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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Books that have stayed with you.

243 replies

FrostyChocolateMilkshake · 06/02/2021 01:31

Currently reading a book called Unravelling Oliver and I already know it will stay with me; the writing is fantastic but the subject matter is surrounding domestic violence. A powerful read so far.

Another book was The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. Based on the murder of Sylvia Likens in the 1960s (don't Google if you are easily upset).

So AIBU to ask, what is a book that has stayed with you and why?

Any recommendations (I enjoy controversial books in particular) would be greatly appreciated too.

OP posts:
hullabaloo68 · 07/02/2021 22:27

Nearly all of Stephen Kings books Liseys Story is brilliant

MrsCods · 08/02/2021 00:49

Do you think authors come on these threads and recommend their own books?

babybythesea · 09/02/2021 18:42

@theDudesmummy

All LM Montgomery (not just Anne) Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon
My eldest is called Emily for reasons not unconnected to LM Montgomery!

And to LesleyA
An Equal Music - a thousand times yes! I give that book to people when I discover they are a reader and I need a good book to give them for a birthday present!

ThatsAllFolks · 09/02/2021 19:42

Bloodman by Robert Pobi. Best crime novel I ever read and I have read a lot

alltoomuchrightnow · 09/02/2021 21:35

Hullabaloo , is Lisey's Story the book that keeps mentioning bools? I just couldn't get into it. I could never work out what a bool was either! I've just googled and still unsure! Does anyone know....in context of the book?

hullabaloo68 · 09/02/2021 21:53

@alltoomuchrightnow bools are clues and prizes a blood bool is more of a punishment. I loved the imagery of Booya moon in the book

alltoomuchrightnow · 09/02/2021 23:46

ah thanks! yes blood bool sounded v ominous. Such a word I'd never heard of

Inpersuitofhappiness · 09/02/2021 23:52

The knowledge of whores- an excellent book about the spread of HIV around the world. Really bloody interesting. A book I recommend to everyone yet no ones ever interested in reading.

The gift of fear- was recommended here a few times so I read it. Its a book everyone should read, as a woman it teaches a lot we need to know, and for a man it allows you to see the dangers women often face that men don't even give a seconds thought. Its a book that has taught my husband to be more aware of dangers myself and my daughter could face.

Princess- a book about a middle Eastern princess, it went into detail about womens lives in the middle East, a really interesting look at culture and how women are treated.

These are my 3 books that will always stick with me.

redpencil77 · 10/02/2021 00:37

Bloody Outlander books, for the discrepancies, lack of historical depth and facile characters along with gratuitous sexual violence. Diana Gabaldon (garbled-on) has a place in literary hell.

I am spoiled by Margaret Attwood, Bernard Cornwell amd Terry Pratchett.

redpencil77 · 10/02/2021 00:39

Positive sticking with me books: Narnia books, John Masefield plus his poems, the Hobbit - not so much LOTR - the Little White Horse. Any Enid Blyton adventure book.

User2847473 · 10/02/2021 01:07

Late Fragments by Kate Gross- cancer memoir written for her children.

Also Mans Search for Meaning. How he survived mentally and physically is beyond me.

User2847473 · 10/02/2021 01:10

Also Henrys Demons a very frank honest memoir of a sons schizophrenia also deeply sad and insightful into community mental health written by his father also a journalist with chapters by his son.

EBearhug · 10/02/2021 02:38

There are loads of books which have stayed with me. Plenty of children's books - Blyton the Dark is Rising, Narnia, Just So Stories, Laura Ingalls Wilder, KM Peyton, Biggles, Tolkien. An anthology called I Like This Poem, also a Child's Garden of Verses. Then Pratchett & Gaiman's Good Omens. Douglas Adams. Alexander Cordell - the Fire People. Browning's Pied Piper of Hamelin, but it has to be the copy my grandmother wrote out for me and illustrated on every page in watercolours.

Also, we had a couple of slim books by R Meurig Evans - Children Down The Mines, which was extracts of interviews to the Royal Commission that led to the 1842 Mines Act. Those books and Cordell are a strong reason why I ended up with a history degree that included a dissertation on 19th century industrial and social Welsh history.

We passed a tattered copy of Lace round at school, and Flowers in the Attic. But it was Judy Blume's Forever which the headmaster confiscated from us in the playground.

I read a book called We Were Young and At War, which is a collection of teenagers diaries from WW2, from all round the world. The one which haunts me most is of a boy in Leningrad, who starts off all positive, going to the People's Palace and having fun with his friends, then all those things stop and it's more about finding food, because of the Seige of Leningrad - eventually his mother and sister are evacuated, but he is too weak to walk, and his mother is too weak to carry both children, so he's left alone in the flat, and the diary ends up tailing off because he dies of starvation, all alone this poor boy who had been so full of life and hope at the beginning.

Hailtomyteeth · 10/02/2021 02:43

The Source - Michener
Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
Our Lady of the Flowers - Jean Genet

Nearly fifty years since i first read them.

o8O8O8o · 10/02/2021 03:19

Adrian mole and hitchhiker's guide 😊

Dunairbeanat · 10/02/2021 04:16

Quite a lot of Bs on here

Florence95 · 10/02/2021 07:11

As a kid:

  • Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)
  • Bridge to Terabithia (Katherine Paterson)
  • We were liars (E. Lockhart)

Now:

  • Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
  • All the light we cannot see (Anthony Doerr)
  • Secret history (Donna Tart)
  • When breath becomes air (Paul Kalanithi)
  • A little life (Hanya Yanagihara)
Dingdong99 · 02/03/2021 07:16

I'm half way through American Dirt as it was recommended on here - I can't put it down!!

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