Reccomend a book (any book)

[Alumnus]

Well, I did like the Da Vinci code (if you ignore all the hype) though Angels and Demons is better. Also the Diana Gabaldon novels starting with Cross Stitch - they are brilliant. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett and Sarum by Edward Rutherford - epic but highly readable historical novels.

Happy reading!

Quoting nymphomanic from 22:16, 15th Jul 2005
Ok, it's a long hot summer. When I'm not working in the office I like lounging round outside - problem is I'm fed up with newspapers (too depressing) and my uni reading list (too demanding in an uninteresting way) and womens magazines (too silly and reflecting badly upon my gender)

I really need a good novel - nothing too heavy, but then again please don't reccomend anything like sagas (a novel which is light and literary if possible).

[Setsuna]

Ok, I am a complete commoner when I read book, I like a good story more than anything. Being a dirty scientist, Im probably more suited to Jackie Collins than Jane Austen.

I RECOMMEND:

'The Time Traveller's Wife' by Audrey Niffenegger - its excellent, I couldnt put it down. It's got it all... romantic love, rampant sex, weird science and libraries. But seriously, read it NOW.

'The Joy Luck Club' and 'The Kitchen God's Wife' by Amy Tan - Great stories about mothers in ye olde China and their daughters's's's lives being born and brought up in America. Really interesting and very well told.

'Ghostwritten' by David Mitchell - very interesting book with essentially 9 interlinked short stories. A very good read.

'The Cutting Room' by Louise Welsh - Set in Glasgow, murder mystery, not bad, but dont read it next to grannies on the bus (I learned the hard way)

'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess - Once you get past the weird 'Nadsat' language, you could love this book. I've read it about 5,968 times from beginning to end.

'To Kill a Mockingbird' by Harper Lee - The ONLY book I enjoyed at school. A great read.


Sorry if that was completely unhelpful! But I DEFO recommend the Time Traveller's Wife - I read it last week, and its STILL stuck in my head. It's Fab.

[underworlddreams]

I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan. Funny, insightful and doesn't quite end in any 'usual' manner. Very honest.

[hr]

I am not your saviour, I am just as fucked as you.

[pelopidas]

Riotous Assembly (Tom Sharpe) is a rip roaringly funny book, the first time I read it I was crying with laughter after 20 minutes. If you like black comedy you will love this book.

Wilt (also Tom Sharpe) is in a similar league on the laughter stakes. Very very funny indeed.

Scoop, Rise & Fall by Evelyn Waugh are both highly amusing. William Boot (main character in Scoop) is supposedly based on the young Bill Deedes (a past editor of the Daily Telegraph and Private Eye's "oldest man in the world")

Small World by David Lodge is a sharp and fast paced book. Not outrageously funny and more of a critics favourite, nevertheless a witty book with a very intelligent plot.

[Lyeta]

Veronika Decides to Die or the Alchemist or try any Paulo Coelho book. Those two are the only two Ive read and loved them both. THey are both quite short but really beautiful. Hitchikers Guide is a must lol if you havent already read it. Other good books... Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley), 100 years of solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez (not sure of the spelling of that one), The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)... lol hope you find something!

[raheli]

For Light:
The Only Boy For Me, Gil McNeil
A very well written romance with a twist

Cold Comfort Farm
Twisted and hilarious, and poking a well-needed hole in all these people that thing darkness and gloom are inherently interesting. They're just dark and gloomy.

The Deverry books by Katherine Kerr-- the Bristling Wood is best. Gritty Celtic fantasy

For the honour of kings,
Well did they attack the hosts
of the enemy
The bristling wood of spears, the grevious flood of the enemy.

Archangel by Sharon Shinn

Any anything by Dianne Wynne Jones is always worth reading, and more truly literary, I've always thought, than some of the pish in the "new cannon" . It can't be literature unless it works on more than one level. Books you can only appreciate if you have a PhD in literary criticism are just elitist, pretentious, and ultimately a failure.
rant over!

[Alex Jennings]

Just read "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova.

Much hype in American newspapers and among the critics and it did a very good job standing up to it all. It's about Dracula. And books.

[hr]

"Look, I told you when we met that I was not a leprechaun, that I was from Rhode Island, and that I was half Korean, but you said it didn't matter."

[Laura]

A lot of people have ranted about 'Birdsong' by Sebastian Faulks, but I found two of his other novels, 'The Girl at the Lion D'Or' and 'On Green Dolphin Street' to be much more consuming and well written. I like any sort of war based fiction that you can sort of get lost in the world of very compelling- Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy works on a similar level.

I've liked all of Stephen Fry's novels for quick, interesting and addictive reading, but especially 'The Liar' which is his real work of genius. I think he sort of peaked early.. the later explorations of zoo-ology and counterfactual history were not as fabulous.

Graham Green is amazing- especially 'The End of the Affair'.. it was the first novel of his I ever read and it's intensity is astonishing. You also can't go wrong with Evelyn Waugh. 'Brideshead Revisited' is a wonderful, wonderful novel that would probably be the one text I would take to a desert island..

I also must, must encourage anyone who has never picked up 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov to do so- it is a lush read, especially in Summer. Something about the imagery that is intensified by the heat. It is the only novel I ever finished and turned right back to the beginning of.

[stevieboy]

I recommend, Porno by Irvine Welsh.

Just because it is funny, frightening and you get to see what happens when begbie meets renton again.

[novium]

hah, I do agree with your last comment, and she was my absolute favorite author as a kid... so maybe I'll look into those other books, as we perhaps have similar tastes. I'm not wild about archangel anymore, but freshman year of high school, when I first read it, I thought it was the best book ever....

Quoting raheli from 20:14, 16th Jul 2005
For Light:
The Only Boy For Me, Gil McNeil
A very well written romance with a twist

Cold Comfort Farm
Twisted and hilarious, and poking a well-needed hole in all these people that thing darkness and gloom are inherently interesting. They're just dark and gloomy.

The Deverry books by Katherine Kerr-- the Bristling Wood is best. Gritty Celtic fantasy

For the honour of kings,
Well did they attack the hosts
of the enemy
The bristling wood of spears, the grevious flood of the enemy.

Archangel by Sharon Shinn

Any anything by Dianne Wynne Jones is always worth reading, and more truly literary, I've always thought, than some of the pish in the "new cannon" . It can't be literature unless it works on more than one level. Books you can only appreciate if you have a PhD in literary criticism are just elitist, pretentious, and ultimately a failure.
rant over!

[hr]

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

[novium]

you might like an author by the name of holly lisle.
anyway, here's a rant of hers on a similar subject that was pretty funny:
http://www.hollylisle.com/fm/Workshops/ ... inous.html

Quoting raheli from 20:14, 16th Jul 2005

[hr]

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

[flarewearer]

Fahrenhiet 451 by Ray Bradbury, interesting story about a future-present where books are banned and people are lulled into a sense of stupidity by ever-present interactive TV, i read it about 5 years ago, and re-read it recently, and it strikes a lot more of a chord now what with all this big-brother muck on the telly

[hr]

image:www.magnificentoctopus.com/x/stormy.png

[lauremw]

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden - I just read it this year and found it to be both a interesting and well written.
There have been entirely too many instances when an author mucks up a perfectly good subject with crap writing, but this isn't one of them.

[hr]

~*~*~*~
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." ~ Anais Nin

[Eliot Wilson]

Quoting Laura from 21:07, 16th Jul 2005
Graham Green is amazing- especially 'The End of the Affair'.. it was the first novel of his I ever read and it's intensity is astonishing.

"The End of the Affair" is brilliant, but I humbly submit that "The Heart of the Matter" is better. One of the best and most moving books I've ever read.

For good, easy and satisfying reading, you might also look towards Raymond Chandler.

[hr]

Bill and Ted beat the Grim Reaper at Twister

Bill: "You played very well, Death, especially with your totally heavy Death robes."

Death: "Don't patronise me."

[David Bean]

Oh, how could I forget? For anyone interested in historical novels, there's always Robert Harris, whose 'Pompeii' is my favourite (though I'm a big fan in general).

Less well-known is Giles Foden's "The Last King of Scotland", a fascinating book about a Scottish doctor who is appointed as the personal physician to Idi Amin, and observes the dictator, who is widely reputed to have been insane, in close quarters. The book turns into a rich, detailed character portrait of Amin from the perspective of one whose feelings on the man are entirely mixed, and the result manages to be sympathetic without glossing over the heinous crimes committed by the Amin regime.

[hr]

"Don't ask me what you know is true, don't have to tell you, I love your precious heart. I - I was standing, you were there, two worlds collided, and they could never tear us apart" - INXS

[The Dude]

I would have to recomend anything by John Steinbeck. He runns the full gambit from light and thoughtful, like Cup of Gold and The Short Reign of Pippen the Fourth, to deep and thoughtful, like East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath, to the downright depressing like The Pearl and Of Mice and Men. It may not be the happiest stuff but it is beautifuly writen.

[Cain]

[quote]Quoting dunqn from 09:50, 16th Jul 2005
"Haunted" by Chuck Palahniuk.
quote]

If you''re going to read any Palahniuk, i recommend Survivor, then Invisible Monsters.

Survivor is a great book, Monsters just has the distinction of being the most fucked up thing i've read (even more so than The Dice Man, but that was rubbish)

[hr]

I hold an element of surprise

[Chain Mailer]

'Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocolypse' by Ian Rankin (very random but very good)

'The Bourne Identity' by Robert Ludlum (don't worry if you didn't like the film, book is brilliant! Am reading the 2nd one, Bourne Supremacy, now)

[hr]

Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious

[exnihilo]

Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safranfoer

Mothership - John Brosnan

On - Adam Roberts

Years Of Rice & Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson

Anything by Richard Morgan or Alistair Reynolds.

[Duggeh]

Raymond Chandlers "The Big Sleep" is just about the best short novel ever written. And also one of the longest. It'll make you come back and read it again and again.

[hr]

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