I want to start a reading list from scratch

[FiscalDragQueen]

At 50+ I have just got back into regular reading, not that I was an avid reader before DC, work and busy life. As Autumn set in, I found myself sitting by the fire with a book.

I have read a few books recently that I enjoyed, but also a lot that I thought was meh...that other people seemed to love.

Whilst I have not read as many books as my peers, I have, in the past done quite a few courses where I have had to study e.g. my business degree, work qualifications and more recently I did 3 online courses during the lockdowns. I like to study, I like to learn.

One thing that I am sad about is that I am not "well-read". I watch quizzes and I don't know about Shakespeare or Dickens, let alone the work of lesser-known authors.

Since my new favourite thing to do is relax and read a book, I am now thinking about 2023 and how I want to improve my life. Well, I want to be better read! More accurately I want to read a mixture of books including fiction, biography and classics.

Sitting here though, I am thinking...where do I start?

There's loads and loads of different 'books you should read before you die' type lists if you Google. You could use one of those as a guide. Or plan to read the Booker Prize winner from each year or something like that.

Oooh sounds like a great project. I'd start with classic authors you might not have read yet - E M Forster, Du Maurier and Henry James are my favourites. Les Miserables is an incredible read but it is long. Modern classics I'd say Wolf Hall trilogy and Donna Tartts Secret History and Goldfinch would be top of my list.

Keep an eye out for readalongs on here - they can help books feel a bit less daunting. Someone’s just started one for A Christmas Carol - this is a great place to start with Dickens and obviously very timely.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4679288-adventish-readalong-for-charles-dickens-a-christmas-carol?reply=121604416

There’s likely to be some other readalongs starting in January so see if any of those take your fancy.

I think you'll want to mix it up a bit - modern and classic, short and long, funny and serious. FWIW off the top of my head my recommendations would be:

Jane Austen - Persuasion, Emma, S&S or P&P for preference

Dickens - start with Christmas Carol, then maybe Great Expectations

PG Wodehouse - Jeeves and Wooster, for something lighter but classic and very funny!

Modern Classics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Great Gatsby, 1984, Wolf Hall, Atonement, Handmaid's Tale, The Secret History, A fine Balance

A bit different: Dracula, In Cold Blood, And then there were none,

Biography: I know why the Caged Bird Sings, Endurance, Wild Swans

I don't really enjoy reading Shakespeare so can't recommend.

Don't read Shakespeare (except the sonnets) watch the plays. Start with Kenneth Branagh's film of Much Ado About Nothing or Leo DeCaprio's Romeo and Juliet.

Anyway, books. The most interesting list of 'must reads' I've seen recently is the one for the Queen's Jubilee: Big Jubilee Read. It includes books from the last 70 years from all around the Commonwealth and so is an excellent survey of recentish novels from around the English speaking world.

What were the books that you enjoyed OP? That would give a good starting point for recommendations.

Personally, I think that with your admirable goal of starting from scratch with an aim of becoming more well-read, you should begin, rather than getting random "favorites" here, with something more official, any of the lists (or books) of the "best" chosen by libraries or scholars.

Great books in this list: apart from Don Quixote which is a chore.
amp.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/12/features.fiction

This is pretty much definitive, you probably can't go wrong with sticking a pin in it and working from there (except if you pick Don Quixote).
www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction

I'm guessing you are not a fan of Don Quixote then @DrAliceHamilton 😂

The trouble with a lot of older lists is they are predominantly written by dead white English speaking men. But they are useful springboards to find books you like. Reading the 50 and 25 booker threads on here will give you an idea of books to read as well.

Things that I have read that I loved:

Where The Crawdads Sing - LOVED this for the rich, beautiful writing and descriptions.
I enjoyed The Paper Palace
The Secret Life of Bees
I love some biographies. I enjoyed the recent one by Miriam Margolyes, Chrissy Hind, Viv Albertine, Scar Tissue.
I like historical fiction and have enjoyed Philippa Gregory's main novels

I don't really like books that are love stories or what I call modern day Mills and Boons. I also don't like Caitlin Moran's books.

Not sure if any of that helps.

I've just finished one of the above and I am about to open The Silence Of The Girls by Pat Barker. I was reading The Salt Path, but I just cannot get into it and have put it down.

I think it sounds like you're after readable yet still literary type books.

Hamnet could be a good one for you.

Also, consider some Barbara Kingsolver (Prodigal Summer is my favourite and not her most widely known about)

Ann Patchett fits your bill. Haven't read anything by her I didn't enjoy. Bel Canto was my fav.

Atwood too. The oryx and crake trilogy.

Sebastian faulks Birdsong is wonderful.

Try some Sarah Waters too.

And I'd throw in the odd biography and classic. Don't get too bogged down with the classics, they can become tiresome. But look at Wide Sargasso Sea and read Jane Eyre one after the other for an alternative take.

Finally, I really enjoyed Burial Rites by Hannah Kent.

I like seeking out debut novels, it's a good way to search for stuff and encounter new authors.

Tell us about a book you enjoyed?

One book that I came to late in life but would really have missed out if I hadn't read is Dickens' Bleak House.

I can feel so many books crowding into my head that I want to tell you about but it's a bit pointless, you will discover your own. An idea is to go to a bookshop and tell them you want to read more classics and ask for a recommendation.

But I will tell you what has helped me with a lot of classic/more challenging books, and that is reading one chapter at a time. Many classics were in fact written to be read that way, particularly Dickens. I used to like just gulping down a book at top speed- I still do - but it's easy to hit a wall with more complex books that way. For example, i tried to read Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie so many times and got so overwhelmed and stopped. But in fact, the chapters are really short - 20 pages each. And the setting often changes with the chapter, it's almost like a series of short stories for a long time until later in the book. Reading one chapter at a time made it manageable and I ended up loving it.

That's a fabulous project.

Obvious things like Jane Austen, and Dickens. More modern, I'd include Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Chocolat.

What about poetry. John Betjamin, or Dylan Thomas' Under Milkwood.

For historical fiction books that I enjoyed:

-The Unbroken Line of the Moon by Johanne Hildebrandt (only the first book, the others are rubbish!)
-The Glass Palace by Amitav Gosh

• Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

... and my top spot for recent reads is The Puzzle Women by Anna Ellory

PS, I don't know why the formatting is so rubbish...

This BBC list is from 2003 so won’t have the most recent good ones, but it’s a really good mix, voted for by readers:

www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

From Lord of the Rings, to Midnights Children, and everything in between (including Harry Potter!) I have dreams of a retirement project to fill in my gaps - I am quite well-read but with notable admissions and I’d love to approach it systematically. For non fiction I just look in eg Waterstones for things that pique my interest

Thanks, @DrAliceHamilton.

I've always been curious about Quixote, and hope to read it at some point, as I'm particularly fascinated at the comment, long ago, of it's being "the best book in the world," which is a reminder of how few novels there were to choose from centuries ago.