Book recommendations

After ten years living abroad, Tarquin Hall wanted to return to his native London. Lured by his nostalgia for a leafy suburban childhood spent in south-west London, he returned with his Indian-born, American fiancee in tow. But, priced out of the housing market, they found themselves living not in a townhouse, oozing Victorian charm, but in a squalid attic above a Bangladeshi sweatshop on London's Brick Lane. ...
SALAAM BRICK LANE provides a rare view of London's underbelly, providing an insight that no other contemporary account has achieved. Hall meets and befriends an extraordinary cast of characters and it his keen observation and sympathetic eye that makes the book such an enthralling read.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is an excellent read. Highly recommend it.

Kertesz ( Kaddish for an Unborn Child ), who, as a youth, spent a year as a prisoner in Auschwitz, has crafted a superb, haunting novel that follows Gyorgy Koves, a 14-year old Hungarian Jew, during the year he is imprisoned in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Fighting to retain his equilibrium when his world turns upside down, Gyorgy rationalizes that certain events are "probably natural" or "probably a mistake." Gradual starvation and what he experiences as grinding boredom become a way of life for him, yet Gyorgy describes both Buchenwald and its guards as "beautiful"; as he asks "who can judge what is possible or believable in a concentration camp?" Gyorgy also comes to a sense of himself as a Jew. At first, he experiences a strong distaste for the Jewish-looking prisoners; he doesn't know Hebrew (for talking to God) or Yiddish (for talking to other Jews). Fellow inmates even claim Gyorgy is "no Jew," and make him feel he isn't "entirely okay." Kertesz's spare, understated prose and the almost ironic perspective of Gyorgy, limited both by his youth and his inability to perceive the enormity of what he is caught up in, give the novel an intensity that will make it difficult to forget. One learns something of concentration camp life here, even while becoming convinced that one cannot understand that life at all--not the way Kertesz does.

Anything by John Grisham.

Another book I would recommend is 1984 by George Orwell. It was one of the those books that people always told me to read, it being a classic and everything. I decided to take their advice and I really loved it. I did get a little paranoid afterwards thinking that Big Brother was watching, it sticks with you. Or maybe that was just me!

Vineland
by Thomas Pynchon

If u liked Catch-22... try Vernon God Little... dark humor... started off a bit slow... but is one of the best books ever... after Catch-22

Best ever, in this order:
Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky), Les Miserables (Hugo), Anna Karennina (Tolstoy)

Do Adroids Dream of Electric Sheep ? Forgotten the author.

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

A story told by the grim reaper about a little girl in Germany during WWII. I was so taken in by the way that "death" tells this story, and how he/it is so intrigued by this little girl. I read a new book every couple of weeks, and I haven't loved a book this much in years. A word of warning, it has a tear inducing ending. A bit unexpected, and a slight feeling of sadness stuck with me for a few days. This is not a concentration camp story. It's a story of life, love, death, struggle, courage, weakness and a view into the lives of the average German citizen.

I'm about to start reading McCarthy's "The Road" but light reading it is not - it is about a father and son heading for the coast following a nuclear attack and how love and hope can go on even under the bleakest of circumstances. The reviews have been resoundingly good, some even saying that this is the masterpiece McCarthy readers have been waiting for, but bleak/beautiful was always his terrain.