It's that time of year again when the British newspapers start to feature lists of summer reads for folks pack into their holiday suitcases.Here's a list of the 50 Best from The Independent with some excellent reading suggestions, both fiction and non-fiction.
Richard and Judy who host Britain's TV Book Club unveil their reading recommendations for Summer 2008 . What this duo selects usually invariably makes the best seller lists - what Ciar Byrnes refers to in The Independent refers to as :
... a literary lotteryThis Summer's picks are :
- Sadie Jones - The Outcast
- Linwood Barclay - No Time for Goodbye
- Julia Gregson - East of the Sun
- John Hart - Down River
- Margaret Cezair - The Pirate's Daughter
- Rebecca Miller - The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
- Toni Jordan - Addition
- James Bradley - The Resurrectionist
Incidentally, have you noticed how many novels these days seem to have be about somebody's "wife", or somebody's "daughter"? (Never, oddly enough, somebody's "husband" or somebody's "son", as if women are defined by the men in their lives, perish the thought.) I thought of compiling a list, but don't think I have the energy.
16 comments:
rebecca miller, isn't she arthur's daughter? and the wife of daniel day-lewis, son of cecil?
don't know who the other 7 are.
yeah! should write about her sometime soon i suppose ...
unfortunately, that's all i knew about her (plus some stuff i am reading right now on this cool website called wikipedia).
one on independant's list...
4. Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
The Bush-led 2003 invasion of Iraq has spawned a library of books but few have had the impact of this award-winning work by the former Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief. Set among the towering plants and sparkling swimming pools of the surreal bubble that was the Iraq capital’s Green Zone, in the year after the “shock’n’awe” invasion, the book details, with great wit and clarity, Bush’s flawed attempt to build American democracy in a political vacuum.
Publisher: Bloomsbury
How much: £8.99
...everytime someone write about bush attempting to bring democrcy in the arab world, it gets me mad as hell.
bush is a damned criminal... he ought to be shot.
ah pong
the book is about the unreality of life in the green zone in baghdad and i'd very much like to read it. don't worry it is very critical of bush. here's the website.
add "Mistral's Daughter" by Judith Krantz to your daughterlist.
:-)
- Poppadumdum
Here's a new book by a brother!
The General's Daughter, Nelson DeMille
Apothecary's Daughter, Patricia Schonstein
Bonesetter's Daughter, Amy Tan
- Poppadumdum
amir - yeah but it isn't called "madonna's brother" is it?
poppadumdum - good list. keep 'em coming. (i'm sure you haven't anything more valuable to do with your day!)
The Time Traveller's Wife, The Memory Keeper's Daughter. A friend of mine actually wrote a blog post ranting about this phenomenon (why must women always be seen only in relation to their men?!?), but I can't find it now, or I'd link to it here.
Ah Pong -- I suggest you read Imperial Life in the Emerald City -- yes, actually read the whole book, not just the last sentence of the summary (how radical of me, I know!) -- before judging it.
-- PS
more wives ...
The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman
The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller
Ahab's Wife or, The Star-Gazer by Sena Naslund
The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy
The Diplomat's Wife by Pam Jenoff
Editor's Wife by Clare Chambers
Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer
The Bachelor's Stand-In Wife (Silhouette Special Edition) by Susan Crosby
The River Wife: A Novel by Jonis Agee
The Greek Tycoon's Pregnant Wife (Modern Romance) by Anne Mather
The Greek Tycoon's Convenient Wife (Modern Romance) by Sharon Kendrick
The Doctor's Wife (Oxford World's Classics) by M.E. Braddon and Lyn Pykett
The Mapmaker's Wife by Robert Whitaker
The Rector's Wife by Joanna Trollope and Patricia Hodge
The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust by Edith Hahn Beer and Susan Dworkin
(more still in film titles)
sorry preeta dah-ling;
blame it on my poor english (it's my third language you know).
I don't mean the book specifically. just any mention about bush and promoting democracy in the arab world gives me high blood pressure and makes me want to blow up something...that's all.
ah pong
Hollywood Wives - Jackie Collins
Hollyood Wives: The Next Generation - Jackie Collins
(to be fair she also wrote Hollywood Husbands !)
Daughter of the River - Hong Ying
Lost Daughter of Happiness - Geling Yan
I just noticed The Apothecary's Daughter is grammatically wrong, isn't it? It should have been called The Apothecarian's Daughter? Like naming a book The Library's Daughter instead of The Librarian's Daughter...
- Poppadumdum
No, an apothecary is both the person and the place.
-- PS
Re Apothecary - oh, okay. Thanks! :-)
So the book's title is even MORE ambiguous now - it could refer to either the PLACE'S daughter, or the person running the place's daughter :-)))))
- Poppadumdum
..but whatever the title meant, it was still a HUGELY disappointing book. Magical realism comes to save a writer who couldn't think of a way to end her story...
- Poppadumdum
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