Books That You Would Recommend To Others

[mikey4444]

Further to the last entry in this section of AB, what books would you recommend to others ?

My list would have to include ::

Anything by Neville Shute, but especially "A Town like Alice" and "On the Beach"
"The Cruel Sea", by Nicholas Monsarrat
"Dance to the Music of Time" by Anthony Powell
"Beyond this Place" by A J Cronin
Any travel book by Paul Theroux
The Balkans Trilogy and the Lavant Trilogy, by Olivia Manning
The "Foundation" trilogy, by Asimov ( actually 7 books ! )


So many books ...so little time !

[DTCwordfan]

sorry the Spence is a History of Modern China....(end of Ming up to Communism, the key message being what's the difference between Communism in China and the Dynasties - not much).

Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng - far more harrowing than Wild Swans.

[mikey4444]

Jeza...Requiem for a wren is one of my favourites by Shute. I have tried to get as many of his books as I can but most of them are out of print. Second Hand bookshops are handy of course.

[LazyGun]

Any of Terry Pratchetts Discworld Novels.
Any of Iain M. Banks "Culture" novels - and " The Algebraist". Oh, and most of his non Sci-Fi fiction, like "The Wasp Factory" and " The Crow Road".
Any of Martin Cruz Smiths "Arkady Renko" series of detective novels, like "Gorky Park", "Polar Star" etc.
Milan Kundera "Unbearable Lightness of Being"
Umberto Eco " The Name of the Rose". "Foucaults Pendulum"
George McDonald Frazer - All of the "Flashman" novels.
Robert Tressell " The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists"
Michael Marshall Smith " Only Forward", "One of Us"
Ed McBain - Any of the 87th Precinct police procedurals.
Elmore Leonard - Pretty much any and all of his books.
Bill Bryson - " A brief history of nearly everything "
Ben Goldacre - " Bad Science", "Bad Pharma"
Richard Feynman - " Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman"
Carl Sagan - "Cosmos", "Daemon Haunted World"
Gabriel Garcia Marquez " Love in a time of Cholera", "One Hundred Years of Solitude"
Dava Sobel - "Longitude"

And very fond childhood memories of any book by Gerald Durrell...

[naomi24]

I'm reluctant to recommend books to people if I don't know their taste in literature. The last time I was asked by a book club to recommend a book, I enthused over 'The Shadow of the Wind' by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, and they hated it.

You might like to try 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' by Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, though. I found it unforgettable.

[granny grump]

Anita Diamant - The Red Tent
Jojo Moyes - Ship of brides
Clara Olink Kelly - The Flamboya Tree
Laurie Graham - The future homemakers of America and Mr Starlight

Anything by Stuart Pawson; Peter James; Peter Robinson; James Patterson John Grisham; John Harvey; Lee Child; Michael Connolly and quite a few more

[marwel7]

A Kind Of Loving by Stan Barstow,and the following two books in the trilogy are,good too.
Flying To Nowhere by John Fuller,I've read it a few times and still can't work out when it is set.
The Game,Set and Match trilogy by Len Deighton is brilliant and there are two more trilogies which continue the story.
The novels of Anthony Price.David Audley is an amazing character.
A Song Of Ice And Fire by George RR Martin the first book of which is A Game Of Thrones.
Ian McEwan.