November 19

Decades – Compiling the Ultimate Library with Gordon Brown / Morgan Cry

It’s Decades. My ongoing quest to put together a library which is full of nothing but the very best books – as recommended by booklovers.

Back in January I had no books on the shelves of my Decades Library. Each week a new guest joins me and I ask them to nominate five books they want me to add to the shelves. Books which they feel all libraries should have available to allow them to be discovered by new readers.

Unfortunately for my guests I have made the selection process slightly more tricky than just nominating five books. I wanted to ensure my Decades Library would offer a great range of reading options. Therefore my guests are restricted to only selecting one book per decade from five consecutive decades – any fifty year publication span. I used to get a bit of flack about this second rule but these days it’s much more common for my guests to find clever ways to cheat when making their selections (just scroll down and take a look at Gordon Brown’s first pick).

As a sharp-eyed soul you will have noticed my guest this week is Gordon Brown. Gordon has just announced he will be penning two new books for Red Dog Press. News so fresh it didn’t make it into his introduction! The even sharper eyed reader will see one of these forthcoming books getting a wee mention in the paragraphs below.

 

Gordon Brown has eight crime and thriller books published to date, along with a novella and a number of short stories.

Under his new expat alias, Morgan Cry, Gordon’s latest crime thriller, ’Thirty-One Bones’, set in Spain, is published by Polygon. Available now in both the UK and the U.S. –  the sequel, called ‘Six Wounds’, will be published in in May 2022.

Gordon also helped found Bloody Scotland, Scotland’s International Crime Writing Festival (see www.bloodyscotland.com), is a DJ on local radio (www.pulseonair.co.uk) and runs a strategic planning consultancy. He lives in Scotland and is married with two children.

In a former life Gordon delivered pizzas in Toronto, sold non-alcoholic beer in the Middle East, launched a creativity training business, floated a high tech company on the London Stock Exchange, compered the main stage at a two-day music festival and was once booed by 49,000 people while on the pitch at a major football Cup Final.

 

DECADES

Gordon is compiling the ultimate library and has asked me to contribute five books from five decades. That’s the deal, right? Okay I’ll admit up front that that is a serious challenge. Looking back on my reading am I to choose books that I loved? The one’s that I couldn’t put down. The ones I loathed (that would be a cracking list)? The ones I’ve read more than once? The ones I never finished but have tried time and time again to do so (take a bow ‘Lord of the Rings’). My own books? Fact or fiction? Or both? Do short stories get a look in? Do I ignore the rules and go for books from the same decade? Or do I just forget it all and go for the books that mean the most to me? The booky equivalents of the music albums that return to my turntable time and time again? Not necessarily the best books I’ve ever read. Nor the most technically proficient. Nor those of literary note. Good or bad the following five have one thing in common.

I love them and they fundamentally influenced my writing.

 

1960s – ‘What Happened at Midnight’ by Franklin W. Dixon

This is a Hardy Boys mystery. Okay so this is already a cheat. The book first came out in 1931 but was revised in 1967 (as were many of the books in the series to address issues with racial stereotyping and to make them more action oriented to compete with 60s TV). In addition, there is no such person as Franklin W. Dixon – the name was used to give consistency to the series – the books were written by a wide range of authors. If you want some real geekdom this book was originally penned by Leslie McFarlane and then re-written by Tom Mulvey. To add to my ‘cheatness’ quotient this is probably not my favourite Hardy Boys book – but it is the one that got me into reading in a big way. All Hardy Boys books rely on a simple premise. Two young adults, Frank (18) (16 in earlier books) and Joe (17) (15 in earlier books), whose father is a police detective, solve the criminal mystery each time. Later in the series they help their dad with his cases but in earlier books they fly solo. ‘What Happened at Midnight’ is centred on a new type of transistor that the boys are asked to steal (by dad) and keep safe. The plot involves smugglers, bi-planes and chases. That’s all you need to know on that front. What marks this out for me was the fact I read the whole thing in one afternoon. And then raided my local library for every other Hardy Boys book I could get my hands on. These books imbued me with a desire to write and to add mustard to this weird sandwich I’ve just put a Glasgow ‘Hardy Boys’ book set in 1973 out on submission.

 

1970s – ‘Nightmare Blue’ by Gardner Dozois and George Alex Effinger

The story of an alien race who land, planning to take over earth, bringing with them a drug that is instantly addictive. One shot and you’ll die, if you don’t keep taking it. The aliens target world leaders along with the great and the good, forcing them to take the drug. Riding to humanity’s rescue is a German private investigator who teams up with a multi-limbed alien slave to rid the planet of this evil threat. Go on tell me you don’t want to read it – I have, at least half a dozen times, maybe more. I have never been able to put my finger on why this book hooks me. It’s not famous, nor is it notorious. It’s not the best written book. Nor is it without its flaws. I’ve only met one other person who has read it and they thought it was ‘okay’ – given I’d put them on to it this was a better reaction than I thought they would have. I’m convinced that the drug that is so central to the story had somehow been infused into the pages of my copy and that’s why I need a regular fix. It still resonates with me to this day. A book populated with outsiders, misfits, underdogs fighting the odds, battling the baddies. Individuals thrown into situations that they are ill prepared for. Both those sentences could sum up every book I’ve written. That’s how influential this book is to me.

 

1980s – ‘Christine’ by Stephen King

 The start of my ‘on/off’ love affair with Mr King. This takes me back to the summer of 1983 when I was working in a bar on the shores of Loch Lomond. The hours were long, the customers demanding and time off limited. When things were quiet we were allowed to read a book. My problem was that once I started Christine I could be found reading in the back cellar when things were the polar opposite of quiet. This is a story set in Libertyville, Pennsylvania in 1978 where two school friends, Arnie and Dennis, stumble upon a wreck of a car, a 1958 Plymouth Fury. Owned by a miserable old git called Roland D. LeBay, he agrees to sell the car to the boys for $250. Only the car isn’t quite what it seems (is any inanimate object in a King novel?). Arnie becomes obsessed with the car and works on it to bring it back to its former glory. When the car starts killing people (of its own volition) poor Arnie is in the frame with the local detective. This was considered King’s first return to a fully-fledged supernatural horror novel since the The Shining but to me the book is wonderful a tale of small-town America. Of a relationship between an old man and a young boy and what true obsession can do to a person and those around them. It’s all about the characters – and that sticks with me in my own writing. Oh, and it does feature a haunted car. A theme he came back to in my favourite King book ‘From a Buick 8’.

 

1990s – ‘A Man in Full’ by Tom Wolfe

The opposite of a rags to riches story in every way possible. Take a man who has everything and is stretching for even more and then we watch as it all unravels. Set in high society Atlanta and told from various points of views this was Tom Wolfe’s second novel, eleven years after the monster that was ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’. I love the set pieces in this book. I borrowed the idea of naming each chapter for my own books from this work. My favourite being ‘The Saddlebags’ – a ‘breakfast’ meeting where Charlie Croker meets with his bankers, believing that, despite the problems his new vanity project is facing, he is set fair to make more money. Only to discover that the people in the room are no longer friends but Rottweilers – out to disabuse him of the notion that he is in control. The Saddlebags refers to the sweat stains that start under Charlie’s armpits as he realises how much trouble he is in. As the meeting goes south and the bankers set upon him, the stains spread across Charlie’s shirt and when they meet in the middle of his chest the cry of ‘Saddlebags’ goes up and the Charlie is sunk and the bankers own him. A story of greed, excess, entitlement and written in a way that I aspire to.

 

2000s – ‘Why Don’t Penguins Feet Freeze’ – The New Scientist

In the New Scientist magazine there is a column called ‘The Last Word’. People write in with questions and scientists (and others) write in with answers. Often disagreeing with each other. Back in 2005 New Scientist decided to take the correspondence from over the years and bundle it into a book. The first book being ‘Does Anything Eat Wasps’. As the title of the books suggest the questions are anything but ordinary – take the other books in this series ‘Do Polar Bears Get Lonely?’, ‘Why Can’t Elephants Jump?’, ‘Why Are Orangutans Orange?’ and ‘Will We Ever Speak Dolphin?’ and you get the idea. Each book has a hundred odd questions loosely ordered by subject matter. And the beauty is that few questions have a definitive answer. ‘Why Don’t Penguins Feet Freeze’ got me into what I call my ‘chewing gum for the mind’ books. I always have one on the go. At the moment it’s the ‘QI Book of the Dead’. They are my ‘escape’ books. As leftfield from crime and thrillers as I can get. Birthdays and Christmases refill my ‘nonsense’ larder as my wife and kids buy me a never-ending supply. I’m looking at one of my book shelves and can see books entitled – ‘How Much Poo Does An Elephant Do’, ‘Usefully Useless – Everything You Didn’t Learn at School’, ‘How To Live Forever and 34 Other Really Interesting Uses of Science’, ‘The World’s Greatest Mistakes’, ‘Why Does E=MC2?’, ‘Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments’ (What is it about elephants?), ‘Go Figure – Things you Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know’, ‘The Worst Case Scenario Handbook’ – and so on. But, in truth, these books, apart from allowing me to lose myself, are simply the dogs bollocks for providing the grist for my creative writing mill.

 

I would never have expected Why Don’t Penguins Feet Freeze? to make its way into my Decades Library but it’s a book I also loved to read. My wife and I both read our way through all the books The New Scientist released – me for the quirky questions and her for the “sciency bits”.

The non-fiction shelves of my Library are not as busy as the fiction ones at this time. Perhaps in future more non-fiction books will make their way through the doors and into the Decades Library?  The only way to find out is to keep reading.

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

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November 12

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with S.G. MacLean

It is time to catch up with my Decades Library again. This week the Decades Curator Hat is passed to Shona MacLean who has selected five new books that she wants me to add to my ever-growing collection of umissable reads.

When making nominations for the books I must add to my Decades Library my guests cannot just pick their five favourite books. I ask them to follow two simple rules:

1 – You can select ANY five books
2 – When making selections you can only select one book per decade from five consecutive decades – this means choices can come from any fifty year span.

Flexing of the rules and name-checking books which narrowly missed out seems to be fairly common practice and Shona has thrown subtlety to the wind to give some nice bonus mentions.

Time for me to step back and let Shona take you through her selections.

 

S.G. MacLean (Shona) was born in Inverness and grew up in various small Highland villages where her parents were hoteliers. One of five children, she learned to appreciate the virtues of peace and quiet and taking to her room with a good book at a young age. Her own nest of 4 children is about be emptied, which will leave more time to concentrate on the world’s neediest dog. After an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Aberdeen University, she began writing historical crime novels while the children were bringing themselves up.

She currently has two series in print – The 4 book Alexander Seaton series, set mainly in the 1620s and 30s in the north-east of Scotland, and the 5 book Damian Seeker series, set mainly in the 1650s England of Oliver Cromwell. Her first book, The Redemption of Alexander Seaton (2008) was longlisted for the Desmond Elliot award and shortlisted for the Saltire 1st Book award and the CWA Historical Dagger. All of the Seeker books have either been longlisted or shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger, 2 of them – The Seeker and Destroying Angel winning it, and two – The Bear Pit and The House of Lamentations also being longlisted for the Gold Dagger. The Bear Pit was also shortlisted for the Blairgowrie Festival Book of the Year award in 2020.

Amongst the framed photos on Shona’s bookshelves are two of her late uncle, bestselling novelist Alistair MacLean, who looks over her shoulder with a wry smile.

Instagram @iwritemybike2 Twitter @SGMacLeanauthor

Books available from all good bookshops and uk.bookshop.org/shop/S_G_MacLean

 

DECADES

Okay, here are my choices. This was extremely difficult because some of my favourite and most influential books were published centuries apart, and others crowding into the same decade. Anyway, I may sneak a couple of them in in the subtext. (There will be asterisks, thus: *). The one book I was absolutely determined to get in was published in the 2000s, so I’ve built my list around that, stretching back from there to the decade in which I was born (1960s). All of these books are high quality reads and well worth a place on the shelves.

So:

1960s: Ellis Peters, A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

 

What can I say about Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael Chronicles? I first discovered them in my late teens ad I couldn’t believe there were books which combined two of my greatest reading pleasures – History and Crime Fiction. I loved that canny, all-too-human Welsh monk and his wonderfully-recreated C12th world. I still listen to the radio programmes starring the inimitable Derek Jacobi. Ellis Peters was for me the absolute trailblazer of my genre. You’re supposed to pretend you don’t mind about winning awards, but when I started writing, it was my dream to one day win the Dagger that had first been instituted in her honour.

 

 

1970s: Reginald Hill, A Clubbable Woman.

Oh, Dalziel and Pascoe – mismatched, again thoroughly human, and brilliant. These books are so well-written, so intricate and intelligent, such consistent page-turners. But I would be lying if I said I’d read the books first. I saw the TV show first – was there ever anyone as magnificently right in a role as Warren Clarke? (although my friend Fiona, who urged me to read the books, assured me he was not disgusting enough). To me, Andy Dalziel has at last found his heir in Mick Herron’s Jackson Lamb.* quietly sneaking in another favourite. In my first year at Harrogate, I was introduced to Reginald Hill. I could hardly believe it, and had nothing remotely sensible to say to him. What a lovely gentleman he was.

 

 

 

1980s: Ian Rankin, Knots and Crosses

I think Tartan Noir is a lazy term, and does none of us any favours, apart from to allow for a comforting kind of kinship when Scottish crime-writers find themselves away from home. Having said that, for me, Ian Rankin broke a mould I hadn’t known existed; several moulds, in fact. Here was well-written, intelligent crime fiction set in Scotland (I’d somehow missed Macillvanney as a crime writer, but happily got him the next time around, and again was lucky enough to meet him at my first Bloody Scotland. “Hello, I’m Willie,” he said, as I tried not to pass out.  Another absolute old school gent.) Rankin’s ‘place’ – Edinburgh, and his character John Rebus, breathed reality, breathed authenticity, and were absolutely engaging for it. With no disrespect intended to any predecessors whose work I might have missed, I have the sense that from then on, Scottish crime writing began to build, to be taken seriously, and for that many of us need to be grateful.

 

 

 

1990s: Ali Smith, Like

Oh, do I love Ali Smith! Oh did I go up to her at Ness Book Fest a few years ago and completely fan girl and burble at her about how much I loved her writing and how much it meant to me, and how of all her work it was Public Library and Other Stories that meant the most to me, because it reminded me of my childhood, and our village library in Muir of Ord, and my Dad and all sorts of things? And she told me that her first novel, Like, was the most her, the most about growing up in Inverness. And so I bought it and I read it and I loved her even more. Which is why my choice for the 1990s isn’t, after all, James Kelman and How Late it was, how Late. * see what I did there?

 

 

 

2000s: James Robertson, The Testament of Gideon Mack

Practically any one of James Robertson’s books is the kind of book that makes me think I should give up writing, because I have not a hope of coming anywhere near him as a writer. His ear for dialogue, for the Scots tongue, is perfect. His characters, at times, are the heirs of the finest characters in Walter Scott; Baillie Nicol Jarvie would not find himself out of place in a James Robertson novel. The Testament of Gideon Mack being longlisted for the Booker Prize brought this brilliant writer to greater prominence.  I think had the judges understood Scottish literature better, had they read Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner* or Stevenson’s Master of Ballantrae*, then Robertson, with this deep, C21st century dive into the Scottish psyche, would not have stopped at the longlist. I stalked him out of an event at Ullapool once, and thrust the book at him to be signed. We are both on the programme for the Blairgowrie festival in a few weeks time, so I fervently hope he has forgotten this.

 

 

 

Five wonderful books which I am thrilled to add to my Decades Library. I also read the Cadfael novels in my late teens and Dalziel and Pascoe were not far behind. As I worked in the largest bookshop in the Highlands at the time Shona was reading her way through the Ellis Peters books I would like to believe there is a possibility I may have sold her some of the books which helped influence these Decades choices.

Also Muir of Ord Library was MY library when I was a teenager – how lovely to have it remembered all these years later. I can still remember the smell of books which hit you as you pushed open the library door.

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

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November 5

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Eamonn Griffin

Back in January I began my Decades challenge. I imagined the dilemma I would face if I was a librarian and was presented with a brand new library but there were absolutely no books on the shelves. Which books would I pick to add to my library if I wanted it to be representative of the very best books which had been published?

I realised I couldn’t possibly pick all the books so each week I have been inviting guests to join me and I have asked them to select the books they believe I should add to my Decades Library.

Why is it a Decades Library?  Well that’s because I ask my guests to follow two rules when they nominate books

1 – Select ANY five books

2 – You can only choose one book per decade from any five consecutive decades

 

This week it is my pleasure to welcome Eamonn Griffin to Grab This Book. Eamonn has picked five wonderful selections and I say this because he has chosen my favourite mix of titles. A couple which I immediately recognise (he has picked one of my favourites) and then some entirely unexpected books which sound utterly fascinating and he makes me want to read them.

Enough from me though – shall we get to these brilliant reading recommendations?  I will get the books added to the Library, you can  enjoy Eamonn’s choices and consider which five books you would choose.

 

Eamonn Griffin lives in North Wales. He writes stuff, sometimes for money. His most recent book is East of England (Unbound, 2019), a revenge noir set in 1980s Lincolnshire. Sequels featuring protagonist Dan Matlock have long been threatened, and may yet emerge.

Other books by Eamonn include The Prospect of this City (set at the outset of the Great Fire of London), Torc (a timeslip novel set both in contemporary and in Roman-era Wester Ross in Scotland), Juggernaut (a direct sequel to RL Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) and Benches of Louth, a personal geography of the Lincolnshire market town in which he grew up.

Online, Eamonn’s ill-maintained website is Eamonn Griffin Writing. He’s on Twitter at @eamonngriffin. He keeps a running reading diary at 255bookreview and contributes capsule movie reviews to 255review (his are the ones tagged ‘Eamonn’). Occasionally, he blogs about his adopted home town at Benches of Llangollen.

The photo’s about five years old, but you’d be able to use it to make a positive ID.

 

DECADES

 

1960s: Elidor, by Alan Garner (Collins, 1965)

I could have chosen any of Garner’s grounded fantasies, as they’re uniformly excellent and properly weird. This is in part becuase they each meld folk traditions, ordinary lives, and relationships between place and person. While Red Shift is another favourite, I’ve gone for Elidor. This is because the fantastic elements are secured in an everyday context – a wet, drab 60s Manchester where the most fun the children at the centre of the drama can come up with is riding the lifts in John Lewis – and because at the same time there’s engagement with all manner of Celtic myth and legend while exploring the consequences of poor decision-making. This is a book I read loads of times growing up: I should really go back to it again.

 

 

 

1970s: Religion and the Decline of Magic, by Keith Thomas (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971)

While its value as a history book has lessened over time because of advances in the field, new writings, and changed perspectives, Keith Thomas’s book is nevertheless a terrific entry point for anyone with an interest in the seventeenth century. The focus is on exploring how and why the British Isles shifted from faith to secularity in a century. That’s a bit of an over-simplification, but the ways in which Thomas brings together a huge array of sources into a single accessible narrative that’s impressive, stimulating, and clear are great. Also, the book’s loads of fun: it’s an immersion in religion, folk beliefs, hedge magic, and superstition while also illustrating ways in which the contexts of your life inform its nature and experience. If you’re interested in this sort of thing – and why wouldn’t you be? – then Michael Hunter’s 2020 The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment is a very useful updating / revision / riposte to Thomas’s work.

 

 

1980s: The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco (Pan Books, 1984)

My favourite novel of all time to date. Simple as that. The Name of the Rose is the book equivalent of something like Scorsese’s GoodFellas: it does everything with brio and panache. Storywise, it’s straightforward: a monk and his apprentice are commissioned to investigate a series of murders in an abbey which both threaten an upcoming religious debate, and which also may be a portent of the end times. The book riffs on Sherlock Holmes, on medieval philosophy, on sign systems, on maze design, on the influence of Jorge Luis Borges, and on the importance of books, as well as on the folly of locking knowledge away. Ah, plus it’s a love story, a superb depiction of friendship, and a deathbed confession.

 

 

 

1990s: Nymphomation, by Jeff Noon (Doubleday, 1997)

Nymphomation acts as a prequel to Noon’s earlier novels Vurt, Pollen and Automated Alice, and is also a terrific National Lottery satire. Set in a near-future Manchester, the book not only sets up the universe in which the later books are set, but works brilliantly as a stand-alone novel. It does that thing that good SF can do so well: give you a new perspective on the present. It’s perhaps not easy to recall what a big thing the National Lottery was in the UK when it began in the mid-90s: Nymphomation gets right to the heart of that, while exploring the prboems inherent in any system designed to extract money from ordinary people for the benefit of those already-rich, while promising a better future as a distraction from the bleakness of the everyday.

 

 

 

2000s: Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate, 2009)

Mantel’s three-novel sequence charting the rise and fall of Henry VIII’s consiligere Thomas Cromwell is the great achievement of contemporary British fiction, historical or otherwise. It’s that good. If I’d had another decade to play with, I’d have picked the second book – Bring Up The Bodies – over this first novel (and I’d have popped Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men into this slot) but Wolf Hall is great in its own right, plus sets up themes and tensions that pay off over the next two books, so it more than earns its place here.

Mantel’s gift is in getting convincingly inside Cromwell, so we experience first-hand what it feels like to rise towards power, and to have to work in situations where you’re constantly being judged by your background. As a treatise on office politics it’s great, and as a detailed depiction of what court life might have been like for those serving a capricious king, it’s unparalleled. Wolf Hall deals with Cromwell’s finding favour and his working to secure the Boleyn marriage: Bring Up The Bodies addresses the collapse of that union, and Cromwell’s dedication to purging the Boleyn influence from court. Part three – The Mirror and the Light – details the crumbling of Cromwell’s place, and his struggling with the inevitability of the axe.

 

Anyway, these are my choices for the library. Another day, and each might well have been different!

 

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

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October 23

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Steph Mullin and Nicole Mabry

A first for Decades this week as I am going to need two Curator Hats.

Each week I invite a guest to join me in my ongoing quest to add books to my Decades Library. In January 2021 I asked myself the question: If you were to fill the shelves of a brand new library but had no books, which books should you add to make sure the very best publications were represented?

Now that was far too difficult a question to answer alone so I am enlisting the assistance of booklovers (authors, publishers, journalists and bloggers) and I ask them which five books they would put into my library. However, I added an extra rule – my guests may only select one book per decade and they must select their five books from five consecutive decades. So they have any fifty year publication span to select from. Apparently this makes it harder to choose than it may sound!

Earlier this year I read a wonderful serial killer thriller: The Family Tree – it is the first novel co-authored by Steph Mullin and Nicole Mabry. The book reminded me of a discussion I had been having with my wife around DNA testing and the unforeseen outcomes which may arise from trying to trace your ancestry. In The Family Tree the protagonist (Liz) discovers she may be related to a serial killer.  For clarity, I am not related to a serial killer (to my knowledge). My discussion with my wife was around charities who are helping people to cope with the trauma some people can experience when they learn their family are not their blood family.

The Family Tree was one of my favourite reads this year and as it was recently released into paperback I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to ask Nicole or Steph if they fancied taking on the Decades challenge. To my delight they were both keen to make their selections so, for the first time, I have co-authors to welcome to Grab This Book and we have ten new titles to add to the Library.

 

Steph Mullin and Nicole Mabry met as co-workers in New York City in 2012, discovering a shared passion for writing and true crime. After Steph relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2018, they continued to collaborate creatively. Separated by five states, they spend countless hours scheming via FaceTime and editing each other’s typos in real time on live Google Docs. Steph’s dream of becoming a writer started at age six, followed by winning scholastic writing awards and crafting articles for her university literary magazine. She currently works as Creative Director for a Media, Entertainment and Digital Marketing Solutions company. Nicole works in television as Senior Manager of Post Production in the photography department. She is the author of Past This Point (2019), an award-winning apocalyptic women’s fiction novel. Past This Point was chosen as Best Book of the Year by Indies Today and won first place in the Global Thriller division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards. The Family Tree is the writing duo’s first co-authored crime novel.

 

 

DECADES

 

My co-author and I are 18 years apart in age, so we loved the idea of doing a list like this separately, knowing our different generations would surely affect our lists.  

 

NICOLE MABRY 

I started my list in the 60’s, the decade before I was born, because it was responsible for some of the most incredible literary works of our time.  

 1960s: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969) 

I was introduced to this autobiography in my college African American History class in 1997 and could not put it down. I read it start to finish in one sitting and those hours brought a range of emotions. It impacted me on so many levels, not just because of the important racial subject matter that I wasn’t fully aware of before this class, but also as a woman and a writer. Angelou’s writing is so beautifully elegant and lyrical that it makes the tough subject matter so much more compelling. I cried multiple times and then undoubtably sighed at the exquisite words Angelou put down on the page. I remember sitting in my dingy college apartment on my unmade bed after reading the last page and just staring off into space, my head filled with Angelou’s life and words. My only regret is that I didn’t read this book sooner. It is a book that has stayed with me over the years and the first I recommend. 

 

 

 

1970s: Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks {as Anonymous} (1971) 

I was raised by a busy, full time working mom who was brilliant at finding ways to impart parental wisdom without actually having difficult conversations. For example, instead of exasperatingly telling me for the 100th time not to wander off in stores, she had me watch the made-for-tv movie Adam, the true story of Adam Walsh’s kidnapping from a shopping center. And it worked. I never left her side at stores again. When I entered my teens, even though she never needed to worry about me taking drugs as I didn’t even drink at parties, my mom gave me the book, Go Ask Alice. The book is in diary entry form and is written by an anonymous fifteen-year-old girl who falls headfirst into drug addiction. I was glued to the page, flipping them rapidly as I devoured a first-hand account of a drug fueled journey of a girl my own age–the good and the bad. To my naïve teenage self, it felt real, as though I was doing drugs alongside her, experiencing the highs and the lows that come with such a life. As I followed her through her addiction and into a more hopeful future, the epilogue delivered a gut punch that left me sitting stunned in my bedroom, anxiously looking for another chapter. Needless to say, it scared the bejeezus out of me and did the superfluous job my mother had hoped it would. But to this day, the final words of this book still haunt me.  

 

1980’s: Misery by Stephen King (1987) 

 

I’m a horror movie lover so King is one of my go-to authors. But Misery is without a doubt my favorite of his. I had watched the movie before I read the book and was certain the book could not be better. James Caan and Kathy Bates gave such incredible, unforgettable performances, I couldn’t fathom that King could top that. I was so wrong. King’s writing in this book is so visceral and each character’s reactions are so perfectly laid out that Caan and Bates had a very detailed map of what to do at each step. And even though I knew what happened, I was glued to every page. Now when I watch the movie, I can see King’s words in my head like a script for the movie. 

 

 

1990’s: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1999) 

 

A friend recommended this book to me and when I first got it, I looked at the slim volume skeptically. How could such a small book fully tell the story of an awkward teen navigating life and learning who he is? But within a few pages I was hooked and fully immersed in Charlie’s world. The concept and formatting were unique and drew me in. Once I got to the poem that’s deep into the book, I cried openly. I read that poem about ten times before moving on. The book is perfect, and I wouldn’t change a thing about it. I still read it once a year.   

 

 

2000s: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (2006) 

During the 2000’s I really dug into the thriller/suspense/mystery genre that eventually led me to choose the same genre for my own writing. But I didn’t know about this book until everyone was raving about Gone Girl years later. While I liked Gone Girl, I decided to search out more by Flynn and found Sharp Objects. This has to be my favorite debut from any thriller author. Flynn created such a devious and emotional plot, and to top that off with a deliciously flawed main character just sweetened the pot. Full of twists and turns, complex, well-developed characters and an ending that will leave you gasping, this was an easy pick for the 2000s. 

 

 

 

STEPH MULLIN

1970s: The Shining by Stephen King (1977) 

The Shining was my first Stephen King novel and really showed me what it was like to be a master of suspense. I didn’t read this book until my teen years, but it played a huge role in influencing the types of books I love to read…and what areas of writing I enjoy the most. Part of what I love so much about this book is the way King is able to turn the atmosphere and setting into a character in itself – the hotel playing such an integral role in the story and the torment of the characters. It so expertly blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, using masterful character development to bring out the horror and mystery woven through the pages. Now, as a writer, developing characters and atmosphere are the two areas I enjoy the most, and as a reader I love to seek out stories that execute them expertly like Stephen King. 

 

 

1980s: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood 

As I was born in 1990, The Handmaid’s Tale was a story I didn’t become familiar with until a bit later in life – however, what’s so brilliant about Atwood’s masterpiece is its uncanny ability to be relatable even decades later. Every woman who reads The Handmaid’s Tale can place themselves into the shoes of these women, feeling the terror at how close society feels at times to turning into Atwood’s world. The Handmaid’s Tale really made me take note of the political policies in today’s society as it relates to women’s rights, and to also realize that this is a timeless concern that we all feel in our bones. I normally read fiction for the entertainment and escapist value in it, but this thought-provoking book is one that sticks with me for entirely different reasons.

 

 

 

1990s: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling (1997) 

 

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the first book I have a distinctive memory of reading. I was only seven years old when it came out, and I remember another girl in my elementary school had a copy and leant it to me – and I was hooked. Over the years, I aged alongside the characters as each book came out and it was something that really shaped my childhood years. I remember convincing my parents to take me to midnight book releases, staying up all night at sleepovers with friends reading through the night and refusing to sleep until we finished the book. I owe a lot of my love of reading, and ability to read quickly, to when I picked up that first Harry Potter book in the late 90s. It was the first time I really felt what it was like to escape into another world through fiction. 

 

2000-2010: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (2002) 

 

The Lovely Bones was one of the first books I read growing up that was of “darker” subject matter. It was also the first book I read that was told through a unique format, the narrator being that of the young Susie Salmon, after she was murdered. Susie watches as her loved ones try to solve her murder and figure out how to move on in life without her. I was only a teenager when this book came out, and the haunting and heartbreaking narrative really struck a chord with me, paving the way for me to continue seeking out books that explored crimes and mysteries. That path The Lovely Bones sent me down is what now has manifested into a love for thrillers and true crime, and ultimately, becoming a thriller writer where one of my favorite things to consider – is unique format and storytelling perspectives. 

 

2010-2020: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (2019) 

As an avid thriller reader and writer that takes in a lot of true crime media, it’s very hard to surprise me in a book. I’m constantly playing detective as I read, subconsciously trying to solve the mystery before the author reveals it. The Silent Patient was one of the first books in a long time to actually surprise me in the end. Masterfully crafted so that the twist reveal was unraveled by the story’s format and unreliable characters (that you didn’t even realize at first were unreliable), I delightfully didn’t guess everything Michaelides had up his sleeve and enjoyed every page-turning moment. As both a reader and a writer, this book really made me think about the way we reveal our own inner truths and I hope to one day pull off an ending with such finesse.  

 

 

 

My thanks to Nicole and Steph for the longest Decades span I have shared (while still keeping within the rules).  But we’re not quite done as Nicole added a bonus recommendation which I will also share now. As the publication was in the 1920’s it doesn’t qualify for Library inclusion but as a booklover it is in my blood to pass on a recommended title!

BONUS 1920s: The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner 

When I was 6, I was a very hyperactive child. My single mom didn’t know how to occupy my curious mind. My teacher had given us a vocabulary workbook for homework assignments for the entire year. I misunderstood the instructions because, being hyperactive also meant I rarely paid attention to adults, and I completed the whole workbook in one night. My exasperated teacher didn’t have any other homework for me so she said I should start reading a book a week instead. So, my mom took me to the library and told me I had to pick a book that was over 100 pages. I chose The Boxcar Children and my mom sat me down on the living room floor with a thick dictionary and my chosen book. I had to read at least 20 pages a night and if I didn’t know a word, I had the dictionary to look it up. The story, about four orphaned kids who make a home in an abandoned boxcar, captivated me instantly. This sparked a passion for stories very early on I never looked back. I became a voracious reader and a regular at the local library. 

 

 

The Family Tree is published by Avon and is available in Digital and paperback formats now.  Nicole and Steph have also just revealed the cover of their next thriller – When She Disappeared – which will release next year.

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

 

 

 

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October 15

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Ayo Onatade

My Decades challenge began in January. I had been contemplating the joy of entering a new library for the first time and tried to imagine the overwhelming situation a librarian may face if they were asked to fill the shelves of a brand new library.

Starting with zero books, how could you possibly hope to decide which titles you needed to order to make sure the very best books would be available for readers? I knew this was a question that demanded an answer and I knew I couldn’t do it alone.

Each week I invite a booklover to join me and I ask them to nominate five new books to be added to my Ultimate Library. Although they can choose ANY five books I do add a second rule which governs their selections…only one book per decade over five consecutive decades. So my guests can choose five books from a fifty year publication span. Easy!

I don’t want to add much more as I want to hand over to Ayo. During my 8 year life as Grab This Book I have been constantly in awe of Ayo who champions crime writing, books and authors in a way I could only ever dream of matching. It is a huge honour to have Ayo taking part in my Decades challenge and, of course, she has selected five terrific books which I am delighted to add to my Library.

 

Ayo Onatade is a freelance crime fiction critic/commentator and blogger. She has written a number of articles on different aspects of crime fiction and has also given papers on the subject as well. She was a contributor to British Crime Writing: An Encyclopaedia (2008) edited by Barry Forshaw and The American Thriller (Critical Insights) (2014) edited by Gary Hoppenstand. She wrote the chapter on Legal Thrillers. She is co-editor with Len Tyler of the anthology Bodies in the Bookshop (2014). She is a former Chair of the CWA Short Story Dagger and former judge of the Ngaio Marsh Award. She is current Chair of HWA (Historical Writers Association) Debut Crown and a Judge for the Strand Magazine Critics Award. She is an Associate Member and a Committee Member of the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain (CWA).

She has an eclectic taste in crime fiction, which runs the gamut from historical crime fiction to hardboiled and short stories. Her research interests include historical fiction especially crime fiction and crime fiction literary criticism. She can be found blogging at Shotsmag Confidential and Tweets @shotsblog.

DECADES

 

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1930)

Dashiell Hammett stole half my heart with Sam Spade. This is one of two books that changed my reading tastes for ever.  It was originally serialised in Black Mask Magazine and was an instant bestseller on publication.  For me Sam Spade (along with Philip Marlowe) encapsulated what it  was to be a private eye. He (that is Dashiell Hammett) according to Raymond Chandler took murder out of the drawing room and put it back in the gutter where it belonged.  As someone who before reading The Maltese Falcon had been reading Agatha Christie and other Golden Age mystery novels this was a revelation.  Sam Spade was  allegedly no one’s hero but to me he was and in The Maltese Falcon he clearly showed how ruthless he could be.   It is a story of double and triple crosses, femme fatale’s and a statue that was worth committing murder for.

 

 

Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler (1940)

Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe stole the other half of my heart.   Farewell My Lovely is the second book to feature the iconic Philip Marlowe and despite being filled with murder and corruption is essentially a love story.  Farewell My Lovely is a cannibalisation of a number of previous  short stories. Famous for its metaphors and allusions it also in my opinion contains some of the most grotesque characters going. I have always said that reading crime fiction is the best way of opening your mind to social history and social policy and in Farewell My Lovely, Raymond Chandler’s implied social critique can be seen.

Both Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe have often been imitated but never bettered. They are the  archetypal private eyes, more iconic and more enduring than we have at the moment.

 

 

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)

It depicts pre-colonial life in the southeastern part of Nigeria and the arrival of Europeans during the late 19th century.  The first book of a trilogy by Chinua Achebe it has gone on not only to be a bestseller but also it is a chronicle of African history and indeed a classic study of cross-cultural misunderstanding and the consequences.  Things Fall Apart was described by Wole Soyinka as being “the first novel in English which spoke from the interior of the African character, rather than portraying the African as an exotic, as the white man would see him” and this certainly was the case. For me it was also the first book by an African author that I read that stuck with me and through a historical lesson as well showed how colonialism impacted on Africans and that violence and pride can bring down an individual.  Also that despite Europeans’ claims of bringing “civilization” to Africa, there was already a complex and varied culture on the continent.  I read it over 40 years ago and it is now considered to be a classic. Chinua Achebe writes beautifully and honestly about Nigeria warts and all. There is a reason that this book became an international bestseller and there is a reason why it considered to be one of the most foremost African novels. Once read never forgotten.

 

I know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969)

Maya Angelou’s seminal novel was published 4 years after I was born (here’s me showing my age) but despite the fact that this book is over 50 years old it is still a classic. It describes her life from when she was 3 until her becoming a young mother at 16 and is the first of seven autobiographies. All her autobiographies deal with issues that a lot of black people (especially women) are still dealing with today. From identity and rape to racism and literacy and also the way in which women and their lives are seen and dealt with in a male dominated society.

The symbolism in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is very revealing.  Think oppression in all its forms including slavery, race based segregation and the still pervasive and insidious forms of oppression that is still rife in black communities today. Maya Angelou was at the forefront of the launch of African American women writers and her importance cannot be ignored. When you think of Black writers whether male or female Maya Angelou will always be talked about. My only disapoointment is that she is no longer alive to inspire future generations.

 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré (1974)

Whether you have read the 1974 John Le Carré spy novel featuring George Smiley or have only seen the brilliant Alec Guinness as Simley in the BBC box set or Gary Oldman playing him in the 2011 film one cannot ignore the importance of the series or the character.  John Le Carré is one of our modern day spy writers and the  nuances in relation to complex social commentary at the time in Tink Tailor Soldier Spy was relevant as it had a lot of relevance in the light of Kim Philby’s deflection.

Why Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy as opposed to any other? The vivid characters and sketches  of secret agents felt so true to life. The realism mad you feel that you were seeing what was going on from the inside. Whilst I was introduced to spy thrillers via Ian Fleming and I will always be a fan of the original Bond books.  It was John Le Carré and specfically his Smiley series that made me appreciate the genre a lot more and seek out other authors. The books that made up the Karla Trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy (1977) and Smiley’s People (1979) are amongst the best spy novels written.   The icy atmosphere of the Cold War is brought brilliantly to life via a cast of memorable and characters who all have their own deep motivations for acts of loyalty, friendship, daring… and betrayal.  It is really exceptional and the writing is superb and engrossing. If you want to read a spy novel without all the glamour then pick up Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

 

I made a conscious effort in my selection not to be solely crime fiction related. Despite what my family think I do read other books. Also some of the crime books that I would have wanted to include were published in the same decade. For example Casino Royale by Ian Fleming which was published in 1953. I had to make a choice. It could have easily have been the case that all five books were crime fiction but looking back on my selections I am pleased that I have included Chinua Achebe and Maya Angelou as they are both books that any self-respecting reader who wants to expand their reading to include black writers should have on their bookshelves. All the books that I have chosen hold important memories for me (aside from the fact that they should be read) and I can honestly say that if I am asked this question again it is likely that my suggestions would change especially if I am looking at a different decade.

I would be very much surprised if some of these have not already been suggested.  If not hurrah! If they have then thank goodness as it clearly means that a lot of the books really do have a significance.

 

Thank you Ayo!  Five exceptional selections and I am once again reminded I really must read Raymond Chandler one day soon.

If you want to visit the Library and see the titles which have been selected by previous guests then this handy wee link will take you there: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/GrabThisBookDecades

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

Category: Decades, From The Bookshelf | Comments Off on Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Ayo Onatade
October 1

Decades – Compiling the Ultimate Library with Simon Bewick

A new week and a new Decades guest with five new books to add to the Decades Library. If you are new to my weekly challenge then let me explain what’s about to happen. I have asked Simon Bewick to nominate five books which he would want to see included within my Ultimate Library.

The Ultimate Library is a concept I started back in January and I had zero books on the virtual shelves. I wanted to assemble the very best collection of books and knew I could not fill a Library on my own so I decided to invite a new guest to join me each week and have them add five books to the collection.

But choosing five books is a little too easy so I add a second rule which my guests need to follow:

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

This week we start in the 1960s and progress to the 00’s.

I have been a bit lax of late in updating and promoting the actual Library but now I am all caught up.  I try to add each recommendation to the Grab This Book Decades Library at Bookshop.Org – you can view all the previous selections, see who nominated the book for inclusion and even buy the books you fancy.  Sadly there are a couple of gaps where books are no longer in print.

Here is a handy link: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/GrabThisBookDecades

 

Now that I have covered why we are here, the rules of selection and how to find out more about previous Decades recommendations I can hand over to my guest curator, Simon Bewick.

Simon Bewick has had short stories published in the UK and US and is represented by A for Author agency, who have his first novel out on submission… He’s also half of Virtual Noir at the Bar and Bay Tales with Vic Watson. Through their shows and website (www.baytales.com) they have hosted more than 300 crime and mystery authors to date and will be hosting their first physical one-day crime festival in Whitley Bay on February 12th 2022. Visit the Bay Tales site for more details. You can follow him on Twitter @simonbewick

 

DECADES

60s – Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury

Growing up I loved Ray Bradbury’s work – his short stories in collections bought second hand from Blyth market on a Saturday. The stories were different from the Pan Book of Horror shorts I’d read. They weren’t ‘graphic’. They weren’t ‘scary’ and, they didn’t always necessarily seem to have ‘an end’. A teacher in my English class used the term ‘purple prose’ but I knew even as a fourteen year old he was wrong. Bradbury didn’t write in an overly ornate or elaborate way, he just wrote beautifully. I preferred his short stories to his novels for the most part – and Something Wicked This Way Comes was one of the few non ‘fix-up’ novels Bradbury wrote. Do I prefer Dandelion Wine? Maybe…but Something Wicked is a fine pairing with it and probably the one that I’ve gone back to most often. The film version of the book was disappointing, but the poster for it and which hangs in my writing room, sums up the story perfectly in its’ Halloween feel. As the book starts:

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.

Ah – I think I copied Bradbury’s openings more than any other author as a teenager. (and that dumb old English teacher never event knew…)

 

 

70s – Danny, Champion of the World – Roald Dahl

I’m not sure how soon after publication I read DCotW, but I’m guessing if it was published in 1975 maybe two years? That would make me around 8 and seems about right. I know I read it a lot of times in the following years. I’m guessing it seemed a somewhat bygone tale on publication: but I loved the descriptive writing (has anyone written such a description of a pie? I haven’t read it if they have). I loved all of Dahl’s books back then (other than The Great Glass Elevator, which started a long history of disappointment in sequels…), but Danny despite, or perhaps because of, being the least fantastical of his children’s fiction if the one that stayed with me and was re-read again and again.

 

 

 

 

80s – Christine – Stephen King

Christine may not be the first choice of many people as Stephen King’s best piece of work but for me it sums up everything I love about his writing. It’s about a haunted car: a ’58 Plymouth Fury to be precise– but that, in some ways, is the least interesting part of the book for me (good though it is). What it’s really about, and what it felt as if it was really about when I read it as a fifteen year old back in the day, is about friendship, growing up and growing apart. Dennis Guilder and Arnie Cunningham’s relationship felt so real to me. Dennis’ voice, which much of the book is told from, struck me as so authentic. The trials of school and being ‘different’. Even though I wasn’t a high school jock or a complete social outcast, that I didn’t live in a US suburb, that my first car was a Mark II Escort rather than an American classic…it seemed real. I remember going (underage) to the cinema to see the movie version: my first certificate 18 movie. I loved John Carpenter who directed it and the effects were spot on, but it summed up why so many of the adaptations of King’s work don’t work for me. The movie was about the car. The book was about the characters.

 

 

90s – Body and Soul – Frank Conroy.

Conroy didn’t write too many books in his lifetime. A memoir Stop-Time in 1967); a collection of short stories – Midair in 1985 and only one novel as far as I know of: 1993’s Body and Soul. It’s a book that is criminally hard to get, which is a true shame. I was given my copy by the manager of a café I used to sit and read in who said she thought I might like it. Since then, I’ve loaned it to a few close friends I’m sure I’ll get it back from and I think it’s one of the greatest books written about music and, particularly, about being a musician. If Christine isn’t just about a car, this isn’t just about being a musical prodigy. What it is, is a beautifully written story of chance, coincidence, talent and a life and the characters encountered along the way.

 

 

 

 

00s – The Bottoms – Joe R Lansdale.

I was a big fan of Joe R Lansdale by the time The Bottoms came out in 2000. His Hap and Leonard novels had become firm favourites of mine since Savage Season had come out. I loved the dialogue – outrageous and hilarious. I devoured his short stories ranging from horror to mystery to sci fi to who-knows-how-to-describe? (Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland springs to mind). But The Bottoms is a very different sort of novel. It’s a book about family, racism, small town mind set and good and bad people and those in between. Set during the Great Depression in East Texas the story concerns Harry Crane, a young boy who finds the body of a black woman and the unfolding mystery amid mounting violence and This story takes place during the Great Depression in East Texas. Young Harry Crane discovers the mutilated body of a black woman – a murder he and his younger sister, Thomasina, believe is the work of local urban legend The Goat Man. As they investigate further and the killings continue, racial tensions rise around them, and their childhoods will be forever changed.  The book has drawn comparisons to To Kill a Mockingbird, and while it’s easy to see why on a surface level, Lansdale is very much his own writer and has his own unique style. No matter what genre he writes in (and he writes in a lot), his voice is unmistakable. I’ve recommended The Bottoms to more people than any other book I’ve read. I haven’t had any people tell me they were disappointed. That’s got to be a good sign, right?

 

My thanks to Simon for these brilliant choices. Another Stephen King book warms my heart, particularly as it is one of the first I read and remains a firm favourite. I am also delighted to see Danny Champion of the World, a childhood favourite in my house too.

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

Category: Decades | Comments Off on Decades – Compiling the Ultimate Library with Simon Bewick
September 23

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Jo Perry

There is a LOT of reading to follow as Jo Perry joins me to take on my Decades challenge so I shall be brief.

I am compiling the Ultimate Library, each week I am joined by a guest who helps me curate my Library. My guests are all asked to nominate ANY five books which were published over five consecutive decades.

This week I am thrilled to be joined by Jo Perry. Jo’s Charlie and Rose books are big favourites at Grab This Book. I didn’t know how the story of a dead man and a dead dog could captivate me or even how it could work! Four books later I am utterly charmed, thrilled and heartbroken by the unlikely duo’s exploits. I could not wait to see which books Jo would nominate, I most certainly did not expect an author from Los Angeles to pick a book which featured my Scottish hometown of Airdrie!

 

Jo Perry earned a Ph.D. in English, taught college literature and writing, produced and wrote episodic television,
and has published articles,  book reviews, and poetry.

She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, novelist Thomas Perry.

They have two adult children. Their three cats and two dogs are rescues.

You can follow her on twitter @JoPerryAuthor

Jo has five books published by Fahrenheit Press: Dead is Better, Dead is Best, Dead is Good, Dead is Beautiful and her latest: Pure. You can buy directly from Fahrenheit’s website: http://www.fahrenheit-press.com/authors_jo_perry.html

 

DECADES

“USED TROUT STREAM FOR SALE. MUST BE SEEN TO BE APPRECIATED.”

 

Compiling a list of the books most important to one’s intellectual, emotional or writing life would be a difficult task, but to be confined to five books from five consecutive decades is impossible. This cruel game forbids me from including books like Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America. But its Fred Astaire grace, its narrative-as-standup, its poignant, haiku’d prose, the slippery delight it takes in its own slyness and shyness, its literary rule-smashing, the exuberant fecundity and clarity of its metaphors, its benevolent voice and radioactive-with-meaning mayonnaise-white spaces on its pages were my first experience of what artistic freedom can produce and the courage and grace required to seize it. But since I’m sworn to abide by the rules of the Decades exercise, I will omit Trout Fishing in America, a representative of a decade I cannot include. Forget I ever mentioned it.

 

 

 

 

Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady by Samuel Richardson

When I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Richardson in 80’s, I was no longer the reader who’d fallen hard for Trout Fishing in America. I wasn’t seventeen and greedy for influence, though I still wanted books to illuminate me to the point of ignition and “to [make me] feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off”—which is how Emily Dickinson described what poetry—real poetry––made her feel.

Richardson’s improbable, alchemical masterpiece (improbable because his biography and earlier work revealed none of the ambition, gravitas, or power of Clarissa) burns slowly because it’s long–the longest novel in the English language. And it’s the longest novel in English because it unfolds through letters from Clarissa to her closest friend, and from John Lovelace, the man who would possess Clarissa, to his friend. The plot is simple: Clarissa’s mercenary family maneuvers her into agreeing to marry a toad because the union will benefit them financially. Clarissa knows that the marriage, a dehumanizing transaction, will destroy her life. Lovelace manipulates Clarissa into running away with a promise of protection, then proceeds to ruin her. She dies, her soul and her self intact. Clarissa is a feminist tragedy, a class-novel, and a rape and disempowerment and transcendence novel. The abridged version you’ll find is just plot. A rich, powerful predator entrapping a woman disempowered by society was a story Richardson had already written in Pamela, the virtue-rewarded happy-ending version of this tale and also the first novel in English. Clarissa’s epistolary form immerses the reader in each character’s first-person voice, point of view and experience. These first-person narratives power a deliberate, intense, inevitable build-up to, and unfolding of a catastrophe in epistolary time, not glib narrator-time. The effect is grandeur.

 

Dance for the Dead by Thomas Perry

“The Old People believed that the place to obtain secret information was in dreams. Sometimes a dream would be an expression of an unconscious desire of the soul, and at other times a message planted there by a guardian spirit. Those were two ways of saying the same thing. If there were such a force as the supernatural, then the soul and the guardian both would be supernatural. If there were no such force, then the soul was the psyche, and the guardian spirit was just the lonely mind’s imaginary friend.”
“’I hear you’re one of those people who could kill me with a pencil,’  he says. Jane answers simply: ‘If I am, I wouldn’t need a pencil.’”

 

During the 90’s I was mostly reading Babar and the Boxcar Children, childcare books and my husband’s novels, which I’d been reading since he wrote The Butcher’s Boy (1982). During the new decade he created Jane Whitefield, a contemporary, mixed-race (Seneca and white) woman who lives in a town very much like the town where he grew up in western New York. Jane Whitefield is a guide; she helps people in danger disappear and teaches them how to inhabit the new identities she invents for them. Dance for the Dead, the second in the series, has always stuck with me. Being inside Jane’s head showed me how easily the person we think we are can be disappeared, and transformed my sense of the world––there are many more opportunities for violence, betrayal and hurt than I’d imagined; past and present are contemporaneous and this simultaneity can be realized with crystalline precision and emotion on the page. Jane Whitefield is heroic, but she makes mistakes. This second book is where Jane crossed over from fiction to being someone real and important to me.

 

The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout

“A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are NOT strengthening her prosocial sense, you are damaging it–and the first person she will stop protecting is herself.”
“’I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic’s. His hair was perfect.’”

Yes, Stout quotes Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London,” maybe my favorite song.

Parenting means constant worrying about your child’s wellbeing and safety. Maybe that’s why The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout was so clarifying. A few of the things that were revelatory to me: The sociopath is invisible. The sociopath relies on our best qualities to exploit us: our kindness, generosity, empathy, the qualities the sociopath lacks and depends on us to stifle gut-feelings of fear or revulsion or that something is off with him. And we can’t avoid the sociopath. He or she is a permanent member of the human family. One in twenty-five people––ordinary, usually not violent, not usually criminal masterminds, often pleasant or charming––doctors, friends, teachers, caregivers of our children and our aging parents, neighbors, pastors, rabbis, roommates, bosses or colleagues, best friends––will fuck us over every chance he or she gets––usually with our help and tacit permission––and will probably know how to make us feel guilty enough when you catch them at it to do it again.

There are more elegant nonfiction books that I’d add to this list if I could: Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light by Jane Brox changed the way I read literature; Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher––reveals so much about language and color and why Homer said “wine-dark” sea and not “blue.” Timothy Egan’s elegiac biography of Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher––but Stout gets the modus operandi of this perfectly selfish predator, most efficient opportunist, manipulator and emotional assaulter down.

 

Mortality by Christopher Hitchens

“In one way, I suppose, I have been ‘in denial’ for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can’t see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.”
“I don’t have a body, I am a body.”
“The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn’t precisely one of the things that engages you, often at first without your noticing it. A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful. This is how philosophy evolved in the symposium, before philosophy was written down. And poetry began with the voice as its only player and the ear as its only recorder.”
If something is worth hearing or listening to, it’s very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.”
“With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great-aunts … and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own … Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.”

I arrived in my 6th decade and became interested in death and, I see now that I was also unconsciously working up to and researching for my first novel, Dead Is Better.  I’d read other books on the topic, but Christopher Hitchens’ posthumously collected writings produced while he was dying of esophageal cancer––which killed his father and my grandmother––besides confirming that dying is a bitch––cruel, thieving, humiliating, disabling––is informative, funny, heartbreaking set-your-hair-on-fire enlightening, and heartening, a whatever life one has left-invigorating demo that that sharp thinking produces sharp writing, that sharp thinking requires courage, and that a writer’s relationship to his reader (imagined or real) is incredibly intimate and requires––if it’s going to go all the way––naked honesty––and that writing is a conversation like the ones Hitchens describes with friends as having been among the greatest pleasures of his too-short time on earth.

 

This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan

“Lucas was building a volcano in the middle of his caravan. The volcano, he explained, was the equivalent of a wheelchair for a physically handicapped person. It’s a means of transport, he said. It allows me to make connections. The volcano was constructed out of old shoeboxes, crumpled newspapers, folded greeting cards, balls of wrapping paper. Long feather boas – pink, blue and purple – took the place of flowing lava… …I have struggled with mental illness for most of my life. But the creative part, the creative part has been the most rewarding. He spoke in a soft, slightly distant voice. A moonie, I thought to myself, a gentle lunatic.
The issue was memory. He had none, or very little, or rather all of his memories were hidden, occluded by chemistry, by water particularly – water on the brain they called it – so that every moment was swept away, the specifics of his day-to-day existence like the splinters of a ship in a storm. This is the logbook, he said, thumbing through notes, moments reconstructed in the wake of a disaster. Then he pointed to the volcano. And this is where the memories live…”
“I don’t know. They were leafing through it one night and he turns to a page that has a picture of Elvis on it. Early Elvis. Young Elvis. Elvis where he looks like a flick knife. And just looking at him he feels like he has stuck his finger in a light bulb socket. He says he literally felt his hair rise up into a kind of electrified quaff. And you know what he means. That haircut was aerodynamic. It came from rushing headlong into the future. He asked his friend, who the fuck is this guy? And he says to him, it’s the new singer. But he mishears it as It’s Sinew Singer and his mind is even more blown apart. He mishears it and this guy whose every muscle, whose every vein, every fucking sinew of this body is singing, you know? Fuck Iggy Pop! And then he realizes his mistake though not really because in that moment he became Sinew Singer. He took on the mantle and it was down to him to live up to it. That’s genius right there, if you ask me. In my opinion genius is accidental, is mistaken, is actually wrong at first. And I don’t care what you say. But it’s hard to be wrong in a housing estate in Airdrie. Even though really they’re all wrong! But they want to be right at all costs. They want to have an ironing board, a cooker and a washing machine. A duvet instead of a sleeping bag. A fucking concrete house with four windows. Some shitty car. A hoover. A job like a fucking jail sentence. A bit TV in the living room. To be woken at six in the morning while it’s still dark. And on top of that they want respect. For being right. How is it possible to respect anyone for being right?
?
How fucking simple. How mind-numbingly fucking dull. Congratulations, You did the right thing. You know?…”
“…I think there is something fulfilling for Lucas and for all of us in being able to make ritual use of forgetting and remembering. And of course that’s how I came up with the name Memorial Device. To me it was like Shakespeare…”
“I’m drawn to madness… I admit it… but only if it energises you… or if it destroys you completely… Only if you blow up or go tearing off… into another life… and another life… and another life running after it…”

This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan. I am squeezing it into the current decade although I may have read it on the cusp. It’s a fictional memoir about what Amazon.com calls “the post punk scene” in Airdrie, a working-class town in Scotland. I read it as research for a character who is the hero of the book I am working on now who is based on a real person who is also a hero. Anyway, This Is Memorial Device is a novel about rock music built as a series of interviews about a band called “This Is Memorial Device.” The voices transcribed in the interviews are electric currents that crack stuff open like hammers against geodes. If there’s a connection between all the books on this list it’s that they are products of empathy and don’t congratulate themselves for following formulae or achieving a recognizable, conformist aesthetic. They’re poetry.

 

My thanks to Jo for these amazing selections. My invitations to participate in Decades highlight that the book selection is a very personal choice. Having five books which were each read in five different decades of Jo’s life is indeed a very personal selection and falls within “flexing” of the Decades rules 😉

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

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September 17

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Russel D McLean

We are back. Decades time. And boy oh boy, there sure are some great new books about to wing their way to my Decades Library!

But wait – what’s Decades?

At the tail end of 2020 a “real world” incident happened which I should really tell you about one day. That incident got me thinking…if you had a brand new library and were tasked with filling the shelves; which books would you pick?  I knew this was not a question I could answer alone so I decided to ask booklovers to help me.  Each week I am joined by writers, bloggers, journalists and publishers and I ask them to pick five books they want me to add to the Decades Library.

Picking five books is easy and does not result in your guests calling you a swine. So I added a wee twist and made the selection process a bit more of a challenge. My guests are asked to add five books to my library but they may only select one book per decade from five consecutive decades. Imogen Church said it was “easy”, RJ Barker called me a “monster” and Russel D McLean…well Russel told me he had fun but there was a bit of name calling.

I leave you in the capable hands of Russel who wants to take us back to 1946 where his selections commence:

 

DECADES

First up – Gordon, you’re a swine, making me do this! A swine! How can I choose only five books, and one per decade? I mean, my initial list is something like twenty or thirty per decade… how can I narrow it down? How?

At least I know where I’m starting because I think any library worth its salt should have my 1940s choice…

So You Want to Be an Actor by Hugh McDermott, with sketches by Michael Gough (1946)

An odd choice, perhaps, to start my decades; a guide to acting by a Scot who made a decent enough career in movies such as Mrs Minniver, No Orchids for Ms Blandish and the sublime Scottish B-movie, Devil Girl from Mars.

But there’s method in my madness. For Hugh McDermott is my great, great, great (too many greats? Too little? It’s not terribly clear; the McLean family tree is rather overgrown in places) uncle.

I never met him, but upon discovering his filmography, and our family connection, I wanted to know more about him. Especially when I found out about his leading man turn in Devil Girl From Mars. but Uncle Hugh also starred in one of the most controversial movies of its era (controversial for its violence, although the US accents by the all-British cast are… well… controversial in their own way), No Orchids for Ms Blandish (based on the novel by James Hadley Chase)

Hugh’s one and only book, So You Want to be an Actor, is a compact wee hardback volume, full of ever so slightly sarcastic advice for actors of stage and screen… such as this little gem on how to avoid being a ham (after witnessing a particular actor in a play):

The villain on making his entrance… pushed his face through the door, well ahead of his body, and held it there, awaiting a burst of applause that didn’t come. That, my dear Watson, is “Ham” with an of gravy around it.

Naturally, then, given that he also wrote a book, I feel the need to include this in Gordon’s ultimate library (even if it is long out of print, although copies crop up here and there!) finally giving Uncle Hugh his due!

 

Psycho by Robert Bloch (1959)

In of those pieces of received wisdom I never want to check in case its untrue, someone once told me that Alfred Hitchock bought up the entire print of Robert Bloch’s novel when he decided to make a move from it in order that no one would spoil the surprise twists in the plot. Whether its true or not, it sounds like it should be – after all, Hitchock’s film followed the main thrust of the novel pretty closely, but the book goes into far more twisted detail about the way in which Norman Bates’s mind works, and deepens his relationship to “mother”.

It’s a short, sharp, shocker of a novel (my edition is 151 pages long) that is so tightly constructed you’re always in fear that the springs are about to come loose. But they never do. If you know the movie, then the book provides a different viewpoint and a few unexpected variations that you can see would never have made into the movie. And if you don’t know the movie… hooo boy, are you in for a dark, disturbing treat when you check in at the Bates Motel…

 

Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes (1965)

Honestly, I could have chosen almost any one of Chester Himes’s brilliant Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones books (thank goodness they spanned a few decades!) but this is the first one I think I read, and it’s a humdinger of a thriller that starts with $87,000 being stolen from a Back to Africa rally, and ends up with cops, criminals and more chasing after a bale of cotton that may contain the missing money.

Himes is one of my favourite US writers – his serious, earlier novel, If He Hollers, Let Him Go, is a chilling account of racism in the USA, but his crime novels deserve to be talked about in the same breath as Chandler, Hammet, et al – and Cotton Comes to Harlem is one of his paciest and most gripping books. If you haven’t read Himes before, you should start here.

 

 

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick (1977)

Once, during a live event, the magnificent modern author of British Noir, Ray Banks (an author who should be far better known, and whose books deserve to be rediscovered by a huge audience) asked me if I was a Dickhead. After a sharp gasp from the audience, we had to clarify that he was asking if I was a fan of the science fiction author Philip K Dick.

And the answer yes is a massive yes: I am indeed a Dickhead.

A Scanner Darkly is one of Dick’s most personal novels. As his career went on, many of his novels would take and explore aspects of his personal life, including his religious beliefs, and what some might terms as his delusions that he had made contact with a higher power. But 1977’s A Scanner Darkly is personal in a deeply affecting way, talking about the highs and lows of drug use through the medium of a near future thriller. No doubt there are biographical aspects in this story of an undercover cop investigating users and deals of Substance D (D for Death, of course). The cop himself wears a scramble suit when on duty so no one can identify him. Even his superiors don’t know who he is. But his latest target is someone who’s a bit too close to home: himself.

The book is at its best chronicling the everyday life of the protagonist and his group of friends, all of whom are, in one way or another, addicted to or affected by D. The book doesn’t shy away from the seductive allure of drug use either, or the joy of shared experiences, but it doesn’t sugarcoat the tragedies, either. In many ways it’s a better exploration of the drug lifestyle than, say, Trainspotting, because it feels almost too natural in places.

But the SF work here is excellent as well, and the exploration of how it must feel to be investigating yourself is superbly done. Dick was never a master of the science side of science fiction, but his insight into people was second to none, and A Scanner Darkly is his most affecting novel, ending on a sobering reminder of the reality Dick was writing about.

 

Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky (1982)

No library is complete without at least one book by Sara Paretsky. Into the eighties and beyond, a new generation of women crime writers reshaped and reformed the discussion around crime fiction, and Paretsky is one of the first and best of them. Without VI Warshawski, her brilliantly rounded PI, who makes her debut here; employed to find her client’s son’s missing girlfriend.

Of course, things get complicated fast, and VI needs to employ all of her skills to unravel the complex and dangerous investigation. VI is, even early on, a fully formed character, and Paretsky’s pacy writing style, even in her debut, is gripping and confident.

It cannot be underestimated what an impact Paretsky – along with other writers such as Sue Grafton – had on crime novel in the eighties and beyond (her latest VI novel, Dead Land, was released in 2020).

VI was a realistic and convincing step away from the old, two-fisted and very male PI of the past, using the form to explore more complex themes of class, feminism and so much more, while still creating a thrilling mystery that entertains and grips the reader.

While Paretsky’s proceeded to build her craft since this first novel, deepening her characters and their world, this is where it all began, meaning the book absolutely deserves a place in any decent library (and it remains an absolute belter of a read!).

 

Russel D McLean is the author of seven crime novels, one short story collection, and a whole bundle of other uncollected shorts. His first five novels, focussed on a PI working out of the Scottish city of Dundee, are currently being re-released in new digital and print editions, with the final book in the series, Cry Uncle being re-released soon. His latest standalone novel – published by the brilliant Saraband – is Ed’s Dead, which was described by Martina Cole as “a really authentic and remarkable read!”

When not writing novels, Russel works as a freelance development editor for several publishers, and is currently working on projects in other forms that he’s looking forward to talking about when he’s allowed!

In the past, he’s been a bookseller, a freelance book reviewer, a roving events chairperson, and a general miscreant.

Find out more about Russel at www.russeldmcleanbooks.com, or follow him on Twitter @russeldmclean, where he talks about the books he’s reading (#russelreads), the movies he’s loving (#russelwatches), the three cats that allow him and his wife to share their flat, and anything else that falls into his brain.

 

 

This week I am heading to Stirling where I hope to meet some old friends at Bloody Scotland. Despite my shyness I am really looking forward to finally meeting some of my previous Decades guests and thanking them in person for helping to grow my Library. I also hope to meet some future Decades guests – watch this space!

DECADES WILL RETURN

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September 9

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Tim Glister

Sometimes my new Decades guest arrives in the week they are celebrating a publication date, it’s almost like I can boast successful planning every now and then.  Let me jump in ahead of Tim and drop a sneaky cover share of his new paperback, Red Corona, before he has a chance to tell you a bit more about it himself.

LUSH!

Before I hand you over to this week’s guest I had better explain what I mean by a “Decades guest”. Every week I am joined by a booklover who is asked to take on my Decades challenge.  I am putting together a collection of unmissable books which should grace the shelves of the very best library collection.

I began this quest back in January and each week a new guest (authors, publishers, bloggers and journalists) select five books they want me to add to the Library. You can see all the previous selections here: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/grab-this-book-the-decades-library

Choosing five books isn’t quite the whole story though.  My guests may only select one book per decade from five consecutive decades. So their choices will come from a fifty year publication span. This can cause some gnashing of teeth but the range of books being added to the Library makes my jaw drop each week.

So it’s enough from me, Tim is waiting in the wings to introduce himself and to share his five selections with you.

DECADES

I’m Tim Glister, the author of the Richard Knox Spy Thriller series. My first novel, RED CORONA, is about the secret battle between Britain, America and Russia to control the birth of the global surveillance age. The second novel in the series, A LOYAL TRAITOR, poses the question: duty or honour, which would you betray?

Over the years I’ve been a library assistant, a bookseller, and a literary agent. Now I’m a novelist. I write espionage fiction, and I read as widely as I can for both fun and inspiration.

For my Decades challenge, I wanted to pick five novels that have blown my mind, and changed the way I look at both reading and writing. These are stories I still think about years after reading them, and recommend to anyone who will listen.

 

 

1957 – ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute

Few novels have given me nightmares. This one has. The 50s and 60s were awash with excellent speculative (and mainly) dystopian fiction, but ON THE BEACH stands out for how devastatingly it explores a world that ends without a bang. It’s all so mannered, so polite, so plausible – it’s utterly terrifying, and extremely, deeply affecting.

 

 

 

 

1962 – LABYRINTHS by Jorge Luis Borges

As Heather Martin has already said, if you could only pick one book for this challenge it would have to be LABYRINTHS. It has no equal. These razor-sharp, mind-bending tales fizz with imagination and vitality, and conjure up entire worlds in just a few pages. Read them and learn the true, awesome power of literature.

 

 

 

 

 

1971 – THE DAY OF THE JACKAL by Frederick Forsyth

THE DAY OF THE JACKAL shouldn’t work. We know Charles de Gaulle isn’t going to die, and his would-be assassin is little more than a hollow puppet somehow pulling its own strings. And yet Forsyth is such a master of the thriller and so skilled at creating tension that you end up glued to the pages and rooting for murder.

 

 

 

 

1984 – HOTEL DU LAC by Anita Brookner

This novel is not what you think it is. It’s shrewd, cunning, deceptive. It takes the best of Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Daphne du Maurier and distills it all down into a biting social commentary driven by a mystery that compels you to keep reading and a heroine that critics have been keen to dismiss but who commands your respect.

 

 

 

 

1995 – BLINDNESS by José Saramago

Another nightmare-inducer to end on. What would happen if a plague of blindness swept through your city? Blending Camus-esque philosophical plotting with a disarming parable-style narrative voice, BLINDNESS grabs hold of you and beats you up until the very last page. Like ON THE BEACH, technically it’s science fiction, but it feels all too real.

 

 

 

 

Five stories which blew Tim’s mind and changed the way he looks at reading and at writing! That’s quite the testimony and exactly what I hope the Decades Library will do for other readers. Just last week I picked up one of the recommendations made by Steven Keddie and my next Decades purchase is guaranteed to be Blindness.

A reminder that Tim’s novel, Red Corona, released this week in paperback. If you want to spot how any of these five books helped shape a new story then here is the link you need to grab your own copy of Red Corona: https://www.waterstones.com/book/red-corona/tim-glister/9781786079435

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

 

 

 

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September 3

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Elizabeth Haynes

Another week has flown by and today I have the pleasure of introducing a new guest who is tasked with the challenge of nominating five new books to be added to my Decades Library. If you haven’t encountered my Decades Library yet then a quick recap will help.

Each week I ask my guests to select five unmissable books which they would want to see added to the Ultimate Library. I began this challenge with zero books and week by week the shelves are filling with some truly amazing titles. If you want to see all the books which have been recommended you can see (and buy) them here: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/grab-this-book-the-decades-library

 

Picking five books just seemed a bit too easy though so I added a second rule: each guest must only select one book per decade from five consecutive decades. So their final five choices will come from any 50 year publication span.  Flexing of the rules is quite commonplace as you will see in the very near future.

This week I am delighted to pass the Decades curator’s hat to Elizabeth Haynes. Elizabeth was one of the first authors I met after I began blogging. Thanks to the brilliant Encounters festival which North Lanarkshire ran I got to head to Motherwell Library to hear her talking about her books. A fabulous evening was had and if, in future, you get a chance to see Elizabeth at any events make booking your ticket a priority.

Enough from me, let me hand you over to Elizabeth so she can share her five selections:

Elizabeth Haynes is a former police intelligence analyst who lives in Norfolk with her husband and son. Her first novel, Into the Darkest Corner, was Amazon’s Best Book of the Year 2011 and a New York Times bestseller. Now published in 37 countries, it was originally written as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), an online challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.

She has written a further three psychological thrillers—Revenge of the Tide, Human Remains and Never Alone—and two novels in the DCI Louisa Smith series, Under a Silent Moon and Behind Closed Doors.

Next came her highly praised historical novel The Murder of Harriet Monckton (a Sunday Times Summer Read) which is based on the 1843 unsolved murder of a young school teacher in Bromley, Kent.

Elizabeth’s latest novel, You, Me and the Sea is a contemporary story of love and redemption set on a remote, windswept Scottish island.

 

DECADES

At the time of writing, I’m four days away from my 50th birthday. I suspect most of Gordon’s guests have also gone through the internal battle wondering where to begin; I suppose the impending half-century made this decision easier for me! So I’ve decided to use the first five decades I was here and use this as a wee self-indulgent trip down memory lane…

1970s: Z for Zachariah, by Robert C. O’Brien (1974)

I was born in 1971 so I’ll admit I didn’t read this book until the early 1980s, but it has stayed with me ever since. It’s a post-apocalyptic story of a girl surviving in a remote, sheltered valley, managing quite well on her own and assuming everyone is dead, until a stranger in a haz-mat suit turns up and suddenly everything becomes a lot scarier.

I read a lot of science fiction as a teenager. In particular I loved Ray Bradbury’s short stories, which made me want to write, not for anyone else, just for myself: the joy of creating worlds, inventing people and giving them problems to solve, kept me busy. I think as an only child, and at times quite lonely, inventing people and putting words in their mouths was a form of social interaction. And yes, before I discovered fiction, I did have imaginary friends.

I remember reading Z for Zachariah in a cupboard. Our spare room had a giant, built-in cupboard in the void  above the staircase (I say giant, I guess it was about a metre square in terms of floor space) and I built a ‘den’ in there out of stored blankets and old pillows. This was my reading haven in which I could imagine any possibility, including a nuclear holocaust.

 

1980s: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, by Sue Townsend (1982)

 

Like Adrian, I was an avid secret diary keeper – I still am – and I saw a lot of myself in him. The desperate desire to be liked, to belong, to understand what adults really meant and how the world worked. My parents also divorced and the effect on me is something I’m only really understanding now – at the time it was just something profoundly life-changing that happened, over which I had no control. Aside from that – finding my identity through a fictional diarist – the book was just tremendously funny, which was very helpful.

 

 

 

 

1990s: Feel the Fear and Beyond: Dynamic Techniques for Doing it Anyway, by Susan Jeffers (1998)

 

Cheating a little, because Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway was originally published in 1987, but I only got to read it in the 1990s. This was the decade in which I finished university and started on the career ladder, mainly in temp admin jobs, but notably also selling cars (my first ever job). It’s fair to say I had very little self-confidence, and Susan Jeffers proved to be quite an eye-opener when I read it. It became the book that I gifted to everyone for many years. I still re-read it regularly now. The message behind it is so simple and true: life is so very much better if you can be a little bit brave.

 

 

2000s: The Bride Stripped Bare, by Nikki Gemmell (2003)

 

In the wake of the ‘Fifty Shades’ fever that gave us all permission to enjoy erotic fiction and talk about it afterwards, The Bride Stripped Bare was presented as being ‘perfect for fans of Fifty Shades’ and used a similar styling (along with countless others) – which is a bit of a shame. Originally it was published anonymously, which added to the intrigue, but what sets it apart is that this book is beautifully written. It’s the story of a misfit couple on honeymoon in Marrakech, and the way the relationship unravels afterwards. Told almost directly from the consciousness of the woman, it’s deep and lyrical and searingly beautiful. I’ve never found a writer who is able to speak that truth in quite such a powerful way. This is the sort of writing that I absolutely aspire to.

 

 

2010s: All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (2014)

 

This is the decade in which I was published, and it’s so tempting to choose any one of the brilliant books I’ve read by authors that I now think of as friends, but to do so would be to leave out so many others. It’s a hard choice to make! So I’m going with a book I only read recently, late to the party as always – the tale of Marie-Laure and Werner, teenagers on opposite sides of global conflict, but with so much in common. When they eventually meet – all too briefly – it feels like a pivotal moment for the whole world.

 

 

 

Thank you to Gordon for letting me join in the Decades challenge! And thank YOU for reading. I hope I’ve given you some inspiration for choosing your next book….

 

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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