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.

One of my favourite books is Weaveworld by Clive Barker.

I enjoyed the sequel to Gone With The Wind, Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley, although I read it many years ago.
Jodi Picoult is one of my favourite authors.

I really loved Burial Rites. Last book I read that truly gripped me.

Lisa Jewel’s early stuff was a bit too chick lit for me.
Her later books are more psychological thrillers.
I like Marion Keyes, Liane Moriarty and Dorothy Koomson too.

I really liked

How to kill your family - Bella Mackie
Cassandra in reverse - holly smale
Preloved - Lauren bravo
The girls I've been - Tess sharpe

Ooooh I think we have very similar tastes, loved Rebecca and so many others on your good list and also agree with most of your unlike list too. I read great gatsby twice because i thought i must have missed something but it was just as dull second time round.

Anyway for classics i also liked middlemarch, the woman in white, and north and south.

For more recent things I really like Claire chambers and Dorothy koomson and Erin Kelly but some of these books might fall into the category of detectives with troubled pasts.

Other books I’ve enjoyed recently were the go between by l p Hartley and also in memoriam by Alice Winn.

I love the books on your list so think we have similar taste :)
I agree with PP you will like Clare Chambers books.

I would also recommend The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and The Dutch House by Ann Patchett.

Fried Green Tomatoes by Fannie Flagg
Tales of the City series by Armistead Maupin

Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovich
Boys of Tommen series by Chloe Walsh.

• Gabriel Garcia Marquez books especially One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera (weird but gripping and beautifully written)

i do agree - Love in the Time of Cholera is a fabulous book which stays with you. My favourite.

i also like I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Sorry, but you do know there is a book section on mn. So, YABU

I recently read
The Giver of Stars - JoJo Moyes about female librarians in rural America. Really enjoyed it (more than I thought I would) and it was an easy read.

My advice would be to pick something you're interested in. Eg. I find Ireland fascinating, so Milkman, Trespasses, small things like these are so good.

I also read Killing Thatcher- I don't think you mentioned non fiction, but it's so good. Written like a political thriller, but true!

Try a William Boyd- any human heart is the classic and deservedly so but lots of other good ones too. Currently reading restless and really enjoying it.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith
an Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris
Are my favourites

I love Marian keys and Cecelia ahern
I also recommend John Connolly the charlie Patker series and Karin Slaughter Will Trent series