The best thing about being asked to write my ‘Hit List’ of recommended reads for the Independent on Sunday has been the wonderful suggestions I have had from friends, family and customers about what to put on it. I now have a list of books that I really want to get stuck into. I’ve tried to list everything here that was suggested to me in the hope that it gives you some ideas of what to read next. I haven’t included all the description or comments for the sake of brevity but I do hope you find the list useful. What an interesting experience and how very, very difficult it is to think of the best ones and leave some out. My published list tried to include some newer titles and books from a range of book ’types’ so I had to leave some of my very favourites out, I’ve added them at the bottom. No doubt I’ve missed some really great reads so please do let me know what you think should be included.
In Alphabetical order by Title:
Fiction
A Horseman Riding By - R.F. Delderfield,
Any Human Heart - William Boyd
Bad Boy - Peter Robinson
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Daniel Deronda - George Eliot
Finger smith - Sarah Waters
Ghostwriters - David Mitchell
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett
Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer
Gulag Archipelago -Solzhenitsyn (fascinating insight into Russia under the communists.)
Jacaranda Tree - H E Bates
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
London Fields - Martin Amis
My Name is Red - Orhan Pamuk
Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham
Old Filth - Jane Gardam
On Black Hill - Bruce Chatwin
One Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley
Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
Possession - AS Byatt
River God - Wilbur Smith
Sour Sweet - Timothy Mo
Tales Of The Klondyke - Jack London
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Grand Meaulnes - Alain-Fournier
The Lights of Manchester - Tony Warren
The Road to Wigan Pier - George Orwell
Therese Raquin by Emile Zola – dark and disastrous
Velocity - Dean Koontz
Non Fiction
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown
Golden Bough - James Frazer
Lytton Strachey - Michael Holroyd
Natasha’s Dance - Orlando Figes
Rings of Saturn - Sebald
Rodinsky’s Room - Lichenstein + Sinclair
Tales of the Alhambra - Washington Irving
The Histories - Herodotus
Too Big To Fail - Andrew Sorkin
Wild Swans - Jung Chang
Crow by Ted Hughes (poetry)
Great authors who have written too many to choose individual titles from!
Alan Bennett
Dan Brown
Harlan Coben
Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe Series
Jeffrey Deaver,
PD James - Adam Dalgliesh series
John Le Carre
Donna Leon
Ian Rankin - Rebus Series
Philip Roth
John Steinbeck
Childrens/ Young Adult Books
Chronicles of Narnia - C.S.Lewis
How I live Now - Meg Rosoff
Roman Mysteries - Caroline Lawrence
StoneHeart Trilogy - Charlie Fletcher
My Recommendations that got pushed off the list because a) I needed a variation of book types and b) are too famous already c) needed a longer list, but that deserved to be there:
Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
I Capture The Castle - Dodie Smith
The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver
The Far Pavilions - M.M. Kaye
The Millenium Trilogy - Stieg Larsson
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
The Shell Seekers - Rosamund Pilcher
The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
And here are some books I've added before:
Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
Abacus £9.99 rrp.
This is not a new title but having just read it, I have to mention it here. It's one of the best books I've read in a long time. Based on the author's real life experiences it tells the story of an escaped prisoner who reaches India in the early 1980s and there has a series of extraordinary, gripping, moving and at times disturbing and often illegal experiences. Despite the setting and subject matter the book manages to be surprisingly rich in human emotion and warmth and is utterly un-put-downable!
Darwin's Garden - Michael Boulter
Constable and Robinson Pb £7.99 rrp
'Five years after returning from his trip around the world on HMS Beagle, the young Charles Darwin became the owner of Down House in Kent where he lived for the rest of his life. It would become the place where he began work on his masterpiece "On the Origin of Species". For almost twenty years he used the garden around him as his laboratory. In the orchard he conducted experiments on pollination. On his daily walk along the sandbank he observed how plants competed for survival. In his heated greenhouse he conducted experiments on orchids and primulas. In solitude he was also able to struggle with the ideas of evolution that had haunted him since his voyage, and give him the courage to publish his revolutionary new ideas.'
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The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
Sort of books - £6.99
This really is one of my all time favourites and it just begs to be read in the shade of the garden with a long cool drink to hand. Tove Jansson is better known as the creator of the Moomin Children stories but this is her favourite too of the ten books she wrote for adults. Drawing from many of her own experiences she writes of one Summer on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland and the relationship that develops between an elderly artist and her six-year-old Grand-daughter. She manages to describe the scenery, the atmosphere and individual moments with such beauty that it really does deserve to be read and re-read.
The Dig - John Preston
Penguin Pb £7.99 rrp
In the long hot summer of 1939 Britain is preparing for war. But on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind: Mrs Petty, the widowed farmer, has had her hunch proved correct that the strange mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As the dig proceeds against a background of mounting national anxiety, it becomes clear though that this is no ordinary find ... And pretty soon the discovery leads to all kinds of jealousies and tensions.
John Preston's recreation of the Sutton Hoo dig - the greatest Anglo-Saxon discovery ever in Britain - brilliantly and comically dramatizes three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivaly flourished in equal measure.
The Cloudspotter's Guide
- Gavin Pretor-Pinney
Sceptre Paperback £7.99
This book did exceptionally (and perhaps surprisingly) well in Hardback and has just been released in paperback. Gavin Pretor-Pinney is the chairman and founder member of the 'Cloud Appreciation Society'. He contends that we are 'blessed in this country with a uniquely rich and varied cloudscape, which has hitherto been sadly undervalued'.
His book teaches us to appreciate their different varieties - the cumulus, nimbostratus and Morning Glory to name only a few - and all their beauties and significances, both meteorological and cultural. We learn how Hindus believed the cumulus clouds were the spiritual cousins of elephants, how thermal air currents act on fair weather cumuli, and how to save a fortune in psychiatric bills by using the clouds as Rorschach images that reflect our state of mind as well as nature's moods.
Looking up will never be the same again.
A Beginner's Guide to Changing the World - For Tibet with Love - Isabel Losada
'Sometimes you just have to do something, don't you? Sometimes an injustice comes along and you think "No, this cannot be", and rather than just turn off the TV, you know it's time to act.' So begins Isabel Losada's extraordinary For Tibet, with Love in which she explores whether it's possible for an ordinary person to change the world, just a little… Isabel demonstrates, falls for a monk in Nepal, gets sick in Tibet, upsets BP, faces some hard truths, starts a company, irritates the Chinese Ambassador, falls from a great height, keeps her bra on, breaks the law, and captures headlines worldwide. And then she meets the Dalai Lama....
The Secret life of Trees - Colin Tudge
Penguin £8.99
In Shropshire stands the Royal Oak, where it is alleged Charles II hid from Cromwell's men. There are kauri trees in New Zealand which were old before the Maoris arrived from Polynesia, and redwoods still standing in California which were ancient by the time Columbus first landed. It is often this sense of age that places us in awe of trees: we look up at them, we know they have stood for many years, and yet we know so little about them, or how they work.
While the stories of trees are as plentiful as leaves in a forest, they are rarely told. Here, Colin Tudge travels from his own back garden round the world to explore the beauty, variety and ingenuity of trees everywhere: from how they live so long to how they talk to each other and why they came to exist in the first place. Lyrical and evocative, this book will make everyone fall in love with the trees around them.
Old Filth - Jane Gardam
Chatto and Windus £6.99
Old Filth was a 'child of the raj'. His earliest memories are of his amah, a teenage Malay girl - not of his mother who is dead, nor his father who can't cope. But very soon he is torn away from the only person who loves him, and sent to be educated at 'Home', where he is boarded out with strangers...What is the terrible secret that the children shared? What exactly happened at the farmhouse in the Lake District from which Filth is rescued by 'Sir' whose 'outfit' is one of the oddest schools in England? Old Filth is funny and heart-breaking at the same time. A touch of surrealism combines with the subtle delicacy of a gifted novelist to make Old Filth a genuine masterpiece.
"An absolutely delightful, moving and nostalgic read, I couldn't put it down" Landers Customer
The Highest Tide
- Jim Lynch
Bloomsbury £7.99
This is an atmospheric and gentle read that has a more than a touch of humour. I really enjoyed it.