On Recommendations

You have to give some thought and considerations, before recommending a book to someone.  No matter how wonderful or amazing you might consider a book to be, there will still be some people who read it and think "Meh".. and there will  be others who might start it, but not finish it.. or might not even pick the book up at all. It's not just about the book, it's about the reader.

I read a lot of books, and I have a friend - essentially the same age, and the same profession - who also reads a lot of books.  We've tried to recommend books to each other.. and it nearly always fails. It took us awhile - and a lot of discarded books - to figure this out, but we've now come to terms with the fact that the Venn diagram of the books he likes, and the books I like, would have a very small overlap.  That overlap does indeed exist, but it's quite small.  So while we continue to tell each "I just finished a really good book", it's most often followed by "but you wouldn't like it."

On the other hand, I know someone else who reads a lot of books and we frequently recommend titles to each other, and 99% of the time those recommendations are spot on.  Maybe even 99.5%.  On a couple of occasions, we've actually recommended the same title to each other at the same time. We're not too far apart in age, but our professions and our lifestyles are very different from each other... yet our reading tastes are very closely aligned.

I have a young niece, and over the years, I've given her quite a number of books as gifts.  I received a phone call from her a few months ago....  "Aunt Laurie, I'm at the library, and they don't have the book I was going to get, so I thought I'd see if you had any recommendations."
Wow.
I was delighted, of course... but there was also a lot of pressure.  We'd shifted from - "Here's a present for you,... Oh, thank you," to .. what do you recommend?  I began by telling her that I could only recommend something, if I knew what she liked.. and I asked her about the last few books I'd given her.  She was rather shy about admitting that she hadn't liked some of them... but I assured her that this was okay and it wouldn't hurt my feelings, and that knowing both her likes and dislikes would help me recommend something new.

And this, of course, is the important thing. There are a gazillion lists out there... with titles such as "25 Books to Read Before You Die",  "The Top 50 Greatest Fiction Books of All Time",  "The 10 Best New Books of 2018"... and many, many more. But unless you created the list, odds are high that you will disagree with at least one title on that list.
And this is okay.
It doesn't mean you're wrong or that the list is wrong, it just means that someone other than you prepared the list.

Having said that -- I thought I'd share some book titles with you.  I'm not suggesting you have to read these before you die, or that they're the greatest of all time, or even the greatest of this year.... and I'm not even suggesting that you will like them.  I'm merely saying that I liked them. If you haven't already read them, or looked at them and concluded you wouldn't like them... you might want to consider them -- or not.
"Sleeping Beauties", by Stephen King and Jonathan Hill.  I'm generally leery of collaborations; usually you can figure out who wrote which section, which means you start looking for those dividing lines.  But I like Stephen King, and I know Jonathan Hill is one of his sons, and I was curious to see how this collaboration would work.  There's no question that the very beginning of the book doesn't 'feel' like a King.. but nonetheless it made me want to read more.  And it wasn't very long before I forgot to try to discern who wrote what, because it was pretty darned seamless.  And it was a great story.  And if you want to find it, there is a lot of social commentary on our times and the book really makes you think.. but I think you could also ignore that and just enjoy the story if you wanted. A successful collaboration, a great read.
"An Easy Death", by Charlaine Harris.  I was  familiar with Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series. Sookie is a cocktail waitress in Louisiana. She can read minds, and many of her friends are vampires and were-animals. Yes, it's brain-candy.. it's pretty mindless stuff, but it's entertaining.  So when I saw a title by Harris that I hadn't read, I decided I was in the mood for fluff and I grabbed it without reading the back jacket. "An Easy Death" is not part of the Stackhouse series. Instead, it's kind of a combination of Old West (think 'gunslingers and wagon trains') and wizards, with a nod to some czarist Russian history.  And it's good, it's really good.  I found myself thinking about the characters, days after I'd finished reading the book.  I was delighted to see that it appears this is a new series, with at least one more book planned.
"The Old Man", by Thomas Perry.  Thomas Perry has written a lot of books.. including the Jane Whitefield series and the Butcher Boy series, and he's also written a lot of stand-alone titles.  This one is a stand-alone.  The title character is not really that old ... well, he's my age. And he doesn't think of himself as an old man, although he notes that his daughter does. But don't mistake this book as a soft, warm, cuddly, character-study.  It's an adventure/spy/suspense book with lots of intense moments.. and a lot of the other characters underestimate the main character, partly because of his age.  Very well-written, my favorite Thomas Perry book by far. As I said, this is a stand-alone... but I wish Perry would follow up with another story with this character.

Are these my favorite books of all time? No, although they're pretty good.  Are they my favorites from this year?  Hmmm, not sure, but they are the three that popped into my head first. Am I recommending them?  Of course not, I don't know your reading likes/dislikes.  But you might want to take a look at them.  Am I drinking my favorite tea as I write this?  Of course I am.  But then, you already knew that.