Book/CD Recommendations Meme

[queerbychoice]

This is a meme. The instructions are as follows:

1. Go to Amazon.com. Log in to your account if you're not automatically logged in.
2. Click on the tab marked "[Your Name]'s store."
3. It should say, "Your Recommendations are based on X items you own." If X is less than 20, click on "Recommendations Wizard" and go through the Wizard repeatedly until you've entered at least 20 items you own. Try copying names from your LJ interests list.
4. Then, copy and paste into your LiveJournal the first 20 recommendations in each subcategory by authors/bands/etc. that you AREN'T already familiar with, for people to tell you whether they're good or not. Don't include items by anyone you already own other things by.

BOOKS
1. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
2. A Natural History of Homosexuality by Francis Mark Mondimore
3. Brick Lane: A Novel by Monica Ali
4. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader by Henry Abelove, et al
5. Dogeaters (Contemporary American Fiction) by Jessica Hagedorn
6. Little Children: A Novel by Tom Perrotta
7. The Foreign Student: A Novel by Susan Choi
8. Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
9. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
10. On a Bed of Rice by Geraldine Kudaka
11. The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writings by Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbians and Bisexual Women by Sharon Lim-Hing
12. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
13. Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers by Alissa Quart
14. One Degree of Separation by Karin Kallmaker
15. Vernon God Little: A 21st Century Comedy in the Presence of Death (Man Booker Prize) by D. B. C. Pierre
16. Untouchable (Twentieth Century Classics S.) by Mulk Raj Anand
17. Musui's Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai by Katsu Kokichi, Craig Teruko
18. Madame Bovary (Bantam Classics) by Gustave Flaubert
19. Female Masculinity by Judith Halberstam
20. The Book of Life: A Personal and Ethical Guide to Race, Normality and the Human Gene Study by Barbara Katz Rothman

MUSIC
1. Parachutes ~ Coldplay
2. Good News For People Who Love Bad News ~ Modest Mouse
3. Chutes Too Narrow ~ The Shins
4. Transatlanticism ~ Death Cab For Cutie
5. Feels Like Home ~ Norah Jones
6. Elephant ~ The White Stripes
7. A Boot & A Shoe ~ Sam Phillips
8. Dummy ~ Portishead
9. Big Beautiful Sky ~ Venus Hum
10. Fever To Tell ~ Yeah Yeah Yeahs
11. Fallen ~ Evanescence
12. Turn On the Bright Lights ~ Interpol
13. All Hands on the Bad One ~ Sleater-Kinney
14. Semantic Spaces ~ Delerium
15. Down Here ~ Tracy Bonham
16. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots ~ The Flaming Lips
17. Entertainment ~ Gang of Four
18. The CD Version of the First Two Records ~ Bikini Kill
19. Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada ~ Godspeed You Black Emperor
20. Circle ~ Boom Bip & Doseone

Comments

[donutgirl.livejournal.com]

I hated Interpreter of Maladies, but you'd probably enjoy it. I hated the Dave Eggers, and I suspect you would as well. I love Madame Bovary, and I'm not sure you'd like it... It's a brilliant book with a spectacularly unlikeable protagonist. Are you okay with that?

I'm not sure, but you might actually enjoy Modest Mouse, but that album isn't their best (it's good though). I think of them as like Morrissey, if Morrissey weren't so attractive. With a slightly harder musical edge. But very lyrically adept.

Probably would not like the White Stripes. Might very well like Portishead... it's almost bowie-esque in parts, minus the lyrics.

That's all I've got.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

"Minus the lyrics" doesn't usually go over well with me. Why would I not like the White Stripes?

I'll take your word for it on the Dave Eggers. As for Madame Bodary, I really don't know. It's not usually one of my favorite plots, but there are times when an unlikeable protagonist can be made to work, at least enough for me to moderately like the book.

[donutgirl.livejournal.com]

The white stripes are a bit more... "rock and roll", for lack of a better term, than I think you'd like. Rough around the edges. A less sophisticated sound than bowie or morrissey or magnetic fields.

Yeah, don't bother with the Flaubert. You might not hate it, but I can't think of any reason it would particularly appeal to you. I don't think you'd relate to his themes.

[spiritofnow.livejournal.com]

The White Stripes -- they are okay, nothing brilliant, nothing spectacular. The sound is a little rough, not very polished given that they don't really use bass and their drum beats are quite rudimentary. Bare-bones rock. I'm not even too crazy about the vocals. There are some standout tracks, and in general I like the idea of 'less is more', but I'm not a big White Stripes fan.

Norah Jones -- get her! Very nice voice, and nice jazzy music.

Portishead -- Beth Gibbon's vocals are amazing, and the songs are amazing. 'Dummy' was a good album too.

Coldplay -- I think you'd like them. They're a quintessential rock band, and I really like a lot of their songs. Parachutes was a good album. Listen to 'Yellow' -- it's the standout track and it's awesome.

Evanescence -- The vocalist is really good. They're okay. They're goth rock. Some songs are nice. But then they have that problem of all the songs sounding the same. I never really got hooked on to Evanescence. They don't excite me much.

[yareach.livejournal.com]

Yes, but if you get Norah Jones, I'd get her first album Come Away with Me, and not the second, which is the one on your list: I find it her better work.

My two cents. :)

[jaq.livejournal.com]

The only one of those I have is "Fallen" by Evanescence. It was certainly catchy and I listened to it lots when I had first got it, but it seems rather shallow now.

[dzuunmod.livejournal.com]

If you like any other Godspeed stuff, or any other Sleater-Kinney stuff those are both solid albums.

However, since you're not familiar with either of those bands, I'd recommend you start your Godspeed love affair off with: "lift yr. skinny fists like antennas to heaven!
released october 23, 2000
constellation records (cst012), kranky (krank043)"; and that the first S-K album you buy be "The Hot Rocks".

[spiritofnow.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'd say the best S-K album was 'Dig Me Out' but 'All Hands on the Bad One' is more listener-friendly, so you may as well get that first. 'The Hot Rock' has some good tracks but was far from S-K's best. 'All Hands on the Bad One' has some ballads including the brilliant 'The Swimmer'...I would *die* for that riff.

And I'm writing down a bunch of bands from this list that I have never heard of so I can get them.

[dzuunmod.livejournal.com]

I can see how Bad One would be more listener-friendly. But, for someone who already likes a given musical genre, maybe that's not a good thing...

[brienf.livejournal.com]

I think everyone should own Bikini Kill's The CD Version of the First Two Records - I consider it their best cd.

[lm.livejournal.com]

I am really not liking Norah Jones. All her songs sound exactly the same to me. It doesn't help that's she's terribly overplayed, but even if she weren't...eh.

Evanescence is a Christian band that's gone mainstream. They sound kind of Goth or neo-Celtic. Only in a pop-y sort of way, vaguely like Avril Lavigne, except she's taking punk and turning it mainstream, and they're doing the same with Goth and Celtic music. I'm not saying that their music is especially Christian in content, but you can see the philosophy in their lyrics. They annoy me. another band where most of their osngs sound very similiar to one another.

Sleater-Kinney is pretty cool. I've heard that title track, and little else, but, hey, they're and old-school punk band that, unless I'm mistaken, is or at least was all-female. And that one track was pretty catchy.

I was into Tracy Bonham when I was, like, 12. She plays an electric violin, and her songs have a lot of angry energy. I've kind of grown out of her, though. Her songs usually have really irregular rhythms that make me kind of twitchy and generally uncomfortable.

I've only heard one Interpol song, "Specialist," but I really really liked it. It's one of my favorite songs at the moment.

[axbesm-starr.livejournal.com]

1, 6, 11,12, and 16 are great on music recomendations.

Especially "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" by The Flaming Lips if you like psychedelic music. Completely awesome.

And "Parachutes" by Coldplay is beautiful.

[flukycoda.livejournal.com]

ohh yoshime, they dont belieeeeve meh, but yooou wont let those robots defeeeat meh, yoshimeh...
the flaming lips rock. also coldplay, death cab, portishead.
i like your music list a lot!
i have to agree with outsider on evanescence. actually i think i'm probably a little more annoyed by them than her. they're so boring and so fake-angsty and trying so desperately hard...it's a sad state of affairs.

i'm amused that people seem to have hated dave eggers...i kinda loved him. i dont usually like that cocky, self-assured, and flippant style, but he pulled it off exceedingly well i thought. his relationship with his brother really makes me laugh, more than anything else.