What great books would you recommend I read??!?

Question

Anything from the likes of Orlando- V Woolf, Perfume- P Suskind, Time Travellers Wife - Niffenneger, etc etc - Would like to hear what your fave books are! I
need recommendations - please tell me what you love and why!

Thanks so much to you all - please keep the great book titles coming!

Answer 1

The Phillip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy (Norhtern Lights, The subtle Knife and the Amber Spyglass).

Answer 2

A recent book I really enjopyed was The Night Watch by Sarah Waters - it is set in London during WW2 and follows the lives of a group of friends. It is very clever as it starts at the end and works to the beginning - the compelling thing is that although we know what happens to the characters we wonder how they go there and as such we have to look back to their past to understand how they became who they are.

Another great book is the Histories by Herototos (aka Herodotus) who was an Anceint Greek who described the Persian Empire's attack on Greece. The fun is that he digresses from the point all the time and describes how the pyramids were built, how falling snow could be mistaken for feathers and how the Spartans beat Tegea by stralin the bones of a ten foot tall man. So much life is in this book - I have read it 5 times now!

Answer 3

A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry. A heartbreaking work of true genius.
Wuthering Heights - for unrequited love.
Anna Karenina - the consequences of requited love ...
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - the consequences of marriage to an axxhxxxx.
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison. Sheer joy.
Doris Lessing - Love Again. It's never too late.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love In The Time of Cholera. Wonderful.
Joyce Carol Oates - The Falls. Magnificent.
Simon Mawer - The Fall. A wonderful novel about friendship and climbing.
Philip Roth - American Pastoral. Regrets, Regrets.
Philip Roth - Everyman. More Regrets.

Answer 4

First, have you seen the film version of Orlando??? I really, really like Sally Potter's work, she also did Mansfield Park a few years ago. AND, someone's made a movie of Perfume (I assume it's the same book) although I haven't read it yet. Now, on to the recommendations!

I just finished reading "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield. All I can say is that it's like a mystery and a love letter for book lovers. If you liked "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, you'll like this one.

Now, one of my particular weaknesses is Good historical fiction. (As you probably know, Bad historical fiction is heartbreaking and should never have been published in the first place, in my opinion.) "The Birth of Venus" and "In the Company of the Courtesan" by Sarah Dunant both show the Italian Rennaissance through the eyes of (some would say) outsiders.

"Life Mask" by Emma Donoghue takes real-life English characters of the eighteenth century (I think, but it's been a while since I read it) and tells their compelling tales. The 'heroine' is the Queen of Comedy, Eliza Farren, who acted at the same time as Sarah Siddons was ruling the stage and Sheridan was trying to trade playwriting for politics. She's got a collection of short stories that I absolutely love, called "The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits" - how's that for a catchy title, eh?

Hmmm . . . what else??? This could take me ages! :)

Did you like "Brave New World"? "1984"? Read "We" by Zamyatin, written decades before either of those. By a Russian. It's incredible the things he said, and so many of them came true in a way.

I should stop . . . I have things I should be doing . . . but just one more has to be mentioned. "Everything is Illuminated" by Johnathan Safran Foer . . . I would marry that book if I weren't so crazy about my boyfriend.

Answer 5

Where to start, so much great stuff out there. Charles Dickens if you fancy having a go at some of the all time classics. I am reading Little Dorrit at the moment and it is superb!!
Connie Willis is a modern day favourite of mine. You could try Doomsday Book, a time travel novel in which a young woman gets accidentally sent back in time to London in the time of the Back Death. The same author wrote Passage, a novel about near death experiences.
Fancy a disaster novel? If so then you could try Flood by Richard Doyle or the uncut version of the Stand by Stephen King.
Happy reading...

Answer 6

Good call on the Time travelers Wife!
also
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

Here's my picks-
Cry the Beloved Country
The Secret Life of Bees
Watership Down- Richard Adams
The Names of the Rose- Umberto Eco
Catch-22- Joseph Heller
Turn of the Screw
Ishmael- Daniel Quinn
The Bluest Eye-Toni Morrison
The Handmaids Tale
Cats Eye- Margaret Atwood

Answer 7

Celestial Navigation by Ann Tyler
Snobs by Julian Glover
Secret Lives by E F Benson
Quarantine by Jim Crace
Being Dead by Jim Crace
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

not a dud among the above - promise !

Answer 8

I would suggest choosing two or three books from different eras or centuries. For example,any of the Greek plays: Medea, The Three Theban Plays; anything by Homer; Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; anything by Chaucer; Shakespeare of course but also check out his contemporaries and you should definitely read Volpone; any female writer from the 1700s; from the 1800s: Austen, Dickens, Hardy for sure; any of the American playwrights from The 20th Century as well as their poets and of course our own Joe Orton, Dylan Thomas, Larkin, etc. I would recommend you try reading Alasdair Gray's Lanark. That should keep you going! Of course, once you have got through that lot there is all the literature of the entire world!

Answer 9

"The Miserables", by Victor Hugo
"The pillars of the Earth" Ken Follet
"Fried green tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe" Fannie Flagg (it has a funny name, but it is a good novel)
"The Perfume", Patrick Suskind
"Angels and Demons" Dan Brown
"The Lord of the rings" (Part 1, 2, 3) Tolkien
"Harry Potter series" Rowling

Answer 10

I finally read the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck last year and really liked it. Anything by Steinbeck is good. I liked East of Eden, too.

I read a couple others recently that I thought were pretty good. Life of PI by Yann Martel is about a young man who is shipwrecked. It's a story within a story, so struggle through the first 30 pages, and you'll be rewarded with a good read.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood was also very good. It's about a scientific experiment that goes horribly wrong with global consequences.