What are you reading now?

Yes I agree about Paying Guests. I was able to swipe it from my Kindle after a few pages. How does a book like that get such a good review?
I'll go for Margaret Forster's new book - i didn't know it was out. On Kindle I am rereading the old page turners and after Gone with the Wind I've now read Thorn Birds again.
Any tips for Oldies that are worth downloading and reading again?

Make Me was brilliant, as expected. I`ve just started Up Our Street, by Sally Spencer. It`s set in Marston, Cheshire, in 1892. I`m only a few pages in, but it looks as if it will be OK.

Ive finished all the Agatha Raisin books by MC Beaton, and now halfway through the Hamish Macbeth ones. Very funny and well written. If you read them in order you get to know the characters as they are introduced.
Picking up one of her books is like being in the company of a good old friend, who knows you are stressed up to the nines, and need a hug and a smile.

I also enjoyed the Goldfinch by Donna Tartt - all of her books in fact.

loopy my non-fiction fave at the moment is Atul Gawande. He writes so beautifully. About the book (he is a surgeon):
His vivid stories take us to battlefield surgical tents in Iraq, to a polio outbreak in India and to malpractice courtrooms around the country. He discusses the ethical dilemmas of doctors' participation in lethal injections, examines the influence of money on modern medicine and recounts the astoundingly contentious history of hand-washing. Finally, he gives a brutally honest insight into life as a practising surgeon.
The book is "Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance". Here is just one review:
I found I had been gripping the book so hard that my fingers hurt... it calls to mind one of the great classics of medical literature, Mikhail Bulgakov's A Country Doctor's Notebook. Few modern authors can stand that comparison, but Gawande can. (Sunday Times)

It was on my £1.19 on Amazon (Kindle) yesterday.

I've read all the agatha Raisin books ( in order) and did enjoy them she's a great character!

Just finished The Taming of the Queen about Henry VIII and Kateryn Parr. Usual Philippa Gregory style , I enjoyed it! About to start the most recent Shardlake book.

I am currently reading Game of Thrones, which DD gave me because she was fed up of trying to get into it! I love it. I haven't seen any of the tv series, so I am coming to it with fresh eyes, so to speak.

I hardly ever read non-fiction books as much prefer a novel. However because I like history, someone bought me The Tears of the Rajahs by Ferdinand Mount which is loosely about ancestors of his who served in India. I'm a couple of hundred pages in and there's a lot more to go so will keep me going for a while. But it is a good read and very interesting about the British involvement and also about the East India Company. Far too thick to carry around so will need to put more fiction on the Kindle before I go on holiday.

Catriona McPherson's Dandy Gilver books are great fun. Dandy is a bored 1920s lady who solves unusual crimes with the aid of a friend from the neighbouring estate -frightfully posh but frightfully funny and well written too.

The Ice Twins By S K Tremayne. Psychological story that's definitely creepy.

Just read (on kindle) a really good one about the trial and crimes of Peter Sutcliffe.

Currently reading Teacher on kindle (99p) which is gripping but the comma splices are driving me up the wall (miserable old pedant that I am).

Just started The Versions of Us, which seems to be an amalgam of Life After Life/Sliding Doors and One Day. Promising start and well reviewed. Looking forward to reading a chapter or two after Sunday night TV.

On holiday I read You Stole my Heart Away, and then The Long Way Home, didn`t particularly like or dislike the first one, loved the second,but can`t remember the authors. I`m now reading White Bones, by Graham Masterton, only just started it, but it looks as if it`ll be good.

Has anyone read The Butchers Hook ? I am looking for a book to take on hols and the reviews are very good . My Fav book of all time is Pure by Andrew Morton which I have read four times because I can get totally lost in 18th C Paris ! Going to Paris for a long weekend and I really need a good book . I like well written historical novels ( not Jean Plaidy types) and The B hook has been recommended . Any suggestions ?

Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett. What a fabulous author he was. I've downloaded it free on my Kindle and I'm learning so many new words, using the dictionary facility.

I'm a native of the Potteries (now living happily in France) and reading Arnold Bennett's stories of the Five Towns takes me back to my roots with his deep understanding of the people of that area.

177ms - I read the Butcher's Hook, I thought it was very well written, slow start but gathers pace midway, Janet Ellis evoked the 18th century very well imo. I would recommend any of the following, all set in the 19th century though, Crimson Petal and the White (a lot of sex, but a very good narrative) The Meaning of Night a story about an inheritance, Star of the Sea - Irish immigration at the time of the potato famine, you need to get past the first 50 pages and then it's wonderful. I have Pure on my shelves, I haven't read it yet but will do. I tend to google books to see what the reviews on Amazon are like before I embark on anything now, to see what the general consensus is, on the basis that not everybody can be wrong if it's at least 4*.

I've just finished and thoroughly enjoyed All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

I'll gladly pass it on if anyone would like to read it.

White Bones was very good, if a bit gory and gruesome. I`m just coming towards the end of A Day Will Come, by Audrey Howard. It`s a (sort of) love story, with some revenge thrown in, set in the 1840s up to the 1860s ner to Liverpool.

If you like Venice and detective stories do try Donna Leon's excellent Brunetti series, set in the city and using the investigations of Brunetti and his very assorted police colleagues as a vehicle for his - and Leon's - musings on modern life, the perilous state of Venice and so on. In the best ones, for me at least, there's as much about Brunetti's family and the mouthwatering food they eat as the crime which is nominally the focus of the story. The first one's Death at la Fenice and all I think are on kindle. Other recent treats have been Jane Smiley's One Hundred Years trilogy - have yet to read the third one though - which is set in the US and tells a family saga and Sweet Caress by William Boyd. The latter more or less convincing though he's attempting writing from a woman's perspective,

Donna Leon's detective stories are real comfort reading. Brunetti and his family are such attractive people. In Germany all the books are filmed in Venice for TV which is like going on holiday.
Donna Leon is American and her books have never been translated into Italian, she has vorbidden it knowing she could not continue to live there if everyone knew her through her books.
I also like William Boyd and my favourite is Any Human Heart
I'm reading A Man called Ove by Frederik Backman, which I read about on this thread. Its amusing and something different for a change.
On Kindle I have All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot, As I come from Yorkshire its lovely to read about it even though its takes place in the 50s and much has changed since then but not the countryside and the weather.

Now reading Careless in Red by Elizabeth George. Enjoyable; very George with her typical rather florid style. I don't think Barbara is in this one, and Lynley is having some sort of a breakdown following the death of his wife.

The Cornishification of the characters' names is a bit odd.

Book group choice for this month is The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom. The protagonist is an Irish girl indentured on a tobacco plantation in the 18th century. Surprisingly it's an easy read in spite of tragedies and brutal mistreatment, almost sanitised.

A Day Will Come was very enjoyable. Am now reading True Blue, by David Baldacci, I think it`s going to be good.