Category: Recommended books

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Other Recommended books

101 Book Group Choices Guaranteed to Provoke Discussion

Choosing a book for a reading group is hard, but I’ve compiled this list of books to help you make that difficult decision. I think the majority of people will enjoy them and, more importantly for any book group, they will create an interesting discussion. This list is a combination of books I’ve read and those that have worked well for other book groups in the past. I hope you find it useful!

My Personal Favourites

Out – Natsuo Kirino
The Ghosts of Eden – Andrew Sharp
The Other Hand – Chris Cleave
Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen
My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult
The Wilderness – Samantha Harvey
Random Acts of Heroic Love – Danny Scheinmann
The Help – Kathryn Stockett
Notes on a Scandal – Zoe Heller
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
The Strain – Guillermo del Toro
Little Face – Sophie Hannah
Ingenious Pain – Andrew Miller

Award Winners

Disgrace – J.M Coetzee
The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas
The Secret River – Kate Grenville
Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
The Bone People – Keri Hulme
Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Dwarf – Par Lagerkvist
Blindness – Jose Saramago
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
The Good Earth – Pearl Buck
Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid
The Fifth Child – Doris Lessing

Long, but Worth It

A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Stone’s Fall – Iain Pears
Fall on Your Knees – Ann-Marie MacDonald
Cutting for Stone – Abraham Verghese
The Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean Auel
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
We Need To Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver

Books You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

The Myth of You and Me – Leah Stewart
Snow in August – Peter Hamill
Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire – David Mura
The Blind Side of the Heart – Julia Franck
Under This Unbroken Sky – Shandi Mitchell
The Ginger Tree – Oswald Wynd
The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
Stolen Lives – Malika Oufkir
Right of Thirst – Frank Huylar
Touching the Void – Joe Simpson
Cane River – Lailita Tademy
Gap Creek – Robert Morgan
Loving Frank – Nancy Horan

Recent Releases

Ruby’s Spoon – Anna Lawrence Pietroni
Rupture – Simon Lelic
Tender Morsels – Margo Lanagan
The Rapture – Liz Jensen
Legend of a Suicide – David Vann
The Girl with Glass Feet – Ali Shaw
The Island at the End of the World – Sam Taylor
The City & The City – China Mieville
Generation A – Douglas Coupland
Pocket Notebook – Mike Thomas
The Infinities – John Banville
The Housekeeper and the Professor – Yoko Ogawa
Still Alice – Lisa Genova
The Vagrants – Yiyun Li
The Chosen One – Carol Lynch Williams
Rooftops of Tehran – Mahbod Seraji

The Calligrapher’s Daughter – Eugenia Kim
The Unit – Ninni Holmqvist

The Best of the Rest

Eating Air – Pauline Melville
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind – William Kamkwamba
Ella Minnow Pea – Mark Dunn
The Glass Castle – Jeannette Walls
The World According to Garp – John Irving
Unless – Carol Shields
The Thirteenth Tale – Diane Setterfield
The Seance – John Harwood
Mudbound – Hilary Jordan
The Blood of Flowers – Anita Amirrezvani
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Flowers For Algernon – Daniel Keyes
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan – Lisa See
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher – Kate Summerscale
The Behaviour of Moths – Poppy Adams
Year of Wonders – Geraldine Brooks
The End of Mr. Y – Scarlett Thomas
The Devil in the White City – Eric Larson
Uglies – Scott Westerfield
Resistance – Anita Shreve
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
The Woman in the Dunes – Kobo Abe
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
Sacred Hearts – Sarah Dunant
Child 44 – Tom Rob Smith
The Book Thief – Marcus Zusak
Q and A – Vikas Swarup
Fun Home – Alison Bechdel
Persepolis – Majane Satrapi
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon

The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson
The Visit of the Royal Physician – Per Olov Enquist
The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite – Beatrice Colin
The Glass Room – Simon Mawer
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox – Maggie O’Farrell

Which books have worked well at your book group?

Have any of the books in the above list failed to charm your book group?

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2009 Chunkster Recommended books

Cutting for Stone – Abraham Verghese

Cutting for Stone is a fantastic book! It would easily have made my ‘Best of 2009’ list, had I read it sooner and I’m sure it will be one of my favourite reads of 2010. At 500+ pages, it isn’t a quick read, but it was well worth the investment of time as the story will stay with me for many years.

The book begins in Ethiopia with a nun giving birth to identical twins. The birth is a shock to everyone who worked with her at Missing, a small hospital struggling to cope with limited resources, as no-one even knew she was pregnant. Unfortunately the nun dies, leaving the father of the children a mystery. The book then follows the twins as they grow up, learning the secrets of their parentage and trying to make the most of themselves in a country on the brink of revolution.

The author, Abraham Verghese, is a doctor and this becomes obvious very early on. The book is packed with medical references and the heart of the novel concerns the differences in medical practices around the world. I admit that sometimes the medical references went over my head, but I felt they gave the book an authenticity that only added to my appreciation of it.

This book is massive in scope, both in terms of the time period covered and continents of the globe visited. It gives an insight into life during a difficult period of Ethiopian history, but also reveals the the universal complexities of family relationships.

Cutting for Stone had the rare ability to bring tears to my eyes, a sign that I had completely connected with the characters and actually cared about their fate.

Highly recommended.

 

Have you read Cutting for Stone?

Did you love it as much as I did?

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2010 Crime Recommended books

Rupture – Simon Lelic

Note: This book is released as A Thousand Cuts in the US

Rupture is set in a London comprehensive school, where a teacher walks into an assembly and shoots three pupils and a colleague, before turning the gun on himself. The book follows the young policewoman who is in charge of investigating the case. She quickly realises that the incident is not as simple as it first appears and sets out to find what motivated a quiet teacher to become a murderer.

The book begins with some truanting boys hearing a disturbance at their school; they sneak past the teachers and police they try to discover what has happened. The boys don’t actually see anything, but in many ways I found their observations more disturbing, as my imagination was left to conjure up the horror for myself.

I see what I had for lunch the day before, a pile of pork all glistening with fat like it’s been run over by a herd of slugs, just left on a tray in the sink. And there’s stuff all over the floor, lettuce gone soggy and brown, and peas with their guts splattered and smeared all over the tiles. I almost throw up.

I’d like to say that Rupture is a cross between Notes on a Scandal and We Need To Talk About Kevin but I think that would be unfair, as Rupture has it’s own unique voice. Much of the book is written as half a conversation, leaving you to fill in the police officer’s questions yourself. Some people may struggle with this writing style, but I found it to be very effective.

This book is gripping throughout and I was very impressed that by the end I had a great deal of sympathy for the murderer. I loved the way my initial opinions were slowly changed, leading me to question the way I look at crime and how often the perpetrator is often a victim too.

This book has everything I love to see in a book: fantastic characters, an impressive writing style, a compelling plot and a list of things to think about for weeks to come.

Highly recommended.

 

Have I persuaded you to buy a copy?!

There seem to be a lot of books about school shootings. Which is your favourite?

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2009 Recommended books Science Fiction

Generation A – Douglas Coupland

I knew that Steph loved Generation A, but I was completely unprepared for how much I’d enjoy it. I’ve had to prioritise this review so that it can appear on my best reads of 2009 list tomorrow – it is going to come surprisingly near the top!

Generation A is set in the near future, when bees have become extinct. People fondly remember honey, flowers and how much more beautiful the planet was back then, so everyone is surprised when five people across the globe are suddenly stung by bees. The victims are whisked away, quarantined and interrogated to try to determine why they have been stung. The answers are cleverer and more shockingly possible than I could ever imagine. This book shares a scary glimpse of the future which is closer to the truth than we dare to admit.

Douglas Coupland has achieved something which no author has managed before – to engage me in short stories. I have always found them disappointing in the past, but this book contained a series of short stories in the final chapters and each of them had me captivated. I have always heard that writing a good short story is the sign of a talented author, and this book has me convinced that this is true. Each one was impressive in its own right and some were so good that I made family members read them too. My favourite was the one in which beings from another planet eat humans:

One day the lieutenant made the observation that human beings who read large numbers of books tended to taste better than humans who didn’t. This intrigued the commander: “I’m listening, Lieutenant.” “Sir, when the humans read books, it gives them a sense of individuality, a sense of being unique – a sense that something about their existence is special or, as they like to say, ‘magical.’ Reading seems to generate microproteins in their bloodstreams, and those eons give them that extra juicy flavour.”

I was totally gripped by this book, unable to put it down once the setting had been established. The writing was impressive, managing to make me laugh out loud as often as I found myself thinking deeply about our society.

Highly recommended.

stars51

 

This is the first Douglas Coupland book that I’ve read, but I am going to ensure I get hold of some more of his books soon.

Have you read any of his books?

Which one is your favourite?

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2010 Recommended books

The Best Books of 2010? Part 2: Debut/Lesser Known Authors

Last week I posted the first half of the list of 2010 books I’m looking forward to:

The Best Books of 2010? Part 1: Authors We Know and Love

This week it is the turn of lesser known authors.

Skippy Dies – Paul Murray 

Skippy Dies will instantly grab your attention in a book shop as it is going to be packaged in a boxed set of three books. The story centres on an overweight genius who attempts to open a portal into a parallel universe. His roommate Skippy falls in love, but then tragedy strikes (is the book’s title a plot spoiler?!) and all kinds of secrets are brought to light. This sounds like a great premise and I look forward to reading it.

 

Rupture – Simon Lelic

A challenging and disturbing novel about an investigation into a school shooting. There have been many books about these incidents in the past few years, but this sounds as though it combines the best aspects of them all. I’m hoping it will be as good as We Need to Talk About Kevin.

The Birth of Love – Joanna Kavenna

Set in Vienna in 1865, London in 2009, and in 2153, this novel shows how childbirth has changed over the centuries. I can’t wait to see how the ‘breeding centres’ of the future are depicted. A contender for the Orange prize this year?

Good to a Fault – Marina Endicott

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, Canada and Caribbean, and short listed for the Giller Prize in 2009 this is a book I have been anticipating for a while. It is released in the UK in March.

The Return of Captain John Emmett – Elizabeth Speller 

A story of love, suicide and mystery set in 1920s England. I think this is an author worth keeping an eye on.

The Temple-goers – Aatish Taseer

A novel about upper-class corruption in modern-day Delhi. The dazzling story of a city quietly burning with rage. Will this be a contender for the Booker prize this year?

The Boat to Redemption – Su Tong

Winner of the Man Asian Prize 2009, this book is a dark comedy about the Chinese Revolution. I’m a big fan of Asian Literature, so this book will be one of my first reads in 2010.

 

Black Mamba Boy – Nadifa Mohamed

Set in 1930s Somalia, this book spans a decade of war and upheaval. Everything is seen through the eyes of a ten-year old boy, so this sounds like one you’ll need the tissues for.

Luke and Jon – Robert Williams

A coming of age novel with a difference. Jon is very strange – he wears 1950s clothes, has a side parting and a twitch. Luke is grieving the loss of his mother. I think this might be one of the most unique releases in 2010.  


The Great Perhaps – Joe Meno

The story of an American family in the run up to the 2004 US presidential election and the Iraq war. It’s a heartfelt story about just how complicated and ambiguous modern life can be.

Ilustrado – Miguel Syjuco

Winner of the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize, this is a book I’m really looking forward to reading when it is released in June.


This Bleeding City – Alex Preston

A debut novel about a hedge fund manager who sees potential to escape from the financial world when the markets crash. A heartbreaking love story and a touching contemplation of how good people end up doing terrible things.


The Whole Wide Beauty – Emily Woof

The story of one woman’s passionate affair with a poet. An unforgettable debut novel about searching for fulfillment in love, art and life. It doesn’t sound like my sort of thing, but I think that others will love it and it could end up on the Orange list.

 
The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2009, this controversial book is released in the UK in May. I bought a copy from New Zealand last year, so you can read my review here. I guarantee that everyone will be talking about this one!


Ruby’s Spoon – Anna Lawrence Pietroni

This book sounds like a lovely fairy tale. It is about a witch, a mermaid and their hunt for a missing woman. The cover is beautiful too!


Advice for Strays – Justine Kilkerr

I think this is a book for cat lovers – especially those who enjoy ghostly stories too. This sounds like an fantastically original debut novel.


We, The Drowned – Carsten Jensen

Carsten Jensen has had huge success in Denmark, winning many literary prizes. This epic novel about life at sea promises to become a lasting classic of seafaring literature.

 
Jasper Jones – Craig Silvey

This book won numerous accolades on its release in Australia. Set in an Australian mining town during the 1960s it deals with issues of racism and social exclusion. I think this has the potential to be one of my favourite reads in 2010.

Do any of these appeal to you?

Which books by debut authors are you most looking forward to in 2010?

Categories
2010 Other Recommended books

The Best Books of 2010? Part 1: Authors We Know and Love

December 2010 UPDATE: See which 2010 books I actually enjoyed the most.

The lists for the best 2009 books are everywhere at the moment, so I thought it would be nice to have a look at some of the books which might make the same lists next year.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet – David Mitchell

I have loved all of David Mitchell’s books, especially Ghostwritten and Black Swan Green. His new book is set on the tiny island of Dejima, the Dutch East India Company’s remotest Japanese trading post in 1799. I am really looking forward to reading it and am hoping it is good enough to win him the Booker Prize, as it would be fantastic to see him win.

Trespass – Rose Tremain

Rose Tremain won the Orange prize in 2008 with The Road Home, so it is exciting to see that she has a new book out in 2010. Trespass is set in an isolated French farmhouse and is described as a powerful, unsettling novel. I can’t wait!

 

So Much for That – Lionel Shriver

If you loved  We Need To Talk About Kevin as much as I did, then you will be looking forward to reading her latest book. It focuses on a woman suffering from an aggressive form of cancer, so I’m sure it will be another emotional read.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ  – Philip Pullman

This promises to be the most controversial release of 2010. I loved the His Dark Materials Trilogy and hope that this will be just as good. Either way, I’m sure this will be the most talked about book of 2010!

Beatrice and Virgil – Yann Martel

A book about a taxidermist, a howler monkey and a donkey called Beatrice doesn’t sound like the best book of the year, but the premise of Life of Pi didn’t look very good either. Another contender for the Booker prize?

The News Where You Are – Catherine O’Flynn

What Was Lost was a very promising debut, so I am looking forward to finding out what her second novel is like. She has originality on her side – I’ve not read a literary mystery focusing on a television anchorman before!

 

Shades of Grey – Jasper Fforde

I loved The Eyre Affair, but for some reason I haven’t got round to reading any more of his books. I need to fix that, but I know that all Fforde fans are getting excited about this release.

More 2010 Books….

Which books are you most looking forward to in 2010?

Read Part 2: The Best Books of 2010? Debut/Lesser Known Authors