Looking for some good clean fiction

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Convert_in_99 said:
Wow thanks everyone! There are lots of authors here to explore. 🙂

Mary Gail thanks I didn’t know you could get that for free!

BlueRose that’s so cool you are an author! Thanks for those links. I can’t afford books right now, do they have some sort of “swap/exchange program” ?

I guess I should have mentioned that historical fiction and mysteries are my favorite. Oops! 😊
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Yes. And there are a few good free books as well available.

With my experience, online with the computer is a little slow.

When you search try something like “Free Kindle Classic Books”

My search just pulled up, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, some Mark Twain books, but also “The Swiss Family Rombinzombies” which I guess is a zombie version of the classic. 😃
 
Convert_in_99 said:
ETA: I don’t have a Kindle, Nook or any other electronic reading devices, so they have to be available in book format (sorry! 😊)
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You can download Kindle for free onto your computer. 🙂

Oh, and if you click on the link in my signature, you can read one of my novels for free.
 
Convert_in_99 said:
I’m so bored and reading is one of the few things I can still do right now. Give me the names of some good clean fiction books you’ve read over your life. They need not be new. But fun and distracting is good. I will also gladly read young adult and children’s books. 😃

ETA: I don’t have a Kindle, Nook or any other electronic reading devices, so they have to be available in book format (sorry! 😊)
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If you like science fiction, you can’t go wrong with Eric Frank Russell. He was an exceptionally gifted writer, and all of his books are enjoyable.

I’m trying to give you an author who you’re unlikely to have come across before, by the way.🙂

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Frank_Russell
 
Convert_in_99 said:
I guess I should have mentioned that historical fiction and mysteries are my favorite. Oops! 😊
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Don’t forget Jeff Shaara then if you like historical war settings - best way for me to understand and remember what went on.

I can’t remember for sure, but I believe the Dianne Fallon mysteries were fairly clean.

My favorite though is classic Sherlock Holmes. 🙂
 
Exiled_Child said:
Hey Robin, I bet you’d like The Anubis Gates.

It’s thoroughly readable, immersive and enjoyable.

amazon.com/The-Anubis-Gates-Tim-Powers/dp/0441023827/
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And by the way, R., there’s another Catholic-related science fiction novel I recently mentioned in another CAF thread, Camp Concentration, by the inimitable Thomas Disch. That one’s cool, but it’s kind of jagged and brutal and viciously modern. The Anubis Gates is also very weird and daring, but it’s much more something you would actually describe as “lovable” and “close to my heart,” a’la the Harry Potter stories. I don’t know, whatever supposedly “literary” criticism is leveled at J.K. Rowling, there’s a reason she has a billion readers who consider her a close personal friend - she has an exceptionally beautiful and magnetic sense of storytelling. I honestly put Tim Powers in the same class - I seriously just love that dude to death.

By the way, I did read that first Harry Potter novel after you mentioned it in another thread. I think she’s one of those rich and famous novelists who actually got her due, which is rare. I’m a decrepit old crustacean, but I did thoroughly dig that novel.🙂
 
Exiled_Child said:
And by the way, R., there’s another Catholic-related science fiction novel I recently mentioned in another CAF thread, Camp Concentration, by the inimitable Thomas Disch. That one’s cool, but it’s kind of jagged and brutal and viciously modern. The Anubis Gates is also very weird and daring, but it’s much more something you would actually describe as “lovable” and “close to my heart,” a’la the Harry Potter stories. I don’t know, whatever supposedly “literary” criticism is leveled at J.K. Rowling, there’s a reason she has a billion readers who consider her a close personal friend - she has an exceptionally beautiful and magnetic sense of storytelling. I honestly put Tim Powers in the same class - I seriously just love that dude to death.

By the way, I did read that first Harry Potter novel after you mentioned it in another thread. I think she’s one of those rich and famous novelists who actually got her due, which is rare. I’m a decrepit old crustacean, but I did thoroughly dig that novel.🙂
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Nice, those sound good, I’ll check them out! I’ve been looking for some new stuff.👍

And glad to hear you liked Harry Potter! 🙂 I found the books actually got better as the series progressed, myself. Which was unusual, I thought. Most of the time it seems a series will lose steam after four or five books, but that never happened with them.

I never really understood the criticism of Rowling’s writing either. I haven’t read that series in probably eight years and I still vividly remember certain scenes from each book. They really stuck with me. That doesn’t happen very often for me. Sign of a good author in my opinion.
 
If you like light-but-pleasant fiction, you might try Jan Karon’s Mitford series. The central character is an Episcopalian priest, so no, it’s definitely not Catholic, but it isn’t overwhelming non-Catholic, either. The writing’s very good, and Mitford (the name of the town in which the series is set) is a lovely place to spend an afternoon!
 
Two books I like for kids or adults are “Moon over Manifest,” and “Navigating Early,” both by Clare Vanderpool.

And a fifth grade kid’s book that I like to re-read on occasion is “There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom!” which thankfully has nothing whatever to do with transgenderism. It’s by Louis Sachar, who has a lot of good kids’ books.

Also, Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi” is a fun read if you skip the first few chapters which are kind of boring, and the last few chapters. The middle part, which recounts his training as a river boat pilot, is great.
 
FICTION:

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman. Domestic fiction. Set in the Carter years. Every summer, the Orthodox Jews of New York follow their rav to their summer homes, and every winter they return to the city.

***Seasons of the heart ***by Janette Oke: Once upon a summer – The winds of autumn – Winter is not forever – Spring’s gentle promise. Domestic fiction. Loosely based upon Oke’s family from the 1910s through the 1940s as a boy meddles with big sister’s dates, has his first crush, becomes a man, and makes a home and a family.

The queen and I by Sue Townsend. Comedy/satire. This one is showing its age, being set during Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s divorce. Still funny, though.

**NONFICTION: **

Pretty much anything written by Bill Bryson, “the man who could make dryer lint interesting” according to his admirers.

High, wide and lonesome by Hal Borland. In the 1910s a family tries to live on the high prairie of Colorado for five years without starving out. If they succeed, they get the land for free.

The last farmer by Howard Kohn. In the 1980s an old man with 5-7 grown children (I forget the number) can’t find anyone to inherit the farm, so he just keeps working.

The barbarians: warriors and wars of the Dark Ages by Timothy Newark. The many nations that swept through Europe between the decline of Rome and the fall of Byzantium to the Ottomans.

…

As a bonus, many of these are available through your library as talking books. When I say “Talking books” I mean compact disc, audiocassette, MP3, or Playaway. Seriously, libraries have the good stuff!
 
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Lord of the Rings meets Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Terry was atheist, but I never found him to be particularly anti-religious or even anti-theist, although he did like to lampoon what he saw as hypocrisy. His stories all had a good dose of silly in them , but underneath it all was a really good fantasy tale. And I love Commander Sam Vimes of the Night Watch, one of my favourite characters ever in any book of any genre.

Louis L’Amour’s westerns. A lot of short reads. No sex (a lot of girls “setting their cap” for a man, usually the protagonist), but of course the usual bang-bang-shoot’'em-up. Louis did a lot of research in his books, so the backdrops and backgrounds are true to the times.

If you are looking for anything deeper and maybe darker, David Gemmell writes a lot of fantasy, usually following the stories (spread out over thousand years or so) of a people called the Riganti. Beware: the victories of the “good guys” are usually pyrrhic.
 
More good clean fun fiction:

***The blue castle ***by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Set in the 1910s. A spinster pushing 30 experiences a personal crisis that makes her do scandalous things such as move her bedroom furniture without permission, get her first job, ask the love of her life to marry her, and (oh, the horror!) get a haircut. (The family can hide the rest of it, you see.)

Also, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney. Why should kids have all the fun? They’re actually pretty good.
 
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