Find me some books for Christmas

[flamesparrow]

I want to give my sister a list of books to choose from to buy me for Christmas... GOOD books - ones that I will want to keep and read again (so preferably not chick lit/easy read murder type).

What do you suggest? Now is a good chance to gush at me about your favourite books

The Curious Incidence of the Dog in The Nighttime - By somebody Haddon
Time Travellers Wife
Anything by Elizabeth Berg, Angela Huth
Personally I would love all the Rebecca Shaw Village books

Thankyou! Any more please?

The Quincunx by Charles Palliser is a book that has had an awful lot of praise on here and will stand reading again and again.

And when you have read it you can come back and tell us what you think of the ending!

A SUPERB book (IMO) re-discovered by my book club, and voted our favourite of all, was 'The Scapegoat' by Daphne Du Maurier.
Basic story goes - a man meets his physical double and is persuaded to swap lives for a week - he starts to interfere and it all goes Horribly Wrong ( or marvellously right, perhaps...). You have to suspend a little disbelief that he could be accepted without question as the other man, but once over that it is a fascinating story with lots of moral questions, insights abouit how people behave to each other, and to my mind a terrific premise. Wouldn't you love to step into somebody else's shoes for a while?

oops, just noticed there was a Daphne Du Maurier thread not so long ago. can you tell I only get 30 seconds at a time to look at MN?

You are all lovely people - I'll give this 2 more bumps and then give my sister the list

One last bump... any more?

The Lovely Bones?
A set of classics - Jane Austen esp. ?
Poetry books - I'd especially recommenr Carol Ann Duffy as someone you can keep going back and dipping into - but I also love Jonne Donne, Gerard manley Hopkins and Philip Larkin for bathtime reading!

These are fairly easy reading but only because they are so well written (in my opinion!!!).

Jonathan Coe's The Rotters Club (and the sequel, The Closed Circle)

Any of Henning Mankell's series with Kurt Wallander as the detective (Before the Frost is the most recent one but I think the best in the series are Sidetracked and One Step Behind). They are translated but they are written well and his descriptive scenes are great.

Alan Hollinghurst The Line of Beauty

Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Star of the Sea

I know this much is true or She's come undone both by Wally Lamb.

The pursuit of happiness by Douglas kennedy which isn't like his other books

Thankyou all lots - I'll go sort out a pile of amazon links now ... will have to update you after Christmas with what I get!!!