Recommendations not chick lit or thrillers?

[bendanana]

Just that really!

Looking for a book or two for a holiday. I haven't read anything for ages - I don't want to waste this reading opportunity!

Not a big fan of chick lit. I will read it and generally forget it after about a day!

I want something that will move me and I want something that my mind will go back to again and again.

Be really grateful if people could tell me of books that have just made them want to go right back to the start and read it again. The kind where you feel jealous when you lend it to somebody who gets to read it for the first time. Not asking for much!

The Hearts Invisible Furies
Small Island
11-22-63
Sarum
A Thousand Splendid Suns
The Last Kingdom
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Help

James Herbert Ash

Mo Hayder Pig Island

The Poisonwood Bible
Poppy Shakespeare
Bad Blood (Lorna Sage)

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
The Gendered Brain by Gina Rippon

The Shepherds Life by James Rebanks. I first read it a few years ago its really stayed with me.

Where The Crawdads Sing

The Shadow Of The Wind

Eleanor Oliphant

Les Miserables
No stage play or film can live up to the book. I carried it everywhere. Stayed in a hotel room rather than go out and walk so I could continue to read (and surprised the lady who came in to tidy as I was sobbing at the story!)
Less moving but definitely stuck in my mind The Electric Michaelangelo
And unputdownable sci-fi by Orson Scott Card, Enders Game

Engleby by Sebastian Faulks
All the Light we Cannot See by Antony Doerr
Never let me Go by Kashuo Ishiguro (sp)

Kissed by an angel

Fernie by James Long. I have read this at least 3 times and it is my go-to purchase for book loving friends. Each and every one of them have loved it too.

All the light we cannot see

The hen who dreamed she could fly. Sun-mi Hwang
This is an amazing story about being a mother, parenthood, life. The main character is indeed a chicken! It’s quite a short story so you could get through it in one sitting (if you so wished)

The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. Set in USA during WW11

Keri Hulme - The Bone People

Robert McFarlane - The Old Ways

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, it's my favourite book and I wish I could read it for the first time again.

Dorothy Dunnett, The Game Of Kings - historical, leads into a series but you can read the first one as a standalone, one of my favourites ever, very rich and complex
Francis Spufford, Golden Hill - historical
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion - fantasy in vaguely Spanish world
Marina Endicott, The Little Shadows - set in the North American vaudeville circuit in the 1910s, and absolutely lovely

Have you read All the Light We Cannot see?

A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel
The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell

The space between us. By Thirty Umigar. About women caught up in the Indian class system

This is going to hurt by Adam Kay, its memoirs from a junior doctor. It was very funny (and heartbreaking in places) easy, entertaining holiday reading.

Some great suggestions here. I'm also going to recommend:
The hearts invisible furies
A thousand splendid suns
All the light we cannot see
Cutting for stone
Some of my all time favourites.

I'm just back from holidays and read 4 books when I was away. Would really recommend 'the trouble with sheep and goats' and 'room'

Thank you! I have now come back from holiday without having seen any of these suggestions 🤦‍♀️ I read a Victoria Hislop book (The Sunrise) which I enjoyed I've read a couple of her books so it worked out ok.

BUT I have invested in a kindle so shall be downloading these recommendations. I read thousand splendid suns and kite runner a couple of years ago and that was exactly the sort of thing I was thinking.

Thanks again!

cheesecake I've not read this but I plan to! Thanks.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Harrowing but heartwarming