Isolation reading recommendations

[SorchaMumsnet]

Hi all

If you're self-isolating, or indeed just spending a lot more time at home now, what are you currently/planning on reading and why?

We're creating a page with recommendations so would love your help - whether you're doing any of the following (or something completely different):

-Seeking out time-appropriate dystopian reads (ie Station Eleven mentioned on this topic already)?
-Steering clear of that and plumping for escapism/light reads?
-Deciding it's time to tackle that 600-pager you've been putting off?

All the best, and happy reading

MNHQ

id rec karin slaughter for the crime lovers.she is one amaing woman.and you get sucked into her series you will never go back,and will fall for the characters you follow.
pillars of the earth books.they are huge which is part of whyi love them.
emma hannigan books are beautiful reads.shes no longer with us but her books are wonderful.they have lovely irish flo to them all.
georgia hill books are lovely.
cathy kelly
claudia carroll
sarah morgan is chic but very racey,no qaurm of sex scenes
gervase phinn again are wonderful uplifting book.he has one series where you follow him as school inspector,and another in a different school setting
david baldacci
harlan coben
jane linfoot
cara hunter
phillipa ashley are lovely warm books
louise candlish is a woman who loves a ending twist

I love Kate Atkinson and realised I hadn't read Life after Life. Really really good and reading what people went through during the blitz is very sobering.

Highly recommend a gentleman in moscow - amor towles Read it a month or so ago and now want to read again - very appropiate for my situatiion in lockdown!

The robin hobb books are great!

Lionel Shriver - the mandibles is a nice bit of dystopian fiction

Rosalind Pilcher is lovely peacefulness

Classics are nice and meaty - a good time to read war and peace or life and fate by vasily gross man for a Second World War novel.

With thanks to my teenager, Sarah J Maas is a really good fantasy read and the books are huge! Very very readable...

I'm planning to re-read Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies and then the Mirror and the Light. Depending how I'm feeling, I'm going to try middlemarch!

@RamsayBoltonsConscience - The Mirror and the Light is book at bedtime(?) on radio 4. Episodes 1-5 on iplayer at the moment - read by Anton Lesser (he who played Sir Thomas moore in the series) - www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000gcvz

And of course, Georgette Heyer for some romantic escapism

Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez - started so many times but never finished so far. Maybe I’ll finish it this time.

@Nowisthemonthofmaying, is the Few Eggs something you've acquired recently?

@SorrelBlackbeak Rosamunde Pilcher is exactly what I need right now.

I love, love, love the Chronicles of St Mary's series by Jodi Taylor - it's series of time travel books set in an alternate universe, but it's very jolly hockey sticks with a great female lead. Cheering at the best of time and there are around 10 books so will get you through the whole sitch.

I'm on R.F Delderfield. Currently reading The Avenue about a series of families and their ordinary lives in the post WW1 period.

I'm alternating this sort of thing with 99p Kindle psycho killer books. Loads of them are crap but you get through them quickly.

Also rereading children's classics Lion Witch and the Wardrobe last week.

And listening to HP on Audible.

i remember loving the historian years ago! currently reading steven king’s the stand, seemed pretty appropriate

There are so many good recommendations here. I'm wondering whether to start my AbeBooks account up again and bulk buy.

Surely one of the best for classy read plus escapism must be Cold Comfort Farm. It's like an ultra rational AIBU inhabitant heading off into the country to sort it all out. You can read it in a day or very pleasurably spread it out over a week.

📚

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. It's a fictionalised account of Eyam and is strangely uplifting.

The Stand, Stephen King.

Can somebody remind me of the name of the book of the family (from Liverpool?) whose fortunes go from good to dire, but their wealthy family won't help.
Is it Ken Follet?

Year of Wonders sounds good Lang. I was only reading about the village today.

One more thing.....

Marcus Corvinus by David Wishart,

I had to re-read the surname - I have Coronavirus on the brain

I misread that too!

The power

The Foundling .

@Footle ~ Few Eggs is published by Persephone Books, so it is currently available.

I’m really enjoying Emily Barr at the moment.
She’s a travel writer too so her stories transport you to some amazing locations. Really needed when in isolation.

@AdaColeman , oh of course , thank you. I'm reading Verily Anderson's Spam Tomorrow, with fascination at the WW2 parallels and differences, especially in medical and child care.

I normally love a dystopian but I'm avoiding anything even remotely dark at the moment. Which means there's only one author that'll do for me - PG Wodehouse! I'll probably take a break to re-read Three Men in a Boat, too.

I signed up to book bub a while ago. They send you a daily email based on your subject choices of e-books on offer from Amazon Kindle and/or iBooks

www.bookbub.com/welcome