For some reason this thread would not accept a reply earlier, but now it will!
(Must have been a browser problem!)

Some of my all-time favorites:
The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, by Michael Dorris
The Robber Bride, by Margaret Atwood
Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri
The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje

and some recent favorites:
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, by Jon McGregor
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

Thank you, teacherlady, for your recommendation of Ahab's Wife, and LynnieD, for recommending Year of Wonders. The funny thing is that I had already bought both of those books and they were just sitting on my shelf.
Now I'm inspired to start reading them right away!
Teacherlady, I also saw that you had recommended Bird by Bird, and I have to second that, although it is actually non-fiction.

ThinGorjus

Come along now...

"And no art historian with any..."

Coming from the upper classes you must have been educated at a top private school.

So, why do you start sentences with conjunctions when not using speech marks? Shocking, quite shocking. What a waste of money for your poor parents.

Great thread. I thoroughly enjoyed Da Vinci code.

For airplanes:
I read Paolo Coelho's The Alchemist on a flight from London home. (way back when there were no kids to worry about and entertain)Fascinating, as are all of his books.

Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies is most excellent, and it's a collection of short stories so you don't feel like you have to finish the whole book to know what happens in the end :)

Hanif Kureishi's books are great, too.
Check out Buddha of Suburbia.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith is great, too although the writing in the beginning is much better than the at the end.

The Lovely Bones is another one that is simple and riveting, great for a plane.

On the other hand, sometimes all you need are issues of Newsweek, Cosmo, Vogue and InStyle, and you're set ;)

I like books with good story lines and characters so:

East of Eden - Steinbeck
Love in the Time of Cholera - Marquez
A Confederacy of Dunces - Toole

Just to throw in a (non) fiction - Killing Pablo.

If I had three choices:
- The Francis Crawford Chronicles (6 volume series) by Dorothy Dunnett - the most perfect read for a trip to France or Scotland
- all of Hemmingway
- Le Morte d'Arthur - Mallory

Neal Stephenson's fiction Cryptnomicon, and the Baroque Trilogy which now includes Quicksilver and The Confusion are all epic novels which capture the feeling of historic times. All of them are big thick books that you can really get into.

"The Pillars of the Earth" is an excellent read and it revolves around the building of a gothic catherdral in medieval England. It has a great storyline, interesting characters, and a good ending. Probably the best book I've ever read.

"Gates of Fire" is historical fiction about the battle at Thermopylae. It's an inspiring saga of how 300 Spartans fought the whole Persian army for several days. An awesome read. As I toured Greece, I vsited the battlefield in Thermopylae and it gave me chills. History at its finest.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom (sp?)

On the long flight to Italy last month I started reading a light and funny book, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding. It is the continuation of the first book which was made into the movie.

I was still reading it in Positano and the part of the Colin Firth interview in the book struck me so funny I was crying. It is always sort of strange to be alone and laughing and crying, I wanted to hold up the book and point at it so people wouldn't want to move away from me.

"The Liberated Bride" by A.B.Yehoshua, takes place in modern Israel; it's a beautiful book. How about the "The Stone Diaries" or anything else by Carole Shields, a Canadian author who died a few months ago.

Beth23, this is the thread I had mentioned to you. I have read many books that were suggested here and I am sure glad that Fodor's have kept this thread. INCIDENTALLY, TODAY IS THIS THREAD 4-YEAR OLD BIRTHDAY!! :-" :-*

A good scifi with a twist is Timeline by Michael Crichton. Recently made into a fairly awful movie, the book has a scifi twist since it goes into a historical mode with time travel into medieval France. It has all of the things that you want in a novel: intrique, love story, characters who move across five hundred years and two continents in a time machine. Good escapist fiction.

First of all, it's okay to start a sentence with "and." Chicago Manual of Style: "There is a widespread belief -- one with no historical or grammatical foundation -- that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjuction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions...." And Bill Bryson, in his Dictionary of Troublesome Words puts it this way: "The belief that "and" should not be used to begin a sentence is without foundation. And that's all there is to it."

Back on topic: "Me Talk Pretty One Day," by David Sedaris is a darkly hilarious book, especially if you're headed to France. I can also recommend "The Master Butcher's Singing Club," by Louise Erdrich and "Miracle at St. Anna," by James McBride (even though he uses "revenge" as a verb, when I think it should be "avenge," but anyway...). Several of my fellow bookworms are completely addicted to a series of historical novels set in Scotland called "Outlanders." I also like the series of travel books called "The Collected Traveler." They give you a diverse and in-depth perspective on places you are going (or just wish you could go).

I really loved Salley Vickers "Miss Garnet`s Angel"-made me think positive, a really good novel. As a London-Lover I also like everything with London in it as in many books by P.D.James and Deborah Crombie.

time to bring this to the top again! it's been nearly 6 weeks.

I am currently reading:

"60 million Frenchmen can't be wrong"
"Paris was Yesterday" a compilation of Janet Flanner's letters for the New Yorker, from 1925-1939
"Is Paris Burning" (from WWII)

just finished "Dude, where's my country" by the infamous Michael Moore

"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand

On a cross-country trip last April I took with me my next assigned reading for the May book-group meeting, knowing I had to get it out of the way but not being terribly excited about the book. But once I started it I didn't want to put it down. The title is "Fateless," and it's by the Nobel-prize-winning Imre Kertesz. The book is an autobiographical novel about his experiences in a German concentration camp at the end of WWII; what makes the book so powerful is that the protaganist is a 16-year-old boy who tries to look on the bright side of everything.

It's quite extraordinary, and I highly recommend it.

Another excellent book for travel is "The Debt to Pleasure," also recommended on the What-to-Read-in-France thread.

Just read throught this thread. Thanks for all the suggestions. No one seems to have mentioned the mysteries by Harlan Coben. Gripping. Fiction-The Secret Life of Bees.
Other page turners in the mystery arena by authors Randy Wayne White (Doc Ford Series set in Florida) and Marcia Mueller-Both write can't put down books.
Also Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.

Just finished a great book - Suzanne Valadon, Mistress of Montmarte. She is the mother of Maurice Utrillo, famous Parisian artist and an accomplished artist herself. She was model and mistress to many of the painters of late 1800, early 1900 Paris, including Renoir and Degas. Great art history and also insight into that era in Paris. Loved reading about the cabarets of Montmarte.

Oops, just realized this thread was about fiction. This book is a biography, but a great book if you're heading to Paris.