To beg for your help with book recommendations?

[Justneedabookto]

I am having a horrendous reading slump, and when the weather’s so beautiful I really need to find one to engage me so unashamedly posting here for traffic.

I’m sick of reading detective novels where the detective has a rocky home life/murdered wife/dying parent.

I also don’t want to read anything with terrible writing (I know that sounds obvious), corny dialogue, or is absolutely predictable. Nothing that takes four pages to explain that the curtains are green.

Please can anyone give me any recommendations that I can get in the morning and enjoy reading in the sun again? It’s been months since I read something I really enjoyed.

I liked/loved:

Gone with the Wind
Forever Amber
Nevewhere (read before the allegations)
We Begin at the End
Wuthering Heights
Rebecca (actually most of Daphne Du Maurier)
The Talented Mr Ripley
Harry Potter
Animal Farm
Call of the Wild
Vanity Fair
Misery
The Strike series

I did not like/hated:

The Old Man and the Sea
The Catcher in the Rye
Corelli’s Mandolin
Jane Eyre (LTB)
The Great Gatsby
Apples Never Fall
And, as mentioned above, the books which are written in the style of ‘her legs shook as the hunk ripped off her bodice’, or anything about opening book shops and ice cream vans and finding the man of her dreams.

Can anyone help? Willing to look at any genre, any country, any age. Just want interesting characters and a good story that’s also well written.

Any recommendations gratefully received.

Lonesome Dove is fantastic.

I've recently read King of Ashes by SA Cosby about a man who returns to his home town because his father is in hospital and has to help out his brother who has been caught up with the local gangsters- avoid if you don't like violence

Lazurus Man by Richard Price about a building collapse and the characters involved, it's quite philosophical and clever

Thank you! I like the sound of that. It’s saying it’s book three of four - do I have to read the other two first?

I have recently read and loved:
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

All of those are very recently published though, and you seem to read a lot of literary fiction classics. Maybe check out recent prize shortlists for the modern equivalents?

All the Colours of the Dark

Have you tried discworld?

I enjoyed the Rook and Rose series. The first book is The Mask of Mirrors. It's a bit of a mishmash of fantasy, historical novel and crime.

Thank you. I don’t mind recently published at all, but it’s so hard separating the good from the average. With the classics, they’re usually classics for a reason.

Bleak House/Dickens. Took me a few decades to read it but it is SO good.

War and Peace/Tolstoy. I had to read the first couple of chapters as if it were a spoof of 19th century writing because it was so over the top, but once I got into it, I left that behind and loved it.

Midnight’s Children/Rushdie. A fucking awesome hot ride of a book with brilliantly short chapters - just read a chapter a night (bit like Dickens really).

The Plot Against America/Roth. A counter factual novel about fascists being elected in America in the 1930s. Roth’s most human and most involving book imo. Some extremely dark parts but it is so gripping and really plausible.

No, what is that?

Nope, the others were written around it really and it's the best in the series (although the others are still worth a read!).

You will like Mrs March by Virginia Feito I PROMISE.

I love anything by Rose Tremain - any of them!

Claire Chambers too

Classics: Dickens, Hardy, Tolstoy

If you like crime but hate the detective element then I highly recommend Janice Hallett, all are good twists on the usual murder mysteries.

For a really good read I like I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves.

@Justneedabookto A series by Terry pratchett. There's 41 ( I think) books. You can start wherever you want in the series. If you liked neverwhere you might like discworld

Do world is Terry pratchett, I’m not a fan sadly! Really struggled to get on with them.

The best recent ones that come to mind that I’ve enjoyed are:

A man called Otto
Elinor Oliphant is perfectly fine
The Midnight Library
NightBitch
Daisy Jones and the Six
A Little Life
The Goldfinch
A Life of Pi

Elena Ferrante - My Brilliant Friend quartet are good for summer reading.

I've just finished (as of 15 mins ago) The Ministry of Time- enjoyed that.

I really enjoyed Never by Ken Follett too last year.

Time and Time again by Ben Elton was a good read.

I've recently read The Criminal Mind by Dr Duncan Harding and really enjoyed it.

If you like Harry Potter and Strike, how about The casual vacancy?
My favourite books recently have been:
The Penguin Lessons - just genuinely delightful without being twee.
Demon Copperhead - very different to the above, but I haven't been as invested in a character's fate for a long time. Am planning to read David Copperfield soon for comparison before reading it again.

Recent, but deservedly very popular; The hunger games, or His Dark Materials.

The Thursday Murder Club books are a great read - easy but funny and good characters.

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I second Claire Chambers, partly because she captures (a) the messiness of being a young adult and (b) bookish folk in south London so well.
I’m currently gripped by American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld - a woman’s journey through life from her 1950s childhood in the mid-west onwards
x

Some I have really enjoyed in the last year or so:
Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver
The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
Gentlemen & Players - Joanne Harris (and its sequels)
Engelby - Sebastian Faulks

Also I’ll take the opportunity to recommend:
A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki