Coming off a literary high - please help

Cote, please do discover margaret atwood. Start with the Handmaid's Tale. You'll never want to read anything by David Mitchell again (incidentally, don't bother reading anything by David Mitchell again. It's all downhill from Cloud Atlas, and if you read anything by Margaret Atwood, you'll wonder why you ever even went to the trouble of buying Cloud Atlas.

"I was a bookish 13 year old but His Dark Materials wasn't around then. Changing my life was left to 1984 and Brave New World"

Ditto!

Slaughterhouse V is almost poetry itself much like Clockwork Orange in many ways. There are definite beats and rhythms to both. I really do envy you reading Slaughterhouse for the first time.

Gave up on The Quincunx and Jonathon Strange AND the bloomin' Dragon Tattoo shite (God that was so bad).

Talking of Golding, has anybody read, 'Pincher Martin?' Now that is one v v weird book.

bulletproof I nearly gave up on Jonathan Strange, was really bogged down by it and so bored! However the ending was surprising & had me in tears, hadn't expected that at all.

Mind you I dispatched my copy to the charity shop the other week, don't think it is a re-reader.

basildon - I could do a 'pilgrimage' to Fitzroy's grave in about 30 mins walk from my house .

Have been meaning to do that & go to Down House to pay homage to Darwin too...but my BIG plan was to follow in their footsteps to Tierra del Fuego...wanted to see penguins so badly! Big snowstorm which grounded all flights at Heathrow, Dec 2010, put paid to all that.

So I haven't re-read This Thing of Darkness since then, as still bitter about my lost holiday dream, but it IS a great book.

People who liked that might also like William Golding's seafaring trilogy which starts with Rites of Passage.

Any Human Heart by William Boyd is very good & David Mitchell fans would probably enjoy it, has the same sense of a broad scope of history & a cast of thousands.

Dragon Tattoo was a page turner for me, harmless fun but nothing more. Book 1 much better than 2 & 3, but I had to read all 3 to find out what happens...

I took a while to get into 1000 autumns but liked it the end. Gave up on jonathon strange (something I rarely do).

Loved thecquincunx - notbthevtype of book I usually read.

I'm confused ... Cloud Atlas and This Thing of Darkness are two of my favourite books ever ... I even went to the cemetery in Norwood where Fitzroy is buried on a sort of pilgrimage as I found it so hard to leave the characters however I loathed girl with a shite tattoo (would rather gouge out my eyeballs with a rusty teaspoon than read books 2 and 3) but loved A Fine Balance so we obviously don't have the same taste after all ...

However I would second His Dark Materials, not a children's book at all IMO, and throw in The Quincunx by Charles Palliser, one of the first of the Victorian pastiche novels and absolutely engrossing - I came to it in the wake of a Wilkie Collins/Dickens immersion. And have you read any Ursula K LeGuin? I read the Earthsea books as a child and have re-read them every few years since, but as an adult I'd thoroughly recommend The Left Hand of Darkness.

I've recently read and enjoyed Wolf Hall (although it took me about 3 goes to get into it and I'm still not convinced by the irritating use of the present tense), Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell though I suspect you'd find it fey, loved Wind-up Bird Chronicle and would thoroughly recommend The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, seemingly much more of a conventional novel than Cloud Atlas but fascinating and haunting.

By the way, had you seen that Cloud Atlas is being made into a film? I'm simultaneously looking forward to it and dreading it ...

Can' blame the iPad for that one!

Try House of Leaves. It's huge, bizarre, and unforgettable. No use for reading on the bus as it's too big, and it'd lose something in ebook format.

Btw Apologies for the typing - bloody iPad!

I loved a lot of the short list and read about half of them. Jarrahs menagerie, Pigeon English, snow drops, loved them! Also another vote for his dark menagerie. Imdidn't read them for years. It took a rare friend who's taste I trust to go with them and then couldnT put them down

Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch is fascinating and brilliantly written. it was shortlisted for the Booker and should have won!

Is it possible that the books are available seperately on the Kindle. The books are:

Northern Lights
The Subtle Knife
The Amber Spyglass

They have sometimes been packaged together under the series name of 'His Dark Materials' but maybe Kindle has them seperately?

Mind and tell us what you think of them!

I read His Dark Materials after a (different) author recommended them to be at a meet the author thing when I was a teenager and I loved them.

I think they are amazing books, I probably get more out of them as an adult - they are much more literary than you'd imagine. The first book is 'Northern Lights', the author is Philip Pullman. It's difficult to describe what they are about without giving away the story, but they are certainly not just for children.

Its kind of about the difference between being a child and being an adult. But it explores this subject in a much more sophisticated way than the average coming of age story.

Cote no I was 13 way before P Pullman too, what I meant was I can imagine it being life-changing for someone at that age, but I still got a lot from it at 25! (and since then)

Didn't think Room matched all the hype. Perfectly readable, but nothing to write home about.

Another good read is The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing. It's easily readable in one sitting and does make for uncomfortable reading, but for some reason I couldn't put it down.