This Saturday I will go alone to a bookshop and buy three books. Tell me what to buy.

[Pruners]

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Have you read Charlotte Mendelson's Oxford one - Daughters of Jerusalem?

definate john irving - i loved 'a prayer for owen meaney' or 'the cider house rules' the best.
that Faber book was superb and soo rude!

Black Swan Green just doesn't show you what David Mitchell can do. It's OK, but I think a bit of a publisher's list filler - as it let's put it out, it'll keep him in the public eye - as opposed to the real genius of his first two books. Cloud Atlas is pretty good too, but possibly suffers a bit from having too obvious a Big Ambition

Kathy6", I might have known you'd know already about books I'm interested in ...!

I like marian Keyes

Also enjoyed book Of Lost THings

I'm new on mumsnet today I have just ordered all of the Richard and Judy summer reads off the internet because I am desperately trying to find something to get interested in again. I do a lot of reading but can now find nothing that I fancy in the local library. I'm hoping that out of the books I've ordered I may find an author who's written a few books that I can really get into. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Hmmm.
I think my recent stonker pleasure, Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky, might be too heavy by implication (she was deported to the concentration camps before this fiction sequence could be finished ) but she writes with a cruel lightness of touch and is well worth a look
My perennial modern social comedy favourite is Mary McCarthy's The Group, published by Penguin, might still be in print...
Second the recommendations for Restless, William Boyd is an excellent novelist

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell one of my fave books (but really couldn't get on with cloud atlas

One of the modern day Pat Barkers like double vision

not fictiion but Can any mother help me? about a correspondence group set up post war by a group of mums and carried on for years...just bought it and it has good reviews

and another one for restless by william boyd

not too light...not too heavy...
You've probably tried these but just in case:

my list would include Julian Barnes - maybe "Metroland". it reminds me a little of The Rotters' Club. Alan Hollingshurst's "The Line of Beauty" is also a bit Rotters', but with more shagging.

Ian McEwan - "Amsterdam" or "Enduring Love".

And "The Go-Between" by LP Hartley - about a man reminiscing on events of his turn of the century childhood. It's an easy read, but deeply moving.

The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud?
Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst?
Mother's Milk, Edward St Aubyn (haven't read it yet, but have excited feeling)

On the perennials, for some reason I was thinking about Pruners's reading last night & thought the time may be right for a bit of Evelyn Waugh.

And/or Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Perennials are more library items, though, than buying?

Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. Crapola film, but unput-downable book.

I would suggest A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, Perfume by Patrick Suskind, and would totally recommend any book by Mitch Albom. I'm in the middle of 'if nobody speaks of remarkable things' by jon mcgregor which I personally am really enjoying.

Oh what bliss, to browse a bookstore all by yourself.....

"Every Man for Himself" by Beryl Bainbridge
If you haven't been reading much for a while, I think you will really enjoy this

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Just finished Dorothy Koomsom's Marshmallows For Breakfast, was very good

And just bobbing back in to recommend Helen Simpson's entertaining collection of short stories Hey Right Get a Life

Have just finished reading Kate Atkinson's "One Good Turn". It was excellent, lots of suspense. But not sure if its in paperback yet.

oh yes - all of Helen Simpson, she's an unsung heroine (and also, shockingly, "not on the inventory" of your high street bookshop)

oh but the most recent Helen Simpson is very depressing Bink. Others brilliant.

We do seem to have similar tastes.... what do you think of Elizabeth von Arnim?

Kathy - is that In the Driver's Seat? - I haven't got to it yet. I am crawling, very very slowly & doubtfully, through Tobias Hill's The Cryptographer, which got very ravy highbrow reviews (almost years ago now) but I have to put it down every time a character says "Alright"

because you spell that "all right" goddammit

oh - I must tell you this - I had a look on the web re Driver's Seat and found a techy cataloging database - and the No.1 key subject phrase it is tagged with is

middle-aged women

I was thinking of 'Constitutional' - didn't know there was another.
Thanks for the tip - have just added it to the Amazon order I was in the middle of. (Even if it is as depressing as Constitutional, DH and I will still want to read it!)

I know you want fiction, but am currently reading Francis Wheen biog of Tom Driberg and it is brilliant

Now, re E von Armin ... I don't think I've read anything in recent years but the name & sort of writing is somehow sort of familiar ... perhaps should look again.

Pruners: have recommended it frequently on here, but to add some graphic verve to your shopping basket, Posy Simmonds's Gemma Bovary is very wonderful, and much deeper than you'd initially guess.