The MN summer reading recommendations list 2010: share your top summer reads here

[GeraldineMumsnet]

There have been calls for an Official MN Summer Reading List.

So we're starting one.

Please list your suggestions for suitcase-friendly summer reads on this thread.

Same criteria as book club ie no misery memoirs, sleb biogs, yummy-mummy lit, books with more than 800 pages, or books with no punctuation or capital letters.

Your recommendations can be fiction or non-fiction. And if you agree with other people's picks, please say so, so that we can try to come up with a handy list of your top 10 (or 20) summer reads.

And , a reminder that MN bookclub will be back in September. Details to follow presently.

Thank you.

Second The People's Act of Love. Couldn't put it down.

Arctic, is Ladder of Years the one where she disappears and leaves her family and starts a new life somewhere else? I read it years ago and couldn't emphatise with why she would do that but I can now!

I agree with Brooklyn (one of my favs this year), enjoyed One Day but it is straying into chicklit imo, American Wife v. good too.

I have The Help in my holiday reading pile.

Would also recommend most books by Patrick Gale.

Yes to One Day and Half a Yellow Sun. Also Her Fearful Symmetry is just out in paperback - very different from Time Traveller's Wife but very readable (and not too spooky for a ghost story!)

Decorhate-yes that's the one-I first read it years ago too pre-children but feel it would be great to re-read.

Second "The Lacuna"
also love "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" - lovely, warm, quirky and unexpectedly moving.
For laugh out loud satire and blackness of humour, anything by Christopher Brookmyre.
The Millennium trilogy by Steigg Larsson (sp?)Starts slow, gets gripping.

The Little Stranger, sarah waters

Yes to Half Of A Yellow Sun. Her Fearful Symmetry is okay but I really disliked the last 40 pages or so. I was v disappointed with The People's Act Of Love.

I read a Patrick Gale on holiday either last year or the year before and quite enjoyed it - Notes From An exhibition I think it was called. I thought the characters were well drawn and I liked the little 'museum pieces' at the beginning of the chapter. I was disappointed by the ending though (which seems to be a theme of mine).

I love Ladder of Years too. After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell is brilliant, and I remember reading A Widow for One Year by John Irving a few summers ago and being completely unable to put it down.

gave UP on lacuna
potato thing nice but lite

Who said Nothing to Envy? That is an absolutely mind blowing book. I was gripped from page one - not cheerful, but such a strange and terrifying place. In an office of 12 people, 10 of us have read it and everyone agreed it was utterly compelling.

I would say any of the Shardlake series would make good holiday reading (which don't have to be read in sequence) though I think Revelation is the best.

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld is also a great holiday read. Satisfying and weighty whilst also being a cracking (and sort of true) story.

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, not sure who it's by.

Summery (set in Trinidad), but meaty.

ME ME ME I DID I DID I LOVED IT

in fact as i scraped leftovers off the kids plates last night i had a pang about North korea

pathetic

I've just read one of the Shardlake series, Dark Fire, loved it! I've ordered 3 more and can't wait for them to arrive.

Yes, yes to Shardlake - they are great. Winter In Madrid is good too.

I read A Widow For One Year on holiday two years ago (somebody had left it at the apartments). I thought it was okay but not great and the man is obsessed with sex. I think I have given up on him now, having read that and A Prayer For Owen Meaney.

I told my children yesterday to stop complaining about the fact they were having prawns for dinner because if they lived in North Korea they would be grateful for boiled bark.

I also love Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale! Very readable

The Shardlake books are good yarns, and evocative of their period. Better, I think, than Winter in Madrid.

City of Thieves by David Benioff is a really exhilarating and (at times) amusing account of a dreadful event - WWII in Russia.

The Faithless Wife by Jo Eames, recommended to me by a friend and not well-known yet, is a great book. Page-turning beach read, but also wonderful descriptions of Menorca and fascinating history from the Spanish Civil War.

So agre re food. Like when she traded her pants

Postcards by Annie Proulx, not cheerful but goodness it's brilliant.

Too many people have recommended Brooklyn now (inc. Lucy Mangan on the webchat) going to have to get a copy asap!

Anyone read any of the Booker shortlist?

no but good q
am interested too
like look of the slap - they say good on antother thread

I'm reading Homicide by David Simon at the moment and it is unputdownable, but might be a bit too doorstoppy to fall within the rules.

Ellis island
its looks naff
but compelling
is it?

Loved American Wife and Shardlake series recently too.

Also now reading 44 Scotland Street series by Alexander McCall Smith