Book ideas

[Puzzled23]

Hi can anyone help, everytime I go into one of the major bookstores I get spoilt for choice on what to choose, can anyone recommend any books for me?

[dotjhawkes]

What type of book have you enjoyed reading the most?

[Robert G]

How about my book? I've still got plenty to sell!

See www.fierychariot.co.uk

[Joe Shmoe]

Hi Puzzled, You do not say what genre you like. But if you live near an Ottakers Book Shop they have The Portable Door by Tom Holt on special offer for 99 pence. it's soft sci fi sureal and so far very funny. For the price it is well worth trying.

[coffeeman]

Jack Kerouac ..Lonesome Traveller

[ezapf]

Top 100 books of 20th century:
(credit to Apricot/(something else) for finding the list)

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Nineteen eighty four, George Orwell
3. Animal Farm, George Orwell
4. Ulysses, James Joyce
5. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
6. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
7. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
9. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
10. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
11. Wild Swans, Jung Chang
12. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
13. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
14. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
15. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Graham
17. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
18. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
19. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
20. The Outsider, Albert Camus
21. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
22. The Trial, Franz Kafka
23. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
24. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
25. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
26. The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank
27. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
28. Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence
29. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
30. If This is a Man, Primo Levi
31. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
32. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
33. Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust

(continued)

[ezapf]

Part 2:
34. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
35. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
36. Beloved, Toni Morrison
37. Possession, AS Byatt
38. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
39. A Passage to India, EM Forster
40. Watership Down, Richard Adams
41. Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder
42. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
43. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
45. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Kundera
46. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
47. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
48. Howards End, EM Forster
49. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
50. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
51. Dune, Frank Herbert
52. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irvine
53. Perfume, Patrick Suskind
54. Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
55. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
56. Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee
57. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
58. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
59. Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain
60. The Magus, John Fowles
61. Brighton Rock, Graham Greene
62. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, Robert Tressell
63. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
64. Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin
65. The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
66. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres

(continued)

[ezapf]

Part 3:
67. Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnergut
68. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
69. A Room with a View, EM Forster
70. Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
71. It, Stephen King
72. The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
73. The Stand, Stephen King
74. All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
75. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Roddy Doyle
76. Matilda, Roald Dahl
77. American Psycho, Bret Easton Eliss
78. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson
79. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
80. James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
81. Lady Chatterley's Lover, DH Lawrence
82. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe
83. Complete Cookery Course, Delia Smith
84. An Evil Cradling, Brian Keenan
85. The Rainbow, DH Lawrence
86. Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
87. 2001 a Space Odyssey, Arthur C Clarke
88. The Tin Drum, Gunther Grass
89. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
90. Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela
91. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
92. Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
93. The Alexandria Quartet, Laurence Durrell
94. Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
95. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
96. The Van, Roddy Doyle
97. The BFG, Roald Dahl
98. Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess
99. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
100. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans

[Buenchico]

The book I've enjoyed most during the past year is 'To the Baltic With Bob' by Griff Rhys Jones. I only bought it because W H Smith were doing 'buy one - get one half price'. I'd already selected my first volume and just grabbed this because my train was about to go. I assumed that it would be one of those books which only got published because of the author's celebrity status (rather than through any literary merit). I couldn't have been more wrong. GRJ is a captivating story-teller with a real mastery of the English language. Highly recommended!

Chris

[simron]

depending on your tastes i can recommend a few authors if crime thrillers/thrillers appeal to you.

[ghost_moth]

It depends what you like but here are a few of my favourites:

Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith

Precious Bane by Mary Webb

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Anything by Marian Keyes

I could go on and on and on ... but I won't!

[Arnett]

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto is a great book. It's not too long and is enjoyable to read. I liked it so much I'm now reading Goodbye Tsugumi by the same author!!

[Hgrove]

I love the Erast Fandorin mystery books by Boris Akunin, pub. by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. They should be read in this order (1) The winter queen. (2) Turkish Gambit. (3) Murder on the Leviathan. (4) Death of Achilles. He has written a total of eleven (!) and I am eagerly waiting for the follow ups to be published in this country (UK).

[islandgirl]

I'm currently reading "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and really enjoying it.

For crime novels, Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew stories (murder and history together), P D James, Elizabeth George and Minette Walters.

Miss Garnet's Angel by Sally Vickers.

[honkytonkgal]

Labyrinth-Kate Mosse

Excellent read its one of the Richard and Judys Book Club.

[Barberello]

You might want to try this new website for personal reading recommendations: findmeagoodread.com
I have found it really helpful.