For Those With Time To Read!! - we wish!
Cathy in Guildford, England
Caroline in Worthing, England
Steve in Toronto, Canada
Allan in St Andrews, Scotland
Diane in San Francisco, USA
Irene in Edinburgh, Scotland
Ok Guys. I have often got wonderful book tips from you.
Steve, you gave me Depak Chopra and your fellow Canadian Margaret Attwood.
Allan, I loved Robert Girardi and we share a love of Iain Banks. Cathy,
you gave me Joanne Harris and many others.
Caroline, I think you gave me the wonderful Louis de Berniere.
Diane (and Scott) you gave me Laura Esquivel and the sublime Larry
McMurtry. Irene, we do wonders for the UK postal service.
So now I have some time, I want to indulge myself. Can you tell me what your
favourite all time top 10 books are so I can read them. Take time to think
about this and I am sure you will enjoy doing it or just off the top of your
head.
Also your top ten great books read in the last year. Even trash is OK.
Entertainment is fine too.
Mine are (this is sooooo difficult):
Janis's TOP 10 ALL TIME FAVOURITE FICTION
Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austin
The woman in white. Wilkie Collins.
Chocolat. Joanne Harris
War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts. Louis de Berniere
Great Expectations. Charles Dickens
House of Spirits. Isabelle Allende.
Middlemarch. George Eliot.
Rebecca. Daphne du Maurier.
The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien.
Dune. Frank Herbert.
So is this a virtual international book club? How sad is that? Well it is a
pretty exclusive one. OK now it is a blog too! Add your comments please.
Janis's MOST ENJOYED IN THE LAST YEAR or TWO
The DaVinci Code. Dan Brown.
Daughter of Fortune. Isabelle Allende.
Big Stone Gap. Adriana Trigiani
Love in the Time of Cholera. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain.
The Time Travellers Wife. Audrey Niffenegger.
The Shadow of the Wind. Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
Amsterdam. Ian McEwan.
The Blue Afternoon. William Boyd.
Gentlemen and Players. Joanne Harris.
This is really difficult. I had to exclude the wonderful Anne McCaffrey,
Yann Martel, Donna Tart, Martin Amis and my favourite Iain Banks.
Obviously enjoyed the Garth Nix's and the Harry Potters and of course the
sublime Philip Pullman's Dark Materials. Maybe shouldn't mention childrens
books though.
Also I haven't listed the great Lee Child, James Patterson, Jonathan
Kellerman, Robert Harris, Patricia Cornwell, Minette Walters, P D James,
Nelson de Mille, Michael Crichton, Quintin Jardine, Jeffrey Deaver and Ian
Rankin thrillers.
Ok I await with interest. In the meantime I am embarking on War and Peace
and I am going back to reread all my old Graham Greene and John Steinbeck
favourites.
If you think this is all a rather frivolous use of my time then you are
absolutely right. (I am also doing some worthy learning, and mega business
stuff for boards, honest).
See you all soon. Janis x
CAROLINE'S LIST
Well here we go – the order changes according to mood but this is today’s! I hope the addresses all work!
1) Jonathan Livingstone Seagull – Richard Bach …… doesn’t take long, is completely uplifting,
2) To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee …… absorbing, evocative, shocking, beautifully written
3) Persuasion – Jane Austen ………. "How quick come the reasons for proving what we like"
4) Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold …… this book lived with me for weeks/months afterwards
5) Ending Up – Kingsley Amis ……. I read this years ago - humour, great observation on growing old - and living in Worthing it somehow seems appropriate
6) Number One Ladies Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith …. I’ve read all the series so far but the first is best – love it for the times when life seems unnecessarily complicated – light and fun
7) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres …… the opening sequence is superb – take hankies
8) Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks …… powerful, terrible, graphic illustration of life in the trenches in the Great War
9) The Bridges of Madison County – Robert James Waller …… more hankies
10) Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden … fascinating
I could add the poems of Thomas Hardy, the Chronicles of Narnia, early Harry Potter and books by John Grisham, Robert Goddard …..
Caroline
x
posted by Janis at 9:20 AM
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