Fiction.

[cerberus]

Does anyone read much fiction at the moment ?
Have not read any in a very long time , is there any book worth buying or getting hold of ?

Last one of any note that I read was "Shogun".

[Dan Dare]

Have you read "Schindler's Ark"? It's very good, it took the Booker Prize in 1982.

[WFHermans]

Anne Frank's Diary.

[cerberus]

Have you read "Schindler's Ark"? It's very good, it took the Booker Prize in 1982.
No Dan , havn't - not one I would go for.
Anne Frank's Diary.
WFH - the Dutch national archives "tested" the origonal , its not a post war job.
Again , not one I would go for.
BTW Mills and Bloom are out as well.:p

[Donny the Punk]

I just finished Robinson Crusoe which wasn't bad (not spectacular, either). A few that I've read recently and which I would wholeheartedly recommend are Idylls of the King, Ivanhoe, the Canterbury Tales, La Peste (the Plague), Phèdre (Phaedra), Down and Out in Paris and London, Who Has Seen the Wind, Metamorphoses, Les Misérables, Le Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland) and Crime and Punishment.

[Dienekes]

There is a pretty good sci-fi reworking of The Canterbury Tales called Hyperion. I'm not the biggest fan of sci-fi but this was pretty interesting. Also Jules Verne. He has a weird combination of getting some things so right and some so wrong that I find fascinating. He's probably much more interesting to read now than when he was actually writing.

[Geist]

There are some interesting new books but given how many old greats there are my advice to any reader is to head into a second hand book store (do you live in Dublin? If so Chapters is the obvious choice, you can pick up the all of Wilkie Collin's novels for about 15e).

The Woman in White, The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins (plenty of Penguin paperbacks).

But I am sure you know all this so my three modern recommendations of novels which will be taught to the children of the future are as follows;

In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason. Other goodies from the modern age are Maxine Hong Kingston's 'The Woman Warrior' as well as A.S. Byatt's 'Possession' (amazing novel and 1990 Booker Prize).

All are excellent reads.