Trying to work out what to read next.
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Barker, Nicola - Darkmans
Clarke, Susanna - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell , The Ladies of Grace Adieu
Faulks, Sebastian - Human Traces
Guo, Xiaolu - A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
Haddon, Mark - A Spot of Bother
Hill, Reginald - The Last National Service Man
Kressman Taylor, Katherine - Address Unknown
Jones, Lloyd - Mister Pip
McCarthy, Cormac - The Road
McEwan, Ian - Atonement
McEwan, Ian - On Chesil Beach
McGrath, Patrick - Dr Haggard's Disease
O'Farrell, Maggie - The Distance Between Us
Robinson, Marilynne - Gilead
Sinha, Indra - Animal's People
Tyler, Anne - Digging to America
Zola, Emile - L'Assomoir
I realise that this is a very odd start to the list; it should appear under childhood or adulthood. But I read it in 2003, and gave it to my mum to read immediately afterwards, and she enjoyed it aswell. Vintage reissued it as a Modern Classic recently, elevating it from its ghetto of forgotten teenage classics.
I won't watch the film; I hear it's awful, and I won't spoil what must be one of my five favourite books.
A slightly controversial choice, maybe. This book is gripping and haunting. I read it in bed, in two sittings, I think, and couldn't get on with normal life until I'd finished it.
This is like the Da Vinci Code but without the bad writing, without the shallow attempts to undermine Christianity with the flimsiest of theories (like trying to shift a ten tonne rock with a piece of A4 paper), without the film with Tom Hanks, without the stupid cliffhangers at the end of each chapter, as if it's an American soap and without the sinking feeling at the end of the book that you've just wasted an important part of your life. In short, not much like the Da Vinci Code at all.
I was reluctant to include this, given that everyone has read it. Everyone in the world. And it was on the Richard & Judy Book Club, that bastion of trite, middlebrow, homogenous books that the big conglomerates churn out. But that attitude's just pure snobbery! It's a wonderful book, truly very romantic but not horribly sentimental. And I think that many people must find that it resonates with them, as I did, otherwise it wouldn't be so popular.
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