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Recommend a book?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Does anyone recommend a really good book for a long journey? I'll read anything really, but I have a thing for romantic novels. Any suggestions?
Post edited by JustV on
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And its 600 pages, plenty to get your teeth into.
It's probably my favourite book ever. I'm not one for love stories, but this one always makes me cry at the end. It's wonderful.
Bushisms, always a good laugh
Goosebumps (allright
(Well, to be honest I liked it when I read it and it wasn't until I started thinking about it a while afterwards that the hatred crept in. What pretentious protagonists, I mean...reciting German poetry while giving birth?)
I'll recommend 'Alias Grace' by Margaret Atwood, which isn't really a love story but is utterly absorbing and really well written.
'Villette' by Charlotte Bronte is a really charming little love story, and semi-autobiographical, if you like that kinda thing.
...is rubbish. Pretentious claptrap IMHO.
But then others think my fave books are;)
But you might as well just get an agathie christie.
I agree 110%. Just finished it and it is the only book I have (nearly) cried at. One of my all time favourites.
I also love Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres, and for something quite different, The Dice Man - Luke Rhinehart.
thirded.
nearly? god, i was in floods. books make me cry waaaay more than films do.
yup, agree on that too. was gutted when they destroyed it by allowing the atrocious film of it :impissed:
i'd recommend anything by haruki murakami. his writing is refreshingly different from all the western stuff you'll be used to, but it's still really simply written and accessible, and not up it's own arse at all. more along the lines of love and loss than love and happy endings, but still worth a read, i think.
I can't read that, I've tried and tried but it's as though they're writting in another language, using English words. Just huh? Oh no, I'm talking out my arse (as per usual), just pulled it off my shelf to quote a nasty sentance as an example... and I'm not even talking about the same book. Not even close- weirdo! Anyway, don't read One Hundred Years of Solitude, G.G.Marquez. It's like reading a book that was written in german, put through a free online translator into spanish, then back to german and then finally to english- wrong!
I recommend Goodnight Mr Tom, Michelle Magorian and Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
i love reading translated books, cause they have a really curious way of wording things that makes you think about what they're actually saying rather than what you assume they're saying cause it's a metaphor you've read 2678 times before.
i do agree they can be pretty hard going sometimes though :yes:
I read Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" in English and the original in Portuguese and they were very different in sentiment and meaning.
I have never cried at a book before though. I find it difficult to do. This one was the closest I have ever been.
It was *awful*. It made me very sad to see how they completely ruined a fantastic book.
The other book that I would recommend, just for a really good, easy read is Adrian Mole and Weapons of Mass Destruction. It's a fun read.
(and the other 6 after it... ) very VERY funny!
Eragon by Christopher Paolini ... couldnt put it down, very addictive
Interview With a Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Damned - Anne Rice... awesome as
Louise Rennison Ruuuuuuuuuulez.
Abso-fucking-lutely fantastic!
I agree this is a very good story, slow to start with but really good once you have got in to it.
There are so many great books out there so it is hard to reccomend a good one.
I also rate The Gun Seller by Hugh laurie, but I doubt it's your cup of tea.
I'm reliably told A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth is wonderful, but I haven't read it yet.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is worth a read.
I've read the Time-Traveler's Wife about ten times now. It always gets me at the end. The last two or three pages have such powerful imagery, for me it sums up love completely and makes me appreciate what I have.
Another book that gets me is The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.
Glad somebody agrees! :thumb:
depends how you define 'badly' though. in a lot of languages there is no direct translation for most phrases, so to make the book make sense at all, much less as a whole, they have to re-write it. translation is more than just popping it all into babelfish and churning out the literal meaning in english.
also your grasp of a language affects the way you interpret books. and i don't mean that in a bad way. like, my mum's first language was polish, and she is completely fluent, but because she was educated in english and she uses english every day, when she reads an english book she will pick up all the subtleties of the way the language is used, and ambiguities in the wording. she can read a polish book, understand it perfectly and know exactly what happened, but she will not get into it in quite the same way.