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May. 4th, 2020 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreI have run out of books I want to read, and am trying to find new ones.
The trouble with book recommending websites is that you put in a book you like, hoping to find another one like it, and the recommendations are given, of course, based on the subject material or writing style. Which makes sense! It's just that I often looking for a particular feel to the book, rather than a particular subject, and that is very difficult to search for.
When I say I want a book like The Goblin Emperor, for example, I don't mean that I want a book about a person thrust into a role they're unprepared for and forced to deal with complicated political intrigue. I mean that I want a book that feels like warm underground caverns and coats that are too heavy and tea brewed with unfamiliar but pleasant spices. Or, the last time I tried to find a new horror novel and realized that what I wanted was a book that felt the same as The Rim of Morning, all dark skies over the desert, and mirrors that showed only blackness, and vast cold emptiness. What it was about in order to feel like that was practically immaterial.
This is why I am almost always disappointed when I ask for horror recommendations in particular, because I can never quite put into words what exactly I want from horror and thus very rarely get it.
Anyway. This is even harder when the thing I want is a book that feels like a work of a different kind of media entirely. This week, I've been listening a lot to the Campaign: Skyjacks podcast and now really want books that feel like that, which is best summed up as "the way you feel when you listen to the Decemberists with the wind in your face as you walk along a rocky beach on a bright day in late autumn, only sometimes funny".
It is very difficult to google for books like that.
The trouble with book recommending websites is that you put in a book you like, hoping to find another one like it, and the recommendations are given, of course, based on the subject material or writing style. Which makes sense! It's just that I often looking for a particular feel to the book, rather than a particular subject, and that is very difficult to search for.
When I say I want a book like The Goblin Emperor, for example, I don't mean that I want a book about a person thrust into a role they're unprepared for and forced to deal with complicated political intrigue. I mean that I want a book that feels like warm underground caverns and coats that are too heavy and tea brewed with unfamiliar but pleasant spices. Or, the last time I tried to find a new horror novel and realized that what I wanted was a book that felt the same as The Rim of Morning, all dark skies over the desert, and mirrors that showed only blackness, and vast cold emptiness. What it was about in order to feel like that was practically immaterial.
This is why I am almost always disappointed when I ask for horror recommendations in particular, because I can never quite put into words what exactly I want from horror and thus very rarely get it.
Anyway. This is even harder when the thing I want is a book that feels like a work of a different kind of media entirely. This week, I've been listening a lot to the Campaign: Skyjacks podcast and now really want books that feel like that, which is best summed up as "the way you feel when you listen to the Decemberists with the wind in your face as you walk along a rocky beach on a bright day in late autumn, only sometimes funny".
It is very difficult to google for books like that.
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Date: 2020-05-05 02:12 am (UTC)(And a lot of the time I re-read my own fanfic, because I know for a fact it will do exactly what I want and give me what I'm looking for.)(As long as i don't pick an old one which will just embarrass me at how much I want to fix it.)
I also tend to not like books that everyone else loves, alas.
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Date: 2020-05-05 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-05 03:09 am (UTC)Also, this?
book that feels like warm underground caverns and coats that are too heavy and tea brewed with unfamiliar but pleasant spices
Is a brilliant description of The Goblin Emperor, and gorgeous writing also.
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Date: 2020-05-05 03:33 pm (UTC)Also, thank you. 8)
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Date: 2020-05-05 06:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-06 07:17 pm (UTC)