Any suggestions as to what book I should read next?

Question

I want a new book to read but I am having great difficulty in choosing one. I admit I tend to choose my books by title and the front cover.

My last few reads have been:

Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
Confessions of an Heiress - Paris Hilton (although not much to read there)
The Understudy - David Nicholls

Help please !

Answer 1

Handmaids Tale is great! Try Wasp Factory by Ian Banks, excellent book. For somthing a little lighter I have just finshed Cell by Stephen King, that was a good read!

Answer 2

Have you read the following?

1. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
2. Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee
3. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
4. The Girls of Slender Means - Muriel Spark
5. The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark
6. The Only Problem - Muriel Spark
7. The Woman Warrior - Maxine Hong Kingston
8. A Clergyman's Daughter - George Orwell

As for Titles 3-6, they are highly recommended since I admire Dame Muriel Spark's narrative style and sense of humor. You can buy "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" as a paperback published by Penguin but the other three are included in a hardcover published by Alfred A. Knopf in the Everyman's Library series. I hope you enjoy reading all of them.

Answer 3

Fiction:

Huckleberry Finn & Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain); Call of the Wild, Sea Wolf, White Fang, John Barleycorn & The Valley of the Moon (Jack London); The Sun Also Rises (novel), "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" & other short stories (Ernest Hemingway); The Iceman Cometh & Long Day's Journey Into Night (Eugene O'Neill); On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels, Big Sur & Vanity of Duluoz (Jack Kerouac); Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller); Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden & The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck); A Fan's Notes (Frederick Exley); The Lost Weekend (Charles Jackson); Steppenwolf, Siddhartha & Narcissus and Goldmund (Hermann Hesse); Burden of Proof (Scott Turow); The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ichiguro); Bonfire of the Vanities & A Man in Full (Tom Wolfe); Florence of Arabia (Christopher Buckley)

Non-Fiction:

Life On the Mississippi (Mark Twain); Travels With Charley (John Steinbeck); Lonesome Traveler (Jack Kerouac); The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test & The Right Stuff (Tom Wolfe); Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 (Jim Lovell); Bias (Bernard Goldberg); America Alone (Mark Steyn); Seabiscuit (Laura Hillenbrand); Marley and Me (John Grogan); The Immortalist (Alan Harrington); Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century and Beyond (Michio Kaku); The Singularity is Near & Fantastic Voyage (Ray Kurzweil)

Answer 4

You haven't said what kind of thing you are after.

If you want an easy read with some strong characters try Saturday by Ian McEwan.

If you want something odd with a bit of gore try Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk.

If you want a book to go well with the Handmaids Tale try Brave New World by Aldux Huxley.

Or read all of them, all good reads!

Answer 5

If its classic you want then either Jane Eyre or A Tale of Two Cities,a modern classic Shardik by Richard Adams, for sheer pleasure ANYTHING by Terry Pratchett,and finally to suspend belief The Eyre Affair by Jasper FForde

Answer 6

here are some books you should read:-
Lord of the Rings trilogy - Tolkien
Northern Lights Trilogy (Or His dark Materials) By Philip Pullman
Sally Lockhart Series - By Philip Pullman
chrestomanci series by Dianne Wyatt Jones
The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
The Enchanted Castle - E.S Nesbit
Life Swap - Jane Green
Da Vinci Code, Deception Point, Angels and demons, Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
Sexing the Cherry, oranges are not the only fruit, Boating for Beginners, The Passion, by Jeanette Winterson

Answer 7

The Handmaid's Tale is one of my all time favorites and Catcher in the Rye is one of my all time least favorites. Have you read Memoirs of a Geisha? It's a wonderful book and much better than the movie.

Answer 8

Try Jane Austen's books: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, etc.

I also like books by Pearl S. Buck. One of them is The Good Earth.

Answer 9

Wow, you have varied tastes, let me see if I can help!

1) "1984" by George Orwell, classic sci-fi
2) "Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden, great read hard to put down
3) Anything by Meg Cabot, funny and light hearted stuff!
4) Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich
5) "The Egyptian" by Waltari, historical and very moving.

Answer 10

If you like Asia, like me, try Wild Swans by Jung Chan, about 3 generations of women in China - lots of history, very insightful. And I loved Kafka on the shore by Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer.