. Who the hell comes up with these "improvements" anyway?

[carbonel]

Midnight Riot (and sequels) is the one I was going to recommend as well. Which is not entirely surprising, since I've been recommending it to everyone and sundry. Gratifyingly, everyone I know who's actually read it has liked it.

I believe there's a waiting list for it, though -- possibly partly as a consequence of my recommending it to everyone and sundry.

I don't know if Georgette Heyer's Regency Romances are Your Thing, but HCL has most, if not all of them, and not all had a waiting list.

I recently read Patrick Ness' Knive of Never Letting Go trilogy via the library, but I can't really recommend it.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I've been put off by the Hennepin County Libraray system's downloadable book section on its online site. I think there's not all that much wrong with it (can't really judge, though, since I've only looked into it once, then ran away screaming), but its more that I'm old, settled in my ways, and GET OFF MY GRASS, YOU DAMN KIDS!

Archive.org's set up I'm fine with, however.

(Suddenly why Yoda I'm writing in then?)

It's not you, it's them

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

There's no two ways about it, that website is just f*king hard to use. The biggest hurdle is that it is two websites, not one. You login to the HCLIB site and muddle around until you finally get to the OverDrive website that you have to use to download anything. And then you HAVE TO LOGIN AGAIN. This is all made harder by the remnants of old download methods still lying around on the HCLIB website. You have to resolutely ignore all of that, make your way to OverDrive and then persevere through their obsession with changing the interface a minimum of once a year until you figure it out.

But at the end of the road are FREE BOOKS! I think that's enough of an incentive to climb the steep learning curve. Just think of it as a puzzle-solving video game.

Here's a cheat code to get you started. Make a browser bookmark for HCLIB. Open "properties" for the bookmark and paste your library card number in the Notes field. Next time you attempt to scale Mount HCLIB, open the bookmark properties first and copy the number. You're going to have to paste it in twice, so you might as well be prepared.