UKC

About 99% of the books I read are NON-fiction. Wife reckons I'm missing out.

How do you go about picking a (new ie not a classic) fiction title which your pretty sure your going to like? Books are too expensive these days to realise that you don't like the book half way through or too time consuming when there are so many books you want to read.
Thoughts and suggestions appreciated

In reply to Indy: Second hand

In reply to Indy: charity shops or freecycle

In reply to Indy: borrow mates recommendation.

In reply to Indy:
Amazon allows you to download a free sample of a book to try before you buy. Helps you decide if it's for you!

In reply to Indy:

Try Ken Follet something like Fall of Giants (Well written Character based historic fiction based around WW1), or WIlbur Smith something like Blue Horizon (Adventure/new frontiers, a sprinkling of Sex and Violence in moderate doses)

Frederick Forsyth is one of my favourite authors, and I don't think he's writen a bad book, and the accuracy and detail is very good (I think he got arrested for espionage recently whilst researching one of his books!)
Try "Icon", "Fist of God", "Avenger" or his short story "The Shepherd" is a good introduction to his work, and is simply fantastic.

In reply to Indy:

Books are dirt cheap these days, I remember buying books when the net book agreement was in place.

In reply to Indy: Charedee shops are a good bet, I get lots from there.

Bernard Cornwell (Sharpe, among many others) is brilliant, his characters are so 2-d but he really captures the historical past so vividly - much like CS Forester, (Hornblower, and many others) who seems out of favour nowadays.

Most of Robert Harris is brilliant too. I love historical fiction!

In reply to Indy:


I have often thought it would be great if there was somewhere that had lots of books and would allow me to borrow one for a few weeks and then take it back when I had read it.

Not sure what such a place could be called though.

In reply to BigBrother: good god sir what a preposterous idea - are you a communist?

In reply to Indy: if I haven't read a good novel for a while, I'll get either a dan Rhodes (dark but poignant laugh-out-loud humour) or Ian Mcewan (who's just a fantastic writer and understands the world and the people in it better than anyone else).