http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2007/10/05#novel-recs <P>I have separate recommendations pages for <a href="fantasy-recs.html">fantasy</a>, <a href="mystery-recs.html">mysteries</a> and <a href="sf-recs.html">science fiction</a>. This is for the residual class, of books that don't belong to any of those genres. This includes what I've taken to calling "scientist fiction", stories by non-scientists about the creative lives and travails of scientists. I've marked those as such. <ul> <li>Iain Banks <ul> <li><cite>The Business</cite> <li><cite>Whit, or, Isis Amongst the Unsaved</cite> </ul> <li>Andrea Barrett, <cite>Ship Fever</cite> [Scientist-fiction] <li><a href="borges.html">Jorge Luis Borges</a> <li>Dino Buzzati, <cite>The Tartar Steppe</cite> <li>A. S. Byatt <ul> <li><cite>Angels and Insects</cite> <li><cite>Possession</cite> </ul> <li><a href="italo-calvino.html">Calvino</a> <li>Joseph Conrad <li><a href="http://jennydavidson.blogspot.com/">Jenny Davidson</a>, <cite>Heredity</cite> <li><a href="didion.html">Joan Didion</a> <li><a href="anatole-france.html">Anatole France</a> <li>George MacDonald Fraser, <cite>The Pyrates</cite> <li>Amin Maalouf, <cite>Ports of Call</cite> <li><a href="http://www.io.com/~gibbonsb/pob/">Patrick O'Brian</a> <li>Orhan Pamuk <ul> <li><cite>My Name Is Red</cite> <li><cite>The White Castle</cite> [<a href="../reviews/white-castle/">Review</a>] </ul> <li>Jill Paton Walsh, <cite>Knowledge of Angels</cite> [<a href="../reviews/knowledge-of-angels/">Review</a>] <li>Thomas Love Peacock, <cite>Nightmare Abbey</cite> <li>Richard Powers <ul> <li><cite>Gain</cite> <li><cite>The Gold-Bug Variations</cite> [Scientist-fiction. Prose almost as dense and slow-reading as pure math; it took me months to read a few hundred pages, and I enjoyed every word.] </ul> <li>Prederic Prokosch, <cite>The Seven Who Fled</cite> [<a href="../reviews/seven-who-fled/">Review: Where Every Prospect Pleases, and Every Man Is Vile</a>] <li>E. Annie Proulx, <cite>The Shipping News</cite> <li>Ivan Turgenev <li><a href="vidal.html">Gore Vidal</a> </ul>