1

Daniel Mason

The Piano Tuner

A great journey to Burma, 120 years in the past. A journey to the end of the world and to the end of life.

2

Charles Frazier

Cold Mountain

A real tragedy, in tragic times, thrilling plot

3

Andrea Barrett

The Voyage of the Narwhal

how men behave in a desert of ice

4

Tom Wolfe

A Man in Full

wonderful language, totally American

5

Tom Wolfe

I am Charlotte Simmons

a brilliant student making her way through campus peer groups -

6

Harper Lee

To kill a mocking bird

Pulitzer Prize

7

Belinda Jones

The California Club

easy reading for holiday use only

8

Thomas Hardy

The Woodlanders

A lovestory of 1887 with lots of nice countryside (Dorset).

9

Carol Shields

Larry´s Party

"He wants to be ready when the time comes to open his mouth and let the words run out like streaming lava". p.83 This is from Larry, the maze maker.

10

Roddy Doyle

The commitments

a funny story about the commitments and the commitmentets

11

Roddy Doyle

The Van

Two men and their working class  friendship

12

Roddy Doyle

A Star Called Henry

Irish bloody history is pouring out of this thrilling reader

13

Robert Harris

Enigma

Bletchley Park 1943, see also museum or film

14

Charles Darwin

The voyage of the Beagle

Darwin loved Tahiti and Brasil, also Terra del Fuego and Chile, where he crossed the Andes. He didn´t like New Zealand and Australia that much, nevertheless he saw Australia as a rising continent. If you are interested in plants, fauna, tectonic you will find it interesting, also Darwin's  journeyed fhas passed by  more than 150 years ago.

15

Niall Griffiths

Wreckage

The novel tells of two young lads, who rob some thousand pounds at a post office and by the way kill the shop assistant. You read a lot of Scousers'  dialect and sociolect from the social basement. The author makes the persons connected with the socialisation of the two heroes talk in monologues. The lack of moral standards destroys the heroes in a short time.

16

Neil Belton

A Game with Sharpened Knives

The hero, Erwin Schrödinger, austrian maths prof, leaves Austria when the Nazis came in and follows an invitation to Dublin. The novel tells about his privat situation. He lives in Dublin with his wife, his mistress and their daughter and falls in love with another young girl who also gets pregnant.

17

Matt Beaumont

 e

The novel with the shortest possible name, consists from e-mails sent around in an ad agency. The author knows the metier, so he managed to create a nice timekiller with entertaining language

.

18

Tim Winton

The Turning

I´m not that much interested in reading short stories. But this ones I enjoyed a lot. The Australian author has a very sensitive, insightful and impressive language. He writes about the unspectacular dramas of normal lives, which all end in death and destruction.

19

William Somerset Maugham

Cakes and Ale

The story has a very nice plan for developing the plot. In the beginning the hero tells the reader about a writer and the plans to write about his life. But as it turns out, the writers first wife is the person of interest. Great language and you can´t stop reading. First published 1930.
 

20

William Somerset Maugham

The razor's edge

In this novel Maugham acts  as the storyteller. The story's object is Larry, a young airman who doesn't go into a job after the war, but has the strong desire to find the sense of his life. Most of the staff in this novel can afford a life without work.

First edition: There are 750 copies of the Limited First Edition printed. There were then two other printings done, the American First Trade Edition and shortly after the English First Trade Edition, both in 1944.  The movie 1946.

http://www.angelfire.com/indie/anna_jones1/darrell_review.html

21

Evelyn Waugh

Brideshead Revisited

First published in 1945.

Then I knelt, too, and prayed: 'O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as a sin,'...

A novel about an English noble family, their vanity and eccentricity, about alcoholism, catholicism, and about the sentiments which are motoring our lives.

A fine book, to kill the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brideshead_Revisited

John Casey

Spartina

A man and the dream of his boat.