Invisible Adjunct

It's hard for me to think which should go first in these pairs, but:

Connie Willis:Kage Baker

John McPhee:Wallace Stegner

Tad Williams:David Brin

Elizabeth Peters:Ian Pears (the silly stuff, not the Incident of the Fingerpost)

Kieran Healy, 69 responses. IA, 1 response. Why? Because this game is hard.

If you like the Dictionary, you'll love the Encyclopedia.

"Kieran Healy, 69 responses. IA, 1 response."

Hey, I'm not playing in the big leagues, I'm strictly house league. But must you turn everything into a zero-sum competition? :)
Anyway, now it's Kieran Healy, 69 responses. IA, 2 responses.

Just thought I'd mention that there are still only two responses.

Or are you going to count this one too?

I'm with you on the heat.

I think I can follow your formula, though (although, as noted in my comments on Kieran's post, you'll probably only find this useful if you like mysteries).

If you like Alan Furst, try Philip Kerr ("Berlin Noir" only.

If you like Stephen King, try John Connolly.

If you like Tony Hillerman, try Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear ( esp. The Anasazi Mysteries).

If you like Amanda Cross, try Sarah Caudwell.

If you like Dorothy Sayers, try Josephine Tey.

If you like Colin Dexter, try Charles Todd.

I think that represents a pretty good cross-section of styles. If you want more suggestions for any particular category (cozy, historical, noir, procedural, thriller), I can supply dozens more. Mysteries are possibly my biggest vice.

"Or are you going to count this one too?"

I won't count the replies where you mock me for the lack of replies.
Kieran Healy 69, IA, 3.

I'm no good at these comparison games :-( -- I can only say: if you like Jeremy Osner, read: Goethe, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Flan O'Connor, Faulkner (especially Faulkner!), Nabokov, Naipaul... Oh and if you like Pynchon, read Calvino's "Cosmicomics", you will love it. If you like classic philosophy (ooh, big cheat!!!), read Wheelwright's "The Presocratics". If you like the first book of Samuel, read Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". If you like Plato, read Blumenberg's "Coming Out Of the Cave" (Hoehlenausgaenge) -- I do not however know if this is available in translation.

Actually that last condition should probably read "If you like Plato and you like Nietzsche,..."

Here's a group: short stories of Isak Dineson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nikolai Gogol (recent new translation), Bernard Malamud (Magic Barrel), and Heinrich von Kleist.

If you like trashy romance fiction, the "Tales" of Marie de France.

If you like Proust, they say Tale of Genji (I don't like Proust much though).

If you like nasty memoirs by highly-cultivated aristocratic ladies , "The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon".

If you like bizarre, gruesome stories about Manichaean rebels in XIX-C Brazil, "Rebellion in the Backlands" by Euclades da Cunha.

If you like funny title-author combinations, P. V. Glob's "The Bog People" (also recommended by Alexander Cockburn).

If Sir Walter Scott, then Dorothy Dunnett.

If Wilkie Collins, then Sarah Waters.

If George Eliot, then A. S. Byatt.

If Charles Dickens, then Peter Carey.

(and, to get us out of the nineteenth century...)

If Raymond Chandler, then Reginald Hill.

If Gregory Maguire, then Geoff Ryman.

If J. G. Ballard, then Alfred K. Bester.

I'm pretty sure my repeated criticism has rallied people to your defense. So,

Kieran Healy 69, IA 2, Ogged 4.

Maybe it's not such a bad game.

Dammit ogged, you may be right. Though perhaps these readers are rallying to their own defense, against your insinuation that I had overestimated their capabilities? In any case, since you insist on turning the compilation of a summer reading list into a cutthroat competition ('swim with the sharks' and that sort of thing), you are welcome to the points.

You're a dirty player, IA. As I'm sure you know, I don't want the points if you just give them to me. I hereby donate my points to Kieran Healy.

Kieran Healy 73, IA 3.

Now who's playing dirty pool?
Well, if you wish to donate your points to Kieran, *I* won't try to stop you.

But is this some sort of crypto-conservative attack on liberal welfare state policies? You don't want "handouts," it might damage your self-esteem if people thought you hadn't worked for it. So in accordance with the oligarchic principles that now reign supreme in this our brave new world of regressive and repressive Republican tax policies, you let Kieran Healy (69 points to my 2 points) have even more points, thus strengthening Kieran's plutocratic grip on the game.

An interesting analysis, to be sure, but I was just being spiteful.

Perhaps thus does the personal become the political.

At the risk of interrupting ogged's, uh, comments, may I suggest the following:

If you like Tony Hillerman try Dana Stabenow.

Ms Stabenow writes mystery novels set in Alaska; her herione is an Alaska native named Kate Shugak. The first book is A Cold Day for Murder (it won the Edgar Award). I think Stabenow's book are better than Hillerman's; the comparison was just to get you started. Enjoy!

If you like Wordsworth you may also like Rilke. Try "First Poems" I think is the English title of the collection, published originally as "Erste Gedichte".

Unfortunately, your examples (If you like Austen, try Fitzgerald; if you like Fitzgerald, try Vickers) evoked for me the image of a chain of iterated recommendations: If you like author A, try author B; if you like B, try C; ... if you like M, try N; .... Even more unfortunately, this image evoked further possibilities. E.g.:

1. A parlor game. Each player, in turn, must make a plausible "if you like X, try Y" recommendation, using the previous player's Y as the new X. Plausibility is determined by the consensus of those in the room, possibly following argument. A player unable to come up with a plausible "if X then Y" recommendation drops from the game (as in musical chairs) or must drink a shot of vodka, or something.

2. A field of mathematical-literary-sociological inquiry. Can the length of recommendation chains be used to measure the "distance" between authors in some kind of "preference space." How many dimensions does such a space require? What is the topology of literary preference -- do chains circle back to the original author and bite their tails? Go on forever? Just peter out? Is literature ergodic, with a single giant chain of "if X try Y" recommendations passing through every possible author?

3. ....

Nonfiction. If you like Edmund Wilson, try Clive James.

"An interesting analysis, to be sure, but I was just being spiteful."

And I was just kidding around, ogged. I didn't really mean to associate you with Republican fiscal policy, any more than I meant to call Kieran Healy a plutocrat.

If you like Alan Furst, try Eric Ambler.

If you like Raymond Chandler, try Ross Macdonald.

If you like Garcia Marques, try Bernardo Atxaga.

I would like to point out that I am making these contributions despite ogged's takeover attempt, and the points should therefore go exclusively to IA.

Active participation trumps the usurper. A parable.

Well, this blog is all about parables.

And I was just kidding around, ogged. I didn't really mean to associate you with Republican fiscal policy, any more than I meant to call Kieran Healy a plutocrat.

I wish I were a plutocrat. Imagine, ruling a whole planet.

"I wish I were a plutocrat. Imagine, ruling a whole planet."

You know, I don't much like that LOL thing because it looks so cheesy and reminds me of people who sign cards with "luv" instead of "love." But, uh, LOL.

If you like Balzac, try Norman Spinrad.

If you liked Pynchon's V, try Gaddis' The Recognitions.

If you liked Burroughs' Naked Lunch, try Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

If you hated anything by Saul Kripke, you'll like Rebecca Goldstein's The Mind-Body Problem. (supposed to be a roman à clef about you-know-who)

If you liked Adorno's Jargon of Authenticity, try Bourdieu's Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger.

If you like drinking too much, try Guy Debord's Panegyric, Volume 1.

Going out on a limb now:

Photography: If you like Lee Friedlander, try William Eggleston.

Music: If you like Glenn Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations, try Glenn Gould playing anything by Schönberg. (yes, he still sings along)

Visual Art: If you like Robert Crumb, try Philip Guston's late paintings.

Booze: if you like mead, try to find some Thomas Hardy's Ale. You'll get over the mead.

More booze: if you like merlot, try (red) zinfandel. There is no such thing as white zinfandel. It's a lie.

How much stuff is there by Kripke to hate? There's his magnum opus, 2 articles 30 years ago totalling 120 pp. or so, and then his late work on Wittgenstein, about the same length a decade later....

Oh wait, I'm going off topic again.

29 (still off topic)

Well, I hated Naming and Necessity and Wittengenstein on Rules and Private Language, and I thought that was it. You mean there's more?

It seems to me that for a philosopher to be regarded as a major figure of hatred, he should be a little more productive. Not as productive as Sartre, but more than two little books.

I didn't hate those books, they struck me as sort of odd with a couple of interesting angles, but I did ask myself, "What's the big deal here? That's a major philsopher?"

If you liked the "Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity" and "The Barbarian Conversion", try "Lithuania Ascending".

If you like Raymond Carver, then try Jhumpa Lahiri.

"Music: If you like Glenn Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations, try Glenn Gould playing anything by Schönberg. (yes, he still sings along)"

Huh? The fans of Bach who are also going to like Schoenberg's piano music are a small subset.

If you like Sayers and/or Caudwell, try Jane Stevenson.

If you like Lewis Carroll, try The Space Child's Mother Goose.

If you like Sir Walter Scott *or* Dorothy Dunnett, try The Steel Bonnets by George MacDonald Fraser.

If you like either Hong Kong kung fu movies or Jonathan D. Spence, try the other; if both, Imperial China 900-1800 by
Frederick W. Mote.

This is a good game, trying to judge what recommendation would be both new and useful to someone.

Martin, you have a tortuous mind (post 18). I think the answer could be mined out of the Web, but it would be an impressive feat.

If you like Dickens, you'll like Ehrenreich's "Nickeled and Dimed" about the life of minimum wage workers.

If you like the movie Heathers, try Daniel Handler's The Basic Eight.

If you like Basic Eight, try Handler's Lemony Snicket books.

If you like the Harry Potter books, try Daniel Handler's Lemony Snicket books.

If you like Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, try Ian McEwan's Atonement.

If you like Atonement, try Margaret Atwood's Blind Assassin.

If you like Todd Solendz's film Storytelling, read Francine Prose's Blue Angel.

If you like Blue Angel, read Philip Roth's The Human Stain.

If you like The Human Stain,, read Alan Kors and Harvey Silverglate's Shadow University.

If you like Dickens, read Zadie Smith's White Teeth.

If you like Jane Austen, read Barbara Pym.

If you like Conrad's Heart of Darkness, read Norman Rush's Mating and Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible.

And just read Jeffrey Eugenides' Virgin Suicides. It isn't like other things.

I am looking for a book that is similar to the writings of Dickens. I only know that the cover is a black and white design that covers the entire cover. It has a unique pattern that looks either keltic or indian in design. It is out in hardback right now. If anyone knows what this book may be, please respond as I know no title or author, time frame or subject matter. Only that the book is a great piece of literature and is similar to Dickens.