One of the best ways to get book recommendations is from other books. I would probably never have heard of E. Nesbit if nore for Edward Eager, but if all of his characters loved her, then I wanted to read her too - and it didn't take long to find that Nesbit was a much better author than Eager himself. (Caveat lector: this rule seems to break down for books that are more than a certain age. Nesbit's own characters love Mrs. Ewing, whom I'd have to say has not entirely stood the test of time (though the non-fairy-tale ones are better), and Jo March loved The Heir of Redclyffe, which isn't even my favorite of Yonge's - and she takes a certain mindset to read at all.)
The recommendations don't have to be within a story. If I had read Spider Robinson or John Scalzi I might have read him because he inspired them. (Or I might not - I've never read the Lensman books, despite Heinlein's glowing article on Doc Smith.)
This is all a lead-in to a thank-you for Jo Rowling. I had never heard of The Little White Horse until I read that it was one of her favorites, but now I love it and Linnets and Valerians. I've just acquired and am now reading I Capture the Castle and I'm having that falling-in-love-with-a-book experience (It usually only takes a few chapters to tell). I might have eventually heard about them via the Internet without JKR of course, but I heard it from her first, and for that I thank her.
What I wish is that the Web had been around when I was growing up. I can love I capture the Castle now, but when I was fourteen I would have moved in and lived inside it, as I did in Norma Johnston's books about Tish Sterling and Bridget Vandever. I enjoy the Shoes books now (Ballet Shoes, Dancing Shoes, etc) and The Little White Horse and Linnets and Valerians and Swallows and Amazons and I'd still be rereading them now no matter what - but I think they would all be that much dearer now if I could reread them with the memory of meeting them first at 8 or 10 or 12, as I can with Little Women and the Nesbit books, Narnia and The Dark is Rising.
Posted by dichroic at May 26, 2006 01:25 PMI wish my mother could have heard you say that. She never understood how I could read certain books over and over. She even gave some of them away without asking me, and I went and got them back, which was a very bold step for me in those days.
Posted by: l'empress at May 26, 2006 05:08 PMI adore 'Linnets and Valerians'. It's an odd thing, but some books I see as one hit wonders. I love them so much I don't read anything else by the same author. This doesn't hold true with every writer, but some. Maybe I'm gun shy after having stumbled onto a few authors who disappointed with other works. Betty Smith. Pearl Buck. Ruth Doan McDouggal. Sometimes I think Harper Lee and Margaret Mitchell had the right idea. Write one absolutely perfect book and then retire. Not that I plan on doing this. Even as I plug on with this first one I am writing the next in my head. But then my first book is no 'Gone With the Wind'. I have an endless horizon of improvement. ~LA
Posted by: LA at May 26, 2006 08:18 PM