Athena Posted December 21, 2013 Share Posted December 21, 2013 Sounds interesting! I look forward to see the list . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vodkafan Posted December 21, 2013 Author Share Posted December 21, 2013 (edited) OK here we go the last 4 years of very best reads The Book Thief Girl Meets Boy Girl, Interrupted London In The Nineteenth Century Jonathon Strange And Mr Norrell Small Island Flowers For Algernon The Star King Nineteen Seventy Nine The Blue World Pride And Prejudice A Scanner Darkly The God Of Small Things The Lovely Bones Tipping The Velvet Five People You Meet In Heaven The Handmaid's Tale A Man Of Double Deed The Forgotten Soldier The Shadow Of The Wind Pied Piper Before I Die Jane Eyre The Windup Girl Lighthouse Keeping Woman's World Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas American Gods The Margarets Before I Go To Sleep The Cloud Walker The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo The Girl Who Played With Fire The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest Edited December 21, 2013 by vodkafan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted December 21, 2013 Share Posted December 21, 2013 That's an interesting list! I have some on my TBR. In particular I loved Flowers for Algernon, Jane Eyre and The Book Thief. Great reads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Little Pixie Posted December 21, 2013 Share Posted December 21, 2013 Your TBR has plenty of appeal for me, especially the Jasper Fforde`s ( though I`m up to date ; I have to read them in hardback as soon as they come out ) and those fun Stephanie Plum books. I`ve read a few of your best reads - I especially enjoyed The Shadow of the Wind and Jonathon Strange And Mr Norrell, which I was thinking of just the other day. I hope the BBC series does justice to it. Good luck with your 2014 reads ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Little Pixie Posted December 21, 2013 Share Posted December 21, 2013 .As said before ,we are all reading and searching for different answers through our books, We read them for enjoyment, to learn, to apply parts of them to our own lives sometimes. Really well put. I`ve been thinking recently that I really like the essays I read in magazines I get on subscription ( The Australian Women`s weekly ( it`s a monthly ), American Vogue and Oprah ) and could branch out into reading books from the same authors featured, like the Ephron sisters, Joan Didion and erm, people like them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vodkafan Posted December 21, 2013 Author Share Posted December 21, 2013 Your TBR has plenty of appeal for me, especially the Jasper Fforde`s ( though I`m up to date ; I have to read them in hardback as soon as they come out ) and those fun Stephanie Plum books. I`ve read a few of your best reads - I especially enjoyed The Shadow of the Wind and Jonathon Strange And Mr Norrell, which I was thinking of just the other day. I hope the BBC series does justice to it. Good luck with your 2014 reads ! Thanks Little Pixie good luck with yours too. Your TBR is huge! I was reading it but I soon got overwhelmed by the quantity.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Little Pixie Posted December 21, 2013 Share Posted December 21, 2013 (edited) Thanks Little Pixie good luck with yours too. Your TBR is huge! I was reading it but I soon got overwhelmed by the quantity.... I`m still not quite sure how that happened ; I blame The Save the Kitties charity shop, Amazon marketplace and Amazon generally. I`m not culpable. Edited December 21, 2013 by Little Pixie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Signor Finzione Posted December 22, 2013 Share Posted December 22, 2013 Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy really is great, isn't it? I also rate Jane Eyre and The Book Thief amongst some of my favourite ever reads, and The God of Small Things is pretty special too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted December 22, 2013 Share Posted December 22, 2013 An interesting and varied list, James. Jane Eyre is one of my all time favorites, and the Dragon Tattoo trilogy is among my faves as well. I loved American Gods, and retrospectively The Handmaid's Tale. But The Book Thief is really on the "other" list of books that I wish I hadn't bothered with. I know I'm in the huge minority here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alexi Posted December 22, 2013 Share Posted December 22, 2013 We obviously have similar tastes James - from the ones I've read from your best list, I loved them all! I must immediately read the rest of them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookmonkey Posted December 23, 2013 Share Posted December 23, 2013 An interesting and varied list, James. Jane Eyre is one of my all time favorites, and the Dragon Tattoo trilogy is among my faves as well. I loved American Gods, and retrospectively The Handmaid's Tale. But The Book Thief is really on the "other" list of books that I wish I hadn't bothered with. I know I'm in the huge minority here. Glad to see I'm not the only one who didn't like the Book Thief Pontalba. I loved Jane Eyre, and plan to reread it sometime. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vodkafan Posted December 28, 2013 Author Share Posted December 28, 2013 We obviously have similar tastes James - from the ones I've read from your best list, I loved them all! I must immediately read the rest of them Cool! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vodkafan Posted December 28, 2013 Author Share Posted December 28, 2013 Dagnabbit I bought some books. Had a splurge on Amazon. I have no excuse. Out Of Time-Five tales of Time Travel The Rise And Fall Of The Victorian Servant The Life And Loves Of A She Devil Letters To Alice On First Reading Jane Austen Habits Of The House (Love and Inheritance) The Passion Of New Eve The Duties Of Servants Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kidsmum Posted December 28, 2013 Share Posted December 28, 2013 I thought i'd already visited your new thread VF but i must have missed it. Just been checking out your TBR pile, lucky you having the Wilkie Collins books to read for the first time, they're such good books. I also liked The Eye Of The Needle, The Other Side Of The Dale & of course Wuthering Heights is one of my all time favourites. Happy reading in 2014 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chesilbeach Posted December 28, 2013 Share Posted December 28, 2013 I thought Letters To Alice On First Reading Jane Austen was excellent, James, and it gave me a whole new insight into Austen's books and some of her characters. Hope you enjoy it too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vodkafan Posted December 28, 2013 Author Share Posted December 28, 2013 Thanks Kidsmum and Claire! Good to know I have treats in store....so many books so little time... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted December 28, 2013 Share Posted December 28, 2013 Nice haul, James ! I hope you enjoy your books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vodkafan Posted December 29, 2013 Author Share Posted December 29, 2013 So, someone I know wrote a book and published on kindle. By coincidence it is also a time travel novel so I downloaded it and read it. Oh dear. I don't want to say the title. To me his worst fault was that he has not bothered to couch his dialogue in the proper language of the time. It has really made me want to do better and avoid the same pitfall. More research. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted December 29, 2013 Share Posted December 29, 2013 Sorry to hear the book wasn't good. Good luck with the research, I'm sure you're able to do better . Seeing what you feel is wrong, or right, in another book makes a good learning experience for writing your own, I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
julie Posted December 29, 2013 Share Posted December 29, 2013 James When I first started reading your post, I thought you were gonna say that your friend wanted you to tell him your opinion of the book . That would have been hard to do if you would have been trying to be diplomatic about it , yet he would want your honest opinion . I guess anything you read that will help you in your writing will be of help, though . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itsmeagain Posted December 29, 2013 Share Posted December 29, 2013 (edited) A fine balance is a tremendous book. Mistry sent me a thank you letter from Canada for my kind letter about it . Bleak house is excellent and there's a bbc dvd too that is amazing Edited December 29, 2013 by itsmeagain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vodkafan Posted December 29, 2013 Author Share Posted December 29, 2013 A fine balance is a tremendous book. Mistry sent me a thank you letter from Canada for my kind letter about it . Bleak house is excellent and there's a bbc dvd too that is amazing That's nice when authors reply personally like that. I hope I will get to A Fine Balance soon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vodkafan Posted December 29, 2013 Author Share Posted December 29, 2013 James When I first started reading your post, I thought you were gonna say that your friend wanted you to tell him your opinion of the book . That would have been hard to do if you would have been trying to be diplomatic about it , yet he would want your honest opinion . I guess anything you read that will help you in your writing will be of help, though . He does want my opinion on the book. I will have to be honest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted December 30, 2013 Share Posted December 30, 2013 He does want my opinion on the book. I will have to be honest.x Good luck.. that sounds like a difficult situation ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vodkafan Posted December 31, 2013 Author Share Posted December 31, 2013 (edited) I have been reading me some George Gissing. So far I like him immensely. He is the perfect author to read to gain a real sense of how the majority of ordinary people lived. Trollope was an admirer of Thackery and like him wrote about the upper classes; Dickens seems preoccupied with the grinding life of the very poor. (And is a bit early for me anyway- I like to read about the 1870's onwards) Gissing (based I admit, on only one book!) seems to inhabit a happy place in the middle. Not that his characters are always in a happy place though! Edited December 31, 2013 by vodkafan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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