Historical fiction that I really enjoyed with the CC book club were: Possession (not classic historical fiction since it’s also a present day story about a pair doing historical research about literary figures from the past.) The Illuminaries - set in the New Zealand Gold Rush. Lonesome Dove - a classic western. The Stockholm Octavo a strange book set in turn of the century Sweden involving fans and cards…
For non-fiction, I highly recommend anything by Oliver Sacks.
LOL, @Pizzagirl, I think you mean what I call “Suffering Women Books.” Anita Shreve, et al.
What kind of thing do you like? Do you enjoy what many people consider to be “boy’s books” ? I always have. And I have always enjoyed historical fiction. When I was a kid, I loved Horatio Hornblower, for example. If so, try Patrick O’Brian, starting with Master and Commander. I also loved Mary Renault’s books about Ancient Greece. She wrote a couple of books about pre-history, The King Must Die and its sequel, The Bull from the Sea, which are great, but my favorites are The Last of the Wine, set during the Peleponnesian War, and The Mask of Apollo, set several decades later. If you decide to read them, definitely read The Last of the Wine first in order to really understand TMOA.
I second the recommendation of Hilary Mantel.
I really loved the Great War novels of Pat Barker, starting with Regeneration. An incredible book, with some fictional and some historical characters. That’s a period I find particularly interesting.
A historical fiction trilogy that I found delightful was To the Ends of the Earth by William Golding (same author as Lord of the Flies).
Just to raise a dissenting voice, I read The Nightingale a few months ago, wasn’t terribly impressed at the time, and had to go back and read the Amazon description to even remember what it was about. It struck me a as a quasi historical novel with romance novel sensibilities–just not my taste. But it’s going to be a movie, and I can certainly see that it will suit the big screen.
I didn’t like Wolf Hall. Too slow moving. The lack of quotation marks for dialog drove me crazy too.
Love the Patrick O’Brian books and loved Hornblower too.
“LOL, @Pizzagirl, I think you mean what I call “Suffering Women Books.” Anita Shreve, et al.”
YES! That’s exactly what I mean. Those books were SO popular, and everyone raved about them, and they all ran together for me. And I don’t really know how to pick them out at the bookstore. This is terrible - but when I see a woman writer’s name, I fear that it’s a “girly book” like this, and I shy away. I just can’t tell from the cover whether a book is one that is meaty or whether it’s going to be yet another suffering-woman chick-lit book.
I don’t know that I would necessarily call what I’ve enjoyed “boy’s books” - but I do like walking away feeling that I’ve learned something, so that’s why if I’m going to read fiction, I would prefer historical fiction.
These suggestions are hugely helpful - thank you! Doing a major library run for an upcoming vacation. Is there a master list of the books that the CC book club has discussed over the years?
^^^ Post #205
Oliver Sachs is great, being the parent of a music student, his book “Musicophilia” is a great read, typical of his work, both amusing and also inciteful. On a musical note, the other book I recommend is “Your brain on music”, it is about the neuroscience behind music, and is pretty interesting (the guy who wrote it was a music producer, now is a professor at McGill in Canada).
Pizzagirl, a really good novel that is by a woman but is not a “suffering woman” book is Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Another novel I think you might like is Winterkill by Craig Lesley. The Round House by Louise Erdrich, which the CC book club read and discussed, is great too.
Second The Round House, which I just read. Excellent book.
An excellent group of historical mysteries set in Ancient Rome are the Roma Sub Rosa series by Stephen Saylor. His historical content in considered exceptional. He wrote them out of chronological order, so it can be tough to figure out where to start. Roman Blood, the first one he wrote, would be a reasonable place.
The Round House was good, but incredibly depressing.
I didn’t find it so.
“Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”
This lady spoke at my D’s graduation earlier this year!
Recent fiction: “The Children’s Crusade,” by Ann Packers; “The Harder They Come,” by T.C. Boyle; “Purity,” by Jonathan Franzen; “A Little Life,” by Hanya Yanagahira; “Big Little Lies,” by Liane Moriarty; “The Zone of Interest,” by Martin Amis. Recent nonfiction: “Missoula,” by Jon Krakauer (about sexual assaults in a college town); “Bad Feminist,” by Roxane Gay (essays on feminism and other topics); “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace,” by Jeff Hobbs (about a young black man who grew up in a very poor neighborhood and then went to an Ivy); “On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City,” by Alice Goffman (life for black men in one Pennsylvania neighborhood); “Just Mercy,” by Bryan Stevenson (a memoir of sorts by a lawyer who works with death-row inmates, among other prisoners).
I am an empty nester.
@Pizzagirl, without reading ahead, Erik Larsen writes really good non-fiction. “Devil in the White City” was just plain fascinating.
“The Boys in the Boat” was really good, too, great description of the times…30’s, Great Depression.
“The Glass Castle”, from many years back but if you didn’t read it then, it another really good non-fiction.
Historical fiction:
The Century trilogy by Ken Follett, loved it, three BIG books.
Two interesting books, both by Dartmouth grads who served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq: Redeployment, riveting short stories by Phil Klay; memoir One Bullet Away by Nathan Fick, commander of unit covered by embedded journalist .Evan Wright in Generation Kill.
I really liked the Jack Whyte historical fiction Camulod series (Arthurian legend as historical fiction). The first one is The Skystone, published in 1992.
@pizzagirl – I think you would get better suggestions if you provided a list of books you’ve enjoyed.
I adored Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, but I don’t think it is what you are looking for. It is very much “chick lit” – in the best possible way, but chick lit nonetheless. It’s a literary romantic comedy with lots of girly touches. Lots of long blog posts about hair, to give an example. And lots about contemporary racial politics in America. As I said, I adored it but from your posts on this and other threads it doesn’t seem like you’d like it all that much. But I hope I’m wrong!
I’m not pizzagirl, but sometimes I like to read things to stretch me out of my natural tendencies. It’s one of the reasons I started reading the CC bookclub suggestions, because nearly all of the books are ones that I would never have picked up on my own. Some have been things I’d wanted to read for a while, but needed the incentive, others were just not on my radar. I have a few contemporary literary writers I keep up with (Penelope Lively, Jon Hassler (now dead) and Anne Tyler. I have a larger list of sci-fi and fantasy writers I keep up with - especially three women Ursula Le Guin, Lois McMasters Bujold and Elizabeth Moon for whom I’ve read just about everything. (For ULG, not all her poetry, short stories and essays - but all the novels for sure.)
It’s funny I read a lot of historical fiction in high school - all those Anya Seton books! - but not so much lately.