What is everyone reading?

Just finished The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood which was fabulous, and I've started an Elizabeth Jane Howard one (The Long View) which is clever but making my head hurt. Both libary books.

Am most pleased to read on here that Barbara Kingsolver has got a new one out, her Poisonwood Bible is one of my all time favourites.

I just finished Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Really liked it. Haven't read her Purple Hibiscous..so will read that too soon
I've just started reading that Bill Bryson Thunderbolt kid one...but thinking of giving up as he is annoying the shit out of me.
I have Beryl Brainbridge's Every Man for Himself waiting in the wings

Sorry, Marina

Marian, I was given Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise as a present so I'm looking forward to reading it. Will I need the tissues?

Just started "A Piece of Cupcake" and trying to finish the "Rights of Man".

I'm reading Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I'd never heard of her before I read the on-line review in the Guardian, but I do like her writing style and the book itself (a year in the life of a family being almost entirely self-sufficient)is turning out to be a bit of a joy.

its time blooming rogue apostrophe

I'm reading the Journal of katharine mansfield which is a very bookish kind of thing to read...it has little sparks of brillliance and is kind of desparing and very much of it's time..the thing i don't like is how they use initials J. came today and we visited K. and M. but I do like the little scraps of writers lives in diaries and notebooks and journals

Well I set myself a challenge of reading all the Richard and Judy summer reads which I have just finished. I liked the Memory Keeper's Daughter, How to Talk to a Widower the Jane fallon one in particular. Did not rate Savage Garden at all

Not long ago I finished Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise, which was one of the most memorable and moving books I've read in ages. It's not new though, published in pbk a while ago.
Dh has just finished One Good Turn, and loved it. He is almost a bigger fan of Kate Atkinson than I am
Oh, and I also liked Vikram Seth's Two Lives, about his uncle and aunt. Magical.
Mark Haddon is on my list, and will also look out Joshua Ferris.

It's probably been mentioned before, but 'The Secret Life of Bees' is an absolutely wonderful book.

Oooh niceglasses - Middlemarch is my favourite book EVER EVER EVER.

I'm reading Alistair Campbell's diaries.

Don't know if these are your thing but some great books I've read recently are

We Need to Talk About Kevin
Cloud Atlas
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
The God of Small Things
After You'd Gone

ROFL at chick licks

If you like Cloud Atlas - have you read Number 9 Dream and Ghostwritten? I think they are far more special than CA. (But I don't really rate Black Swan Green.)

If you are going somewhere where you can read and read & haven't read those two, arm yourself with them!

Yes I was bink, but got waylaid by Cloud Atlas and tiny tots - am off on holiday tomorrow so maybe I'll get a chance to finish it while away (ha!). Glad you enjoyed it. I'll let you know how I get on.

Have on the go a silly puffery thing by an over-promoted young gun called Thirlwell. Hear my sepulchral warning groans and AVOID.

Best thing I've read this year was Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End. I think that's fab, in so many ways ... midnightexpress, weren't you reading it?

term limits
taking america back...one politician at ..a...time.

all about killing polititians in america - bingo! unless they stop their corrupt ways and start running america properly

i think michael moore will turn up as the baddie

I thought spot of bother was a good read too. COuldnt get into cloud atlas too much. I have just started reading salem falls.

Have also just finished "A Spot Of Bother" which I quite enjoyed - a bit lightweight but it made me laugh so fine for one of those books that you briefly enjoy and then instantly forget.

Ladida - I've read "The Girls" recently too but didn't think much of it to be honest. I loved the beginning but then thought it really didn't live up to what it could have been and it all got a bit voyeuristic and weird. In the end I just found myself thinking - well go on, hurry up and die then - heartless fiend that I am.

Have just started a Peter Straub (not read any of his before but like the ones he's done with Stephen King) but managed 4 pages this afternoon before falling asleep on the bed in a Pimms induced haze, so can't really have an opinion on the book yet!

Cloud Atlas, and it's fabadabadoo. Took me a while to get into it but I can't put it down now.

I passed on The Island to my mum and she rang me tonight to tell me how much she enjoyed it. It was one of dh's buys - he is very good at choosing books!

I'm currently reading Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner - about a bored American suburban housewife who tries to find out who murdered a fellow "mommy". It is very American, which grates a little at times, but well written and full of some great comic touches. Am only a third of the way in but enjoying it.

MrsSpoon, I'm also reading One Good Turn - I've liked Kate Atkinson from her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and I'm also a crime fiction reader - and her character, Jackson, listens to a lot of my favourite music too.

Then I will probably return to Andrew Taylor's Lydmouth novels, a crime fiction series set in the 1950s - I read 5 of these in June/July but it's taken me a while to find the next one in the series to read it.