It's that time of year again

[janeite]

Long summer holidays coming up, including two weeks in Greece.

What can I read?

I need gripping and exciting novels (no chick-lit, no overly lit-fic) that will last me for a day or two each (read very, very quickly).

Things I have enjoyed recently are:

• all the CJ Sansoms
• World Without End and the other one
• A murder-mystery featuring Oscar Wilde
• re-reading Brideshead Revisited
• the Frank Talis Viennese mysteries
• somebody Kellerman - a mystery about an artist - was a Richard and Judy

Favourite authors ever are Austen and Stephen King but of course, I've read all of theirs.

OK, some books that were surprises to me and that I really enjoyed. They were all recommended to me by a friend who is an English teacher!
Cloth Girl: Marilyn Heward Mills here
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard: Kiran Desai here
The Other Side of the Bridge: Mary Lawson here
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: Jonh Bernendt here
Also, as recommended by someone earlier, if you haven't already read it (but imagine that's unlikely!), A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. It's epic.

The only one of those I've read is 'The Other Side of The Bridge' which a colleague lent me. I didn't like it!

Off to google 'A Fine Balance' now.

The four I mentioned are all very different in terms of subject matter and (to a certain extent) style. A Fine Balance is in quite a differnt class to the others but all in some ways reflect my obsession with travel, which is why I suggested them as holiday reads!

get Owman's World, for heaven's sake.

Or try Magnus Mills. Funny and dark.

What the flip is Owman's World?

Woman's World, that should be. I mentioend it before. It is var funny but no one ever seems to read it.

Woman's World? The magazine? I need WEIGHT woman, not 'twenty ways to cook fishfingers' or 'to perm or not to perm - and other style dilemmas of the noughties' I thought I could rely on you!

here is what I posted on Sunday:

"Tell you what I read a ocuple of years ago and loved. Woman's World by Graham rawle I think. Var funny, pacy, interesting. Try that. Good for a hol, nothing else like it."

Rawle pieced toegther sentences and excerpts from 1950s women's mags to make a novel with a cracking plot. It sounds contrived but it just flows and is so funny.

Sorry! I am tired and stupid.

It sounds like the "New Fast Automatic Daffodils" poem. Very interesting.

Sorry again.

oh don't apologise. I'm tired and pissed off myself

Awww. Am not pissed off - just knackered. Although the headteacher accused me of looking in a foul mood today - I really wasn't, just tired and stressy.

What we both need is a good book methinks! And chocolate would be good - but I haven't got any.

I also feel podgy. Hav escoffed two digestives.

Mmmmmm digestives. I did a 'healthy Sainsbo's order' so the worst thing I have in the house at the mo is muesli. have eaten a bowl but it really hasn't done the trick.

Can you get POST-MT instead of Pre? Because I think I have it!

Right. Have you found anything yet?

I swear I do get post MT as well, or maybe I'm just a grumpy old hag

Finished 'Hawksmoor' - am clearly a thicko because I Just Didn't Get it At All. AT ALL I tell you! WTF was it going on about?

I will return to this thread when I am less stressy and stupid, as I appear incapable of even deciding between biscuit, or cake; black skirt, or purple skirt; sleep or bath at the moment - and books are so much more important than any of those!

I don't get pre-mt never mind post-mt. I have annoyed people in the past by insinuating it is exaggerated. I have been put in my place already, though, so please no one take offence.

Pointy - usually I'm fine but this time I have the most awful sugar cravings and am tired and snappy.

Anybody want to explain Hawksmoor to me?

Ahundredtimes -

no idea yet. Nothing much has grabbed me yet - am sure there are more books out there!

you read The Bone People by Keri Hulme?

Nope - is it good?

it's good, yes, but hard reading at times due to subject matter. I am very bad at remembering books other than good/bad.

Thanks Pointy.

How about Dorothy Dunnett? Or is historical not your thing?(and even for a fast reader they might last longer than a day or two..)
..and post MT is definitely possible,I'm fine pre now but post is another matter.Chocolate is the answer.And sleep.

Chocolate and sleep - they always sound good!

History books, yes. Historical novels, probably mostly no.

Although I read my first georgette Heyer earlier this year and think I could cope with another of hers.