Summer reads

Anything by Patricia Scanlon

A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini by devastatingly good

im reading through my collection of Danielle steel books at the moment i can really get into them x

twinplus2girls sounds like you have a twinny family there! Welcome from one (well, 3 x 2) to another. I haven't read Danielle Steele for years - my mum used to pass them on to me. Must take another look, as I used to enjoy them.

I'm just about to start Salmon Fishing in the Yemen this evening. Looking forward to this one

Just (or recently) finished:

"Into the Darkest Corner" Elizabeth Haynes. Excellent for a first novel.
"The Revelations" Alex Preston
"Perfect Love". Elizabeth Buchanan (Love her books!)
"Sing You Home" Jodi Picoult

No great literary efforts here, but good, entertaining holiday reading. Oh, and I also, courtesy of Amazon deals, discovered Giselle Greene.

I have just started, and am enjoying, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach.

I wanted to read it before seeing the film, and I'm glad, because it's so well-written and brings the characters to life in such a way that I'll be surprised if the film matches up to it. There again, that's my usual opinion on books made into films!

Great summer reading in my opinion!

Isn't it good? I read it ages ago, and, as ever, was a bit nervous about the film, but it was great!

Oh, good! I'll have that to look forward to afterwards!

yes i have twin grandchildren aged 3 (in few weeks) boy/girl and 7 and 5 year old granddaughters so i do love a good book after they have been round hehe :-)

salmon fishing in the yemen sounds good!

thanks for the welcome whenim64 xxx

I've just read The Greenhouse by Audur Ava Olafsdottir, it was a freebie Kindle, a bit different, and I really enjoyed it.

Have just read "One Moment, One Morning" and "The Two Week Wait" by Sarah Rayner and thoroughly enjoyed both of them. Also would highly recommend "Conditions of Faith" by Alex Miller.

Summers Lease - Sir John Mortimer

Captain Corellis Mandolin - Louis de Berniere

Anything by Donna Leon (Guido Brunetti - Venetian detective)

Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett.

Anyone who has visited Sri Lanka will probably enjoy Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne. Also recommend Year of Wonder by Geraldine Brooks a story of the plague and how it affected the village of Eyam in Derbyshire, not a 'light' read but gripping.

I agree two of my best ever reads

Our Reading group have enjoyed the following very much in the last year!

The Help - Kathryn Stockett

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society-Mary Anne Shaffer

Me Before You- Jojo Moyes (I like anything by her!)

Dead Simple- Peter James (not if you are claustrophobic though)

Enigma- Robert Harris (again I'll read anything by him & love it)

Victoria Hislop is popular although not my own personal favourite

Anything by Kate Akinson

& my own all time favourite book of all time- Captain Corelli's Mandolin- Louis de Bernieres- NOTHING like the film- just bear with it through the first few chapters- the ending is beautiful

Oh- yes & the 3 Stieg Larson books if you have not read them- Girl with Dragon Tattoo, Girl who Played with Fire & Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.
Also The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron if you like a long book.

Forgot those but loved them all.

I'm hooked on Douglas Kennedy. Am reading The Moment and thoroughly enjoying the experience. The author is an artist with words. Very believable and moving.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. I loved Harold - this is a really charming tale, you'll want to know what happens but won't want it ever to finish.
Before that I read Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding because I so admire her style she writes beautifully as Margaret Forster wrote in the "blurb" "She lays an image down so gently that it floats in the mind long after" (I wish I'd said that!) All her books are so worth reading and I think this is her best.

I am revisiting Barbara Pym.

She wrote a lot in the 50s and 60s. Most of her novels are about people and their every day lives and idiosyncracies. Her character are often former gentility in reduced circumstances, perhaps trying to deal with the changing social circumstances of the 1950s and 60s. There is a lot of gentle humour and compassion for the often rather odd characters she writes about. There are no fast moving plots.

Some novels are..
A quartet in Autumn,
Jane and Prudence.
Excellent Women (I am reading at present.)

A modern American equivalent is Anne Tyler she sets her characters in modern USA, but they are again novels about ordinary people managing their lives at times of crisis. What you get from both writers is that you end up caring about these sometime quite odd people.
Both write well.

Just finishing The Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears and it is our book club read this month. Rather a long book and complicated but wonderful interesting writing style and very well researched. Set in the 17th century Oxford. Some one is murdered and the wider events around the murder are told by 4 different men. The Characters are based on real people and events in History.

Lots of lovely light reads, thank you all!

We love the Perigord region in France and I have just discovered the Martin Walker books about 'Bruno, Chief of Police'. Evokes the life of a rural community beautifully, and that French obsession with food and wine!

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
please take care when you get to the last few chapters - find a secluded corner and invest in a large box of tissues. You will love the book, but uncontrollable sobbing is never a good look

me before you also by Jojo Moyes - really thought provoking but nevertheless one of the most enjoyable books i've read in a long time