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.

My copy of Nothing to envy arrived this morning I am already engrossed.

it is fab

#becomesevangelical

Alaska - we should swap reading lists, because I too fancy The Slap but didn't want to buy in that silly big paperback format. Made me think of MN.

right
what elese have you read?
do do do do read htis is fabioso

The Help is one of the best books I've read in a long time (yes, written in the vernacular but it so brings it to life....). I laughed, I cried.... (and I don't that often!).

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was really good once you get past the first 90 odd pages... its worth the perseverence. I'm now on the 3rd book of the trilogy and cannot wait to finish work so i can get the train and read on.

The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna - brilliant

Alaska - dh will LOVE that book! Will rustle it up on Amazon.

Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher is a satisfyingly substantial read and the Seventies bit is v well done.

I bought a book recently and left it on a train having only read two chapters. Can't remember the author or title but it was about a guy running a private security firm who gets called to an alarm at a client's house. Was shaping up to be FAB. I would be really grateful if anyone can help!

I'm currently reading and really enjoying My Life in France by Julia Child.

Of the books mentioned above I've also loved The Help, Brooklyn and American Wife.

I have

The Help
The Lacuna
The Art of Keeping Secrets (or something like that)
and
Her Fearful Symmetry

in my holiday book pile so far - probably take another. Wanted the new Jonathan Coe but couldn't be bothered by the trade paperback format.

That doesn't help much as I haven't read any of them to recommend or not.

Of those mentioned that I have read -

Yes to Half a yellow sun
One Day - prob a good holiday read if not requiring anything heavy
Potato Peel - Def a good holiday read if not requiring anything heavy
MAggie O'Farrell - Yes, esp After you've gone.
Am about the only person who doesn't like Stieg Larson - read the first one but only because everyone told me I would get into it and I didn't.
Patrick Glae - yes

No one else will back me up on this one as no one has probably read it but it is fantastic - and would make a great holiday read, esp if you don't want to talk to anyone - www.amazon.co.uk/Molokai-Alan-Brennert/dp/0312304358/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280419952&sr=8- 2. I keep recommending it in the hope someone else will read it but don't think anyone else has.

Love, love, loved - "The Shack", insightful, "Have a Little Faith", great story, "&%$^&* My Dad Says", tooo funny, Annie G Freemans Fabulous Traveling Funeral,great read, "Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons", great fun,and love mysteries,three of my most recent - "Ice Cold", and "Violets are Blue", "Shutter Island". I download them on my Barnes and noble e-reader on my laptop- then I can read outside, in the car, or at night without a night light!!!!!!! love it, any book at my fingertips!!!!! Don't you hate that when you finish a book during naptime and are itching to get a new one - no prob with the e-reader!

Another vote for the Shardlake books - have preordered the next one for September. Found Winter in Madrid completely unmemorable though.

Also enjoyed The Catriona McPherson Dandy Gilmore books

Keep dabbling with The Slap but for every good review I see I keep coming across a 'meh' one.

Nothing to Envy looks like it will be next on my list..

Oh I quite enjoyed some silly-ish Oscar Wilde mysteries by Giles somebody or other who was/is a Tory I'm afraid but his books are quite fun and clearly well researched for Wildean details.

Probably awful for anybody who doesn't like Wilde though.

They would be lightly diverting for holiday reading I think.

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets made me want to throw up. We had to read it for book group; afterwards, no one would own up to having nominated it.

Oh that doesn't sound good Cyteen - I only got it because it was recommended on here. Ah well.

Just finished "The bed I Made" by Lucie Whitehouse, very Sophie Hannah-ish. Good holiday reading especially if you are going to the Isle of Wight.

It's definitely superior chick-lit, Wheelybug, but chick-lit all the same. Not really my bag, although I did like the descriptions of the clothes

My fave summer book ever was Gone With The Wind. Oldie but a goodie.

Just finished "The Return" by Victoria Hislop. Loved it - a great book to take on your hols

yy Half of a Yellow Sun. Really very emotive in parts, had me in tears!

Reading Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas at the min, not as good as Pop Co but better than The End of Mr Y for anyone else who likes her stuff.

I've also started The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey and it seems to grab you right from the start.

for something a bit different Cavalier and Clay or Sputnik Sweetheart...i think they are both under 800 pages and funny/heart warming and mysterious all at once. LOVE them.
Anything by Terry Pratchett gets my vote, I can re-read them all.

The Collaborator by Gerald Seymour
The Ghost by Robert Harris (about a ghost writer, not the spooky type!)

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey - the story of a marriage between a French woman and an English man expats in Trinidad from the late 1950s to the mid-noughties. Excellent writer, fab setting - You will love if you like the Caribbean

The Given Day by Dennis (Lehane)- same author as Shutter Island - epic novel, great characters set in Boston.

Agree The Slap looks v good but £13 in waterstones so couldn't justify it! Requested a few of the Booker list from the library but may be waiting all Summer them. Bookshop man told me 4 not published yet either.

Some great looking suggestions here, thanks!

Can't remember if anyone has mentioned White Tiger yet. I enjoyed that hugely. I also enjoyed the book that became Slumdog Millionnaire but I can't remember what it's called or who it's by!

I have just finished 'Jane's Fame' which was excellent - non-fiction and you need to like/know a fair bit about Austen to appreicate it. It has a good mix of academia, silliness and is full of love of Austen plus various scathing comments and wonderful Austen quotations from all sorts of people, from Churchill, to DH Lawrence to Helen Fielding!