"Lunar Park" - not even sure I liked it that much but couldn't put it down. Compelling reading.

Now I did like "Shadow of the Wind" - only book in my book group I've ever finished!

They don't know it yet but they're reading "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" as my next choice!

I agree with shellgrip - it's only the books I don't like that I can leave around unread.

optimist

I still feel as if I'd know Ruby Ferguson's Jill if I bumped into her in ASDA, or Monica Edwards' Lindsay and Tamzin. Always assuming that the economic climate and Surrey property prices have forced them to move to the grim North...

I think it was Noel Streatfeild, writing about E. Nesbit, who invented the 'bus test':

"One way of gauging the aliveness of a family in a children's book is to ask yourself 'Would I know them if they sat opposite me in a bus?'"

Emma

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I enjoyed Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell a lot, but somehow got diverted. I don't think I cared enough about any of the characters, though I found the whole thing very fascinating. Suspect S. Clarke was brought up on Joan Aiken, as I was.

Shellgrip, what was the book you mentioned? I'm curious.

Optimist - I agree about Shadow of the Wind. Thought I was the only one!

I've got 'Jonathon Strange.....' and I think I'll read it next, after all these recommendations.

You should. As a first novel it's an awesome achievement, hugely inventive and populated with a cast of odd characters I'm struggling to match in my own writing! The style appears to me more pastiche of post-romantic fiction than anything else, though others disagree with my assessment. Enjoy!

Andy

I was first swept off my feet at the age of ten by 'The wind on the moon' by Eric Linklater, and I actually bought a copy this year to read to my daughter, as even though she is 15 now she loves me to read to her, she loved it. Now putting aside the clissics I love a good horsy thriller. The last one I read, last week that is, was 'Outsider' by John Francome, and all his books are good fast track reads. The two books that stay in my mind from a few years back is 'Firefox' the author just went out of my head though this book was made into a film with Clint Eastwood playing the lead role, and 'One flew over the coockoo's nest' , the film to this was brilliant, but I liked the book a little better.
I like books that make you think, and or give you emotional feeling. Linda

The thing with Jonathan Strange that got me was how easily imagined it was, how vivid the characters, and how damn funny it was. There are real laugh out loud moments, and the olde worlde dialogue really lends itself to humour. All that 'O!' - ing made me chuckle lots.

The thread of magic running through it is beautifully haunting. I was pleased to see Clarke is planning to write more about the Raven King. Let's see if the upcoming movie amounts to much.


JB

So there's going to be a movie!

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Jonathan Strange please!

(Sorry, but it is a beautiful thought!)

optimist

It's like the difference between being a two-year-old and discovering an earthworm, wriggling and squirming out of the ground and being a parent of that two-year-old watching her face, amazed and concentrated, as you put it on the palm of her hand. (It happened to me this weekend and I was thinking that at the time.) Which is the 'better' experience? The latter is a more second-hand experience but is a wonderful way of living it again, this time with more knowledge and understanding. Not sure if the analogy holds up

Sorry fro being so late but I think it is more akin to having dissected the worm in biology class and picturing how it moves versus the child watching it innocently.

Yours was still a first time experience of a mother watching a child.

Brian.

Argh! I wrote a reply yesterday but then my stupid laptop decided to restart of its own accord, and the whole thing was lost. Along with half a chapter of something I've been writing lately. Oh well...

Anyhow, I agree with many of you that it's harder to get lost in a book when you've learnt a thing or two about the dynamics of writing. I think it might also mean that when it does happen, the experience is all the more powerful...

I wonder, though, if this applies to your own writing as well? When I was young, I got wrapt up in the stories I was writing -- I was genuinely entertained by my own imagination. I'd like to think I've become a better writer since then; at the very least, I'm more aware of what I'm doing. From 'mere' entertainment, I graduated to writing (or trying to write) more 'challenging' or 'clever' things. But though I've gained a lot I think I've lost something important on the way. I think I've travelled a full circle -- I've come to realise that young me was right, after all! I suppose the trick is to take that visceral enjoyment and harness it with the knowledge I now have (or think I have). I only hope it's still possible to get that early, naive je ne sais quoi back...

And Emma,

But I think that I shy away from feeling that much. I shrink from being so over-taken, don't want my blood pressure to rise or to cry or to mind so much about what happens. So I grab an old friend of a detective story or a Heyer off the shelf instead.

That's a good point as well. I've got a compartmentalised brain that usually keeps 'real-life' emotions under lock and key, so I definitely understand what you mean. But I think the compartment system gets lulled into a false sense of security when I read fiction; it says to itself, 'Ah, it's not real, it doesn't matter'... and before you know, it matters very much indeed!

I was just thinking about this very issue the other day.

By way of backfill: I recently realised that the reason I was never truly happy with my 'day-jobs' was nothing to do with my aptitude for them. I have never been described as anything less than apt. It was that for my whole life, I had been writing whenever I could. If not on paper, then in my mind.

However; what finally spurred me into some positive action was when someone handed me a dog-eared copy of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. They impressed on me 'Great book!, I couldn't put it down...'

Well, as most of my friends know, I'm always on the lookout for great books, and all the fuss over the content of the book had me intreaged. So, with a long bus jouney ahead of me, I sat down to read...

...and I couldn't put the book down.

Now, this wasn't becasue I was absorbed into the story through the keen whit or snappy dialogue. No. I was simply amazed that so many people could be sold on a book that, in my eyes, was so intensely average that were it not for my constant imploring hope that it would get better soon, I would certainly not have finished the book.

I've been reading fiction books since I was 6. By the time I was 12 I was reading a novel in an evening, and padding the days out with things like Dawkins, Dennet and Gould. I considered that it was snobbery that prevented me from enjoying The Da Vinci Code. Perhaps, I had simply been spoiled by the likes of Vonnegut?

So I re-read a few passages, but this nagging suspiscion began dawning on me: "If people will publish, and subsequently buy this kind of book, maybe I should really take up writing myself."

And so it was done. To my delight I discovered that the old addage was true: "Writing is the only thing that, when I'm doing it, I don't feel I should be doing something else".

Anyway - that's what made me make this my first post on this website; but now to the point of the whole topic.

The last two books that had me so absorbed I couldn't put them down were:

Corpsing by Tony Litt/i]

and

The Falls by Ian Rankin

Both bought as part of my 'Going to have to broaden your horizons if you want to write well' initiative.

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Argh! Must remember to check for typos before submitting! =/