Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog; or, How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump At Last by Connie Willis. It's Oxford historians doing time travel, and it's brilliant and hilarious and heartbreaking and beautiful and superlative in every single way imaginable. I recommend these books to everyone I can get my hands on.
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. It's short, but is quite possibly the most gorgeous prose I've ever read.
The two Mary Doria Russell books are strongly... thirded? Whichevered.
Edward Rutherford writes these historical paperweights that follow a few families in one contained area for about three thousand years apiece, no kidding. He's done it for London, Russia, Salisbury, and I believe his latest one is either Dublin or Paris.
Watership Down, if for some incomprehensible reason you've never read that, and if you have, Traveler by the same author. I'm reading a completely delightful book right now that's like a cross between Discworld and The Dark is Rising, titled Who's Afraid of Beowulf? I couldn't resist. I'm also reading this ridiculous but also highly amusing parody called The Dragon and the George, which is the first in a series, about a mundane guy who is accidentally transformed into a dragon in a high fantasy kind of world. I can't remember either of those two authors offhand, but Richard Adams is required reading.
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Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. It's short, but is quite possibly the most gorgeous prose I've ever read.
The two Mary Doria Russell books are strongly... thirded? Whichevered.
Edward Rutherford writes these historical paperweights that follow a few families in one contained area for about three thousand years apiece, no kidding. He's done it for London, Russia, Salisbury, and I believe his latest one is either Dublin or Paris.
Watership Down, if for some incomprehensible reason you've never read that, and if you have, Traveler by the same author. I'm reading a completely delightful book right now that's like a cross between Discworld and The Dark is Rising, titled Who's Afraid of Beowulf? I couldn't resist. I'm also reading this ridiculous but also highly amusing parody called The Dragon and the George, which is the first in a series, about a mundane guy who is accidentally transformed into a dragon in a high fantasy kind of world. I can't remember either of those two authors offhand, but Richard Adams is required reading.