July 4

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Anne Coates

I am in awe of bloggers who are able to juggle their reading, their personal lives and still keep their blog ticking over. Sometimes that IS me, recently it has NOT been me. Over the last few weeks my day job has become overwheming and has taken far too much of my time; becoming something of a “whole-day” job. Something had to give and unfortunately that was Decades. My apologies to my guests who have been waiting patiently, also to those who have indicated they would like to join in but I have not yet been in contact with them. And my apologies to everyone who as asked me “where is Decades?”

Today Decades is back.

Since January 2021 I have been inviting guests to join me and I ask them to nominate their five favourite books which they would like to see included in the Ultimate Library. This Ultimate Library is my Decades Library, I started with zero books and wanted to curate a library which contained only the very best reads – the ones booklovers read and want everyone else to enjoy too.

Each guest is asked to follow just two rules when nominating their favourite books to the Decades Library:

1 – You May Select ANY Five Books

2 – You May Only Select One Book Per Decade From Five Consecutive Decades. Selections are to be made from any fifty-year publication span.

 

It sounds easy but I am often told that nailing down a final five can lead to some frustrating internal soul searching. And cussing.

Today I am delighted to bring Decades back and introduce the wonderful Anne Coates. As Decades is not about me but about my guests I am now taking a step back and leaving you in Anne’s care…

 

It only took one tap dancing class (and some coaching from her mother who had been a dancer) for Anne Coates to realise that she would never be a Ginger Rogers but being a journalist/editor and writing fiction has allowed her to explore all manner of careers and situations with far less embarrassment. Anne has worked as a journalist and editor for newspapers, magazines and publishers and has published seven non-fiction books as well as short stories. Born in Clapham and now living a few miles away in East Dulwich, Anne’s Hannah Weybridge series, amzn.to/38egdOO published by Red Dog press, is set in 1990s London. The first book, ‘Dancers in the Wind’, was inspired by interviews she did for a national newspaper and the latest, ‘Stage Call’ begins and ends in one of the capital’s most iconic theatres, The Old Vic – a favourite with the Coates family.

 

 

 

DECADES

 

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (1865)

 

Alice is the book made unforgettable by my mother reading it to me. I adored listening to her as she brought everything alive with different “voices”. I love the sheer madness of these books and although I never sought out rabbit holes, I have certainly spent time staring into mirrors and hoping to be absorbed into another world! I continued the tradition by reading it to my daughter and quoting passages on the walk to school (she was not impressed).

 

 

 

Middlemarch by George Elliot (1871)

 

What a perfect novel! And how irritated I was with Dorothea when I read this as a teenager. Middlemarch followed me from school to my degree and I still have my battered Penguin edition. It encompasses so much social history especially the status of women, issues about marriage and inheritance, beautifully written and plotted. Much later in life I abridged Middlemarch for a compact edition and nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to cut parts of a favourite tome!

 

 

 

 

The Strange Case of Dr Jekell and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

 

From an early age I have been fascinated by the occult and the supernatural (in theory not practice!). Although I wasn’t a fan of Treasure Island or Kidnapped, Stevenson’s Jekell and Hyde captured my imagination with a struggle between good and evil in one character with two lives.

 

 

 

 

 

New Grub Street by George Gissing (1891)

 

A book I have reread since university, about writing and authors, their trials and tribulations. Written well over a century ago, Gissing depicts a society in which literature has become a commodity, which could very much sum up the case in publishing now especially in the snobbism associated with literary as opposed to genre fiction. New Grub Street is a “three volume novel” which one of the main characters, Reardon, struggles to write. It was a book, which resonated with me long before I became a published author.

 

 

 

 

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (1901)

 

What’s not to love about Sherlock Holmes stories? Holmes intrigued me and I found his legendary powers of deduction utterly beguiling – the ultimate in detectives. Plus of course there was often the possibility of a supernatural agency at work. Doyle uses a favourite Holmes ruse of being too busy to attend the scene in Dartmoor and sending Dr Watson in his stead. Of course Holmes is there in disguise conducting his own enquiry into the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. Greed as ever was the motivation for the death, which was not the result of a family curse. Perfect reading.

 

 

 

 

My huge thanks to Anne for five wonderful selections. If you knew how much trouble we had behind the scenes to actually get Anne’s book recommendations to my inbox then you would know why I am feeling particularly thrilled to bring these five new Decades books to you today.

To everyone who has enjoyed Decades – thanks for the love and support. To new readers, welcome – I hope you find some new books to love.

I will aim to bring a new Decades post to you every Monday as we go forward. If you feel you have five unmissable books (pubished over five consecutive Decades) then please do get in touch with me @GrabThisBook and together we can hopefully share the booklove and introduce new readers to those titles.

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

 

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May 16

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Caron McKinlay

It isn’t Friday but it IS time for a return to the Decades Library. It has been a while since we last visited the Library and I apologise for the brief hiatus which just so happened to coincide with a change of role in the day job (same job, new work), exam season in Scotland (teenager Grab has been working hard and we have been supporting where we can) plus lots of other fun reading things which I simply cannot talk about just yet.

But it’s time the Library welcomed a new curator and as it is Publication Day for The Storytellers I wanted to share Caron McKinlay’s selections today – rather than wait for Friday to roll around.

As it has been a couple of weeks I will recap what the Decades Library is all about. I am assembling a Library of the very best books. I started this project back in January 2021 and I had no books on my Library shelves. I did not know which books would represent the “very best” and I knew that I would not be able to fill a Library with just my personal selections so I invite guests to join me and ask them to nominate their selections for inclusion within the Decades Library. I ask them to pick their favourite or memorable reads or the books which they believe the best libraries should offer to readers.

Each guest must follow just two simple rules when nominating books to the Decades Library:

1 – Select ANY Five Books
2 – You May Only Select One Book Per Decade From Five Consecutive Decades.

 

So with a huge congratulations on publication day I pass to Caron McKinlay for five new selections.

Caron grew up in a mining town on the east coast of Scotland where her dad would return from the pit and fill her life with his tall tales. She never thought about making a career in writing – that was what posh people did, not someone from a working-class council estate.

However, her father’s death was the cause of deep introspection and her emotions gave birth to a short story, Cash, which was published in the Scottish Book Trust’s anthology, Blether. This gave her the confidence to try and believe in herself.

When not blogging, reading, and writing, Caron spends her time with her daughters. She doesn’t enjoy exercise – but loves running around after her grandsons, Lyle and Noah, to whom she is devoted.

Caron had three childhood dreams in life: to become a published author, to become a teacher, and for David Essex to fall in love with her. Two out of three ain’t bad, and she’s delighted with that.

You can buy The Storytellers here: https://geni.us/theStorytellers

And Find Caron here:

www.twitter.com/caronmckinlay

www.instagram.com/caronmckinlay

www.facebook.com/mckinlaycaron

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZML8bGo9h/

Good Reads

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60844999-the-storytellers

Website

http://www.caronmckinlay.com

 

Decades

 

The 1980s

‘The Silence of the Lambs’ by Thomas Harris

Contemporary takes on the novel focus on Hannibal Lecter, the fearsome imprisoned serial murderer antagonist. But as the title suggests, the book is as much about the FBI agent Clarice Starling, her childhood as an orphan, and the screaming of slaughtered lambs on her cousin’s farm she experienced as a child. An eerie relationship grows between Starling and Lecter, as, perhaps for the first time in his life, he experiences empathy for another. Not exactly a love story, but a fascinating depiction of the way that relationships can grow, like weeds, in the unlikeliest of places as, at the end, he writes to her that he hopes, for her, the lambs have stopped screaming. I will never forget a section of the narrative where I thought “Huh what just happened” and had to turn back to read the pages again. I loved that!

 

 

The 1990s

‘The Notebook’ by Nicholas Sparks

I have always been swept away by grand romances. One of my favourite books is Wuthering Heights. In its own way, ‘The Notebook’ evokes the same sense, for me, of two people whose love transcends the passage of time and events. “I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough”. How romantic? Of course, like all the best books, the story is unfolded in ways that you would never expect, beginning with an old man reading a ’story’ to an old woman in a nursing home. But who are they, and who are the characters in the story he tells her? It’s such a beautiful story that makes me cry every time I read it.

 

 

 

The 2000s

‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ by Audrey Niffenegger

Write a book that involves time travel, and you already have me halfway there. But this is so much more. The poignant story of how Clare waits, as the years roll by, to be reunited with her one true love as he is flung across history and back again is both heart-breaking and uplifting. The love story is what captures you. But it only works because of the superb manner in which Niffenegger deals with the time travel element, allowing you to suspend disbelief long enough to become enthralled with Clare and Henry’s relationship. Another one that had me sobbing at the end.

 

 

 

The 2010s

‘11/22/63’ by Stephen King

This mix of time travel and one of the world’s great storytellers is just hard to beat. As ever, with King, the characters leap off the page, and their stories are never as straightforward as you would have imagined. The central character, Jake, has set himself the task of using a time portal to travel back in time to prevent John F. Kennedy’s assassination. But life, for a character in one of King’s novels, is never easy and, in the end, he is forced to confront a moral dilemma.  This was brilliantly plotted.

 

 

 

The 2020s

‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue’ by V.E. Schwab

Yet more twisty time travels. There might be a theme developing here. In the eighteenth century, a young woman barters her soul to avoid an enforced marriage. Consigned by the Devil, to live forever but be remembered by no one. We follow her life and struggles as she learns to live a lonely life. But in the twenty-first century, she finally finds love with someone, Henry, who does remember her. What will the Devil do now? Such gorgeous prose and the book I wish I had the talent to write. It was always remain one of my favourite books.

 

 

 

 

I am reading The Storytellers at the moment and enjoying it immensely. Unfortunatley the secret reading I am doing is keeping me away from finishing it for the present but a review will be forthcoming as soon as I can catch up!

As for these magnificent Decades selections – I am delighted that another Stephen King book has made its way onto the Library shelves (particularly as it is one of my favourites). And The Notebook! That’s a real crowd pleaser too.

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

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April 29

Decades: Compiling The Ultimate Library with Jane Isaac

Decades. Every Friday I invite a new guest to join me here at Grab This Book and I ask them to tell me which five unmissable, memorable, remarkable or favourite books I should add to my Decades Library.

The reason we are highlighting five books is to allow me to assemble the Ultimate Library of wonderful books. I started this challenge back in January 2021 and I had no books on the library shelves. I only wanted the very best books to be represented and I knew one person could never possibly hope to remember all the greatest books from down the years so I ask each of my guests to pick their five favourites.

But why Decades? Well just picking five books is far too easy so I ask that each guest only pick one book per decade from five consecutive decades – a fifty year publication span to choose from. This brings double joy – seeing which five books my guests choose and spotting the clever ways they flex the rules.

This week it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Jane Isaac to Grab This Book. Jane has been wonderfully supportive of my blogging down the years and I was utterly thrilled when she agreed to make her Decades choices. I’ve been looking forward to this week so I shall pass over to Jane and stop waffling on…

 

Jane Isaac is the author of standalone crime novels and three critically acclaimed detective series. Her books have topped the Amazon best-seller charts, been nominated as best mystery in the ‘eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook awards’, selected as ‘Thriller of the Month’ by E-thriller.com, and have been translated into several languages including Italian, German, Swedish and Chinese.

One Fatal Secret, her next domestic thriller and twelfth novel, is scheduled for publication in June 2022.

Jane lives in rural Northamptonshire, UK with her husband, a real-life working detective, and her two Labradors, Bollo and Digity. When she is not writing she can be found reading, trudging over the fields with her dogs, travelling, or spending time with her family.

www.janeisaac.co.uk

 

DECADES

It’s such an honour to be asked to contribute to Decades on the brilliant Grab This Book blog, not least because I’ve been following it for some time! The utter joy in building a library from scratch feels a bit like being a child in a sweet shop. In reality, the process of narrowing down my favourite reads was quite a daunting prospect because there were so many to choose from! So, I haven’t necessarily picked my absolute favourite reads, but all the books I selected have left a lasting impression on me.

 

Papillon by Henri Charriere – First published in English in 1970

 

This auto-biographical tale from bank robber, Henri Charriere, nicknamed Papillon, is prison-escape thriller, and an emotional rollercoaster of a ride. Sent to prison for a murder he didn’t commit, he reflects on the decisions he made that shaped his life, and the penal colony where he is kept is a marked reminder of the best and the worst of humanity.

 

 

 

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill – 1983

 

This gothic ghost story gave me all the creeps when I first read it in the 1990s, so much so that I couldn’t have it in the bedroom when I slept! When young solicitor, Arthur Kipps, is sent to settle the estate of the late Mrs. Alice Drablow, a reclusive widow who lived alone in the desolate Eel Marsh House, he faces the horror of nightmares. Tense, atmospheric and dark, I wouldn’t recommend reading it last thing at night.

 

 

 

 

Wild Swans by Jung Chang – 1991

 

I’ve always been fascinated by the Far East and this incredible book is a window into Chinese twentieth century history told through the eyes of three generations of women from the same family. Powerful, moving, and at times harrowing, ultimately the bravery of the women and their endurance shines through.

 

 

 

 

Tokyo by Mo Hayder (later re-titled The Devil of Nanking) – 2004

 

The late Mo Hayder possessed the most amazing ability to create evocative characters that pulled you in from the first page, and her stories tackled sometimes difficult issues that stayed with you long after you closed the book. For me, Tokyo was one of her best examples of this. Alone in Tokyo, Grey Hutchins finds herself searching for a piece of film taken during the infamous Nanking massacre of 1937. What follows is a tense, high-octane story where Hutchins faces resistance in her search and struggles to come to terms with the horrors of past events.

 

 

 

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens – 2018

 

This story of Kya, abandoned at a young age and forced to raise herself in the Carolina Marshes, took me through all the emotions! Her ability to focus, connect with nature and keep faith in herself, despite what was thrown at her, showed real strength of character; particularly when the police charged her with murder and she was placed on trial, fighting for her life. A beautiful, and ultimately uplifting book in so many ways.

 

 

 

 

I have fond memories of Wild Swans releasing back in 1991 when I was working in a bookshop. It’s a real doorstep of a book, absolutely huge, and I remember lugging dozens and dozens of copies of it filling the gaps in the shelves as it flew out the door. Good times! It brings back so many happy memories seeing it again and I am delighted to add it to the Decades Library. The Woman in Black creeped the hell out of me but I’ll make room for that too!!!

Huge thanks to Jane for finding time to make these terrific selections and take on the Decades Challenge.

 

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

 

 

 

 

 

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April 22

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with David F. Ross

Welcome back to Decades. I am on a mission to compile the Ultimate Library, my Decades Library, which only offers readers a choice of the very best books.

I started this mission back in January 2021 when I asked myself the question: If you were to open a new library and had zero books available, which books should be added to the shelves? I knew I would not be able to answer the question alone so each week I am joined by a guest and I ask them to nominate five new books which I should add to the library shelves.

There are only two rules governing the choices my guests make:

1 – Choose ANY Five Books
2 – You May Only Choose One Book Per Decade From Five Consecutive Decades

 

This week it is my pleasure to welcome David F Ross back to Grab This Book. One of the first book-launch events I attended after I started blogging was for David’s debut The Last Days of Disco. I love that David writes characters that sound like the people I am surrounded by each day and his books always hit the mark.

David kindly agreed to take on my Decades challenge after I put him on the spot when I bumped into him one morning as I was out walking my dog. His selections are tremendous so I may need to start using the pooch and a lack of coffee more often when I invite people to take part in Decades!  Over to David…

 

David F. Ross was born in Glasgow in 1964. His debut novel, The Last Days of Disco, was shortlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and received exceptional critical acclaim, as did the other two books in the Ayrshire-based Disco Days Trilogy – The Rise & Fall of the Miraculous Vespas and The Man Who Loved Islands. He is a regular contributor to Nutmeg Magazine, and in 2020 he wrote the screenplay for the film Miraculous, based on his own novel.

There’s Only One Danny Garvey is his fifth book. It was shortlisted for Scottish Fiction Book of the Year, 2021. His sixth novel will be published by Orenda Books in December 2022.

 

 

Decades

It’s an intriguing idea to select five books from consecutive decades to ‘represent’ me in the ultimate library. If this is a type of literary mixtape, should there be a natural flow to the selection? Should they reflect my ever-changing moods? Will they infer that I’m too narrow-minded? Will my stereotypical choices rule me out of future hypothetical dinner party invitations? Will anyone else ultimately give a fuck?

I may be over-thinking this task.

I didn’t read a lot as a child. Mine wasn’t a family background that encouraged reading. I do not recall there being books in our house and perhaps as a result, I was always occupied by other things: music and football, mainly. These selections are from a period of life where my latent interest in literature developed. From when I forced myself to make time to read because I understood my appreciation of the world around me could be enhanced by more than LPs by The Jam and Morrissey’s lyrics.

These choices are stereotypical. All male writers. All white. I am making up for the narrowness of focus they might imply now that I am a writer myself, but I chose these books because they are the ones that inspired me to write. The ones that persuaded me that I could have something to say that was worth writing about. The capacity to inspire others to create is a very powerful motivation for any artistic endeavour. And despite their flaws and blemishes, you can never forget your first love(s), right?

 

The 1950s – Billy Liar, by Keith Waterhouse (1959)

Billy Liar paints a monochromatic picture of a country still struggling to come to terms with the end of Empirical power in the wake of two devastating wars. (The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?) Everyone in Billy Fisher’s world is trapped by these circumstances, apart from Liz, the beatnik girl played by Julie Christie in the film adaptation. She represents freedom; an escape from a life of pram-pushing drudgery or factory conditioning. The writing is ahead of it’s time in tackling mental health issues in young men. This book’s influence on The Last Days of Disco is perhaps inevitable given how much of an impact it had on me.

 

 

 

 

The 1960s – The Blinder, by Barry Hines (1966)

Another typically northern story of a young footballer, Lennie Hawk, whom many supporters considered him to be the reincarnation of a flawed genius from his club’s past. The Blinder was the first book I can remember loving. It’s less well known than A Kestral For A Knave and I’m perhaps the only person in the world who thinks it’s better. I’m still slightly ashamed to admit that I stole this book from a small, local library during an ill-thought out mid-70s break-in. Although, since I still have the stolen copy, and it continues to inspire me now, hopefully the local Council can forgive me.

There’s Only One Danny Garvey owes a massive debt to this brilliant book.

 

The 1970s – The World According To Garp, by John Irving (1978)

I stumbled on this book almost by accident. A fellow passenger left it on a London train and told me I could have it when I alerted her. Garp is a comic novel full of idiosyncratic characters; the successful writer Garp, his accidental feminist icon mother, a former football player turned transgender activist, and a supporting cast of assassins and suburban seductresses and cult members and unicycling bears and fortune tellers. The book’s scope is vast, and it directly influenced the chaotic, diverse world I imagined in The Rise & Fall of the Miraculous Vespas. It’s an angry novel although that underlying rage is brilliantly obscured by the wit and humour of the writing. That’s a difficult balance to strike. The World According to Garp is still hugely relevant. Sexual intolerance is still all around us.

 

 

 

The 1980s – The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster (1987)

“The story is not in the words; it’s in the struggle.”

I have this as an epigram for my next book which is due to be published later this year. The New York Trilogy is like the city itself; complex, multi-layered, and full of contradictions. For me, it represents a way of telling a story that doesn’t offer easy answers but simply asks more questions. I like the idea of the reader having to make sense of a book, and ultimately of what its intertextuality means to them alone. I found out late last year that Paul Auster and I share a close mutual friendship. His writing – particularly around serendipitous meetings and coincidental occurrences – has influenced all of my books, so it was a real thrill for me that he read Welcome To The Heady Heights.

 

 

The 1990s – Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh (1993)

I think Irvine Welsh – and Trainspotting especially – has changed the way the Scottish literary voice is appreciated around the world. Trainspotting is something of a Year Zero for Scottish authors from a working-class background. It has blazed a trail for so many brilliant books. In recent years, Shuggie Bain and The Young Team share its DNA. There is so much energy and life and – paradoxically – hope bursting out from the pages that it’s impossible not to get caught up in the exuberance of the writing, and the authenticity of the characters, despite the misery (for the most part) of their situations.

Trainspotting isn’t a period piece, or a point-in-time consequence of the social chaos visited on Scotland by the Thatcher Government. It’s the story of the world we all live in today.

 

 

 

Huge thanks once again to David. I have already ordered a copy of The New York Trilogy and this feature continues to take over my TBR!

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

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April 8

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Jamie Mollart

Happy New Year! For all the financial services workers in the UK this week marks the start of a brand new tax year (2022/23 as it turns out). So I thought I’d acknowledge it on the blog for a wee change.

But you’re not here for tax chat, you’re here for the books. Specifically you’re here to see which five books Jamie Mollart has selected when he took on my Decades Challenge.

Quick recap before I hand over to Jamie: Last year I set myself the challenge of filling the shelves of a brand new library with nothing but the very best books represented. I knew I could not take on this epic task alone so each week I invite a guest to select five of their favourite books which they feel should be represented in my new library.  When making their selections there are just two rules my guests must follow:

1 – Select ANY five Books
2 – You May Only Select One Book Per Decade From Five Consecutive Decades.

Sounds easy? I am assured it takes a while to settle on five and there are rumours of cursing and heartache as favourites don’t fall within the five consecutive decades rule.

This week it is my abolute pleasure to welcome Jamie Mollart to Grab This Book. Jamie’s latest novel, Kings of the Dead World is my #currentlyreading book and has been commuting with me on my train trips back into the office now that I am not exclusively working from home. It is making the trip to work much more manageable.

Over to Jamie…

I’ve written two novels and am about to send my third to my agent. The Zoo was published in 2015 to some pretty good reviews and press. I was made an Amazon Rising Star for that year and spent 2015/16 at some cool literary festivals. My second novel, Kings of a Dead World came out in 2021, was an Amazon bestseller, has a Waterstones edition with very beautiful sprayed green edges and was longlisted for the British Science Fiction Association best novel award.

I am a member of the Climate Fiction Writers League (https://climate-fiction.org/), Nottingham Writers Studio (https://www.nottinghamwritersstudio.co.uk/) , I’m a mentor for Writing East Midlands (https://writingeastmidlands.co.uk/for-writers/mentoring/), I have contributed to the Writers and Artists Yearbook (https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/advice/lessons-i-learned-writing-my-second-novel), and the Bookseller (https://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/cli-fi-time-1262857) and I’m a long standing guest on the webs oldest and most influential writing podcast, Litopia (https://litopia.com/)

If you want to find out more about me the best places are one twitter (@jamiemollart) or on my youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsYzJh4RrSdYkM3e0o2WFOg)

If you want to get a copy of Kings of a Dead World with its lovely green edges you can do so here (https://www.waterstones.com/book/kings-of-a-dead-world/jamie-mollart/9781914518027) there’s also a hardback and audiobook version available here (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kings-Dead-World-Jamie-Mollart/dp/1913207455)

 

DECADES

1970-1979 – JG Ballard – Crash (1973)

I could have chosen any one of several JG Ballard books from the 70’s because they’re all excellent – The Atrocity Exhibition, Concrete Island, or High Rise – but for me Crash is the one which is the best realised. The fact that it was filmed by one of my all-time favourite directors, David Cronenberg, is the icing on the cake. Ballard is all about high concept and Crash is no exception. He always seemed to be able to predict the future in a way which most authors don’t, and Crash is no exception to this. It also demonstrates Ballard’s ability to compress massive concepts into razor sharp narratives.

The narrator, James Ballard, is involved in a car crash which kills the other driver, and when he begins a relationship with the dead man’s wife the boundaries between the mechanical and the erotic become blurred.

When he meets Robert Vaughan, and is drawn into his sphere of influence, Ballard in turn becomes involved in a group who recreate the fatal car crashes of famous people for sexual pleasure.

The book was controversial at the time of release – ‘This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do Not Publish’ – and still has the power to shock, but in our increasingly Petro-chemical/celebrity obsessed world it seems even more important than when it was written. Not for the feint hearted, but for me essential reading.

 

1980-1989 – Peter Carey – Oscar and Lucinda (1988)

The Booker winner from 1988 is, in my opinion, the most perfect novel ever written. Populated with rich, flawed, and complex characters, this Victorian epic is weird, daring, romantic and challenging all at the same time. It also contains one of the most bravura set pieces I’ve ever read, which I can’t tell you about here because it’s a massive spoiler, but somehow Carey manages to make one act represent the entirety of not only the lead characters relationship, but the whole narrative. Annoyingly the book’s Wikipedia entry manages to blurt it out, so if you intend to read it don’t visit Wikipedia.

Oscar Hopkins is an Anglican Priest, Lucinda Leplastrier is an heiress to a glass factory, they are both gamblers, and when the meet on a ship they both find the other fascinating. It’s a love story that’s more about friendship than passion, while still managing to be incurably romantic. It’s about religion and fanaticism of all kinds, it’s about technology and the allure of it, it’s about how our childhoods affect us and so much more.

Carey loves a misfit character, and both Oscar and Lucinda fall into that category, but they are so lucidly drawn that I struggle not to think of them as real people. It’s one of the few books that I’ve read multiple times, it’s just not something I normally do, but Oscar and Lucinda calls to me regularly and I can’t help but return to it.

Peter Carey is one of the few writers who can turn his hand to anything and succeed every single time.  He’s won the Booker twice and been shortlisted for it 5 times, no mean feat, and utterly deserved. Angela Carter also described Oscar and Lucinda as ‘novel of extraordinary richness, complexity and strength’, so if you don’t believe me, you should definitely believe her.

 

1990- 1999 Bret Easton-Ellis – American Psycho (1991)

The ultimate dissection of 80’s excess and yuppie culture, American Psycho was banned on release in many places, and gained notoriety because of its aestheticized violence. What was largely missed at the time is that the book is clearly a satire and is actually laugh out loud funny in many places.

Patrick Bateman is a slick, vacuous banker on the Wall Street of the eighties. He’s obsessed with his hair, clothes, fancy restaurants, his sculpted body and making sure his business card is whiter and crisper than his colleagues. Oh, and at night he likes to murder people in increasingly depraved and meticulously described ways, whilst extoling the virtues of albums by people like Huey Lewis and The News and Whiteny Houston. As Bateman’s murder spree escalates and his grip on reality becomes more tenuous it becomes more unclear whether what we’re witnessing is actually happening or whether Bateman’s fractured mind is in fact making him the most unreliable of narrators.

American Psycho is probably the most caustic and damning attack on consumerism ever written, unrelenting in its horror show depiction of the American Dream, it is both difficult to read and impossible to put down. On a sentence level Easton-Ellis is second to none (apart from maybe Zadie Smith, who I really wanted to include on this list too), and the whole book reads as a macabre satirical masterpiece.

 

2000-2009 China Mieville – Perdido Street Station (2000)

What. A. Book. This. Is.

I put off reading it for a while because of the sheer size of it, but oh my days is it worth it. China Mieville is one of the cleverest, imaginative, and downright weird writers out there. Every single one of his books reaches for the sky, most of the succeed, but this one absolutely smashes through it.

It’s 1000 pages of steam punk craziness set in the world of Bas-Lag (which he revisits in The Scar and Iron Council), where magic is real and considered a science, and New Crobozon is a sleazy, sexy, corrupt city full of weird and wonderful species such as the Falcon like Garudas, and the Khepri, who have human bodies and insects as heads.

Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is a scientist who is approached by one of the Garuda, who has had his wings removed as punishment, to craft a new pair of wings to enable him to fly again. Isaac sends his team out into New Crobozon to bring back as many species with the ability to fly as possible so he can learn the secret of flight. Unknowingly he is brought back a caterpillar which will end up turning into something nasty enough to endanger the whole of the city.

It’s a whole lot more complicated than that and features a massive cast in a wonderfully vivid city. It won the Arthur C Clarke award (he’s won it a record 3 times in total) amongst many others and the legendary Michael Moorcock described Mieville as ‘a writer with a rare descriptive gift, an unusually observant eye for physical detail, for the sensuality and beauty of the ordinarily human as well as the thoroughly alien.’

Mieville has written some brilliant books after Perdido Street Station, not least the amazing The City and The City, but this is his masterpiece.

 

2010- 2020 – Nobody Told Me – Hollie McNish (2016)

Hollie McNish is so forthright and honest and open and fearless as a writer that she ought to be compulsory reading. Her view of the world is hilarious and disarmingly honest. In this amazing book, which is part diary, part poetry and part essay, she turns her unflinching gaze onto motherhood as she narrates the first year of her daughter’s life.

My wife suffered horrendous post-natal depression with our first daughter, in no small part I believe due to the facile and fake way in which motherhood is portrayed in our modern culture. The awkward, unpleasant bits are whitewashed and hidden from view, and we’re presented with an unrealistic portrayal which is damaging to both mother and child.

Hollie McNish does no whitewashing. With Nobody Told Me she sets out to give an honest, personal, and deeply moving account of what it means to be a new mother, and in doing so goes some way to busting the harmful myths. She covers everything from morning sickness, to what it actually feels like to not sleep properly for months, the first public tantrum, mum guilt, leaky boobs, the changes a woman’s body goes through, but also the amazing gift that is having a child. It’s funny, touching, and profoundly moving.

I love the way Hollie McNish looks at the world and I love the way her words describe it. She’s a rare and genuine talent and should be considered a national treasure.

 

I have mentioned this before but, for me, the perfect five Decades selections are when I know one or two of the books and have read them before and then there are three books which I don’t know. A blend of new and familiar. Jamie has hit that perfect balance this week and I have already been checking out the books which were new to me.

My thanks to Jamie for finding time to make his selections. Decades continues entirely because of the kindness of my guests who all devote some of their precious time towards sharing the booklove.

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

Category: Decades, From The Bookshelf | Comments Off on Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Jamie Mollart
April 1

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with David Monteath

The second quarter of 2022 is upon us. As this latest Decades selection goes live it will be April and Decades will be in its sixteenth month of guests. I am grateful to each and every contributor and to you for returning, week on week, to see the latest books which are being added to my Decades Library.

The Decades Library I hear you ask?  I am compiling a list of the very best books which my guests think would deserve a place in the Ulitmate Library. I started this project in January 2021 with zero books and each week I ask a guest to nominate five new books which they would want to see included in a collection of the finest writing.

When making their selections my guests are asked to follow two rules.

1 – Choose Any Five Books
2 – You May Only Select One Book Per Decade From Five Consecutive Decades.

This week I am delighted to be joined my someone who reads my books for me. Or is that to me? David Monteath (@joxvox) will be a familiar voice to many audiobook fans and I am always fascinated to know which books stand out to someone who spends most of his waking hours focused entirely on the written word.

 

One of Scotland’s most popular voiceovers, David Monteath was born in Glasgow and started acting while at high school, he trained as an actor at Webber Douglas in London and has been an actor and voiceover for 25 years.

David’s early life was split between homes on the outskirts of Glasgow and the beautiful Spey Valley in the Highlands of Scotland. He also lived in central Perthshire near the popular tourist destination of Pitlochry with its world-famous Festival Theatre.

While training at the prestigious Webber Douglas Academy in London, David met his future wife Lindsay. They have three children and all five of them have worked as voiceovers for clients across Europe, Asia, North America and the Middle East.

David has put his voice to good use over the years and has vast experience of most aspects of being a voiceover from advertising for television and radio, ADR and dubbing on film and television, language tapes for learners of English, telephony and on-hold messages, character animation through to narration, commentary and audiobooks.

He has also produced and co-presented a weekly request show on Stoke Mandeville Hospital Radio

DECADES

 

Most of my choices are made from books I have read for work, one of the downside of being an audiobook narrator is that I rarely have time now to read for pleasure, so in many ways my reading choices are dictated by my clients.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, this work has introduced me to many writers I would never have found otherwise.

 

The High Girders – John Prebble – 1956

 

This is an absolute classic and the first John Prebble I have read.  It follows the story of the building of the Tay Railway bridge and its eventual collapse on 28th December 1879. The story follows in detail the events of the night, and wherever the blame is felt to lie for the errors which caused the disaster and 75 deaths, Prebble’s book is a fascinating account of a terrible night and a compassionate recounting of so many very human losses.

 

 

 

 

The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles) Dorothy Dunnett – 1961

Ok, there is a tale behind this one…where else would tails be?…I was recording a quiet story of a country doctor when the producer asked if I would be interested in narrating another book for him, ‘it’s a bit longer than this one’ he said. ‘Of course I would.’ Now cut forward a few days and I was sent the pdf, most audiobook narrators work from iPads, it makes it much quieter as you don’t hear the dreaded page-turn noises that audio editors hate. Also making notes on character and scene etc are simpler on a screen. So, I opened the pdf and found a place at random a good few pages in. I read a rather lovely scene between our hero Lymond and a very young Mary Queen of Scots, set on an island in the middle of the Lake of Menteith, my area of Scotland…but more importantly where I was married. Of course I was completely drawn in and contacted the producer who said…’Um, this has changed slightly, you might have noticed that the book is a biggie, we think it’ll be around 26 hours when you’ve finished recording. Is that still ok?’. Oh definitely good for me. Then he muttered quietly as the phone was going down…’just one more thing…there are six of them, all pretty much the same length!!’ So, this quiet chat turned into 1.3 million words read, 146 hours of finished audiobooks and over 300 hours recording in my tiny studio during the very hot summer of 2018…it was HUGE…and I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

I’m not going to try to precis the book or the series, if you’ve read or listened to them you know why…if you haven’t, the please, please do, you absolutely wont regret it. They are glorious.

 

The General Danced at Dawn – George MacDonald Fraser – 1970

IN the early 1990s, when I was on tour with the Oscar Wilde play ‘A Woman of No Importance’, I shared dressing rooms around the country with an actor called Stuart Hutchison, who was also a regular face on Westward Television in the Plymouth area. Stuart and I spent hours talking about books, art, music and pretty much anything but football which we both dislike. He bought me a copy of The General Danced at Dawn as I’d never read the stories and he wanted someone else to be able to laugh at them and love them as much as he did. I’ve been very fortunte in my career to work with some really kind, generous people and that was Stuart.

 

 

 

 

The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco – 1980 

Hmmm, I’m beginning to sense a bit of a history theme in my reading. This book sort of crosses all of my working genres, history (albeit fictional) and crime.  It’s a complicated disturbing romp through murders in a 16th Century monastry in middle Europe, probably modern day Germany. The descriptions of ecclesiastical life and the conflicts in the church at that time are great, although if you saw the film first, I defy you not to hear Sean Connery every time Brother William speaks.

 

 

 

 

Iain Banks – Complicity – 1993

 

Right then, back to me again…this is a revenge story, brilliantly written by the always brilliant Iain Banks.  Someone once asked me, if given a choice what books would you like to have narrated?  Any of the Iain Banks would have been my choice.  It’s even more annoying that the reader is a friend and a very good reader.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I worked in a bookshop in the early 1990’s and without exception all these authors were selling in great numbers in Inverness bookshops – I know this as I was selling them. Pure nostalgia for me and I loved these choices.

And not just those choices as David gave me two extras. I have taken an executive decision to move Montrose out of the 1970s and Morningstar out of the 1990s selections.  I don’t mind the fact Montrose was originally written in the 1920s but it would mean dropping George MacDonald Fraser so rather than flex the rules I opted for the clear cut entry.  I am being hard on David Gemmell by moving him to the subs bench but only one book per decade is the rule so I flipped a coin!

But I don’t hide the alternates so here are David’s thoughts:

 

Montrose – John Buchan – 1979 (from 1928)?

This might be a bit of a cheeky one as the book was originally published in 1928, but reissued in 1979.  This was another audiobook project, but one far closer to my heart.  My clan are the Graham from Stirlingshire and this book tells the story of the first James Graham, 1st Duke of Montrose.  My father was passionately interested in Scottish history, so this exploration of a turbulent time in Scotland was a particular favourite of his.

 

Morningstar – David Gemmell – 1992

OK, yes, actually I just like a good historical epic, this one was a thumping good read, glorious descriptions and a suitably complicated fantasy world.  Its beautifully written and a great adventure.

A country in desperate need of heroes . . .

Angostin invaders surge through the Highlands, laying waste to everything in their path. Darkness follows in their wake as a mad necromancer resurrects the eons-dead Vampyre Kings.

Only the bandit Jarek Mace, and the magicker and bard Owen Odell, have the courage to fight the Angostins and the undead. Whispers soon spread that Mace is the legendary Morningstar, a saviour who will protect his country in its hour of need. Yet Mace seems nothing more than a thief and a liar.

As the final battle approaches, Odell wonders which of the two Maces will triumph: the self-serving rogue or the saviour of his people, the Morningstar.

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

 

Category: Decades, From The Bookshelf | Comments Off on Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with David Monteath
March 25

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Steph Broadribb

You can’t tell just by looking, however, this week’s Decades selection is the first blog post written in my 9th year of blogging. For eight full years I have tried to find ways to champion books, give hidden gems a chance to shine and to let others share their thoughts about books they loved too. When I started this blog in 2014 I did not envisage still updating it in 2022.

When I started this Decades feature in January 2021 I certainly did not expect it to have become become a weekly feature and have welcomed over 60 guests (and counting) to the Decades Library.

For anyone joining for the first time. Each week I invite a booklover to join me and add five new books to my Decades Library. I started the Library with empty shelves and the challenge is to only have the very best books represented. My guests are asked to nominate five books they believe should be included in an Ultimate Library but they have two rules to follow which govern their selections:

1 – Pick Any Five Books
2 – You May Only Select One Book Per Decade From Five Consecuive Decades

This week I am delighted to be joined by blogger turned bestselling author, Steph Broadribb. As I write this I am just a few chapters away from finishing Steph’s new novel Death in the Sunshine. Full review to follow soon but (spoilers) I am loving it. Steph was a major influence on how Grab This Book developed in the early years (I take all the blame for the bits you don’t like) and her blog was one of my go-to places when I was looking for reading recommendations. I was really looking forward to seeing which five books Steph selected.

 

Steph Broadribb has an MA in Creative Writing and trained as a Bounty Hunter in California. Her latest novel, Death in the Sunshine, is the first book in her new Retired Detectives Club series set in a luxury Florida retirement resort and is available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Sunshine-Retired-Detectives-Club-ebook/dp/B094JMFJNK . Her thriller series featuring single mom bounty hunter Lori Anderson has been shortlisted for the eDunnit eBook of the year award, the ITW Best First Novel, and the Dead Good Reader Awards for Fearless Female Character and Most Exceptional Debut. She also writes psychological police procedurals under the pen name Stephanie Marland. Find out more at www.stephbroadribb.com or follow her on Twitter (@CrimeThrillGirl) or Facebook (@CrimeThrillerGirl).

 

DECADES

 

Riders by Jilly Cooper (1985)

 

OMG this book! This was the taboo book that, as teenagers, my friends and I would sneak off our mums’ bookshelves and read secretly. As a horse rider I loved the horse bits, and as a teenage girl I loved the naughty bits. It is very much of its time, but was definitely a much-loved book of teenage me.

 

 

 

 

The Runaway Jury by John Grisham (1996)

 

This was the first Grisham book and the first legal thriller I read, and it remains my favourite. It has it all – a compelling story, great characters, and lots of pace. I didn’t like the film as much as they changed some of the elements of the story, but the book remains one of my top five.

 

 

 

 

 

State of Fear by Michael Crichton (2004)

 

I remember reading this climate change thriller and thinking wow! It’s a pulse pounding, adrenaline hit of a novel and I read all through the night to finish it. I’m a huge Crichton fan, and am always amazed by how clever and creative his plots and storylines are. This is my favourite of all his novels.

 

 

 

 

 

The Good Girl by Mary Kubica (2014)

 

This book made me cry! An abduction story with a hell of a twist, I loved the characters and plot, and marvelled at the genius of the structure and storytelling. Now, almost ten years on, I can still remember that first read vividly.

 

 

 

 

The Belladonna Maze by Sinead Crowley (2022)

 

This dual timeline novel set in a historic house in the west of Ireland is simply stunning. With a mesmerising cast of characters, it hooks you in as it reveals the decades of deadly secrets surrounding the house and maze, and packs one hell of an emotional punch at the end.

 

 

 

 

 

I always love seeing new authors appear in the Decades Library and Steph has brought one of my favourites this week.  I read all of Michael Crichton’s novels when I was in my 20’s and I remember really enjoying State of Fear. Can I find some way to make more time to revisit it? My thanks to Steph for taking time to make her selections. Death in the Sunshine is available in all your favourite book buying places, grab it!

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

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March 18

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Ian Moore

January 2021: when I set the path of my Thursday evenings for the next 14 months (and counting). You see, every Thursday evening I make myself a mug of hot coffee and I prepare to introduce my next guest to the Decades Library.

What is the Decades Library?  I always hope you ask as it means you are a new visitor and new visitors are always welcome. All those months ago I was pondering the question “If I had to fill a brand new library with nothing but the very best books, which books would I put on the shelves?”

I realised this was not a question I could not answer alone so each week I am joined by a new guest and I ask them which books they would add to my Decades Library. My guests are all invited to choose five books but I ask that they follow two rules when making their nominations:

Rule 1 – Choose Any Five Books
Rule 2 – You May Only Choose One Book Per Decade From Five Consecutive Decades.

Easy!

This week I am delighted to welcome Ian Moore to Grab This Book. Ian’s book C’est Modnifique! was the first book I added to my Audible Library waaay back in 2014 when I branched out into new ways to enjoy reading. I have long been a fan of his contributions to Radio Five’s Fighting Talk and his latest novel Death and Croissants was the book I bought myself for Christmas!

 

Ian Moore has been one of the UK’s leading stand-up comedians for the last 20 years. In 2021, Death and Croissants was published by Farrago Books, the first in the Follet Valley series of French-set cosy mysteries involving an Anglo-French amateur detective duo. Described as ‘Bloody Funny’ by Alan Carr, Death and Croissants has become a best-seller (number one in Bird Care (!) for 7 months) and has been optioned for television. The paperback is out in April and the second in the series, Death and Fromage, is out in July 2022.

 

 

DECADES

 

1950s – Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit – PG Wodehouse

It always comes back to Wodehouse. The writing, the characters, the humour… whenever I feel down, I return to Pelham Grenville. It’s not a world I should necessarily be interested in, I have no connection with pre-war Bright Young Things or the aristocracy or country houses or omniscient gentlemens’ gentlemen but Wodehouse more than humanises his ‘targets’, if you will, he makes you care for them. I actually feel Bertie Wooster has been hard done by through the ages; he’s become the very epitome of upper class twittery, whereas I see him more as a gentle, giving soul always there for a friend and the victim of other’s whims and machinations. This collection has all the great characters Roderick Spode, Aunt Dahlia, Florence Craye and it all begins over a slight disagreement about facial furniture.

 

 

 

1960s – A Murder of Quality – John Le Carré

This was Le Carré’s second George Smiley book and the only one that wasn’t directly about espionage. This is a more straightforward murder investigation which Smiley takes an interest in on behalf of an old friend, when the wife of a schoolmaster is beaten to death at the fictional public school of Carne. Though in many ways it’s a straightforward whodunnit, it has all the claustrophobia and downbeat atmosphere of Smiley’s more famous outings. So beautifully written, it’s another book I return to often, an absolute masterpiece of plotting and characterisation with melancholic ‘toad’ Smiley always humane and at the heart of it all.

PS I would highly recommend the Radio 4 George Smiley dramatisations with Simon Russell Beale. Peerless radio.

 

 

 

1970s – Bring On the Empty Horses – David Niven

This is probably the one book I have read more often than any other. David Niven’s tales and anecdotes of the Golden Age of Hollywood, all the famous stars of the time seen through Niven’s raconteur eyes. It’s such a joy to be transported to that era, and yes, I know it’s glossy and one only hears the positives (mostly) of an era and society that was actually rather vicious, but I don’t care. It inspired me as a child, and I still think I was born in the wrong era. If only I’d tipped up in Hollywood in the early 1930s as a young man, with a pencil moustache…

 

 

 

 

1980s – The Beiderbecke Affair – Alan Plater

Alan Plater’s first book in The Beiderbecke Trilogy is another chosen for its calming influences. Plater said he wrote about characters whose normal lives are interrupted when the outside world barges in, and on the face of it, Trevor Chaplin and Jill Swinburne seem completely unsuited for the convoluted jazz-themed mystery that they’re drawn into. But the dialogue and, in opposite to Wodehouse, the sheer mundanity of their world, is just so perfectly pitched. It’s been a big inspiration to me in my Follet Valley Series, and the TV series is as charming as television gets.

 

 

 

1990s – What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe

I read What a Carve Up! when it first came out in 1994, drawn to it because it had Shirley Eaton on the cover and that appealed to my film obsession, but it became the first book that left me terribly angry and helpless about the state of the world. It also left me bereft because I thought that no matter what I read from now on, and for the next (hopefully) 60 years of my life, nothing would come close to the sheer majesty of the work. It’s fragmented in style, structure and voice which contributes to the story of the dizzying grip on power that just a few people can have and so it’s as much horror as it is satire. If you don’t know, it’s about how Britain has been carved up so that the same names run government, agriculture, industry, health, arms, and the media. It’s a work of fiction obviously, it could never really happen…

 

 

 

 

HOW DID I ARRIVE AT THESE CHOICES? Well I started with What a Carve Up! and worked around that. My second favourite book, Birdsong, was published in the same decade and it seems a pity to have left that out, but I’ll be surprised if someone else doesn’t choose it. I had to have Wodehouse in their somewhere, and David Niven has influenced more as a person and a writer than anyone else I can think of. A couple of notable omissions are Catch-22, The Last Exit of Sherlock Holmes by Michael Dibdin and Halliwell’s Filmgoers Companion. Also, now I look at the list see how they have all, in their way, had an influence on my writing style or general demeanour!

 

Huge thanks to Ian for these brilliant selections. There have not been many non-fiction titles recommended thus far and David Niven is definately bringing some glitz to proceedings. This is also the first selection for many months where I haven’t read a single one of the books recommended. I really must put that right – and soon.

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

 

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March 11

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Margaret Kirk

Seven days seem to fly past so quickly at the moment and already I find I am rolling out the red carpet to welcome a new guest curator to the Decades Library.

Have you visited the Decades Library before? Let me quickly explain what’s happening.

Back in January 2021 I asked myself the question: If I were to build a new library from the ground up which books would I put on the shelves to make sure only the best books were represented?  I quickly realised this was not a question I could answer alone so I have been inviting guests to join me here at Grab This Book and asking them to nominate five of their favourite books which they feel deserve a place in my Decades Library.

Why is it a Decades Library? Well there are two rules governing the choices my guests can make.

1 – Pick ANY five books
2 – You may only select one book per decade from five consecutive decades.

Easy. In theory. But when it comes to making those selections and narrowing down which decades to represent I am told it can get a bit more challenging than you may believe.

Today I am delighted to pass the Curator’s Hat to Margaret Kirk who (before you scroll down) has selected five brilliant books which I will add to the shelves of the Decades Library.

 

Margaret Kirk writes ‘Highland Noir’ Scottish crime fiction with a gothic twist, set in and around her home town of Inverness.

Her debut novel, Shadow Man, won the Good Housekeeping First Novel Competition in 2016. Described as ‘a harrowing and horrific game of consequences’ by Val McDermid, it was published in 2017 by Orion. Book 2 in the DI Lukas Mahler series, What Lies Buried, was published in June 2019. Book 3, In The Blood, is set in Inverness and Orkney and is available from all good book stores.

Margaret is also the writer of several award-winning short stories, including The Seal Singers, which has been published in translation in Germany and Switzerland.

You can find Margaret here:

Website:  https://margaretmortonkirk.wordpress.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MargaretKirkAuthor/

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/HighlandWriter

And Margaret’s books are here:

Amazon: Shadow Man https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shadow-Man-Margaret-Kirk-ebook/dp/B06VVS5P1H/ref

What Lies Buried https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Lies-Buried-Margaret-Kirk-ebook/dp/B07N6DRL4K/ref

In The Blood https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Margaret-Kirk-ebook/dp/B07ZK9CMXN/ref

OR

Hive https://www.hive.co.uk/

(supports local independent bookshops)

 

DECADES

 

Thank you for inviting me to contribute to Decades ! I changed my mind several times about which decade would be my starting point – I very nearly picked the 1890s, because I wanted to include a certain iconic horror novel. But how would it be fair to include Dracula and leave out Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s more nuanced and arguably much more disturbing creation of 1818? And then I couldn’t have had one of my great heroes of the classic mystery genre, Dorothy L Sayers.

In the end, I’ve gone all modern, which allows me to genre-hop as I please, something I was also keen to do. My picks are all fairly well-known, but hopefully there’s something for everyone here – and I thoroughly recommend each and every one of them!

 

1970s – ‘Salem’s Lot  (Stephen King)

Very early Stephen King, and no, it’s not his best. It shows its age in places, and his protagonist, Ben Mears, is not a particularly compelling character. But King’s portrayal of small-town American life and attitudes always fascinates me, and this novel was the first I’d read which grabbed vampires by their mouldering, cobwebby capes and chucked them out into the contemporary world. Where, it seems to me, they have the potential to be infinitely more terrifying than confined to their Transylvanian homeland …

 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/salems-lot/stephen-king/9781444708141

 

 

 

1980s – Silence of the Lambs (Thomas Harris)

What can I say about this one that hasn’t been said?  It’s a masterful study in suspense, in drama, in character creation and development – there’s a reason so many books and courses on crime-writing pick this one apart to analyse the brilliance of its construction. (And let’s not forget, spawner of a million internet memes … 😉

 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/silence-of-the-lambs/thomas-harris/9780099532927

 

 

 

 

1990s – Good Omens (Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman)

The book which my husband and I bonded over, pretty much at our first meeting. I love fantasy, and I love clever, witty writing with a bit of bite. Is there any wonder this is one of my favourite books? (No, not another vampire reference). Pratchett is a huge loss to the writing world, and we’re all the poorer for not having him around to skewer the cruel and the vainglorious and the stupid in his own inimitable way.

 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/good-omens/neil-gaiman/terry-pratchett/9780552171892

 

 

 

2000s – On Writing (Stephen King)

Seriously, another Stephen King? Hey, my list, my rules. And this is his brutally honest and hugely influential non-fiction memoir and look back over his writing life. I read it initially just as a huge King fan, but now I think it was what gave me that initial nudge to think maybe I could try my hand at this writing thing (so if you were looking for someone to blame …)

Seriously, it’s one of the best books on writing I’ve read, mainly because it’s so honest and down-to-earth. And the final section on editing, where he actually shows how he does it? So, so good.

 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/on-writing/stephen-king/9781444723250

 

 

2010s – Just One Damned Thing After Another (Jodi Taylor)

‘St Mary’s – a group of tea-soaked disaster magnets who hurtle their way around History.’ Yep, that pretty much describes the protagonists of Jodi Taylor’s brilliantly irreverent take on the whole time travel concept (sorry, Dr Bairstow). But beneath the historical mayhem, there’s a subtle but growing darkness that hooked me from the outset. Another firm favourite!

 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/just-one-damned-thing-after-another/jodi-taylor/9781472264268

 

 

 

 

Boom – that’s how you do a Decades selection. King (twice) and Pratchett/Gaimen. Although I have never tried to nail down my personal five selections (I will save that for the very last Decades post) I would bet the farm on Good Omens making it into my five – no book has ever matched it for me. My thanks to Margaret for taking on the Decades Challenge, as ever, my apologies to your TBR.

 

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

 

 

Category: Decades | Comments Off on Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Margaret Kirk
February 25

Decades: Compiling the Ulitmate Library with Fiona Cummins

It’s time to add five new books to the Decades Library. Each week I am joined by a guest who nominates five new books to be added to my ultimate collection of essential reading.

Back in January 2021 I asked myself the question: If you had to fill a brand new library with nothing but the very best books, which books would you put on the shelves? I knew this was not a challenge I could complete alone so I invited authors, publishers, journalists and bloggers to help me. I ask each of my guests to pick five books which they feel should be included in my Decades Library.

Why do I call it a Decades Library? Although my guests are allowed to select any five books I ask that they only select one book per decade from five consecutive decades. This ensures I get a broad range of titles as it’s highly unusual for one author to have a backlist so extensive it covers five decades. There is one fellow though, King his name is, he pops up quite often…in fact stick around there’s another King novel making its debut in the Library this week.

This week it is my pleasure to welcome Fiona Cummins to Grab This Book. Regular readers will know I love the stories with a dark edge to them so it’s a real thrill for me to be able to share Fiona’s selections and add her chosen books to my library…

 

Fiona Cummins is an award-winning former showbusiness journalist and a graduate of the Faber Academy’s Writing A Novel course, where she now tutors in Writing Crime.

Her bestselling novels – RATTLE, THE COLLECTOR, THE NEIGHBOUR and WHEN I WAS TEN – have received widespread critical acclaim from authors including Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Lee Child, Martina Cole and David Baldacci. Her fifth book INTO THE DARK will be published in April 2022. She is published in more than 15 languages.

When Fiona is not writing, she can be found on Twitter at @FionaAnnCummins, walking her dogs or indulging her love of nature photography.

When I was Ten released in paperback on 30/12/21 and the hardback of Into The Dark publishes on 14/4/22.

 

DECADES

I was thrilled when Gordon of the brilliant Grab This Book blog asked if I’d like to take part in Decades, his Desert Island Discs for books. Imagine filling an empty library – what joy that would be! That said, I found it incredibly difficult to narrow down my choices because there are so many fantastic stories in the literary cosmos. With that in mind, I haven’t necessarily chosen the best books but the books that made the most profound impression on me.

 

The Borrowers – Mary Norton – 1952

I was obsessed with this series about the Clocks, a tiny family who live in the walls and under the floorboards of the Big House, borrowing from ‘human beans’ to survive. As a child, I remember scouring the library shelves for these stories, burning to find out more about the adventures of Pod, Homily, and most importantly, 14-year-old Arrietty, a fellow book lover with a curious streak.

 

 

 

 

The Magic Toyshop – Angela Carter – 1967

 

I read this novel in my teens after a boyfriend bought it for me one birthday. I wasn’t familiar with Angela Carter’s work until then but it started a lifelong love affair with her writing. I was captivated by this coming-of-age story dealing with the complexities of family dynamics and blossoming sexuality through the prism of magical realism.

 

 

 

 

The Stand – Stephen King – 1979

I can’t remember the first book I read by Stephen King but I do know that once I’d discovered him, I devoured everything I could lay my hands on. In this epic post-apocalyptic dark fantasy, the world has been decimated by a weaponised virus (too close to home right now?!) and the survivors fall into two camps, driven by Good and Evil. King is truly a master at making the reader care about the fate of his (many) characters. His ability to bring them to life on the page is nothing short of genius.

 

 

 

 

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson – 1985

Another coming-of-age story (I seem to have a weakness for these) about Jess – adopted into a strict Pentecostal family – who rejects her future as a missionary when she begins to have feelings for another girl. As a teenager reading this for the first time, this book, which Winterson describes as partly autobiographical, had a profound impact on me, opening my eyes to unfamiliar worlds, doing what the very best fiction should do. I later played Jess in a university drama production and this novel has been a fixture throughout my life.

 

 

 

 

American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis – 1991

American Psycho blew my mind the first time I read it. This bleak satire allows us a first-hand glimpse into the mind of Patrick Bateman, a sophisticated, handsome and charming Wall Street investment banker who also happens to be a vicious and narcissistic serial killer. The brutality and sadism – the sheer scale of violence – stunned me, but I could not put it down. This was perhaps the first time I recognised the power of writing, that compulsion to read on, even though the subject matter was distasteful, because his storytelling had snared me in its iron grip.

 

 

 

And there we are for another week. Five fabulous books, some I instantly recognise, two I have read and one new name which I will need to investigate further. My thanks to Fiona for taking time to make her selections. Decades continues thanks to the support and kindness of all my guests who give their time to share the booklove.

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

 

 

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