Customer Recommendations
Girl in the Hammock, 1873 (oil on canvas) by Homer, Winslow (1836-1910)
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What’s your favourite book?
We all have a favourite book; something that is dear to us, something we recommend or lend out (possibly!) to those close to us (and hope they feel the same way about it too!).
Whether it’s one of the literary classics or whether it’s a recent release, please let us know in the comments box below. Feel free to respond to some of the recommendations made by others.
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Badjelly the Witch by Spike Milligan.
Happy Christmas 🙂
Has to be ‘Love in the time of Cholerea’ Marquez. Still gives me shivers.
However, just read ,The Goldfinch, Donna Tart. Wowzer. Would thoroughly recommend. I normally re-cycle books onward but keeping this one for a second read.
Does it cause buzzers to go off if I choose more than one? I had this question posed to me in a dream once and picked three. When I woke up I thought my answers were pretty good. The books were; The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence and The Riders by Tim Winton.
Power without Glory by Frank Hardy. A classic and massively ignored’
Just one? That’s difficult, but I’m going to opt for a lesser-known gem – Colm Toibin’s ‘The Heather Blazing’. It’s a cameo, rather than a grand panorama, but I love it’s depth of understanding, and also the way it’s written. In a lot of books there are occasional sentences which jar, but in this I was re-reading sentences just for pleasure in the way they were put together.
Hard to pick a favourite but for just one it has to be an Iain M Banks culture novel. I’d urge you to read them all but the one I’ll pick is Surface Detail, an intricate analysis of human society concealed in a scifi novel about a very alien society existing roughly at the same time as ours (Surface Detail is a few thousand years in our future, other books in the series are set before the present by millennium or two (or in 1977!))
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.
I’ll always remember when my mother first gave me this book as something to read over the summer holidays. I think I must have been a young teenager, perhaps 14. She said to me ‘Harper Lee only ever wrote one book, but she put all her stories into it’. Once I read it, I understood what she meant.
I fell in love with the character of Scout, whose childish innocence means that the serious issues which the book deals with never get too heavy. It’s so beautifully written; I wouldn’t want to spoil the plot for anyone, but there’s a moment when a character who has accused someone of something is shown to be incredibly lonely, and it really touched me. Loneliness is, in fact, very well portrayed in the book – Boo Radley and the storyline surrounding his character also fascinated me. Harper Lee wrote real people, with both flaws and good points in each. I could talk for days about all the different things Lee manages to touch on and explore in this book.
I read a lot of books but every so often, perhaps once every year or every two years, I return to this and thoroughly enjoy it once again. I highly recommend giving it a go, you have nothing to lose; if you don’t like it, you needn’t read it again. But if you’re anything like me, then it’ll stick with you for the rest of your life! I can also highly recommend the 1962 film of the novel (I believe all the best films come from novels).
The DI Damen Brook ‘Reaper’ series by Steven Dunne.
Most of the series is based in and around Derby, with the divorced detective living in Hartington. Each of the books has a plot that combines police work and inter-personal work relationships, inspired detective skills, and a psychological thread that runs through the villains.
Dunne’s basic skill is in his ability to make the English language work for him, instead of trying to use it to thrill the reader. It is a natural, flowing, often menacing style of writing that allows the reader to absorb the plot through a well-penned story. Dunne doesn’t strive to be clever with his writing; he just has a natural and profound understanding and ability with words.
Be prepared to know who did it; find out you’re wrong; change you’re mind – and eventually discover twists and turns that create shocking and surprising endings.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
I’ve been an avid reader of Murakami for some time now and I could probably have chosen from several of his novels, but this is probably the one that sticks with me the most and is the one I feel closest to.
The story revolves around Toru’s search for his missing cat, and covers topics such as the transitory nature of romantic love, the banality of evil and the horrors of war. There are dream scenes, flashbacks and long periods of time spent at the bottom of a well. And some very peculiar characters.
If I hadn’t chosen a Murakami, it would have been Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.