THE List
Congratulations! Felicitations! Complimenti! You found your way to ‘THE LIST’. Don’t you just love a list? It’s so satisfying to cross off a task when you have completed it. This is a different list. Not the sort you get with a stern lecture about how much time you should devote to reading things you would really rather not. The sort you start to read and then find yourself waking up four hours later thinking “Oh dear, how did that happen?” I doubt you will have seen one like this before. I have organised the list into my own genres They aren’t exactly traditional and I am open to suggestion for others. Might I suggest crossing each book off the list if you read it? You could award a grade, maybe running from A to GRAVE (so bad it needs to be buried) You might want to do this (tick not grade, don’t get ahead of yourself!) when you start a book if you are really trustworthy. Regrettably I am not.
Ms Lea Purveyor of exceptionally good book lists
THE List
I promised you ’The list’ and here it is in all of its glory! I think of it like a gallery. I often judge a book by its cover (at least initially) so its easier to show them to you like this.
THE List
They are arranged rather unconventionally but I hope you will catch my drift. If you would like to suggest a title for a list please do. I’d love to hear it and we can add it to the next edition.
THE List
Love (but not in the conventional sense)
It’s a grave matter
Another World
Trashy-sometimes we don’t want Tolstoy. (shhh...I don’t ever want Tolstoy)
THE List
Watery pleasures Like salted sweet popcorn-odd but good And I thought my family was strange!
School days
Gals with grit
Love, but not in the conventional sense
'Obsessed with sex!' said Jassy, 'there's nobody so obsessed as you, Linda. Why if I so much as look at a picture you say I'm a pygmalionist'. In the end we got far more information out of a book called "Ducks and Duck Breeding". 'Ducks can only copulate,' said Linda, after studying this for a while, 'in running water. Good luck to them'. Oh the tedium of waiting to grow up! Longing for love, obsessed with weddings and sex, Linda and her sisters and cousin Fanny are on the look out for the perfect lover. But finding Mr Right is much harder than any of the sisters thought. Linda must suffer marriage first to a stuffy Tory MP and then to a handsome and humorousless communist before finding real love in war-torn Paris..."The Pursuit of Love" is one of the funniest, sharpest novels about love and growing up ever written.
Oskar and Eli. In very different ways, they were both victims. Which is why, against the odds, they became friends. And how they came to depend on one another, for life itself. Oskar is a 12 year old boy living with his mother on a dreary housing estate at the city's edge. He dreams about his absentee father, gets bullied at school, and wets himself when he's frightened. Eli is the young girl who moves in next door. She doesn't go to school and never leaves the flat by day. She is a 200 year old vampire, forever frozen in childhood, and condemned to live on a diet of fresh blood. John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel is a unique and brilliant fusion of social novel and vampire legend, a deeply moving fable The film is beautiful and about rejection, friendship achingly sad. Read it then and loyalty. watch it. You will never look at a swimming pool in the same way again!
Golden Richards is a normal dad. But with four wives and twenty eight children there just isn't enough of him to go around. Unbeknownst to his wives, Golden has taken a construction job on a Nevada brothel. Lying to cover his tracks, beset by familial rivalry on all sides, he seeks relief in the arms of his boss' wife. To put it simply, this is the story of a polygamist who has an affair. But there is much more to it than that. Generous, wise and moving "The Lonely Polygamist" is a bittersweet tale of family, love and belonging.
It’s a grave matter
Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods - until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night. Acquitted of the murders, Constance has returned home, where Merricat protects her from the curiosity and hostility of In a dusty post-war the villagers. Their days pass summer in rural in happy isolation until Warwickshire, a doctor is cousin Charles appears. Only called to a patient at Merricat can see the danger, lonely Hundreds Hall. and she must act swiftly to Home to the Ayres family keep Constance from his for over two centuries, grasp. the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, its owners mother, son and daughter - struggling to keep pace. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.
1891. In a remote and crumbling New England mansion, 12-year-old orphan Florence is neglected by her guardian uncle and banned from reading. Left to her own devices she devours books in secret and talks to herself - and narrates this, her story - in a unique language of her own invention. By night, she sleepwalks the corridors like one of the old house's many ghosts and is troubled by a recurrent dream in which a mysterious woman appears to threaten her younger brother Giles. Sometimes Florence doesn't sleepwalk at all, but simply pretends to so she can roam at will and search the house for clues to her own baffling past. After the sudden violent death of the children's first governess, a second teacher, Miss Taylor, arrives, and immediately strange phenomena begin to occur. Florence becomes convinced that the new governess is a vengeful and malevolent spirit who means to do Giles harm. Against this powerful supernatural enemy, and without any adult to whom she can turn for help, Florence must use all her intelligence and ingenuity to both protect her little brother and preserve her private world.
ANOTHER WORLD
Deep in the jungles of eastern Colombia, Professor Jonas Lear has finally found what he's been searching for - and wishes to God he hadn't. In Memphis, Tennessee, a six-yearold girl called Amy is left at the convent of the Sisters of Mercy and wonders why her mother has abandoned her. In a maximum security jail in Nevada, a convicted murderer called Giles Babcock has the same strange nightmare, over and over again, while he waits for a lethal injection. In a remote community in the Capfornia mountains, a young man called Peter waits for his beloved brother to return home - so he can kill him. Bound together in ways they cannot comprehend, for each of them a door is about to open into a future they could not have imagined. And a journey is about to begin. An epic journey that will take them through a world transformed by man's darkest dreams, to the very heart of what it means to be human. And beyond.
When historian Diana Bishop opens a bewitched alchemical manuscript in Oxford’s Bodleian Library it represents an unwelcome Far in the future, the World intrusion of magic into her carefully ordinary life. Controllers have created the ideal society. Through Though descended from a long line of witches, she is clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing determined to remain untouched by her family’s and recreational sex and legacy. She banishes the drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard manuscript to the stacks, but Diana finds it impossible to Marx seems alone hold the world of magic at harbouring an ill-defined bay any longer. longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, The second in the trilogy is out soon and will want to read it. Quick! Catch up! imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress...
d you !
y h s a Tr N d u o r P
TRASHY
Meet Sookie Stackhouse in the first True Blood book. One bite of these books and you will be hooked.
Who would have guessed she was a Sookie Stackhouse fan?
Sookie is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much - not because she's not pretty - she's a very cute bubbly blonde - or not “You've reached Fangtasia interested in a social life. She really is . . . where the undead live again but Sookie's got a bit of a disability. She every night," "For bar hours, can read minds. And that doesn't press one. To make a party WANTED make her too dateable. reservation, press two. To talk to Dead And then along comes Bill: he's tall, alive person or a dead vampire, he's dark and he's handsome - and press three. Or, if you were Sookie can't 'hear' a word he's intending to leave a humorous thinking. He's exactly the type of guy prank message on our she's been waiting all her life for. But answering machine, know this: Bill has a disability of his own: he's we will find you.” fussy about his food, he doesn't like ERIC The message on Fangtasia’s suntans and he's never around during NORTHMAN answerphone. the day . . . Yep, Bill's a vampire. (Bring to Living Dead in Dallas Worse than that, he hangs with a Ms Lea) seriously creepy crowd, with a reputation for trouble - of the murderous kind. And then one of Sookie's You can watch ‘True Blood’. on DVD colleagues at the bar is killed, and it's You won’t think about Mr Darcy again! beginning to look like Sookie might be the next victim . . .
Watery Pleasures
In her dazzling first book Julie Orringer dives into the private world of childhood and immerses us in its fears and longings: the jealous friendships and the bitter sibling battles; the parents that row and the boys that won't dance with you. Then, in a voice that is equally tender and compassionate, she reminds us of those rare, exhilarating moments of victory
In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, its owners mother, son and daughter struggling to keep pace. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.
Watch the DVD after you’ve read it and see which you like best
When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, grifters, and misfits - the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth - a second-rate travelling circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. Jacob, a veterinary student who almost earned his degree, is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her. Water for Elephants is illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. It tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can afford.
Odd But Good
Luke is twenty-five and allergic to the sun. He is stuck in his bedroom, where the world comes to him through TV, the internet and Julie's visits. Julie, meanwhile, is brilliant, kind and could be changing the world. Unfortunately she is too terrified of aeroplane crashes, road accidents and potentially life-threatening bacteria to leave her home town. When someone contacts Luke and claims that he can cure him, Luke and Julie have to deal with their fears and face the world outside. With four friends, wellies and a homemade space suit, they set off in a VW Camper van along Britain's B-roads. It is a journey that might just change their lives. Did you love watching Sherlock on TV?
Well now I have the antidote to your longing. With devilish plotting and excellent characterisation, bestselling author Anthony Horowitz delivers a first-rate Sherlock Holmes mystery for a modern readership whilst remaining utterly true to the spirit of the original Conan Doyle books. Sherlock Holmes is back with all the nuance, pace and powers of deduction that make him the world's greatest and most celebrated detective. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow privateschool mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom. Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle--and people in general--has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic. To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence--creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world
Strange Families
Berry Family Motto “Keep passing the open windows”
Meet the Rabbite’s, they’re ‘grand’ .Be prepared to laugh until you hurt but don’t read on the bus; I did and people moved away from me! This volume brings together under one cover, Roddy Doyle's three acclaimed novels about the Rabbite family from Dublin.
?
Quirky, bizarre, tragic, fiendishly funny, "The Hotel New Hampshire" is anything but a conventional family saga, though a family saga it certainly is. The Berry family are different. Love abounds - both healthy and incestuous. It is the overwhelming desire of the Berry father to run a hotel, which he does, with dubious success, in both a former girls' school in New Hampshire, and in Vienna. It is the Berry children who grab the readers' attention, sympathies and love - all five of them: Frank (the eldest), Franny (the weirdest), John (the narrator), Lily (the writer) and Egg (the youngest). When Irving, or rather John, writes 'Frank's queer, Franny's weird, Lily's small and Egg is Egg' the initiated reader can do no other than shout a deafening 'yes, I know what you mean!' From there on, the reader is held spellbound as the family Labrador, Sorrow, is first stuffed then becomes the cruel victim of a plane crash; and as John and Franny realise their incestuous desires. Stunningly readable, mercilessly involving, "The Hotel New Hampshire" is peopled with characters and bears - that you'll never forget
School Days
’Six inches is perfectly adequate. More is vulgar’ Miss Brodie informs a student on the correct distance to open a window.
Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-yearold when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel Ultimately, Lee’s experiences– complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an allconsuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.
“crème de la crème…”
'Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life . . .' LEE 4 CROSS 4 EVER X
Passionate, free-thinking and unconventional, Miss Brodie is a teacher who exerts a powerful influence over her group of 'special girls' at Marcia Blaine School. They are the Brodie set, the crème de la crème, each famous for something Monica for mathematics, Eunice for swimming, Rose for sex - who are initiated into a world of adult games and extracurricular activities they will never forget. But the price they pay is their undivided loyalty . . . Read this then watch it on DVD
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an élite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and for ever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill …
Gals with Grit!
Ree Dolly is one kick ass young woman
Ree Dolly's father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date. With two young brothers depending on her, 16-year-old Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive. Living in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, Ree learns quickly that asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake. But, as an unsettling revelation lurks, Ree discovers unforeseen depths in herself and in a family network that protects its own at any cost.
'There’s a lot that doesn’t bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last.’ Narrator Offred is a Handmaid serving the Republic of Gilead – formerly part of the United States. Her role is to bear children for her Commander, whose wife is unable to conceive. If Offred refuses, she will be hanged or sent to die of radiation sickness in the Colonies. Yet she can remember a different life, when she had a home, a husband, and – most agonisingly – her own child. The Handmaid’s Tale portrays a chilling dystopia, with its military hierarchy of Angels, Guardians and Eyes, and its Birthmobiles, Econowives, Prayvaganzas and Salvagings (executions). Offred makes frequent references to the world she once knew and the freedom she took for granted – having her own bank account, wearing her hair uncovered, even something as simple as using nail varnish.
When Mattie Gokey is given a bundle of letters to burn she fully intends to execute the wishes of the giver, Grace Brown. When Grace Brown is found drowned the next day in Big Moose Lake, Mattie finds that it is not as easy to burn those letters as she had thought. And, as she reads, a riveting story emerges - not only Grace Brown's story but also Mattie's hopes and ambitions for the future and her relationships with her friends and family.
Stinker?
What did you think?
Star?
A
What did you award an ‘’A’ and what did you think should be buried? There is no right answer. Reading should NEVER be prescriptive; my list is intended to be a suggestion.
I want to entice you, to make you think ‘I will run to the library and get that book before my best friend even thinks about it and then I shall read it in front of her knowing I had it first!’ Yes, I really do think you should be that person. I believe that I should encourage you to read and I will use whatever means necessary. I’ll see you first (Before your friend. Run, quickly!)
Ms Lea Purveyor of exceptionally good book lists