maternity leave starts in 2 weeks - recommend some books !

[Myneaux]

Hello all

I am due to start maternity leave in 2 weeks and then have another 4 weeks to go until the birth.

Everyone tells me to enjoy the time off, sleep, relax etc etc.....trouble is Im not very good at doing any of that!. I have a few little jobs saved up to keep me occupied but I know I am going to be really bored after a few days (and I want to avoid any ill advised mammoth spring cleans, garden renovations which seem a good idea at the time but knacker me !).

So....i really enjoy reading a good book but find it difficult to choose. Do you have any recommendations? To give you an idea, I like well written (but not too weird) novels, history and biographies and can do just about any genre (except chic lit and maybe true crime). To give you an idea books I have enjoyed in the last few years are Life of Pi, Time Travellers Wife, A History of Tractors in Ukrainian, White Tiger, Dream Cloud, Sea of Poppies.

many thanks in advance !

I think if you go to any reasonably upmarket bookshop and choose a few things off the front table, they'll probably match in with what you've described here.

Am just that you can read books at all during pregnancy - it does something to my brain so all I can concentrate on is pg/childcare or stuff I've read before. Have now reached the point of not being able to remember what it's like to read

For light reads I do like anything by David Lodge or Bill Bryson. As time goes on you're probably going to want light light light easy reads, as you won't go that long without falling asleep. Even if you're not normally that kind of person.

PS If you're feeling pretty fit and likely to get bored, it's a good idea to plan an outing every day, to reduce the stale feeling.

The Kate Atkinson jackson Brodie novels are an easy but intelligent read. Anne Tyler, Barbara Kingsolver, Donna Tartt 'The Secret History', Sarah Waters 'Fingersmith'. For your classics I'd recommend Wilkie Collins 'The Moonstone' and 'Woman in White', Thomas Hardy 'Far from the Madding Crowd', Tolsoy 'Anna Karenina' and Daphne du Maurier 'Rebecca'. God, I'm so jealous, textbooks are all I get to read these days!

Try Suzannah Dunn - very good writer, has done historical and more modern fiction, in a similar style to some you mentioned.

I find it easier to go back to a really good teen/children's writer when tired or under the weather eg Philippa Pearce, Jan Mark etc as they are easier to finish/fall asleep to, without losing a good story/style.

Good luck!

Give in and read the Twilight books I couldn't concentrate on any books in pregnancy at all, so glad I'm not the only one

Buy some Mills and Boons to read on the loo if you get a stop-start labour.

By a hypnobirthing/hypnotherapy cd

go for lots of walks

I second Donna Tartt The Secret HIstory
Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Paul Auster The Brooklyn Follies
Margaret Atwood The Edible Woman

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

Off to amazon to order me some books as we speak

Have you read any Colm Toibin or Salley Vickers? And my favourite read of the year so far was Vanity Fair by Thackeray - I never read Victorian stuff but a friend recommended it (after I was complaining I have always found Dickens really dull, she prefers Thackeray) - it's long, but like a really well written soap and with very short chapters which are useful if you keep nodding off / going to loo or fridge etc.

ooo, yes, I second Reikizen! Barbara Kinsolver "The Poisonwood Bible" - great book - read it in one go on holiday once!

My mother and I had a chat today about how to weed out our huge collection of paperbacks to give to Oxfam and we agreed we would both only keep books that we really loved and might read again - the sort of books where you are a bit sad at the end because you have finished reading them. (there are no undiscovered gems in this list - they are all bestsellers)

Memoirs of a Geisha
The Lovely Bones
Sour Sweet (gorgeous slice of first generation chinese in London)
The Girls
Perfume
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
Wild Swans
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Colour Purple
Like Water For Chocolate

I also used to really enjoy the Jean Sasson books eg Princess, Daughters of Arabia etc which detail the lives of women 'behind the veil' in the Saudi Royal Family. A mix of opulence and comparative female repression.

Looking back at your list of 'likes' you might like Raj by Gita Mehta, good story in historical context (1800s India) and maybe The Rice Mother - I loved this but the last chapter went very slightly Danieel Steele which was a bit odd !

I thought of another one - We Need To Talk About Kevin
Am going to stop posting now and write a favourite books list in my notebook of lists as three posts on one thread is a bit greedy. Perhaps I should go hang out in the book club threads which I have never looked at

Funny thing is I have a stash of very well reviewed books that are likely to make my keep list (Time Traveller's Wife, Birdsong, Book Thief) but I have just not got round to reading them because the blurb on the back doesn't grip me. If anyone wants to do a hard sell on these to persuade me to read them I am all ears

Ooh have you done the His Dark Materials trilogy? They're a total treat if you haven't...

Iain Banks - The Crow Road - I love this book, and I have also enjoyed everything else on OP's list.