So which book did you love that you just randomly picked up?

[Coatdegroan]

I have just read "In the Springtime of the Year" by Susan Hill. I'm not a very accomplished or complicated reader... its not everyone's cup of tea but I was spelll bound by it. Picked it up in a second hand bookshop for 50p. Very understated and quite sad, but beautiful reading.

Anyone else had a surprise lovely read?

The House with the Stained Glass Window by Żanna Słoniowska. I saw this in the bookshop having never heard of it but ended up loving it. It's set in Lviv and there's such a strong sense of place, made me want to visit thisbeautiful and historic city. Not that that is possible at the moment.

@PeskyYeti make sure u read the rest in the series I think there are 13 books and some smaller numbers he’s in between.

then when u have done that go on and read the time police which is the spin off. Love any work Jodi Taylor does.

Yes I've read it all now! And the donkey series. The only one I didn't like was the weird period one written by Barclay

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym - I think think I even realised how much I enjoyed it initially, but its become one of those books I read at least once a year

Also Diary of a provincial lady by E M Delafield

I picked up a book called "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits" by Ayelet Waldman at a book swap, and ended up loving it.

My partner knows her, apparently she is lovely

Randomly picked and listened this audiobook from my library's app! So good!

Back 20 years, I got 2 books free with magazines in a short period. To my surprise they were both excellent and I've re read them many times.
A Slipping Down Life by Anne Fine
Burning Bright by Helen Dunmore

There was a third one about a young doctor, recently qualified, who had a difficult relationship with her mum, who may or may not have cancer. It was also very good but I've forgotten the title.

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome, was abroad on a school exchange, neither the family nor my exchangee were friendly or welcoming and it was awful! Found this on a bookshelf there and bizarrely loved it!

Pachinko. Most people probably read it five years ago but I only just picked up a copy. can't wait to watch the tv series now.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid - an amazing book!

I also got Burning Bright with a magazine (was it More?) and have loved Helen Dunmore ever since!
Talking to the Dead is also fantastic.

Rosemary's Baby - I'd seen the film years ago and wasn't too fussed about reading it but it really gripped me. I even woke up in the middle of the night and kept on reading - and then couldn't get to sleep as it was too scary.😆

I loved that in fact anything Korean related highly recommend the orphan masers son as well
but a TV series how exciting when ?

The Well by Catherine Chanter - I picked it up on a holiday cottage bookshelf and couldn't put it down.

what a wonderful thread. I've just downloaded The Card on my library app. Thank you @JohannSebastianBach

When I moved to the US 30 years ago I went to a second hand shop and bought a beautiful old mahogany table for almost nothing and also a copy of Susan Howatch's Glamorous Powers for 50 cents. The table served us all these years and is now in my son's flat. I adored that book and was thrilled to realise it was a series and have read and re-read all the starbridge books over the years.

I also picked up Agustus Carp Esq by Himself in a secondhand shop in Ireland - what a joy. I gave it to my BIL who teaches in a US university and he put it on the list of "Books professors think you should read before graduation" on the university's website.

Also discovered The Papers of A.J Wentworth B.A in a second hand shop - another joy.

@Pallisers enjoy it!

Just finished ‘Educated’. It was stunning.

The Girl With No Name by Reine Andrieu, a book by a French author translated into English. The central part of the story is about a little girl with amnesia just after the Second World War but also tells the tale of the events leading up to it, concerning a well-to-do French family and a German soldier. I learned a lot about the war from the French point of view and just how courageous the members of the Resistance were.

The Movie by Louise Bagshawe. I got it free with a magazine and read it so many times it fell apart.

Dunno why, really. Just fun escapism.

Pleasant vices - I think it is by Trisha Ashley. - free with. A. Magazine - hilarious - recommended it to Many friends who also loved it

Connie Willis’ The Doomsday Book, which I found abandoned on a windowsill in my college, and picked up out of curiosity. I don’t read sci-fi/fantasy, it got key things about Oxford/the college system completely wrong, and the idea that, once time travel had been developed, it would only be an academic technique for historians, is a bit mad, but I was gripped by it — history undergraduate is accidentally sent to the Black Death when a modern pandemic hits.

Squirrelsnut I was about to say the same thing about A Slipping Down Life! It is by Anne Tyler not Fine though.I fell in love with her writing and have read everything of hers ever since. I got it as a magazine freebie too but it must have been 30 years ago as I was doing A levels at the time, and roughly the same age as the main character . It certainly doesn't feel that long ago though. I remember the cover of that Helen Dumore one too, but can't think what your third book may have been.

I do remember a freebie dirty book from a mag at around that time, something like The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. We all passed that one around but I can't say it has had such an impact .

Another surprise to me was Rough Music by Patrick Gayle. I bought it in a charity shop because I liked the cover and just instantly got into it. I love his books, he makes me cry.

Anno Dracula by Kim Newman - picked up in Smith's at Waterloo (in the days before 1,000 e-books on your phone / Kindle) when I needed something to read on the train home. Terrible cover - in fact so terrible (black with raised, blood dripping Gothic font & vampire bat) that I had to read the blurb. Reimagines Dracula as a real aristo who marries Queen Victoria & vampirism becomes the fashionable thing to do in Victorian London - meanwhile Jack the Ripper is a vampire killer. The story is clever & I'm still spotting characters from history, film & novels who pop up in the narrative.

Kim turns out to be a leading authority on horror films & mates with Neil Gaiman and Mark Kermode.

Storyteller by Dave Grohl, I still no nothing about his music, apart from Nirvana. An acquaintance and I swapped books after Christmas, she got a copy of the green roasting tin, which I already have, I got this. I was spellbound from start to finish, what an absolute unexpected treat