Margaret attwood

Alias Grace and Oryx and Crake were both very good. I started After The Flood about 6 months ago then put to one side to read something else for a while but never really got back into it. I have The Blind Assassin on my shelf waiting for a suitable moment - will hopefully give it a go soon.

I loved the robber bride, I was alot younger when I read it
also loved alias grace (maybe love not the word for such a tale..)

I have to earth out some more

I loved the Blind Assassin. i took it on holiday with me a few years ago and couldn't put it down. It was beautiful, heartbreaking and quite haunting.

Cheers, Cote. Will let you know how I get on with it, once I've finished my latest Wilkie Collins (I LOVE that man!).

Remus - I liked DADOES. Philip K Dick has written many books - one of the benefits of writing under the influence of amphetamines was that he wrote fast, apparently) but I can't think of any that I didn't really like. Some I thought were brilliant, and the rest surprisingly good, considering that he has written all this sci-fi back when there was no such thing as a PC or even a mobile phone.

My favourite Philip K Dick books are:
Martian Time Slip - Complete mind-bender. It gave me an exquisite headache as I tried to keep up with the story.
A Scanner Darkly - Not sci-fi, really, and quite different than the rest of his work. Dark and brilliant. The film was truly awful, though.

His books of short stories are also worth reading. Films such as Minority Report, Total Recall, Impostor, and Paycheck were based on his short stories and all feature Dick's trademark "Am I really here? Is this real?" kind of scenarios.

I added The Handmaid's Tale to my Kindle "wish list", after all these glowing recommendations. I'm quite curious, actually - I would love to discover a new sci-fi author I like.

I love Margaret Atwood. I remember reading The Handmaid's Tale when I was about 16 and it blew me away.

Alias Grace is another favourite.

Thanks Cote. They only had Stranger IAST in the library today, but I did get, 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep' and, 'The Invisible Man' - am amazed I've never read these.

Which one are you picking Marisa?

My Heinlein period was late teens, so can't say what I would think of his books now, but I loved SIASL, Time Enough For Love, and Friday. Even then I do remember thinking that he is a bit too far gone when I read To Sail Beyond The Sunset, I Will Fear No Evil etc.

Maybe he was impotent in his later years, hence the obsession with everyone having sex with everyone. Who knows what he would have written if he could get a few little blue pills?

:) Stranger IAST is the only one of his I've read.

I think Heinlein went a bit doolally in his later books.

Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are wonderful- but Friday and its ilk are ghastly. So is a Time Enough For Love- can't remember whether that's a later one or not.

Trust me, Remus, Stranger In A Strange Land had nothing but a bit of free sex. Some of his later books are totally obsessed.

Time Enough For Love, I already mentioned.

I Will Fear No Evil was pretty out there, too. Iirc, it was about an old man who dies of old age but is somehow put into the body of a young attractive woman (details are a bit hazy) who then starts shagging everyone, starting with her (his?) driver and bodyguards. It has some worrying content like this man-in-a-woman's body chimera curling into various men's laps and saying she deserves a spanking before more sex, some of it with multiple partners.

I must be missing something...what was the twist at the end of Alias Grace? PM me if you don't want to give it away on here, but I don't remember a twist at all.

Remus, I loved Alias Grace until the ending.

I think Cat's Eye is my favourite.

Heinlein is weirdly obsessed. Stranger In A Strange Land is bonkers once the shagging starts.

Robert Heinlein is another author obsessed with sex. In Time Enough For Love, women who pass through Lazarus Long's bed include but are not restricted to:

• his adopted daughter Dora
• his twin girl-clones (don't ask!) Lapis Lazuli and Lorelei Lee
• a computer called Minerva who then becomes a flesh & blood woman
• his own mother called Maureen, to fetch whom as a young woman he travels back in time (again, just don't ask )

I didn't even have to look up the names of these characters. That's how badly it's burnt in my memory.

oh and another man obsessed by sex is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I am half way through Love in the Time of Cholera and tbh I am soooo bored with all the shagging. I say half way, I stopped reading it after last years summers holiday and haven't picked up another book since...........

Cote you are right, that is exactly what I said

I have never read any Margaret Atwood (I don't know why) but because of this thread have downloaded the Penelopeiad and am devouring it, so thank you.

I will download a few more later.

I agree with kitten on the hatred of the word critique, it seems like such a gary Barlow word to misuse.

I didn't know Julian May was female. I loved the start of the Many Coloured Land but never managed to finish the series, this has reminded me about it, must see if I can find the books.

Love Margaret Atwood! Oryx & Crake is possibly my favourite dystopia ever (and I love dystopias).

Realised on looking at the (constant) pile of books on my bedside table that they're almost all by women!

HMT is there, one by Ursula LeGuin (my all time favourite author), in fact 2 by her, a JK Rowling (prisoner of Azkaban), a great book about the Lighthouse Stevenson family, and one by Julian May - who is female.

I liked The Penelopeaiad because it's a really tongue in cheek comment on how history and culture are so male centred and mysoginistic.

I mean, poor old Penelope. She's beset by all those bloody suitors. She's not interested in any of them, shes got no way of getting rid of them, and yet she's regarded with suspicion because she let them hang around.

But everyone is so impressed with Odysseus's "bravery" over the wicked sirens. FFS!

Actually, I've asked for that post to be deleted because I realised later that I misread yours as A critique doesn't have to be negative.