tipping question also book recs

[boxofdelights]

1. Say you go to your favorite restaurant on December 23, and it's really busy so you eat at the bar, and they comp your drink, "because you are such a good customer" is what they say. Your total is $21. The drink would have been $8. You normally tip 20%. How much would you tip?

2. The hostess at my favorite restaurant always asks about what I'm reading. (I usually eat alone, with a book.) Tonight she asked me to bring her some book recs next time I come in. Sometimes when I am reading a book I think of a person who might like it, but my brain doesn't work well in the other direction. Also I barely know this woman. She reads anything-- really, anything!-- but not much nonfiction because she is afraid it will be boring. She just got a Nook, and wanted to buy books for it, but was overwhelmed by all the titles and authors without a clue to how to choose. She bought Dune. She gets books from her mom, who passes on the books from her (the mom's) book group. She mentioned a few titles, none of which I recognized. "So basically Oprah's Book Group choices," she said, as if she thought I would sneer at her for that.

Help?

3. Speaking of book recs and restaurants. A very attractive young person who works as a busboy at different restaurant from the one above asked me about what I was reading (Connie Willis's Remake). Then he told me about the best book he had ever read (Eric Nylund's Signal to Noise). I told him I would put it on my to-read list but when I looked it up it did not really look like my sort of thing. When I was his age, any sf would have been at least worth looking at, but now, there are so very many books and so very little time. Have any of you read it? Is it worth a look?

Comments

[adrian_turtle]

"So basically Oprah's Book Group choices," she said, as if she thought I would sneer at her for that.

The expectation that others will sneer at one's taste in books (or anything else) is really sad. But it's unfortunately common, these days. I can only sympathize with her.

I don't know if she's reading books like the stuff on Oprah's list because that's what she particularly likes, or because she gets pointed towards it and doesn't like it. Oprah tends to recommend mainstream books that are very sentimental, even depressing. For the first few years, the recommendations seemed to focus on books with strong female characters. (Toni Morrison, Elizabeth Berg, Barbara Kingsolver.) More recently, it seems like a general Great Books thing. (William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Charles Dickens.)

For a situation like that, with no further information, I'd recommend speculative fiction and mysteries (on the theory she probably wasn't seeing much of them), that are accessible for readers who aren't accustomed to dealing with alternate worlds. And I'd look for sympathetic characters and some kind of substance, rather than pure fluff.

Voices, by Ursula LeGuin, is just about perfect. It's the second in a trilogy, and the whole trilogy is very good, but the first (Gifts) assumes more experience with fantasy reading protocols. They can be read independently...I'd explain the situation, and say that if she finds the first book confusing, she should skip directly to the second.

Sara Paretsky. Her recent books are sigifnicantly better written, and don't require knowledge of earlier books about the same characters.

Possibly Jo Walton's Farthing

Kate Wilhelm

[aedifica]

Based on adrian_turtle's description of Oprah books, I'd suggest Barbara Kingsolver. My favorites of hers are The Bean Trees and High Tide in Tucson (the latter is a collection of essays--nonfiction mixed with autobiography mixed with etcetera--so it may or may not be something she'd be interested in).

[hobbitbabe]

I would tip my usual percentage on the "would-have-been" bill. So 20% of $29, or something around $5.50 or $6.00.

[cimorene]

I glanced into your journal because you followed me and this post caught my eye. I know it's a bit old, but I always like talking about book recs!

• P.G. Wodehouse is often considered the greatest English-language humorist for good reason, and his Jeeves & Wooster books are my favorites to re-read. On the other hand, they're set in between-wars England and have a very specific flavor, so they might not be for everyone.



• Agatha Christies are nice, easy reads. Some of them are a lot better than others, and those are usually the most famous ones (eg Murder on the Orient Express, which might be the most celebrated mystery plot and surprise ending in recent history? You see a lot of riffs on it if you watch/read much mystery/crime).



• Tracy Chevalier's historical novels. Girl with a Pearl Earring is still my favorite (possibly just because of the extra interest generated by the premise), but her other books are fun, too.



• Diana Wynne Jones and Neil Gaiman are in my opinion the masters of modern fantasy, which is my favorite genre. I would pick American Gods or Anansi Boys for Gaiman and Archer's Goon, The Lives of Christopher Chant, or Fire & Hemlock as introductions to DWJ.



• Barry Hughart's three Master Li books, starting with Bridge of Birds: Sherlock Holmes-style mysteries set in an ancient China where Chinese mythologies/superstitions are real, so they're filled with gods and magic as well as richly textured settings and are, on top of that, incredibly funny. The narrator is Number Ten Ox, the beefy sidekick to a tiny, wizened and extremely dirty little old man named Master Li who is the genius detective.



• Poul Anderson's Flandry stories are from the same period of classic SF as Dune, if she liked it. Flandry stories are fun - he's an interstellar take on James Bond, so the stories are action, adventure, womanizing (often with aliens), and political intrigue.



• Samuel Delany's novellas Empire Star & Babel-17, both space opera-type sf. I prefer the former, but they're usually published together I think.


• One of my favorite historical fantasies is Vonda McIntyre's The Moon & The Sun, which is Louis the Sun King with mermaids. Or something like that. It's been a while since I read it.



• I took a class on the Gothic novel one time, and my favorite read out of the lot was Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. If she has a taste for Gothic stuff, anyway.

Haha, sorry for the tl;dr. Hi. :)

[boxofdelights]

Thank you! Book recs are always timely.

[krait]

Oooh, The Moon and the Sun! I love that book. :D

[cimorene]

Me too! :D I've got to get a copy of my own so I can reread.

[carbonel]

1. If the drink is something I actually want and appreciate, I'd tip on that as well, so I'd add an extra $1.60 to the tip for the drink. Well, actually, I'd add $1.20, but that's because I usually tip 15% unless they do something special.

2. If she's used to mainstream or chicklit and wants something with stfnal sensibilities, I'd recommend Never Let Me Go and The Time Traveler's Wife to start with. If she likes those, you can try stuff more firmly in the SF or fantasy camp.

3. Never heard of it.

[boxofdelights]

1. Yeah, I ordered the drink and expected to pay for it until the moment she rang me up. They have given me appetizers or desserts I didn't order on nights the restaurant was almost empty, but I assumed those were "we can give you this food or throw it out" situations and didn't worry about tipping.

2. Good suggestions. Thank you.

stuff everybody likes!

[mercyorbemoaned.livejournal.com]

Tell her to read Ursula Le Guin, MFK Fisher, Angela Carter, Isak Dineson, and Lark Rise to Candleford.

Re: stuff everybody likes!

[boxofdelights]

Thank you!

Re: stuff everybody likes!

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Ah, I've so seldom heard anyone else mention Lark Rise to Candleford. *beam*

Though, sadly, I don't actually like M.F.K. Fisher.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

I'd tip a lot higher than usual. She's not only had the usual work of serving the drink, but someone has had the extra work of an unusual bill and explaining it to you.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I read Signal to Noise a long time ago and recall it as in the okay-to-good range, nothing earthshaking. I may be confusing it with Nylund's Pawn's Dream, which came recommended (I think by rosefox) as having a very interesting magic system, but which I did not love.

I'd tip on the full amount, my standard ~20% with an inclination to round up rather than down.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

1. Oh, I don't know, maybe $5.60 or $6.00 or $8.00.
2. I can't recommend books, either, and very seldom manage to notice when I think a book would suit someone from the book end. People have such different tastes, and even more stumpingly, read in such different ways.
3. I haven't read it and I suspect I'd find it annoying, if the amazon review correctly characterizes its approaches to pattern and characters (if the stock figures aren't deliberate and used ironically or some'at).

As of January 1 I will be on six months unpaid leave, and able to keep appointments. I miss you too much and would love to see you if that's possible....

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

The people who see you all the time like you and want to be friends.

I would have tipped $6.00 because I can't do arithmetic very well. I like to tip 20% since it's easy to figure out.

I would read the Eric Nylund book, even though I know nothing about it, because it's an opportunity to show you value the gesture of friendship implicit in reccing a book. (I say that because I'm a fast reader--though I'm behind on reading all the things people have recced me lately!)

For the hostess, rec her something you read recently and enjoyed, because then you'll be able to discuss it--and that's partly what she's asking, I suspect.

[elissaann.livejournal.com]

1. I would tip for what the meal would have cost with the drink. Like many ex-waitresses, I like to tip well (sometimes to the point that people remark on it) unless I hate the service.

2. I would recommend books that I love. When I ask someone for recommendations, that's what I want to hear. I would recommend Charles Dickens, Robertson Davies, and my secret pleasure, Jennifer Weiner.

[lookfar.livejournal.com]

I would tip on the total check, including the comped drink, because the drink was offered free but not the service. I'd tip on the 29.00, which would be, to my mind, six bucks because I usually round up and pay 20%.

If I were the server in your second paragraph, I'd like a list of five books that my customer really likes, with a short description of each. Because then if they didn't sound like my kind of thing, I'd still have discovered something about my customer. I sometimes ask my bookish clients about books they like for that reason. Sometimes I even read them!

[lcohen]

i would tip $6.

i loved this book and think that it would be a good recommend for someone who likes oprah's book club books:

http://www.amazon.com/Guernsey-Literary-Potato-Peel-Society/dp/0385340990

[joxn.livejournal.com]

1. I would tip $6 because I am "such a good customer".
2. "Well, the book I was reading last time I was in here was X and I really liked it."
3. Haven't read it.