Book Lovers: Help me choose!

[neadods]

So. There's this thing called World Book Night. It started in Britain, but the US has woken up and this year gave away 1 million special-edition books, including The Hunger Games, Little Bee, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, A Reliable Wife, The Poisonwood Bible, The Namesake, The Lovely Bones, and (ironically) The Book Thief.

You know me. Free books? I'm SO there! I've signed up for World Book Night notices, and I've just got the one asking me to send in suggestions for 4 books to be given away next year. Fiction, nonfiction, classics all allowed. (They aren't interested in children's books.) They tend to trope towards classics and bestsellers, but I'm still going to put in a pitch for some outliers.

The problem is - only 4? I can think of 40! Which books do I pick? The Checklist Manifesto? Having Our Say? The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes? Dandelion Wine? Holmes on the Range? In the Bleak Midwinter? Chicks Unravel Time? (and congrats to everyone who is published in that, by the way.) The latest of any number of authors I know?


Sing out in comments. If you could encourage anyone to read book X by giving out copies of something you really loved, it would be...? (And authors, go ahead and pimp your work.)

Comments

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Joan Aiken's The Butterfly Picnic
Patricia Finney "Gloriana's Torch"

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I think they have to currently be in print, which would disqualify The Butterfly Picnic. (I'll have to hunt down a personal copy of that. The only Aiken I've read is her YA stuff and Jane.)

I'll have to check out Gloriana's Torch too. There's a world of great Tudor fiction. If the language wasn't so stiff, I'd suggest Ruled Britannia; with Bring up the Bodies just out I'm wondering if there's going to be a swell of votes for Wolf Hall.

Or flip to fact - have you read Queen Elizabeth's Spymaster by Hutchinson?