I love books! In fact, I’m a confessed book sniffer. I cannot resist opening the pages of new books and smelling them. Each book has its own special smell, depending on whether it is glossy, has pictures, is old, what kind of paper is used and so on.
I don’t just smell books; I read them too. Here are some books that I just love reading!
I’d love to receive your book tips too…
The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
Heart-breaking and intense.
Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:
A gripping story about a tragedy that the Western world ignored: Biafra
A hundred years of solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez
The wonderful story of a family’s history in the fictional town of Macondo.
The Tenderness of Wolves
by Stef Penney won the Costa Award.
Murder mystery in the cold Canadian frontier of the 19th century with a spectrum of complex emotions and relationships. A gripping read! Sometimes the journey is more interesting than the destination.
The Bone People
by Keri Hulme
is a wonderful novel. Apparently, it was refused by 200 publisers – amazing!
It went onto win the Booker Prize in 1985! Set in New Zealand, it involves three people: a boy,a man and a woman, who come together, break apart, go through loss and pain, come together and eventually find healing. Poetic and haunting.
The Rainbow
by D.H. Lawrence
- full of sexuality, passion and spirituality. We were made to read it at school, but it was a great read. The story of Ursula continues in Women in Love – also wonderful (especially if you are a teenager).
Douglas Coupland - you’ve just got to read him! Anything by him! Witty, incisive and very insightful. All the books I’ve read by him are glorious – they’ll leave you with a smile on your face, and maybe even a bit of sadness, too.
Two recent reads that I – and many friends – have enjoyed are:
The Gum Thief:
Two people work at Staples, an American mega-store selling stationery. The relationship between them, the story of their lives is written in letter format. And within this novel, there is a novel within a novel called Glove Pond – full of poignancy and insights.
J Pod:
Bizarre and funny. Some say this is the Microserfs for the 21st century, but not quite as good (as Microserfs). I thoroughly enjoyed this anyway.
Other good novels by Coupland: Generation X, of course, and Girlfriend in a Coma.
I really enjoyed this love story cum time travel novel: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Henry meets Clare when she is only a child (from her perspective), but later on, when they are married, he still travels in time to meet her as a child, plus himself and various family members. A wonderful, heart-warming read – but you’ll need some tissues at the end of the novel, too.
August 6, 2008 at 9:48 am
How about Kate Morton- The Shifting Fog (published internationally as The House at Riverton); and her latest book, The Forgotten Garden. Also a great Aussie book ‘A fraction of the whole” by Steve Toltz which is a great read and enormously entertaining. Khaled Hosseini has written a 2nd book called A Thousand splendid suns, which I personally think is better than The Kite Runner. Not to mention my favourite classic author Anthony Trollope. And Paullina Simons is another favourite of mine..
August 6, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Thanks for your tips! Have bought Hosseini’s second book, but haven’t read it yet. I’m looking forward to it!
Keep those tips rolling in!
August 6, 2008 at 2:02 pm
“The Husband” by Dean R. Koontz ( http://www.amazon.com/Husband-Dean-Koontz/dp/0553589091/ref=ed_oe_p ) Truly un-put-downable book – I read it in one sitting!
August 9, 2008 at 7:12 am
Hopefully The Husband is not about murder!!
August 9, 2008 at 9:59 am
No, it’s mainly about a husband who has to use his wits to save his wife from kidnappers.
August 11, 2008 at 2:33 am
That’s good! In which case you could try Paullina Simons’ ‘Eleven Hours” which is a good read and difficult to put down. I tried Cathy Lettes’ “How To successfully Kill Your Husband” but got bored by all the husband- bashing by the protagonists. Criticism for the sake of being critical (spiteful) leaves me cold. Eleven Hours was written when the act perpetrated (or attempted) was unthought of but in recent years has horrifyingly happened in America in recent years.
August 17, 2008 at 8:39 am
I’m glad you found D.H. Lawrence full of sexuality and passion. I only discovered years later that (I think it was Women in Love) had a supposed erotic scenario between two women but I missed it completely when I read it as a teenager. Ditto for Lady Chatterley!! One of my friends did once tell me I was not very subtle at spotting romance and I once misheard an attempted obscene phone call and thought the caller was trying to speak to a girl called Sylvia! So I guess that friend was right!!
September 18, 2008 at 11:09 am
Thanx for all the book tips!
I have a must-read for you: Cormack McCarthy’s “The Road”. Father and his young son walking across America, in the ashes of a continent, a world that is no more because of global warmth/natural catastrophies. Their journey, struggle, horror, love and hope is described in a powerful and beautiful languague: it’s a terrifying and heart warming story at the same time. (It’s is the most emotionally striking book I’ve read since Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain.)
September 18, 2008 at 11:17 am
Thanks for that tip. I recently read McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men”, which is also good.
November 15, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I’ve never read The Rainbow, I’ll have to give it a try! I loved Time Traveler’s Wife, too.
February 18, 2009 at 7:38 pm
I have a secret to tell you. I’m a book sniffer too…
March 26, 2009 at 10:35 pm
I’m a bookie too. Very gald to see The Time Traveler’s Wife and The Kite runner on your list.
I have many books I could recommend. For unusualness, you cannot beat Marius Brill’s Making Love, which is a story told by a book, which starts off quite quietly, covers the concept of 12th century courtly love and eventually builds to a true James Bond “blow em up” climax. Really really fascinating read. Satire, farce, blockbluster, philosophical treatise. I can’t recommend it enough.
Other books I love include The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak, The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom and Bareback by Kit Whitfield. Every one of them have something special and philosophical within them, set in magically-told stories.
April 10, 2009 at 5:18 pm
The entire Patrick O’Brien series. He is the most literate writer I have ever encountered. The interesting and complex history and personalities involved, plus the insight into relationships makes these on-going stoires exceptional. I wish there were 21 more of these books.
April 10, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Please ignore the typos in the above post. I’m a terrific nurse practitioner, but a lousy typist. My keyboard skills never improve despite a 25 year effort. Typing is not even “hunt ‘n peck”…strictly “search and destroy”…
July 3, 2009 at 8:19 pm
I’m currently reading the Kite Runner, recommended by my mum and a friend – absolutely absorbing, I am really into it. I had just read the Time Traveler’s Wife and was lamenting nearing the end, when my friend lent me the Kite Runner – saved! Another brilliant read, yet again a tip from my mum, is Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, it is a tricky story to tell, told expertly and from a refreshingly new perspective. Definately worth a go.