To ask for recommendations for a really long amazing book?

[theotherfossilsister]

Something I can immerse myself in. I like historical fiction (Wolf Hall and BUTB, The Crimson Petal and the White, All the Light We Cannot See) but open to anything big and brilliant and immersive.

Oh I also love The Cazalet Chronicles which were recommended on here, and really enjoyed I Claudius despite thinking it would be dry (it wasn't dry.)

Any recommendations please?

I’ve downloaded this onto my kindle, it was only £2.99. Looking forward to it.

Agree with Neopolitan novels. Haven't rtft but has anyone mentioned The Love Songs of W.E.B du Bois? I couldn't put it down.

Loved these too. Also thought the characters were great. Yaki!🙄

@NorthFaceofthelaundrypile I've already mentioned it on this thread but if you liked Homegoing, I think you'd love The Love Songs of W.E.B du Bois. Similar themes.

Just skimmed the thread but didn’t see Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean Auel.
It’s 1st in a series and they’re all huge

Passion by Jude Morgan - follows the lives of the women who surrounded Byron, Shelley and Keats. I also love his The Taste of Sorrow, about the Brontës, but it's not such along read. Both absolutely beautiful works of fiction.

Haven't read all the posts but here are a few that probably haven't been mentioned

Neal Stephenson - Reamde, Anathem, Seven Eyes

Norman Mailer - The Naked and the Dead, The Executioners Song

Vassily Grossman -Life and Fate

Jonathan Littell - The Kindly Ones

George Eliot - Romola

Honore de Balzac - Lost Illusions

Mary Stewart's Arthurian series, starting with the Crystal Cave. Indirectly led me to be living where I am now.

Epic books that I loved include: A Suitable Boy, Shantaram, Anna Karenina, The Secret History and The Grapes of Wrath.

East of Eden
Alias Grace

War and Peace is a cliché but it's a jolly good read. I enjoyed it more than Anna Karenina. Good for long winter evenings.
A Suitable Boy.
South Riding by Winifred Holtby.
The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald.

Alison Weir’s Six Queens series is good - a book about each of Henry VIII’s Queens - fictionalised, but I think she is a good historian, so they are pretty accurate, and well written.

Anything by Sharon Penman (all historical fiction) especially The Sunne In Splendour (Richard III)

The Hearts Invisible Furies.

It's such a beautiful, sad but amazing book. Follows the whole life of an Irish boy, who happens to be gay. He lives in various countries in his life. Covers the aids crisis, changes in how homosexuality was viewed over time, Forced adoption in Ireland. Really very very good.

How did I forget to put this book on my list? I Absolutely loved it as second this recommendation.

The promise by Damon Galgut about White South African farming family really gripping read won the booker in 2021

For a long book I found War and Peace fairly easy to read - I can think of many others not even that long that are much more turgid - Ulysses and The Brothers Karamazov for starters.

@beguilingeyes - Penman's books are great - my personal favourite is When Christ and his Saints Slept - the 12th century civil war between Stephen and Maud

I agree @ManAboutTown about Brothers Karamazov, I couldn't get into it, but I loved Crime and Punishment!

Haven’t read the entire thread, but in case it hasn’t been mentioned already, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. Listening to the audiobook now - loving it.

If you can find it then Lady of Hay is quite quirky and a bit mad about a woman who regresses to past lives?

Possession by A S Byatt

www.goodreads.com/book/show/41219.Possession

www.amazon.co.uk/Possession-Romance-S-Byatt/dp/0099800403