What's your book of the year?

The Thread by Victoria Hislop. It was one of those books that was difficult to put down, just wanted to know what was happening next. Not a lot of housework was done for a couple of days!

I was really surprised at the content - he is one deep person!

He was on Radio 6 today. He was saying that Stevie Wonder wanted to play Tommy in the film. Then I switched to Classic FM so didn't hear any more. Going to get Neil Young's autobiography which has just come out.

Just read Pete Townsend's autobigraphy and really enjoyed it- if only Roger would write one too!

The Secret River by Kate Grenville (this author is new to me).
It's the best book I've read for ages- it's really superb. She is a gifted writer and I highly recommend her.

Nice to see Penelope Lively has been made a Dame. Who else would we suggest?

Thanks Jess, have just read your post and downloaded The Crimson Petal and the White - I love my Kindle! Yes the Claire Tomalin Dickens biography is brilliant - what a wonderful writer she is.

I have read 3 really good non-fiction books lately and it is hard to choose between them...
I think though, Smile or Die by Barbara Ehrenreich gets it, for her swingeing attack on the tidal wave of positivism that has swamped the USA and affected all of us.
Crimson Petal and the White definitely my non-fiction winner.
Looking forward to reading Tomalin on Dickens, I enjoyed her biography of Pepys.

Annobel thanks for the reminder, and I totally agree. I've just read the biography of Bruce Chatwin whose work I enjoyed and who also intermingles fact with fiction. He was a hero of mine,but having read the biog. I realise he wasn't a very nice person! Oh dear!

The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I'm only on p188. I have to keep putting it down because I'm so shocked and my guts are all churned up with the horror of it. Yes, I knew about apartheid in South Africa. Yes, I knew the southern USA was openly racist at the time, but I didn't realise just how bad it was. The same bull-headed ignorance is what drives creationists now, I suppose. Gives your belief in humanity a bit of a thump, a book like this. But it is great because of that and because it is well written.

Very hard to choose. I have just finished Claire Tomalin's wonderful biography of Charles Dickens. I found Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows: How the Internet is changing the way we think, read and remember" an absolutely fascinating book and John Lanchester's "Whoops! Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay" was a brilliant insight into the economic state that we are in. For sheer pathos "A Woman in Berlin" by Anonymous was an amazing read.

OGM Barbara Kingsolver - Lacuna is so different from Poisonwood Bible, isn't it? I loved both of them. The way she has interwoven the fictitious characters with the historical ones is most ingenious. I didn't know much about Trotsky before or Freda Kalo.

Sorry the question was book of the year NOT books

'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel first, closely followed by 'The Lacuna' by the same lady who wrote 'The Poisonwood Bible' which I read and enjoyed some years ago.(Sorry, her name escapes me, it's late!) I also liked 'When God was a Rabbit'

I've just finished "The Tiger's Wife" by Tea Obreht and it is just brilliant. I'll definitely read it again.

Has to be The Sense of an Ending. I know it won the Booker, but it is splendid. And short!

The Help was one of the few books that created complete unanimity in my book group! My DiL, not an enthusiastic reader, couldn't put it down. Our book group also read John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in which he describes the vile and abusive scenes outside a school in the Deep South where young black children were being introduced. It made The Help all the more 'real' to us. I'd first read the Steinbeck in the early '60s and it's surprising how contemporary much of it seemed.

I have just finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett and, for me, this is the best book I've read this year. A good read, and so illuminating about the recency of segregation in Mississippi.

Choices, choices. Best of the Booker, Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey, Best of the Orange, The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forma. Lots mentioned by other people but I think the most beautifully written, with believable characters I cared about, is The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay. It is about an odd happening in a Catholic church in contemporary London, and it's effect on a group of people who worship there. I thought it was wonderful, and will be interested to see if it resonates with other Gransnetters, lCatholic or not. Happy Christmas reading to you all, if you get time to pick up a book!!! [fsmile, fsmile, fsmile]

I also loved 'The Hand that first held mine' by Maggie O'Farrell, but I read that last year.
This year, 'The Fear Index' by Robert Harris
'A visit from the Goon Squad' by Jennifer Egan

Forgot my favourite! Australian writer Kate Grenville's, first book I think called Lilian's Story. It tells the moving life story, of an unconventional woman who starts life as middle class and ends as a cheerfully eccentric bag lady. It is both moving and funny. Also highly recommend two other books of hers - The Secret River and The Lieutenant, both set in the early days of the settlers.

expatmaggie I've read all of Ann Tyler's books and love them. She has such a good understanding of family dynamics. Do try and read some others, I'd recommend When we were Growing Up and Ladder of Years, but they are all good.

Mishap Minaret by Leila Aboulela is another book about the clash of cultures. I read it as a real book, but it is on Kindle.

Carbon..... I do so identify with your comment about book groups.
My favourite book is The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brian, and I recommended it to a book group that I belonged to. They did not like it and tore it apart - as it is a book I have read over and over, it almost feels as though it is part of me, so I felt as though I was being torn apart!
Keep it to yourself - treasure it!!

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid - an extraordinary book that subtlely illustrates the misunderstandings between cultures - very clever - and quite disturbing - brilliantly written.