Week Three, Assignment Three: Three conversations, three recommendations

Conversation One:  The reader loves Eat, Pray, Love, and apparently the strong and brave female character is the draw for her.  If she were only hooked on Elizabeth Gilbert's personal story, I'd suggest Committed (2010), her sequel/conclusion to E,P,L, but as she seems more into the strong-brave-woman aspect, I'd go with one I'm also recommending for the Third Conversation: Pirates!  The true and remarkable adventures of Minerva Sharpe and Nancy Kington, female pirates, by Celie Rees (2004) -- it sounds like something I myself would truly enjoy, combining proto-feminism with piracy with 18th century shipboard-life.  What's not to like?

Conversation Two: This reader wants vampire stories "just like" Twilight, only totally different: she doesn't want the teen-love, angst-driven navel-contemplation but instead wants more blood and violence.  For her I suggest some of the Japanese vampire manga -- some is very good and certainly fast-enough paced for anyone with a short attention span.  Graphic novels aren't for everyone, of course, so I'd also recommend Seth Graham-Smith's 2010 Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, which is both biographical (well ... sort of) and action-packed (and much better than the recent filmed version).   

In the Young Adult class, there is a virtual plethora of titles, but one of the promising is Cheyenne McCray's Night Trackers series, about a group of dedicated (you guessed it) high school vampire slayers.  And there's a passel of books based on Josh Whedon's Buffy TV series, any of which might work for this reader.

Conversation Three was definitely the one closest to my tastes (though I love a good vampire story, too -- but my tastes run more toward Stoker's original Dracula [1897], Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian [2005], or Anne Rice's Vampire Lestat [1985]).  The reader wanted fast-paced true adventure stories.  I really loved Aron Ralston's Between a Rock and a Hard Place (2004) -- he is the hiker/skier who ran off solo without telling anyone his plan, got stuck (literally) and was some days getting rescued -- if you saw James Franco's Oscar-nominated performance in 127 Hours, you know the story.  The original book has been called the Greatest Adventure Story Ever, and it's way up there.  Well-written, exciting ... though maybe a little lacking in the fast-pacedness, at least until you fall into the rhythm of the prose.

Other great true-adventures include Halsey's Typhoon, by Bob Drury (2006), about the World War II typhoon that nearly wiped out Task Force 38 of the US Navy (and features in both the movie and novel of The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk), Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose (1996), a biography of Merewether Lewis cloaked in a retelling of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-06, fills all the reader's requirements.  Others I think s/he'd enjoy include almost anything by Nathaniel Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea [2001], Mayflower [2006], and The Last Stand [2010], most notably).