What book should I read?

[Katzpur]

Some of the books I've read and really enjoyed over the past few years are:

Not Without My Daughter
Follow the River
Year of Wonders
Pope Joan

If you have read at least one of these and liked it, you should have a pretty good idea of the kind of books that appeal to me. Please don't bother to just tell me your favorite book. I may not like it at all. If, on the other hand, you can recommend something I might like, based on the four books I listed, I would very much appreciate your giving me some suggestions. :yes:

 

[Quagmire]

You might like The Kite Runner, Katzpur.

The Kite Runner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It was kind of an eye-opener.

 

[Katzpur]

You might like The Kite Runner, Katzpur.

it's so funny you'd mention that one. My mother and my husband both just finished it and loved it. When I started this thread, I thought, well... if I don't get any good recommendations, maybe I'll try The Kite Runner.

 

[Quagmire]

it's so funny you'd mention that one. My mother and my husband both just finished it and loved it. When I started this thread, I thought, well... if I don't get any good recommendations, maybe I'll try The Kite Runner.

I recommend it. It really pulls you in. I love books that can take you out of yourself and put you into someone else's world for awhile.

It kind of did the same thing for me that The Joy Luck Club did;
got me taking a second look at some of the people I run into here and there from other cultures and countries and thinking, "that person has a story, quite possibly one that would blow my mind".

 

[Katzpur]

I recommend it. It really pulls you in. I love books that can take you out of yourself and put you into someone else's world for awhile.

It kind of did the same thing for me that The Joy Luck Club did;
got me taking a second look at some of the people I run into here and there from other cultures and countries and thinking, "that person has a story, quite possibly one that would blow my mind".

The Joy Luck Club moved too slowly for me. It was interesting, but I'm really looking for something I can't put down.

 

[Buttercup]

Well, I haven't read any of those books you mention so I hesitate to suggest any as I'm not sure what genre those books are. However, if you're into English history at all, I'm reading The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir. It's written well and is quite engaging.

I'd also recommend White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Both my daughter and I really enjoyed that novel.

 

[Quagmire]

The Joy Luck Club moved too slowly for me. It was interesting, but I'm really looking for something I can't put down.

The Kite Runner is pretty fast paced by comparison. The only objection I had was that there are a cpl of incidents which I thought were something less than credible, but those are easy to overlook.

 

[Katzpur]

Well, I haven't read any of those books you mention so I hesitate to suggest any as I'm not sure what genre those books are. However, if you're into English history at all, I'm reading The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir. It's written well and is quite engaging.

I'd also recommend White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Both my daughter and I really enjoyed that novel.

What's White Oleander about?

Not Without My Daughter is non-fiction, a biography more or less. The others would probably all be considered historical fiction.

 

[Quagmire]

Well, I haven't read any of those books you mention so I hesitate to suggest any as I'm not sure what genre those books are. However, if you're into English history at all, I'm reading The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir. It's written well and is quite engaging.

.

I started reading that right after The Other Bolyn Girl (which was also pretty good if not completely accurate historically). :yes:

 

[Watchmen]

The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

It may be the best novel I've ever read.

 

[Katzpur]

The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

It may be the best novel I've ever read.

What's it about?

 

[Watchmen]

What's it about?

Here's a description from amazon.com that's better than anything I could probably come up with:

Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehanehttp://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/RBCH4O6PXBKOE/

 

[Watchmen]

Katz, I would add that it is at once the most depressing and most hopeful novel I have ever read. I really can't recommend it enough.

 

[Katzpur]

Katz, I would add that it is at once the most depressing and most hopeful novel I have ever read. I really can't recommend it enough.

It sounds really, really cool, actually. I'll have to go out this weekend and buy it. I do think I'll read Kite Runner, too. Everybody I have talked to likes it.

 

[Nepenthe]

Katz, I would add that it is at once the most depressing and most hopeful novel I have ever read. I really can't recommend it enough.

I have to second that. Any time I see The Road mentioned I have to trumpet my praise of McCarthy's works in general. Lets hope the film does the novel justice. I was stupid enough to read this shortly after the birth of my son- it was like being kicked in the chest repeatedly but still a literary experience unlike any other. Amazing book.

 

[Buttercup]

What's White Oleander about?

Not Without My Daughter is non-fiction, a biography more or less. The others would probably all be considered historical fiction.

Oh, weird. Normally the Amazon links let you read the back book cover (I embedded the link to Amazon in the book title in my last post) but I went to check it again and it was only the Henry VIII link that had that option.

Anyway, Wiki has a better synopsis of the storyline than I could probably write.

White Oleander - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Katzpur]

The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

It may be the best novel I've ever read.

I just finished it, Watchmen. I wouldn't say it was the best novel I've ever read, but I enjoyed it and am looking forward to the movie. My son agrees with you about the book, though. He said it's one of the best, if not the best, book he's ever read.

 

[Alceste]

You've probably found loads of books by now, but if you liked Pope Joan you'd probably like Ken Follett's historical fiction - Pillars of the Earth and World Without End. They're more dense, but I couldn't put either of them down. Both are among the top ten best-crafted historical fiction novels I've read.

I also like Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon, and another one about Troy from the POV of Cassandra and other female characters (female-centred myth retellings = guilty pleasure.) If I can remember the name of the second one I'll let you know.

For autobiographical stuff along the lines of not Without My Daughter (which I haven't read), Escape by Caroline Jessop is pretty good.

 

[Autodidact]

Is Not Without My Daughter where her Muslim husband keeps her daughter in some Muslim country and she has to kind of escape with her? And it's non-fiction?

If so, and if you like that, you might like (or hate? It's FLDS) stuff like Church of Lies, by Flora Jessup.

 

[Autodidact]

Katz, I would add that it is at once the most depressing and most hopeful novel I have ever read. I really can't recommend it enough.

Have you read A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. God I loved that book. I haven't read The Kite Runner, but I bet A Fine Balance gives it a run for depressing and hopeful. It's a big Indian saga, and it's largely about the tragedy of poverty and the hope of human kindness.