I would like a recommendation please.

[Lonelymum]

Now don't dismiss me as an airhead, but I recently really enjoyed reading the Harry Potter books (against expectations!) and would like to read something similar. I am not talking children's books, or school stories, and preferably not fantasy books either although if you know one that really fits the bill, you could mention it. What appealed to me about HP was the mentor/protege relationship between Dumbledore and Harry, and the fight for good over evil.

Anything to recommend?

Pullman is fantastic - definitely read the trilogy if you like the good vs evil angle of Harry Potter.
Never contemplate starting that Jonathan Strange malarky - OMG, it is one of the few books I have ever refused to finish on the grounds I could feel my mind gently imploding from boredom with each word

I had a good look round the bookshop yesterday and I have to say, the one department I felt uncomfortable in was the section devoted to true crimes. I didn't notice the black and gold so much as the faces of criminals staring out from the covers. Must be great to be a criminal and then, when you get a bit old to go around beating people up and breaking and entering, you can write a book about your life for the next generation of misfits (Moondog excepted!) to read.

Hausfrau - great book HGIMV, have you read it? Moondog, the shameless Welsh nationalist, has not!

It's still by my bed lm!

I hate myself for wanting to know about nutters who tie up girls and keep them under their beds or Dennis Nilssen's social life but I just can't help it.....

I know, I have read the odd crime story myself too although I prefer the Victorian/Edwardian crimes - they seem a bit "nicer" with the distance of time inbetween.

I would have thought you could have read HGIMV by now! It is hardly intellectually challenging!

Ooh lm,you can be so withering at times!

I have piles of books waiting to be read by my bed.I still read a lot but MN has really made adent in my old bookworm ways.

Lol at 'nicer' crime.

I'm reading Andrea Levy's 'Small Island' (just won the Orange Prize I think) at the moment.

Also very into travel writing, but as I travel so much, often find myself in the incongruous situation of being in one new place and reading about another,which can't be right....

Hey,for a real laugh try Tim Moore (travel writer.)
Also extremely erudite and elegantly written.
I love him.

Oh maybe HGIMV is not quite cerebral enough for you then. Funny isn't it? I picture you with your pile of books, picking out the intellectually challenging ones and leaving the pop fiction unread.

Me, it's the other way round. I have at least 4 weighty tomes sitting about untouched (in some cases for years) while I read Harry Potter!

Oh no,no,no,I read plenty of crap!!

I read one HP. Liked it but didn't feel it offered anything new.Just seemed a mix of tried and tested formulae. Maybe that's why it's such a success?!

I have heard that complaint about HP before. TBH I only read them because ds1 has read them and I wanted to keep up with his reading. I didn't expect to like them, just thought I could read them quickly and know what ds1 was talking about. I am not claiming they are literature as such and I daresay they are not original, but I do find them very readable and I love some of JKR's ideas - like the talking portraits who move from one picture to another, for instance.

Also, as I read each in turn, I found myself falling for some of the characters. I particularly feel motherly towards Harry. Dumbledore is obviously a Merlin-esque figure and as a good Celt, of course I am more than familiar with the Arthurian legends!

I also like the fact that I have read them before the series has been finished - rare for me to be reading contemporary fiction - so I still don't know how it will all end and can read them again for clues as to what I think might happen in the last book.

I am but tbh I hate all that Celtic swirling mist folklore crap.....

I loved it when I was a teenager. Not what I read now though I admit.

I always seem to fall in with Americans who want to discuss Celtic folklore and symbolism with me when I really only want to discuss Southern rock and the blues.....

Another vote for Northern Lights etc.
I think it's a fanstastic philospohical theory, a beautiful love story, a cracking action adventure, an inventive fantasy world (but not in the Dungeons and Dragons way) and a kids' book with veryv high expectations of the reader. In that order.
I laughed, I sat on the edge of my seat, I hungered for more, I wept and I wept and I named my daughter Lyra Read 'em! There must be some good deals on buying the whole set 2nd hand on Amazon.

I vote for the Pullman trilogy too. Not really my kind of thing, but I loved them and found they were much better than the one Potter book i tried.

lol dizzymama, I had exactly the same experience with Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Yawn ... ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZz