General Chat

give Alexander McCall Smith a go - his books on The No: 1 Ladies Detective Agency are delightful

psst ive got all the Marian Keyes books too... but dont tell anyone..lol

Thanks Ann ill add them to me list too

Suzian my fave classic is the picture of Dorian Gray think I like the darkness of it.

Thanks Em we seem to like the same sort of books so will look out for them too

Daff I know everytime I see a copy of Polgara the sorceress I think of you and your cat lol

I havent read any Anne McCaffrey books but they sound good too!!

Clan of the cave bears series I read years ago I think they are in one of the boxes of books delegated to the attic lol

I do like Marian Keyes for if I want a bit of light reading they are quite good, if you want to borrow some let me know :o)

Aileen I think between my OH, You, David, Jac and Daff ill end up reading at least one of Pratchetts books just to see what all the fuss is about lol

Thanks everyone for your suggestions I think this lot will keep me going for a while lol

Im off to bed now, sweet dreams and thanks again :o)

Aileen, Martina Coles books knocked me sick with all the violence..plus the fact she seemed to repeat herself all the time... going over the same personality background of certain characters, same character description, just changing the wording each time i ended up skipping chunksover and over again... it got a bit annoying after the 3rd book.
Her stories are great.. good imagination, just not keen on her style of writing.

Suzian, yes absolutely, Kate was a lovely change, and i look forward to her next book

Martina Cole's series of books are very gritty about life in the London underworld. One of my 91yr olds loves them!

Michael Dobbs' series of four books on Churchill mixing fact with fiction are excellent if you like anything to do with history.

Aileen xxx

Hi Our Em

I love Kate Atkinson - my daughter bought me "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" 'cos I'd run out of Lynda La Plante, Kathy Reichs et al

And what a lovely change!


Sue x

Hi,

Have you tried Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of books? They are absolutely brilliant. They are so funny. A parallel world with witches, wizards, trolls, dwarves etc.

I was given one last year and got hooked. I've bought every one he has written from Amazon as you never see them in the charity shops. People never seem to give those away. Like gold dust.

I actually have three duplicates which you are more than welcome to have if you haven't read Pratchett before. Read one and you will be hooked if you like fantasy.

Aileen xxx

Hiya Jax... I won't mention David Eddings and Terry Pratchett then, lolol (My beautiful 16 year old cat is called Polgara!!)

Have you read the Dragon series by Anne McCaffrey? I'll bring some to Swansea for you to try if you'd like... they sort of go back to front, but it doesn't really matter what order you read them in!! Your namesake, Jax, is is in one of them!! The dragons are good not evil, by the way. I wanted one myself.

Another series was Clan of The Cave Bear by Jean Auel. I loved them, although they were a bit difficult to get into at first... about a neanderthal tribe finding a small orphanned cro magnum girl, and how she grows up and then travels... wonderful!!

We have all been into that genre at some time... I have boxes and boxes full of books all tucked away... if you find someone you like, I might have all the others as well... R also does all the crusades type stuff, modern spy thrillers etc. Recently I have been reading chick lit cos it doesn't take too much concentration and often makes me howl with laughter....... I will get back to reading heavier stuff soon, I expect

Love

Daff xxxxxx

Hi Jax,
you are like me, an avid reader , and i too recently ran out of books by my usual authors and decided to explore new ones.. i too have read al of the colin dexter books.
I have found two new ones that have had me scouring the shops for more , firstly, Michael Robotham, he has only written 3 so far but boy are they good.. he writes crime thrillers with a twist... the best is Shatter, which won a crime thriller award.
and a complete change for me, Kate atkinson a more soft aproach to a thriller but again with a twist.
they are both fairly new writers (well i think they are), but after reading all of Colin Dexter, Ruth Rendell, Lynda La Plante, Dick Francis, James Herbert to name but a few, i think they are up with the best.

Oh and another excellent one is Messiah, by Boris Starling, another crime thriller.. that one i read in a day! brilliant...

I'm with Rose - Moab is my Washpot is a bloody good read - The Liar also.

My own favourites, though, are the old classics. You can't beat Pride and Prejudice, Lorna Doona and Wuthering Heights

Suex

David thats what my OH says ive managed to fend them off for 7 years lol

Dont they have to be read in order then?

Hayley Im gonna have to read em now to see how rude they are

If I blush it will be your doing!! lol

Jax,
You would probably enjoy books by Harlan Coben, Gone for Good is a good thriller.

Ann
Glos

No not raunchy as in nookie books with rude words.....i read Daddies girl first and put it down twice thinking nope i really dont want to read this....the same with sequel Father of lies....that did cross the line....colour of sins takes you by complete shock half way through...

Hayley yeh I read the speel about them and they sound well raunchy lol

Rose Bill Bryson books are very funny will get the John Barrowman one from the library as I do like him he seems a very nice funny talented man :o)

Just got these recomendations from the lovely Joy mm

Cashelmara by Susan Howatch and Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. Also, I signed my death warrant by Michael Collins.

Thankyou Joy ~~~~~~~~ see you back soon xx

Rose, Echoes is one of my favourites;)

Jax, you will have to try one eventually;)) I f you ever do , go for a witches one or Good Omens first:)

Anything by Bill Bryson makes me laugh out loud...
Stephen Fry 'Moab is my washpot' is a good read as is John Barrowman's autobiography..
for soft, characterful books, no strain reading, with a heavy dose of romance ...Maeve Binchy lol

Just read Domenica de Rosa's 'Summer school' set in Italy about a writer's course... light read, but made me want to head off to Italy straight away :))

xx

Bonking books?....I think there is a line....and I cant make my mind up if Janet Inglis crosses it with a big stride or just pokes a tip of a toe on it....

David we have all the Terry Pratchett books here as my OH is a fan but I just cant bring myself to read them and I dont even know why lol

Jac I dont like waiting for sequals either or if I have to when a new book in the series comes out I will read the previous ones again

Edit

Janey that one looks good too thanks

this thread is gonna cost me a fortune lol

A genealogical mystery, of course!

Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine.

Asta's Book

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Astas-Book-Barbara-Vine/dp/0140176616
/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242247622&sr=8-2

"1905. Asta and her husband Rasmus have come to east London from Denmark with their two sons. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keeps loneliness and isolation at bay by writing her diary. These diaries, published over seventy years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal, for they seem to hold the key to an unsolved murder, to the quest for a missing child and to the enigma surrounding Asta's daughter, Swanny. It falls to Asta's granddaughter Ann to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before."

I read it just after my grandmother died. My mum and I had found her old photo album in my grandfather's workshop (he had died years before) -- with a photo from about 1916 or 1917, when she was a teenager, prominently missing. We then found the photo at the bottom of the bottom drawer of her bedside table under other assorted stuff. My grandma and a young man, sitting on a fallen tree log. When did she take it out of the album? How long had it been since she'd looked at it? Was he the one she hinted she wished she'd married? No one will ever know.

Asta's Book is like that. ;)

Jax if you like a long series it was enjoyable I just used to get p**d off waiting so long between the books only got upto 10 before we left the UK and funnily enough T checked them out today to discover 11 was released 2005 12.1 due in Nov the parts 12.2 and 12.3 due 2010 and 2011
he don't write that quick.