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.

I think the hunger games is becoming increasingly better as they introduce the prequel books!

The Martian. Andy weir

Yellowface

The Venice hotel Tess woods

Birnam wood Eleanor catton

I’ve just finished Love’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne.

A journalist friend recommended it but when I found out that the author also wrote The boy in the stripped pyjamas, I was slightly put off. Anyway, one of the best written books I’ve read in the past few years, I’ve downloaded a few of his other books to get me through the summer.

If you lean towards classics I suggest these authors
RF Delderfield
Winifred Holtby
Horse by Geraldine Brooks is new and a good read

I loved Long Island Compromise. I read an interview with the author and she said she devoured a book called The Rachel Incident, so I read that as well and also loved it.

• Diane Setterfield’s books are beautifully written and were the first books I’d read in ages that had me totally engrossed - especially Once Upon a River
• the Red Tent
• Secret Life of Bees
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez books especially One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera (weird but gripping and beautifully written)
• the His Dark Materials series (I’m basing this off the Harry Potter reference as I guess they’re kind of ‘teen’/‘young adult’ but they’re such good stories, though I prefer the later ones to the first one! There is then a bit of a universe of books around the series - the Book of Dust trilogy (last one due this autumn) and some other shorter stories)

I had an horrific reading slump a few years ago and the book that got me out of it was Ishiguro's 'Klara and the Sun' which I couldn't put down. 'Never Let me Go' by the same author might also be good.
Have you tried the Shardlake series? I guess it falls into the detective category but might work as a bridge between your liking for the Strike novels and more classic fiction.
The author that leapt out at me when I read your list was Jane Smiley. Maybe '1,000 Acres' which is a retelling of King Lear in the Mid West, but I would begin with the trilogy which starts with 'Some Luck'. This tells the story of an extended family over 100 years. There is one chapter a year from 1900 and so it's quite episodic and easy to pick up and put down (although I raced through it).

This is a shorter book, and aimed at teenagers, but The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Stefan Ross is brilliant and worth a few hours of anyone’s time. It won the Carnegie Medal in 2023 and it’s one you can get through in one sitting.

Middlesex is an epic tale, Half of a Yellow Sun is excellent. We need to talk about Kevin is gripping and very clever, Never let me go is brilliant. A pp mentioned the Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling. I really loved it too, very well-observed.

The broken earth trilogy by N. K. Jemisin. Beautifully written.

Here’s a few, all very different so hopefully something to deslump you 😊
I sometimes find a short story can lift me out of a slump.

The Heart’s Invisible Furies
Lessons in Chemistry
All my Mothers
The Maiden
The King’s Witches
Tomorrow (not to be confused with Tomorrow & tomorrow & tomorrow)
Ask Not
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
The Little Liar
That Bonesetter Woman
Fingersmith
One Hundred Years of Lenni & Margot
Lilith

Foster, by Claire Keegan.

Short, well written, evocative.

Clear, by Carys Davies.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Elena Ferrante - neopolitan novels
In cold blood - Truman Capote
Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood
A farewell to arms - Hemmingway
Red Dust Road - Jackie Kay

If you don't mind scifi try Backyard Starship. It's light hearted and fun once your into it.

Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Fresh Water for Flowers by Valerie Perrin
Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn.

Seconding Discworld. They are such funny, wise and humane books. Start with Wyrd Sisters, or Guards! Guards!

Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine also fabulous.

I might get this suggestion wrong as unsure of your age, but did you read Jacqueline Wilson as a child? She bought out an adult novel last year x

If you liked The Talented Mr Ripley try A Kiss Before Dying. Great mid century psychological thriller.

A secret history
Seven lives of Evelyn Hugo
Lessons in chemistry
The Rosie project
Dracula
Slow Horses

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A thousand splendid suns
There are rivers in the sky
The Goldfinch
The curtain twitchers book of murder
Never let me go
also love the Washington Poe series but might not be for you!

Agree with pp about The Hearts Invisible Furies but also anything by John Boyne, all his books are great.

The Engagements - Courtney Sullivan

The Moment - Douglas Kennedy

The Guest List - Lucy Foley

The Burning Air - Erin Kelly

Anything by Lisa Jewel but particularly her early stuff - Ralph's Party, Vince and Joy.

His water/earth/fire series is great too!

Came here to say this!

Also, Kindered by Octavia Butler, that one should be a classic, instead, I think, it's a hidden gem.

If you want something more modern, try Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törz