Book Suggestions - Bronxville,NY

I like Janet Evanovich.. The stephani Plum series.. This always is a good laugh.

http://www.evanovich.com/novels/

I have read all but 19 it just came out, but I have not had the energy to read it due to Christmas etc..

I frequently recommend "A Walk in the Woods" -it is a true story and absolutely hilarious-for a change.

I loved The Glass Castle. Other memoirs I enjoyed were Mao's Last Dancer, Three Dog Life, Song for Sarah, Leap of Faith, Confessions of a Prairie B*tch.
Good fiction I've enjoyed in recent years - Still Alice, Room, Life of Pi, The Kite Runner, The Forgotten Garden, Shantarum, Sarahs Key, Those Who Save Us, Let the Great World Spin, Slumdog Millionaire, The Pearl Diver, The Kitchen House, Somebody Knows My Name, Mudbound.

anything by Canadian author Michael Ondaatje

Just finishing Pillars of the Earth, really good historical fiction and very long, you won't need another book suggestion for a while! I also like The Last Queen, similar format as Pillar but different century it's about Queen Juana of Spain. Both weave history with enough personal interest and drama to keep things interesting.

I just re-read The Poisonwood Bible, I loved all Kingslover's novels. I love most Cormac Mcarthy but they are a bit dark. I too loved Glass Castle and read only the first Dragon book. It was OK but I never could figure out what all the fuss was about.

Below are a few more I've enjoyed:

A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
Middlesex, Jeffery Eugenides
Light In August, Faulkner
Red Water, Judith Freeman

I hear there is another book similar to Glass Castle by the same author. You can get these or any book not super recently published for a couple of dollars at thriftbooks.com. We LOVE that site at our house, happy reading!

The Age of Miracles
The Shadow of The Wind
Gone Girl
Some Assembly Required
The Brothers K
The Poisonwood Bible
The Book Thief
Between Shades of Gray

Have you read the Girl with The Dragon Tattoo trilogy? I read them over the summer and LOVED them!

ETA - OK then. :) I found it thrilling - but I guess that's just me.

How about an oldie but goodie The Poisonwood Bible?

We have very similar taste, it seems. Why hasn't Wally Lamb written anything new lately? For fiction-Jeannette Walls other book Half Broke Horses is pretty good. I took a chance of a free Amazon book recently called "The Snow Child" by Eowyn Ivey. I was pleasantly surprised on that one. Not my usual type of fiction but beautifully written. A few others- Slammerkin by Emma Donahue (who also wrote Room), Shanghai Girls by Lisa See. Wench: A Novel by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. For memoirs, Wild by Cheryl Strayed was pretty good. Several years ago I read Drinking: A Love Story by Carolyn Knapp. That one kind of stuck with me.
Anyway, here's a few different ones for you. :)

If you like 'real world fantasy', try P. Briggs - vampires, werewolves, fae, strong heroines, interesting relationships, no heavy sex, but there is violence (of course - a given with vampires & werewolves - not too over the top, but it's a part of the stories).

I'm not sure of the three you mentioned, but I just got done reading:
'What Alice Forgot' by Liane Moriarty.

LOVED IT!

All the Kate Morton books
The historian
The Outlander series
The memoirs of Cleopatra
Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrel

Okay, let's see...I also loved Glass Castle and love Wally Lamb (but the last one was a bit of a bore I thought) and could just never get into Dragon Tattoo either.

Some of my all time faves are Memoirs of a Geisha and Midwives. They are fiction but sort of written like a memoir. I also really went through a memoir phase and can't remember most of the ones I read, but one that sticks with me is called Ghost Light. It's about one guys experience with Broadway theatre and it's interesting if you like theatre.

Other good ones are
The Language of Flowers
The 13th Tale
The Book Thief
Cutting for Stone
A Paris Wife (this is not a memoir but it's based on Hemingway's wife)
So Cold the River

I also do read Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels, as someone suggested, and they are fun and cute and hilarious, but they are not meaty! ;) If you're up for some mindless fun, check it out!

I like memoirs too! I am reading Unbroken right now...by the author who wrote Seabiscuit. Really good so far.

I also recently read My Life in France by Julia Child...I really enjoyed it. Then I read As Always, Julia...letters between Julia Child and her penpal. I really hated it when I was done with both of them!

Left Neglected

I tried The Tiger's Wife and hated it.

I don't read much fiction so sorry I don't have any other suggestions right now.

Life of Pi was one of the best books I've ever read.
I also second the Outlander series. If you want meaty, this is the series for you. I lovelovelove historical fiction, and it is that and so much more.
Four of my favorite authors are Robert Rankin, Terry Pratchett, Tom Robbins, and Bill Bryson. Anything by any of them is a sure win. The first three are amazing fiction writers, ad Bill Bryson has a way of looking at the world that makes you go "hm."

I just read Shadow of the Wind and The Prisoner of Heaven, both by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and they were wonderful. I also just started the Passage by Justin Cronin based on my best friend's rave reviews. I am only 4 chapters in but can already tell it is going to be a good one!

I am a very picky reader myself. If I can't get into the first couple of pages, I don't bother. I enjoy Memoirs and the Glass Castle was one of my favorite books. Oddly enough, I never did finish Half Brok Horses- a little boring. I also really liked "Running With Scissors". A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson was great, and on the lighter side. People who like all types of books seem to enjoy that one. I am into reading first hand account of real life Drama. Ie. A Stolen Life, by Jaycee Duggard. I am facinated by Psychology and what makes people tick... some people may find things like that disturbing though. For fiction, I enjoy books by Lisa Scottoline and some of the Jodi Picoult books.

Here are a few suggestions that aren't on the bestseller list, but that I found to be interesting, compelling reads:

fiction:

Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
The Crazed by Ha Jin

non-fiction:

Sea of Glory by Nathaniel Philbrick
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Let's Not Go to the Dogs Tonight (I've forgotten the author's name - it's a memoir of a childhood spent in Africa)

Check out eharliquin.com. Tons of books, not all romance. You can get free shipping, free books, clearance books ect.

I really like the Debbie MacCumber (sp) books. She has a great series called Blossom Street, it's about the shopkeepers and their friends along the same street.

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls (author of The Glass Castle) is supposed to be really good. I loved loved loved The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. She also wrote a memoir of her childhood called Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Homes, about how her parents abandoned her and her sisters when she was 4 and they grew up in the foster care system. Mary Karr, who wrote the Liars' Club also wrote other memoirs about other times in her life.

For novels, I loved Little Bee by Chris Cleave. A Thousand Splendid Suns is great, but it's a tearjerker. Also really liked The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachmann, it's different in that each chapter is about a different character but the stories are intertwined because the people work at the same newspaper and he captures people's quirks so well. Steve Martin, yes the actor, is actually a great writer too. I read a couple of his novels.

Right now I'm reading The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright about the woman who created the Lonely Doll books from many years ago.

Feel free to PM me if you ever want to talk about books. Happy reading!

I LOVE Sci-fi/Fantasy.

Girl Genius series(now being novelized from their comic of the same title). It's SteamPunk/Gaslamp Fantasy.
Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga
John Ringo/David Weber's Emperor of Man trilogy
Weber's Honor Harrington series(not my cuppa, but I bet many of you ladiies will love it)
Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider of Pern series and her Crystal Singer trilogy
Anything Mercedes Lackey or her hubby Larry Dixon

99.99% of Baen's sci-fi/fantasy catalogue 2006 and prior are gracing many bookshelves in my home, and if I can ever get Pandigital to fix my e-reader, back on there. Fixed budget has prevent it from going BORG critical assimilation, so Bujold, Ringo/Weber(joint collaborations), and Phil and Kaja Foglio are the only ones I still keep up with.

For a little more drama suspense
Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series

I also liked Amy Tan's
To read with two boxes of Kleenex:
Joy Luck Club
Bonesetter's Daughter
and many more...
To share with kids:
Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat(yes, THAT ONE)

Hope that is different.

"Follow the River" by James Alexander Thom. A fictionalized account of a true story--a woman kidnapped by Indians in the 18th century.
Just read "When She Was Good" by Laura Lippman. Really good, and very different. You could also check out the three novels by Gillian Flynn if you are looking for interesting fiction.
I thought the Steig Larssen books were all right, but a bigger deal was made out of the them because they were published posthumously.
Enjoy!

Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander III fantastic and potentially life changing! LOVED IT!

I love is question!!! I found all three to be very meaty!
Kite Runner
Shanghai Girls
Bonhoeffer Biography

Loved the glass castle and hated girl with the dragon tattoo! Just like you! Have you read the Time Traveler's Wife? Liked that, and I really liked the Book Thief. And if you like memoirs like that, you might like Running with Scissors.