With so many books and so little time, it helps to have a little guidance. It also helps when two or even three books can be read simultaneously – thus saving the reader valuable time for even more books.
Here then is my current recommended reading list. Something for everyone here.
Old Favorites Rediscovered
Steppenwolf Hall – A German man has a spiritual crisis in an old house in Wiltshire.
Gaudy Knight – An Arthurian legend of fashionable armour set in an Oxford College
(This was later re-published as Gaudy Nightwood also known as Tender is the Nightwood – Glamorous lesbian goths go drinking in the South of France.)
Midnight’s Children of Dynmouth – An allegory of colonial rule set in a seaside town.
The Lord of the Rings of Saturn – A fantasy walking tour of middle earth
Rogue Mail – Hunted by enemy agents and the police, a man goes postal in Dorset
Howard’s End of the Affair – How a bookcase ended a wartime romance
Fahrenheit 451 Years of Solitude – Just before his death, a South American colonel discovers how to burn books
The Glass Bead Game of Thrones – A young man advances in a world torn apart by competing fantasies plus dragons,
The Martian Chronicles of a Death Foretold – Even after fair warning, Americans cannot stop the end of the world
Gone With the Wind in the Willows – In which the wild wooders set fire to Atlanta and Toad declares he will never go hungry again.
Lorna Dune – A feudal interstellar romance set in a west country moorland
The Spy Who Came in From Cold Comfort Farm – An everyday story of double-crossing country folk.
The Death of the Heart of Darkness at Noon – An orphan disappears in Africa before being killed in a Stalinist purge.
And Now a Few Books on my TBR (To Be Read) Pile
Which one should I read next? Can anyone help out by providing a simple summary of what any of them are about?
Anna Karen In A Pickle
Middle March to a Different Drummer
Things Fall A Part from that Mrs. Lincoln
Invisible Mann Booker Prize
The Old Man and The Sea, The Sea
Pale Fire Next Time
The Handmaid’s Tale of Two Cities
Little Drummer Girl With a Pearl Earring
Barchester Towers of Trebizond
Clockwork Oranges are Not the Only Fruit
Strangers on a Train to Pakistan
Rejected and Neglected
Some books that weren’t for me:
Paradise Lost Horizon – This is the poem that proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the Garden of Eden was located in the mountains of Tibet.
Giovanni’s Room at the Top – Upwardly mobile homosexual having affairs in a tower block in Paris.
Block Beauty – How the city got another brutalist skyscraper.
Gulliver’s Travels with Charley – A voyage across America accompanied by a poodle.
Lord Jim of the Flies (I did not enjoy this dystopian seafaring yarn but I did enjoy the sequel: Lucky Lord Jim of the Flies where our hero quits the sea for a college job and delivers the last word on Merrie England before passing out.
Happy reading everyone! Do you have any new titles to suggest?
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I wish I'd had your guide handy sooner. Howard’s End of the Affair – Had I known there was a tale about a bookcase ending a wartime romance, I would've had second thoughts about purchasing this particular article of furniture for myself. I recently found The Tenant of Mansfield Park to be very gothically gripping.
I think "The Handmaid’s Tale of Two Cities" is that book where the Republic of Gilead finds itself in the midst of the French Revolution and some women are forced into servitude only to be rescued at the last minute by one man who looks like the exact copy of another! My other favourite books are "Never Let Me Go Tell It On the Mountain" and "A Lost Lady Susan".
I kid you not - a friend swears that when she worked in a bookshop, one person came in and asked for '1984 Charing Cross Road' and 'Dining Out in Paris and London'. Might have been the victim of a windup.
And that was Nice - can't even type my own name. Obviousy a while since I've been on here since there was no memory for me.
I can't remember if you saw this but my post 'Titles in search of books' was similarly inspired by your notion: https://wp.me/p2oNj1-3tY
The title that had one reader spluttering into their tea was "The Angry Caterpillar: the diary of a butterfly larva with IBS." You may be safer with the others -- I found putting my drink down helped when reading your post... (Btw, I rather fancy 'Lorna Dune' -- maybe as a film on Netflix though.)
Ah! Thanks. Yes. I wrote this post after finding some of the titles in an old google doc sandbox.
And now I see I must have written that after reading your post and tucked it away. Because - Lo and behold! There is most of my post in my reply to yours! Oh well - worse things happen in "The Wide Sargasso Sea of Troubles".
😁 I'm currently enjoying 'Slaughterhouse-Five on a Treasure Island' (Kirrin Island gets blasted to smithereens) and 'At the Mountains of Moominsummer Madness' (when Cthulhu visits Snufkin and Snufkin is not impressed).
Sound like excellent reads! As for Kirren Island - one of Uncle Quentin's experiments gone awry? George will be in such a sulk now.
And while we are on the topic of the beloved Enid:
"The Naughtiest Girl in the School for Scandal"
Here's a time-saving combo: "Giovanni's Room With a View From the Bridge Over the River Kwai."
Alternative: "The Enormous Room at the Top Girls of Slender Means"
A few more for your bookshelf
The God of Small Things Fall Apart
The God of Small Things They Carried
Twenty Thousand leagues Under the Sea of Stories
Around the World in Eighty Days of Wine and Roses
Women in Love in the Time of Cholera
Light in August is a Wicked Month
A High Wind in Jamaica Inn
The Death of the Heart of Darkness
Watership Down and Out in Paris and London
Quiet Flows the Don Quixote
Half of a Yellow Sun Also Rises
Cloud Atlas Shrugged
Never Let Me Go Tell it on the Mountain
Thanks, Phillip. Great list. Wondering about the plot lines of some of these!
Fall of the House of Cards
Little Bleak House on the Prairie
The Good the Bad and the Beautiful and Damned.
I think book titles will be crashing in my head all day!
I know what you mean. Once they start up the brain-rattling can get quite intrusive! And it only gets worse if you let poems creep in;
"The Sound and the Fury of Aerial Bombardment"
"My mistress' eyes are nothing like The Sun Also Rises"
"The Little Prince Caspian"
.... and how about this classic
"The Chicken Soup Murder on the Orient Express"
Very funny and inventive!
....and then there's MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL UNDER THE SUN (good and evil being about the only things that will grow in the midnight sun -- and I'm not too sure about the good).
Took me a second to catch on, Josie. Very imaginative! And I love that last photo!
Treasure Island of Dr Moreau
Victorian gothic
Forever War of the Worlds
H G Wells take on the Vietnam war
The Mysterious End of the Affair at Styles
--unpublished collaboration between Graham Greene and Agatha Christie;
well, - I suppose death would be one end of an affair!
Excellent! Some good reads there. See also:
"4.50 from Paddington Bear "- Stuffed animal sees a murder from a train.
And thinking of Christie mysteries, here are some doubleheaders:
"The Sittaford Mystery of the Blue Train"
"Appointment with Death Comes at the End"
"Mrs.McGinty's Dead Man's Folly"
And this one has the extra treat of political intrigue in the sandwich;
"Peril at End House of Cards on the Table"
And here's a cross with Dorothy L. Sayers:
"Death in the Clouds of Witness"