One the best thrills I get is when I lend someone a book and they love it as much as I do. Then we have this amazing shared love over literature. That person walks around with a sparkling glow in my mind. They are special and wonderful.
SO because I love to share my books in the hope of having that spark ignite between my fellow book readers I often lend books. And sometimes they don't return.
Which makes me sad.
So here's two of some great loves I've lost:
Feersum Endjinn by Ian Banks
The main character in this Science Fiction novel can't spell. He writes phonetically which means we are the reader have to work harder to read the story. After a while you fall into his rhythm and it becomes natural. When other three narrators pop in and spelling returns to standard english it is a jolt and then back to phonetic and so on. The fourth chapter of the book's Part One opens with:
Woak up. Got dresd. Had brekfast. Spoke wif Ergates thi ant who sed itz juss been wurk wurk wurk 4 u lately master Bascule, Y dont u ½ a holiday? & I agreed & that woz how we decided we otter go 2 c Mr Zoliparia in thi I-ball ov thi gargoyle Rosbrith.
The book is set on a far future Earth where the uploading of mindstates into a world-spanning computer network (known as "the data corpus", "cryptosphere" or simply "crypt") is commonplace, allowing the dead to be easily reincarnated, a set number of times, first physically and then virtually within the crypt. The crypt has become increasingly chaotic, causing much concern within society. Much of the story takes place within a giant, decaying structure built to resemble a medieval castle, in which each "room" spans several kilometers horizontally and vertically, and the king's palace occupies one room's chandelier. The structure used to be a space elevator, left behind by the ancestors of those who remained on earth, with the circuitry of the crypt built into its structure. The world is in crisis as the solar system is slowly drifting into an interstellar molecular cloud ("the Encroachment"), which will eventually dim and then destroy the Sun, ending life on Earth.
I'm dyslexic so this book was a joy. I have read it at least twice and think of it often.
If its at your house it has a red and black cover. Please return.
Grass by Sherri S Tepper
Sherri S Tepper is a feminist SF writer. So all her novels have a strong message of about breeding, sex, woman's rights and power and control issues. Grass is one of her masterpieces. I don't know who I lent it to, it has been missing a while. I have several missing Sherri S Tepper books in my collection - because I collect all her books and have gone to great lengths to collect out of print books.
My favourite Tepper books are The Awakeners series: Northshore and Southshore but they are not to everyones taste.
Grass Plot: In the distant future Terra (Earth) has become massively over-populated and its resources overstretched. Partially as a result of this, the human race has spread out across the galaxy and populated new worlds. The spread of a seemingly incurable plague across human settlements throughout known space prompts the authoritarian religious rulers of humanity, Sanctity, to send investigators to Grass, the only place the plague does not seem to have affected, in the hope of finding a cure.
Marjorie Westriding-Yrarier is the one sent and her first mission will be to befriend the human aristocracy of the planet who have seemingly become obsessed with a localised variant of fox hunting using the planet’s native fauna in place of the horses, hounds and foxes found on Earth. (thanks for the details wikipedia)
Grass is the first novel of the Arbai-Trilogy. The sequels are Raising the Stones and Sideshow. And Sideshow is WOW. The series just gets better and better.