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I'm done with this year's challenge and have been making my way through the 2016 challenge, which was before my time.

One of the categories is "a book recommended by someone you just met." Frankly, I feel weird asking new acquaintances about this sort of thing, so instead I am asking you! (Moderators, I hope this is OK!)

The catch is that when I do old challenges, I set myself the rule that everything I read must have been available in the year the challenge was issued, so in this case, I need recommendations of books that were published in 2016 or earlier. (I realize that's probably a little silly, but that's just the way my mind works.)

Please recommend your favorite (almost)-a-decade-old book to me! I am omnivorous in my reading tastes—to give you an idea, some of my favorite books of the past year have been The Trackers by Charles Frazier, To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose, The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff, The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by K.J. Charles, and Yellowface by R.F. Kuang—and I read a lot, so more obscure titles I am less likely to have gotten to are especially appreciated. That said, absolutely no judgment of recommendations will be forthcoming. I am happy to cast a wide net!

Thank you!

Black-Eyed Susans

Still Life

The Likeness

The Spellman Files

Blindsighted

Well, hello! Nice to meet you! :)

First book I always recommend to people who ask is The Gargoyle. I don't know if anyone has ever taken me up on it, though!

Some others that I like to recommend:

Three Day Road
The Gift of Rain
The Loop
Nervous Conditions
The Complete Maus (also conveniently our group read this month that I am leading! :)

Not knowing you, and not being familiar with most of the books you mentioned, I would recommend

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

Hilarious!

Thank you, Chrissie, Jennifer, and Doni!

I will recommend a delightful all-ages fantasy book (maybe magical realism, but definitely not realistic):

The Candymakers by Wendy Mass

I scrolled through the last few books I rated 5 stars until I found one published before 2016:

The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters - it's a murder mystery and an impending apocalypse

Thank you so much for the great suggestions! I'm very happy to "meet" you all—and to check another item off my 2016 challenge. :-)

Mary Beth wrote: "Thank you so much for the great suggestions! I'm very happy to "meet" you all—and to check another item off my 2016 challenge. :-)"


Welcome to the group! I hope you stick around and chat. There is nothing we enjoy more than talking about books we loved - especially recommending slightly more obscure books to other people.

Mary Beth wrote: "I'm done with this year's challenge and have been making my way through the 2016 challenge, which was before my time.

One of the categories is "a book recommended by someone you just met." Frankly..."

I just started the 2016 challenge, too! Can you reco something, Mary Beth? I don't need it to have been available in 2016, so send me your best! Thanks!

One of my forever favorites - City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett. It's a fantasy but it has EVERYTHING.

Hi, Jennifer! Nice to "meet" someone else plugging her way through the old challenges. :-)

Not knowing what you're into, I'm just throwing out a few books I really like that have relatively few ratings/reviews on ŷ������.

�� Devil Makes Three by Ben Fountain. A big, ambitious novel about three people—two Americans, one Haitian—in Haiti in the wake of the 1991 coup against Aristide. It does an amazing job of navigating really complicated political waters, while also literally being about treasure-hunting and shipwrecks. Absolutely immersive.
��Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism by Peter Staley. A fascinating memoir about AIDS activism in the 1980s and '90s, dealing with different tactics and strategies, survivor's guilt, etc. Not remotely preachy, but powerful and inspiring even so.
�� Amber and Clay by Laura Amy Schlitz. A children's novel set in ancient Greece, about an aristocratic girl pledged to a Temple of Artemis and an unhappy slave boy who meets Socrates. It takes some dazzlingly weird turns (it's not at all a romance, for starters—the principal characters barely meet), but it's beautiful and unique, and you really don't need to be a kid to enjoy it.
�� Untamed Shore by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Unlike some of Moreno-Garcia's other novels, this one sort of flew under the radar, but it's a great noirish story, giving agency to the sort of character who would just be a pawn in more traditional noir. Suspenseful, great sense of place.
�� The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist. Dystopic novel with an unmarried, childless woman in late middle age as the protagonist. Haunting.
�� The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji. Basically a a puzzle in novel form, but it’s a great puzzle: intricate, well constructed, surprising, and impeccably fair in terms of Golden Age–style mystery writing. Lots of fun if you're into that sort of thing.

Mary Beth wrote: "I'm done with this year's challenge and have been making my way through the 2016 challenge, which was before my time.

One of the categories is "a book recommended by someone you just met." Frankly..."

I would also recommend The Spellman Files.