I’d love any book recommendations the Massive might have, as I’m dithering over what to read next.
My most recent reads have all been immensely enjoyable- ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ by Anthony Doerr, ‘An Instance Of The Fingerpost’ by Iain Pears & I’ve just finished the last part of Don Winslow’s gruesomely illuminating ‘Border’ trilogy, if that’s ant indicator of current tastes.
I have the final part of the Wolf Hall trilogy & ‘To Paradise’ by Hanya Yanagitata on standby, but I’m not really feeling them right now.
So, any meaty belters you’d recommend? I tend to prefer 400 pages plus, just to indulge in the immersion of a novel, but have no hard & fast preferences.
Cheers!
Books, please!
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My most recently enjoyed trio this summer:
‘The Invention Of Wings’ – Sue Monk Kid – gripping yarn set in slave era South.
‘And Away’ – Bob Mortimer – searingly honest, hugely funny auto from Vic’s mate.
‘Klara And The Sun’ – Kazuo Ishiguro – charming, engrossing tale of artificial friendship.
Current read:
Brothers In Arms – James Holland – unflinching account of a Brit tank regiment D-Day to VE-Day.
Cheers, Foxy. I do actually have a copy of the Ishiguro on the shelf ;that I was given & I’m also a big fan of Holland & Murray’s podcast & have been pondering checking out his writing- food for thought.
Cheers Foxy, just sprung for the Holland – less than a fiver on offer on Dodgers.
Winslow`s `Border` trilogy is hard to follow. Anything I suggest would be sub-par.
Winslow’s latest “City on Fire” is the first part of a new trilogy and is highly recommended
There must be a word (German probably) for that state of mind one has when has almost a sense of ‘relief’ at having concluded a mighty work that is coupled simultaneously with something akin to a sense of loss that it’s over.
‘Sweeping epic’ doesn’t really do ‘The Border’ trilogy justice.
Another vote for the Border Trilogy her. An incredible piece of work.
And @junglejim, James’ Hollands books are equally incredible too but in a different way. He takes the research and depth of Antony Beevor’s work but somehow adds in more social interest. I’m waiting for his latest, the tank one, to turn up in my local BHF shop….recommended!
If you have done The Border then do The Firm, a brilliant stand alone novel from Don Winslow. Honestly just read a ton of Don Winslow.
Struggling with fiction just now, but Cursed Rabbit by Bora Chung impressed the shit out of me this year. Horror, fantasy short stories from South Korea.
Just read Underland by Robert MacFarlane which is one of the best non fiction books I have read in my life.
I heartily second Underland.
I’ve been dithering over buying a copy of Cursed Bunny but it looks like that will be added to the TBR mountain now.
Thanks for that I think.
I loved “The Wild Places” and “The Old Ways” by Robert MacFarlane.
I’ve had “Underland” waiting for me on my TBR shelf for about a year now, so maybe I should get at it!
Same – was very excited when I bought it, and then for some reason just lost my enthusiasm for no reason, and it’s been on my shelf collecting dust ever since. I keep hearing great things about it, but never seem to be in the right mood to pick it up.
But having recently picked up a few other forgotten TBRs and finally read them, I live in hope that Underland will meet the same fate soon.
Try Robert Ludlam’s “The Aquitaine Progression ” 700+ pages (deadly Global Violence network)
“The Pride Of Kings” Justin Scott 600+ pages (Russian Empire at war with Germany 1916/ rescue the Czar)
Cheers, Jack – never read any Ludlum, though obviously familiar with the Jason Bourne character- that sounds like a belter.
I’d previously read a few of Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole novels (in English translation) and found them too dour for my taste. A standalone novel of his “The Son” was recently going for 99p at the Kindle Store, so I took a punt on it and enjoyed it immensely.
A very different lighter tone to this one despite the serious subject matter.
It’s a police procedural, sort of, about deep corruption, exploitation, retribution and a quest for truth, with some very engaging characters alongside some very evil ones.
A shrewd old cop nearing retirement, paired with a reluctant but smart new partner, seeks justice, as dark deeds unfold in and around an Oslo prison.
A couple of believable little love stories are woven into the narrative and there are a couple of good unforseen twists as the happy/sad redemptive ending approaches.
I like Nesbo a lot & ‘The Son’ is still 99p, so I’ll be snapping that up forthwith!
Thanks for the heads up.
If you enjoy UK crime fiction with a bit of dry humour and police proedural in the mix then give M W Craven a try. His Poe & Tilly series is amazing
Recent four or five stars:
Ben lerner’s The Topeka School – great work exploring toxic masculinity in 90s America. Really strong writing.
The Fortune Men – a real-life case of racial injustice and wrongful execution in fifties Cardiff
The Manningtree Witches – beautifully written and plotted novel about the Witchfinder General and the women accused of witchcraft
I’ve just read Smiley’s People for the first time which is just amazing. If like me you’re not a complete Le Carre groupie I think that you can miss out The Honourable Schoolboy, the middle of the Karla trilogy, and read Tinker Tailor and Smiley’s People and only miss out on a tiny bit of deep Smiley background. I found THS over-researched and indigestible, whereas the other two are just pure magic.
SF has finally and fully embraced diversity and Tade Thompson’s Far From the Light of Heaven is a great afrofuturist riff on the generation starship trope.
A few contemporary American novels that you may well enjoy are November Road by Lou Berney, American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins and Dodgers by Bill Beverley. November Road is a riff on the Kennedy assassination and Dodgers is about a group of disaffected junior gangbangers who are sent on a road trip by a gang leader to commit a murder.
One that would definitely resonate because you enjoyed Don Winslow’s magnificent trilogy is American Dirt it’s the same situation but from the point of view of a collection of innocents that get caught up in the fallout from the cartels and are forced to flee.
A couple of British crime novels from Benjamin Myers that are certainly worth the effort are Turning Blue and These Darkening Days, the main protagonists are introduced to the reader in These Darkening Days, both are set in the North and are pretty gritty, gristly stuff.
A couple of more light-hearted and I hate using this word but it’s apt…quirky novels that are just fun are The Forensic Records Society by Magnus Mills and one I’m currently engaged upon and will probably finish today or tomorrow is Villager by Tom Cox. As I said quirky. I hate that word…so…so…much.
Lastly an oddity and I’ll give out nought but the title and author.
Night Film by Marisha Pessl.
I have Dodgers by Bill Beverley up next.
I’d be very surprised if you didn’t enjoy it Steve.
Thanks Mr Eyeball Pleaser, I’ll check out your tips with proper diligence, not least because ‘Dodgers’ blew me away, & I also loved ‘Gutshot Straight’ by Lou Berney, so ‘November Road’ is now a must.
Great tips Pencil, thanks.
One novelist who is great at writing longer novels that immerse you in a world very different from your own is Barbara Kingsolver. I’ve read three – The Poisonwood Bible,The Lacuna and Flight Behaviour. They all have heft and seriousness in their themes but are also immensely readable.
If you enjoyed Iain Pears’ Instance of the Fingerpost, strongly recommend you check out Charles Palliser’s Quincunx. At over 1,000 pages, it’s a real doorstopper of a novel and one of the best Dickens’ pastiches/homages I’ve ever read
Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell would go nicely with ‘Fingerpost’ and “Quincunx’.
Seconded on all three.
It’s been that long since I read ‘Fingerpost’ that it would be like reading it again from fresh (almost – I remembers something of the twists).
Quincunx, although I enjoyed the deep dive into melodramatic Dickensian London and to an extent England, the last sentence left me completely confused about everything I had read before and I couldn’t be bothered to read through the prose again, which just seemed turgid and impenetrable and full of really unpleasant characters.
Crimson Petal and the White managed to be a better and more empowering Dickensian pageturner for me.
I loved Quincunx when it came out. I reread it last year and was less impressed. There are a few holes in that thar plot when you know what’s coming.
Two older books I have absolutely loved this year are A Prayer For Owen Meanie by John Irving and Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. Don’t like westerns you say? I didn’t until I read Lonesome Dove.
A modern book I recommend is The Last House On Needless Street by Catriona Ward. It’s a real genre shifter. You’ll be really puzzled most of the time but here’s a thing: absolutely everything is satisfactorily and credibly explained at the end.
Totally bookmarking this page! Not sure I take music or film recommendations on board here, though I always like reading them, but I take book recommendations very seriously. Me & Mrs M are allus on the lookout for summat that good readin’.
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a hell of a read. Set in the Biafra war, there’s history, tragedy and a gripping narrative. A well known, award winning novel. A classic I suppose.
Completely agree. It’s a wonderful novel. Purple Hibiscus is likewise. I have a copy of Americanah on a shelf awaiting my attention, I suspect that will also turn out to be essential reading.
Americanah might be better than Half Of A Yellow Sun you know.
It looks like it’s just risen to the top of the TBR mountain.
Seconded here too – fantastic book.
Thirded
Thanks so much for this tip – I have it on the Kindle & I think it’s likely to be my next read. Due to the subject matter, I’ve been a tad daunted, feeling I might need a ‘deep breath’ before commencing, but the AW endorsements have emboldened me.
I was taken with Robert Harris’ trilogy of Cicero novels, now in one handy ‘The Cicero Trilogy’ hardback or kindle version.
Also had my first go at Agatha Christie (get a grip, Ed) and saw off ‘4:50 from Paddington’, ‘A Pocket Full Of Rye’ and the twisty-bonkers ‘Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?’ Because if they had the book would have been 4 pages long.
‘English Journey’ by J B Priestly. Almost a century old it describes an England that was grimy, class-controlled and difficult to cope with. Thank fuck for Attlee and Morrison.
On the go at the moment is ‘The Dream of Europe’ by Geert Mak. A follow up to his ‘In Europe’ from 2000 that described the 20th century in er.. Europe. This one examines how and why the place is in such a state now. Populism and Putin don’t do well.
Point of order: England is still (or again) grimy, class-controlled and difficult to cope with.
Conceded. But there was a ubiquity of Homburg hats, trousers with braces and woodbines then.
If no one else is going to mention them…
Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series
George McDonald Fraser’s Flashman series
Bernie Gunther is such a great character. A superb series.
I also really rate Martin Cruz Smith’s Soviet (and after) Russia-based Arkady Renko series.
With both Renko and Gunther the quality does taper off the further into the series you go. Renko I would take Gorky Park and Polar Star, and the ones set in Cuba and near Chernobyl. The others very much law of diminishing returns.
Thanks to everybody that has stumped up with ideas : I don’t think there’s a single clunker in there.
What I like most about others’ recommendations is they can so often lead to palate cleanser books that I likely wouldn’t have considered – it’s very easy to become a reading creature of predictable habit & few things are as rewarding as something that hadn’t previously occurred or one felt hesitant about.
Cheers!
James Ellroy – American Tabloid. Cool, hip, shocking, funny, violent, offensive…often at the same time. I got to the end (it’s quite long) and went straight back to the beginning and read it again as I thought I’d missed stuff. Loved it more the second time. I’m due a third reread. Basically it is set in America in the early 60s with a heady brew of the Mob, Kennedys, CIA, Howard Hughes, FBI / J Edgar, Cuban émigrés, Bay of Pigs…really excellent.
I thoroughly agree. American Tabloid is fantastic. Some people prefer Don de Lillo’s Libra, but they’re quite wrong to do so. (Mind you, I’ve not read Libra, but still).
The best of all Elroy’s books im(ns)ho
I like the LA quartet a lot but the follow-ups to Tabloid, while a decent read, are not as good.
Fight! I think you’ll find that’s White Jazz.
If you’re in the mood for something short and not read Ruth Rendell, you could do a lot worse than try Judgement in Stone.
The book – a psychological thriller – kicks off with one of the most audacious opening sentences ever:
“Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write”
RR’s books as Barbara Vine are every bit as good
Ruth Rendell wrote about Whitsenake??
She also did a stonking cover of Mose Allison’s Parchman Farm
‘Ere’s a novel for ya!’
Lol.
There are those who might suggest that parts of the Coverdale family couldn’t write either, I’m sure.
A few highly recommended reads that I’ve enjoyed during the last couple of years:
From the Wreck – Jane Rawson (a survivor of a shipwreck returns home not knowing that something is tagging along, shapeshifting into a cat, a woman and a birthmark…brilliant aussie novel!)
The Rain Heron – Robbie Arnott (another aussie one if I’m not mistaken – dystopian story set after a civil war, where a band of soldiers come to a mountain to find and catch a mythical bird)
Three Days to Never – Tim Powers (timetraveling, Einstein, a severed head ghost radio, and non-stop action; for fans of the Last Call trilogy and Medusa’s Web-style of his writing)
The Memory Police – Yoko Ogawa (another fantastic dystopian novel, set on an island where some invisible totalitarian regime makes banned things disappear from memory, and the minority of people who can’t forget have to hide unless they want to disappear as well – this is an instant classic with so many levels of brilliance)
Just to name a few that I think you’d enjoy!
The Memory Police is indeed a fine novel. At least I think I’m remembering that correctly…
Police make it stop
Thank, Locust – I’m always astonished at the breadth of the books you write up in Blogger’s Takeovers, so I will pick through these carefully.
I’m reading the new-ish book (Madhouse at the end of the Earth) about the Belgica’s ill-fated journey to the Antarctic, featuring a Brooklyn doctor and Roald Amundsen (pre south pole stuff) among its crew. So far it’s a ripping yarn, although a little annoyingly written in American English. (What’s an ax, for example?)
If you like this kind of thing (and even if you don’t, to be fair) Endurance, by Alfred Lansing, is an astonishing read, telling the story of Ernest Shackleton’s similarly ill-fated trip down south, which he rescued virtually single handedly, by doing some stuff that, frankly, if you made it up would sound horribly unlikely. I could barely put this one down.
On the same theme Bob, if you haven’t read it, ‘Barrow’s Boys’ by Fergus Fleming is one of the most astonishing books I’ve ever read.
Lunatic expeditions in disguise, misguided adventures, cannibalism, searches for lost tribes & cities, it’s all there.
Beyond brilliant!
There’s a guy called Dickens who is pretty good …
Had great expectations when opening one of his books but experienced hard times when reading it
Maybe we have a mutual friend, he said the same …
I’ve just thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Hustler’ by Walter Tevis, 1959 novel that spawned the Paul Newman movie. Riveting read about obsession and addiction to risk.
@rotherhithe-hack
WT also wrote The Man Who Fell to Earth and Queen’s Gambit
I revisited the Man from Berlin series recently, and was reminded just how good they are.
When you mentioned the stupendous ‘An Instance Of The Fingerpost’ , I knew this was going to be a monster of a thread and I’m not disappointed.
I find new reads in the oddest of places.
I recently discovered that the English Church in Stockholm has an English book fair a few times a year. Not only have I picked a pile of literary gems and paid peanuts (Ian Rankin, Francis Spufford, Raymond Chandler, Colum McCann etc etc.), but I’ve also met the Church Beemaster and been given a tour of the hives!!
They make their own honey and it is superb.
I think the book fair would be the perfect location , @Locust, for that Stockholm Mini Mingle which we’ve talked about for the past 20 years.
Last week I was in Skivhögen, a Södermalm second hand record shop. I know the owner well and he’s good at picking out stuff I might enjoy.
To my surprise, I noticed he also sold books. This led to him recommending Lindsey Davis and her Marcus Didius Falco detective novels, set in Rome in 70 AD. I’m 50 pages into The Silver Pigs and enjoying it a great deal.
An old pal in England recommended Mick Herron’s Slough House spy novels. Cynically amusing, fast-moving and highly entertaining.
I’m told that Gary Oldham is superb as Jackson Lamb in the TV series.
By way of total contrast, our book circle recently read Michelle Gallen’s Big Girl, Small Town.
A week in the life of Majella, who works in a chip shop in the border town of Aghybogey just after The Troubles. It’s beautifully written and very amusing. If you want action and plot, this is not the book for you. One of the most exciting events is when our heroine buys a new duvet. Ok, there is also a reefer or two and some casual shagging in the store room at the chippie.
I can’t recommend it strongly enough.
An introduction to an exciting, mysterious new world for me. I’ve never bought a duvet or indeed had a moment of steamy passion among the frozen fish. For me it was always the right plaice but the wrong time.
@Kaisfatdad: Well you know me, I’m always a few books short of yet another Billy bookcase!
Just today I collected a parcel containing 6 kilos of literature…with some very ambitious reading projects for the summer (and years to come): the collected works of Kurt Vonnegut and Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob (clocking in at 1053 pages), and six more that can be described as bite-sized in comparison.
Where in Stockholm is the English Church? I assume somewhere outside the city center, if they keep bees in the vicinities! I’m also hoping that this is the year that the book table at Drottninggatan makes its comeback after the covid years, I’ve really missed it!
Two top tips for the book table: always bring more cash than you think you need, and bring a dramaten to roll all of your finds back home in!
Six kilos! I am very impressed, @Locust!
The church is just opposite the US embassy, on the edge of Östermalm.
I combine my visits to the book fair with a stroll out to the Ethnographic or Science Museum. It’s a great walk.
The book table in the Culture Festival sounds fun too. But I need to shop less and read more!
Round of applause, KFD, for ‘the right plaice but the wrong time.’
There’s an English church in Stockholm? Do they have a toothy vicar and sturdy vergers who look like characters from Midsomer Murders?
“Life is like a tin of Surströmming, we’re all of us… running away from it”
More Gevalia, vicar?
I was very hesitant to go there, Mooche. I’m really not so keen about being part of an ex-pat scene. But I was very pleasantly surprised about how friendly everyone I met was. In a very unpushy way. I wasn’t bombarded with questions about who I was and how I came to be there. They just gave me a few book tips when I asked.
And the second time we went, my pal Tim was there manning the till and selling his home-made rock cakes.
But yes, you are right, Moose. It could very well be a crime scene for DCI Barnaby. I don’t think the flower arranging is quite as competitive as Alan Bennett described in Talking Heads.
MM is huge in Sweden isn’t it? I didn’t disavow the people I met in Ljungby of their idea that it’s essentially a documentary about normal life in England.