Coming off a literary high - please help

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is truly brilliant. It is fairly dystopian but based on the Great Depression so based on real life. Great characters; great family; great road trip.

Not sure if it's been mentioned but I've read first two books of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and I really enjoyed them, is that something you might be interested in?

The thousand autumns of Jacob de by David Mitchell is absolutely brilliant and I strongly recommend it.

I guess you have already read the 'other' Neal Stephenson books like cryptonomicon and the Baroque cycle? They are also well worth a read but kindle would be best as they are very thick.

I'm not getting in with it very well, but you might also like 2666 by Roberts bolano.

Goodness but the autocorrect function on this iPad can be annoying. Hope that last post wasn't too unintelligible.

@MNHubbie The Song of Ice and Fire are currently my favourite books in the history of ......reading. 9 months after reading them. Will they stand the test of time? Maybe. Who can say. I still completely adore them right now though. That's how I felt after ravening throu The Dark Tower series too, and the Gap series. Literary crack, all. The Gap I know has stood the test of time since alive re-read it 5 or 6 times since the last volume was published. The others - bit early to say. I know I like good reads though and I know they aren't literary fiction. I do like literary fiction too, but apart from David Mitchell (who might just squeak in) my all time favourite books are either classics or good reads. Unless we are calling the dance to the music of time sequence modern literary fiction rather than classic. Same with Waugh too, I suppose - although for me, his books are so gripping I feel about them the same way as I feel about good reads.

The person who asked about Ghostwritten? It's my favourite single book. Tied in first place with Jane Eyre. Although its not completely a single book of course, since Mitchell is doing the same thing as SK in making all his books .......something. There are strong links between every single thing he has written so far, common characters etc - so we shall see what we see (and perhaps we shall 'see this very well' ;) )

anyone read "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch? Absolutely brilliant!

I found Cell was a little pulpy but enjoyable and I wasn't expecting much from Duma Key given some of the recent stuff but was blown away.

There is a snobby backlash against him in some quarters.

I highly recommend (if I haven't already) anything by Vonnegut.

Re IQ84, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I did. Really like his earlier stuff though. It just felt too drawn out, characters weren't as intriguing as in his other books. Just didn't do it for me.

sgs you have reminded me about iris Murdoch - I loved the sea the sea years ago. Off to add some to goodreads.

I'm afraid I haven't read some of the books you've read and liked CoteDAzur so I don't know how appropriate a recomendation it is exactly, but have you read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy?

(Apologies if its too mainstream for you to have missed)

In a similar teen-vein, I also enjoyed Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus books starting with The Amulet of Samarkand - a wicked sense of humour. I'm also a huge Potter fan so feel I ought to mention it when recommending books, though most people already have strong opinions one way or another.

I clearly need to tuck into my DH's sci-fi collection, as some have been mentioned here and I've never got around to reading them. Imagine that, great free books that I don't need to pay for or order and I haven't read them. Will remedy that once I've got through my current to-read pile.

I'm another one who enjoyed Middlesex, but did wonder when I first picked it
up how on earth such a dull county could provide the subject matter for a book!

Whenever anyone is asking for a recommendation I always, always suggest Half of a Yellow Sun.

It is wonderful. It's the book that got me back into reading after a post-university aversion and, five years later, I still think about the characters and their fates. I read that it's going to be made into a film soon - mixed feelings about that!

Whoever said they wouldn't read any more David Mitchell after Cloud Atlas, I should say that, while I wasn't too keen on that one of his, there are a couple more of his that I did really like.

The first: Black Swan Green
The second: Number9Dream

Would anyone recommend Ghostwritten, his debut?

Reading these suggestions with interest.

For anyone that likes Murakami, I'd also recommend Banana Yoshimoto as an author. Same ilk of Japanese, eccentric characters.

Also, Donna Tartt (not Japanese, I know!). And thirding (fourthing, fifthing?) Middlesex (I, too, was underwhelmed by The Virgin Suicides. Anyone read his latest?). As an aside, I originally read that in German, and when I picked it up from the library shelf, I thought who on earth would write a book about Middlesex? Glad curiosity got the better of me though, as it's one of the best books I've read.

Oh, and I highly, highly recommend anything by Rohinton Mistry. In particular a Fine Balance.

And the mighty Iris Murdoch. My favourite is The Black Prince.

Was introduced to those latter two authors by picking up a book of theirs each from the charity bookshop I volunteered in. Haven't looked back.

Oh, and not sure if anyone's mentioned it, but recent dystoption fiction by SArah Hall, called either DAughters of the North or the Carhullan ARmy, depending on the edition.

Shades of Handmaid's tale, but enjoyable in its own right.

Ivanhoe - WAlter Scott

I read a varied amount (although probably too much sci fi - second Iain M Banks and REynolds btw and Peter Hamilton), but haven't really touched the 'classics' since I was at Uni.

Thought I'd better start somewhere, so a bit of Romantic (in the proper sense) fiction about mediaeval knights and expelled Jews it was.

I'm really enjoying it! THrow in some spaceships and it's very similar to a lot of sci fi!

CoteDAzur Have you read any Ken Mcleod? Intrusion is his latest one. Fairly near future dystopia, pregnant women closely monitored re cigarettes and alcohol and also expected to take a pill called 'the fix' which removes any genetic imperfections.

I loved Cloud Atlas, Wolf Hall, the Song of Ice and Fire books by George R R Martin.

You could also try William Gibson's more recent books - Pattern Recognition, Spook Country and Zero History?

Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell?

Sorry if I've repeated what others have said - haven't read the full thread.

Oh yes HP Lovecraft (all free through iPhone apps or Guttenberg for Kindle/PC) is gloriously nihilistic.

Stephen King is deeply under rated as a writer critically (although not by sales). I know of very few others who can make characters come to life so quickly in a story and make you empathise with them within very few words (Harper Lee is similar. In fact Mockingbird felt like a King book that had been censored of the horror until you get near the end and realise the horror was there all along just more human in form than most of King's work).

What about Heart of Darkness. I must confess I've given it 3 goes and not got past the first few pages but I know it must be good if I ever do get into it as so many other works are influenced by it.

Dune isn't exactly throw away fiction. It isn't an impenetrably deep treatise on the human soul like some books that disappear up their own bums but it isn't pulp fiction at all.

I've yet to start on them myself but I've heard a huge amount of good stuff about the Books of Ice and Fire.

Oh and have you read the Lord of the Rings and Narnia books? Obvious ones to ask but some pass them over as too mainstream.