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What are some good novels?
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WastingTime




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 6:51 am
I'm looking for some good novels to read.
Not classics, things like mystery s or thrillers are good as long as they're not too violent/ disturbing. Romance novels are okay if they're novels not trash.
Or ones that subsequently became movies like the notebook, the help etc
Im really open to any type of suggestions.
Any ideas??
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thunderstorm




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 6:54 am
Anything written by James Patterson...I LOVE each one of his books.
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 7:13 am
I like the Elizabeth George mystery series. They are very classic English procedurals. The protagonist is Lord Lynley who is a detective in Scotland Yard. My favorite character is his underling Barbara Havers who is a lovable very smart shlumpy woman. I would start at the beginning of the series as the characters develop over time.

Other good series are the Sue Grafton mysteries and Sara Paretsky. These are not particularly violent series but rely a lot on the characters.

In another vein altogether are the Jodi Picoult novels. You can read reviews on Amazon and see if they are intriguing.
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momtra




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 8:55 am
I heard Me Before You is excellent - although I haven't read it yet .
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WastingTime




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 9:08 am
Amarante wrote:
I like the Elizabeth George mystery series. They are very classic English procedurals. The protagonist is Lord Lynley who is a detective in Scotland Yard. My favorite character is his underling Barbara Havers who is a lovable very smart shlumpy woman. I would start at the beginning of the series as the characters develop over time.

Other good series are the Sue Grafton mysteries and Sara Paretsky. These are not particularly violent series but rely a lot on the characters.

In another vein altogether are the Jodi Picoult novels. You can read reviews on Amazon and see if they are intriguing.


Funny I got a Lynel novel randomly called Just one evil act. Although many reviews said it was her worst book. And I had to skip over all the Italian.
I will check all the other names.
Thanks! !
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 9:19 am
I don't want to give away plot details but there was one which covered the action of a teenage hoodlum which was not very enjoyable but I plowed through it stoically. And then I think this was the sequel to that one which was also pretty terrible.

I turned my friend on to Elizabeth George and we are both HUGE Barbara Havers fanatics. I don't think she isn't even in this one as isn't it Lynley being depressed walking along the coast line? LOL.

I also like PD James who does similar English type of mysteries with the Dalgliesh detective.

Completely different but you can also check out Penny Vincenzi who does English family type of sagas. Nothing prurient - I would call it well written soap opera type of stuff - the literary equivalent of Downton Abby.

I just finished Still Alice by Lisa Genova which is about a Harvard professor who gets early onset Alzheimers. That was a great read - I devoured it in one day when I had a lot of time to myself :-)
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amother
Fuchsia


 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 9:21 am
The Hunger Games
The Maze Runner
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 9:23 am
There is John Grisham as he does reliably good legal thrillers. The current one is Gray Mountain which I believe is the sequel to Sycamore Row. These are always reliable page turners. Nothing exceptionally prurient or gory.
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 9:26 am
There are also the Nevada Barr mystery series which "star" Anna Pigeon as a ranger for US Park Service. They are a fun read and the milieu is fascinating as they take place in various National Parks.
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 9:30 am
I don't know if you want something that is a bit more literary. This won the Pulitzer Prize.

All The Light We Cannot See


WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

Set in World War II France and Germany, All the Light We Cannot See is my favorite kind of novel: long, rich, populated by a range of imperfect characters, some who try to transcend that imperfection, others who cannot see it.

The cast of characters includes Marie-Laure, blind since age six, with a quick mind and a great deal of self-confidence; her father, locksmith for the Museum of Natural History in Paris; Marie-Laure’s great-uncle, an agoraphobic haunted by ghosts since he returned from World War I; the great-uncle’s elderly housekeeper, who finds the courage to join the French resistance; Werner, a German orphan who is a prodigy in the creation and repair of radios; Werner’s sister Jutta, left behind when Werner is accepted into a science academy for Hitler Youth that offers more political indoctrination than science; and a whole host of others.

Anthony Doerr brings this wide assembly of individuals to life, moving among them, slowly drawing them nearer one another, fleshing each of them out so that even those we might expect to be stereotypes are much more multifaceted.

And among these multifaceted characters lies a multifaceted stone: a diamond with a legendary history. In less able hands, the diamond would have dominated this story, which would have degenerated into a variation on Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it’s the characters who are the heart of All the Light We Cannot See. There are a few we hate, but for the most part, we can’t help but see the better parts of them. The question is whether they will discover these better selves in time to make a difference of some sort in a world quite literally in flames.
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Maya




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 9:35 am
Agree about Penny Vincenzi. Also Still Alice.
I don't read much mystery or drama or thrillers or romances, so I can't recommend much in those genres.

If you don't mind some language, I'm currently enjoying Petropolis by Anya Ulinich.
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Maya




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 9:37 am
And if you haven't yet, check out Maeve Binchy's books.
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 9:38 am
I am planning this as my next read. The Jewish Book Council called it the "Jewish Downton Abbey" yesterday. I am somewhat of a sucker for English generational sagas so take that into consideration :-)

The Song of Hargrove Hall - Natasha Solomons

A captivating novel that evokes the author’s New York Times bestseller The House at Tyneford

Natasha Solomons’s breathtaking new novel has it all: a love triangle, family obligations, and rediscovering joy in the face of grief, all set against the alluring backdrop of an English country estate perfect for fans of Downton Abbey

It's a terrible thing to covet your brother’s girl

New Year’s Eve, Dorset, England, 1946. Candles flicker, a gramophone scratches out a tune as guests dance and sip champagne— for one night Hartgrove Hall relives better days. Harry Fox-Talbot and his brothers have returned from World War II determined to save their once grand home from ruin. But the arrival of beautiful Jewish wartime singer Edie Rose tangles the threads of love and duty, and leads to a devastating betrayal.

Fifty years later, now a celebrated composer, Fox reels from the death of his adored wife, Edie. Until his connection with his four-year old grandson - a music prodigy – propels him back into life, and ultimately to confront his past. An enthralling novel about love and treachery, joy after grief, and a man forced to ask: is it ever too late to seek forgiveness?
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 9:39 am
Maya wrote:
And if you haven't yet, check out Maeve Binchy's books.


Love those. And they have wide appeal as my grandfather also likes them very much and he is not a fan of too much schmaltz LOL
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 9:45 am
This is an older book but I think would appeal to you based on your criteria.

The Midwives - Chris Bohjalian

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review


Oprah Book Club® Selection, October 1998: On a violent, stormy winter night, a home birth goes disastrously wrong. The phone lines are down, the roads slick with ice. The midwife, unable to get her patient to a hospital, works frantically to save both mother and child while her inexperienced assistant and the woman's terrified husband look on. The mother dies but the baby is saved thanks to an emergency C-section. And then the nightmare begins: the assistant suggests that maybe the woman wasn't really dead when the midwife operated:
Did she perform at least eight or nine cycles as my mother said, or four or five as Asa recalled? That is the sort of detail that was disputable. But at some point within minutes of what my mother believed had been a stroke, after my mother concluded the cardiopulmonary resuscitation had failed to generate a pulse or a breath, she screamed for Asa and Anne to find her the sharpest knife in the house.

In Midwives, Chris Bohjalian chronicles the events leading up to the trial of Sibyl Danforth, a respected midwife in the small Vermont town of Reddington, on charges of manslaughter. It quickly becomes evident, however, that Sibyl is not the only one on trial--the prosecuting attorney and the state's medical community are all anxious to use this tragedy as ammunition against midwifery in general; this particular midwife, after all, an ex-hippie who still evokes the best of the flower-power generation, is something of an anachronism in 1981. Through it all, Sibyl, her husband, Rand, and their teenage daughter, Connie, attempt to keep their family intact, but the stress of the trial--and Sibyl's growing closeness to her lawyer--puts pressure on both marriage and family. Bohjalian takes readers through the intricacies of childbirth and the law, and by the end of Sibyl Danforth's trial, it's difficult to decide which was more harrowing--the tragic delivery or its legal aftermath.
Narrated by a now adult Connie, Midwives moves back and forth in time, fitting vital pieces of information about what happened that night like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into its complicated plot. As Connie looks back on her mother's trial, she is still trying to understand what happened--not on the night of the disaster--but in the months and years that followed. --Margaret Prior
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 9:56 am
momtra wrote:
I heard Me Before You is excellent - although I haven't read it yet .


That was a great read. I have the sequel but haven't read it yet.

She also wrote a book about Australian war brides traveling to Great Britain after WWII. Lots of good plot as the various brides play out their stories. I this it was called Ship of brides but I can confirm if anyone needs the name.
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WastingTime




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 10:35 am
Amarante wrote:
I don't know if you want something that is a bit more literary. This won the Pulitzer Prize.

All The Light We Cannot See


WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

Set in World War II France and Germany, All the Light We Cannot See is my favorite kind of novel: long, rich, populated by a range of imperfect characters, some who try to transcend that imperfection, others who cannot see it.

The cast of characters includes Marie-Laure, blind since age six, with a quick mind and a great deal of self-confidence; her father, locksmith for the Museum of Natural History in Paris; Marie-Laure’s great-uncle, an agoraphobic haunted by ghosts since he returned from World War I; the great-uncle’s elderly housekeeper, who finds the courage to join the French resistance; Werner, a German orphan who is a prodigy in the creation and repair of radios; Werner’s sister Jutta, left behind when Werner is accepted into a science academy for Hitler Youth that offers more political indoctrination than science; and a whole host of others.

Anthony Doerr brings this wide assembly of individuals to life, moving among them, slowly drawing them nearer one another, fleshing each of them out so that even those we might expect to be stereotypes are much more multifaceted.

And among these multifaceted characters lies a multifaceted stone: a diamond with a legendary history. In less able hands, the diamond would have dominated this story, which would have degenerated into a variation on Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it’s the characters who are the heart of All the Light We Cannot See. There are a few we hate, but for the most part, we can’t help but see the better parts of them. The question is whether they will discover these better selves in time to make a difference of some sort in a world quite literally in flames.



sounds good. I am trying to ship books from an English book store that ships to Israel. This one is a pricier one (46 shekel):-(
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 10:37 am
WastingTime wrote:
sounds good. I am trying to ship books from an English book store that ships to Israel. This one is a pricier one (46 shekel):-(


Do you have a Kindle or iPad or even a smart phone with a reading App. I love being bike to shlep a 100 books around with me as I have a fear of having nothing to read. LOL

If you do, I could email to you.


Last edited by Amarante on Wed, Jan 06 2016, 10:38 am; edited 1 time in total
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WastingTime




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 10:37 am
Amarante wrote:
There is John Grisham as he does reliably good legal thrillers. The current one is Gray Mountain which I believe is the sequel to Sycamore Row. These are always reliable page turners. Nothing exceptionally prurient or gory.


Ever since I watched some of the movies as a kid, I feel all his books are so similar. I read the pelican brief last year anyway and was kinda waiting for it to end already...
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WastingTime




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 06 2016, 10:38 am
Amarante wrote:
Do you have a Kindle or iPad or even a smart phone with a reading App. I love being bike to shlep a 100 books around with me as I have a fear of having nothing to read. LOL


The main time I have to read is Shabbos--- otherwise I would definitely consider buying a kindle!
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