Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Jay Stringer

My guest this week once offered a Star Wars book to anyone at Noir at the Bar that would wail like a Wookie. To this day I still have that book. He is also the first guest to tell me they wanted to select five comic books for their Decades choices – I may need to invite him back just so I can see which books he would have selected.

Don’t mourn the loss of Jay’s comic book picks as he has selected five quality novels which I am delighted to add to my Decades Library.

For those not familiar with #Decades a quick recap. Each week I invite a guest to join me and select five unmissable or essential reads which they would want to see included in my Ultimate Library. When this project started back in January I had no books and a mountain to climb, week on week my guests have selected five books and my library is filling up. You can see all the previous selections (and buy any which catch your eye) here at Bookshop.org: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/GrabThisBookDecades

Choosing five books may be challenging but I add a second rule which my guests need to follow. They can only select one book per decade over five consecutive decades – so they have any fifty year publication span to select from.

This week I am delighted to welcome Jay Stringer to Grab This Book. As Jay is Glasgow based he is one of the few guests I have actually met and I was thrilled he was able to make time to take on the Decades challenge. Jay’s latest book Don’t Tell a Soul is my current read and it’s flipping brilliant, putting it down to prep this post was a wrench.

So I pass you over to Jay but before I do – here is how you get Don’t Tell a Soul: https://www.waterstones.com/book/dont-tell-a-soul/jay-stringer/9781916892309

Jay Stringer was born in 1980, and he’s not dead yet. His crime fiction has been nominated for both Anthony and Derringer awards, and shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize. His stand-up comedy has been laughed at by at least three people. He was born and raised in the Black Country, but has since adopted Glasgow as his hometown.

Jay’s newest book Don’t Tell a Soul was released on July 26^th.

Also, Jay’s birthday was July 26^th. You know what to do.

DECADES

One book from each decade? That’s a crazy rule. I hate rules. So the only way I’m going to get through this is imposing a few more on myself.

I can’t just pick an Elmore Leonard book for each decade (because, seriously, I could.)
No comic books. (Because once I open that door, I pick nothing but comic books.)

Okay. On with the list.

1970’s. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

This decade was hard. So many great books. So many great Elmore Leonard books. But Douglas Adams was one of my gateway drugs to reading novels, as a struggling dyslexic teen, and it still holds up today. Funny. Satirical. Basically accurate and mostly harmless. One of the funniest books ever written.

1980’s. The Demon Headmaster – Gillian Cross

I was a child during the 80’s, and I can’t remove myself from that. This pick is all about memories. Again, as a dyslexic I didn’t read much prose early on. Choose Your Own Adventure books were pretty much my speed, and the rest was comic books. (The 80’s was a great decade for comics.) But I read the hell out of The Demon Headmaster. And had it read to me just as much.

1990’s. Stone Junction – Jim Dodge

Now then. We. Are. Talking. I love this book. I’d get an all-over body tattoo of this book if I could. What’s it about? No idea. There’s magic, gambling, revenge, and a big diamond. It’s sort of like what Harry Potter would be if he was a cool kid who drank a lot and wanted to be in a punk band. And it’s funny, moving, and occasionally deep. Jim Dodge’s writing is all about the journey, not so much about the destination. But it’s a great journey.

2000’s. Pagan Babies – Elmore Leonard

This isn’t Elmore’s best book. But it might be the one that stayed with me the longest after I read it. The key to understanding Leonard is that he was always writing about self-awareness. About characters becoming better or worse at being who they really are. And he often also explored the huge grey area between right/wrong and legal/illegal. Pagan Babies feels like the ultimate distillation of these themes into something simple and primal. And, placed where it is in his career, it feels like the summation of his themes, before he became a little more self-indulgent in his last few books.

2010’s. Recursion – Blake Crouch

It’s not often a book blows me away. I don’t just mean I enjoyed it. I enjoy a lot of books. But this one simply blew me away. It might be one of the best books I’ve ever read. Though to talk too much about it is to ruin the fun. It’s a sci-fi story at heart. But it also feels like it’s about fake news, and the way we’re all living in different realities right now. It’s about the way I can remember using the King Kong statue in Birmingham as a meeting point with friends, even though it left Birmingham four years before I was born. It’s a brilliant book. Go buy it.

Thanks again to Jay for these brilliant selections. If you want to know his comic book selections then tweet him @JayStringer and ask him to tell you what he would have picked! If you do happen to follow him over on Twitter it also helps to know Jay is a Wolverhampton Wanderers fan and this can result in some cryptic sounding tweets landing on your timeline most weekends.

DECADES WILL RETURN

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August 20

Decades: Compiling The Ultimate Library with Steven Kedie

My favourite part of the week is when I get to put together the new Decades post. It is my hope that someone will read the selections my guest has made and will discover a new book which they too will fall in love with.

If you have not encountered Decades before today then let me quickly bring you up to speed. Each week I invite a guest to join me and I ask them which five books they want to see added to my Decades Library. I started with zero books back in January and now we have had 150 recommendations – each of which can be seen here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/GrabThisBookDecades

Choosing any five books just seemed a bit too easy so I added an extra rule which all my guests need to give a little more thought to – you can only select one book per decade over five consecutive decades. This week we have the 1970s to 2010’s and a great mix of titles too.

My guest this week is no stranger to the fun which accompanies reaching out to new guests and assembling a weekly blog post. However, Steven Kedie is very much a fan of music and the Eight Albums website sees his guests chatting through their eight favourite albums. It is one of my favourite weekly reads and I have discovered some great music through following recommendations I found there.

Time to hand over to Steven to introduce his selections:

Steven Kedie is a writer and co-founder of music website www.eightalbums.co.uk, who lives in Manchester with his wife and two children. He spends far too much time running, writing, talking about albums and trying to complete television. All of which get in the way of his football watching habit.

His debut novel, Suburb, due to be re-released this year, tells the story of Tom Fray, a young man at a crossroads in his life – not a kid anymore, not quite an adult yet – who returns home from university to find no-one has changed but him. When he starts an affair with a neighbour, his simple plan to leave home and travel becomes a lot more complicated.

Steven will release a second novel this autumn. Running and Jumping tells the story of British Olympian Adam Lowe and his rivalry with American athlete Chris Madison. The novel deals with the question: What if you had your greatest ever day and still didn’t win?
Details of his writing can be found at www.stevenkedie.com

DECADES

I’m a man of simple pleasures. I like books, music, films and sport. So, when I started thinking about my Decades library choices, I thought I should try and incorporate those things into my selections.
I’ve come up with the below.

All The Presidents Men, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — 1974

The story of Watergate, told by the men who wrote the stories of Watergate in the Washington Post. The book is more than the source material of the fantastic film that followed. Watergate defined America. And this book – inside account of what it was like to break the biggest political scandal in American history – captures that moment brilliantly.

Knots and Crosses, Ian Rankin— 1987

Ian Rankin’s Rebus series has been part of almost my entire reading life. I can remember the first time I picked up a copy of a Rebus novel, Strip Jack (fourth in the series), at a friend’s house. His mum was reading it. I read the first chapter and was hooked. I had to force myself not to read on because I’m someone who has to start a series at the beginning.

My girlfriend (now wife) was working at the Trafford Centre, so that night, I went early to pick her up so I could go to the bookshop and buy the first Rebus book. I bought the first three. I clearly remember being sat in the car reading Knots and Crosses and instantly knowing I was a fan. As I type these words, eighteen or so years later, the book I’m currently reading is A Song for the Dark Times, the latest in the series.

I run a music website called eightalbums.co.uk (along with a friend, Matt) where we ask people to write about eight albums that are important to them and why. Early on in the site’s life, I approached Ian Rankin, thinking, given his well-documented love of music (a thread that runs through the Rebus novels), he would enjoy the site as a reader. He actually offered to take part and submitted his own Eight Albums entry. The day his entry went out was absolutely fantastic for me personally, with one of my heroes taking part in something I’d created. It also opened up the site to a whole new audience of people. I’ll forever be grateful to Ian for that.

Anyway, back to the book. I’ve chosen Knots and Crosses because it’s the first in the series. And you should always start with the first one.

Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger — 1990

I love books by people who are embedded within a team. There are some fantastic examples over the years: John Feinstein’s A Season on the Brink and the wonderful The Miracle of St Anthony’s by Adrian Wojnarowski, about basketball coach Bob Hurley and his life-transforming high school team.

Sport can often be a vehicle to tell us about the people involved or the society in which they exist. Friday Night Lights is the best example of this concept. Bissinger, a journalist from Philadelphia, wanted to explore the idea of a high school sports team keeping a town together. When he decided to move to a town and experience life through a team, (to quote the opening page): “… all roads led to West Texas, to a town called Odessa.” The town’s high school American Football team, the Permian Panthers, played in front of 20,000 fans on a Friday night.

Through this lens, Bissinger tells the story of a town whose best years seem behind it, of race and class, of what happens when society makes heroes and celebrities of kids (most players are 17), and what the fall out of that is when they stop playing.

The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock, John Harris — 2003

A book from the noughties that is very much the story of the nineties.

I turned 8 thirteen days into 1990 and 18 thirteen days after the decade ended. The ‘90s defines who I am as a person. When it comes to the music I love, no era has influenced me more. Britpop has soundtracked much of my life.

Harris’ book covers a period from ‘94 to ‘98 and looks at Britpop and the rise of Tony Blair and the Labour Party as they went on to win the 1997 General Election. Although the book talks about what a great period it was, it isn’t always a love-in of the era. It doesn’t always look back on it as fondly as my hazy memory does. But it’s a book that documents the merging of music and politics, the change in the country, the excitement and feelings of hope at that time. Definitely (Maybe) one that should be in the Decades library.

The Force, Don Winslow — 2017

This decade’s choice took a lot of consideration. Eight Albums and my own writing has allowed me into a world of creative people I didn’t ever think possible at the start of the 2010. I’ve got friends who have written fantastic books and I probably should’ve done them solid and picked one and talked about how great they are. But the truth is when I think about my last ten years of reading, there’s only one name I kept coming back to: Don Winslow.

I once joked when I grow up, I want to be Don Winslow. I wasn’t really joking. The man writes powerful, thought provoking, entertaining crime books. His Cartel trilogy is an important work that tells the story of the US’s failed War on Drugs. His Boone Daniels series is one of the most entertaining private detective series I’ve read. I could go on. But don’t worry, I won’t.

I’ve chosen 2017’s The Force because it’s a standalone novel. It tells the story of Denny Malone, a star New York detective, and his crew of men who police the streets of New York with their own rules and style. Denny’s story is one of corruption: his own and that of the city he works. It’s a superb piece of crime fiction. Don Winslow is a unique and interesting voice and if someone came to the Decades library looking for a new crime writer to read, The Force would be a fantastic introduction to Winslow and what he’s all about.

I think this week Steven has captured exactly what I love about Decades. There is a “how was this one not mentioned before now?” an “I’ve never heard of that one (but it sounds like something I would love)” and even an “ah yes – that’s a belter, I am glad it was picked.” Terrific choices.

Eight Albums is one of my favourite reads each week. Just looking at the recent guests I spot Tony Kent, Morgan Cry and Simon Bewick – it is my hope I can also persuade all three to take on Decades one day too!

DECADES WILL RETURN

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August 14

Decades: Compiling the Ulitmate Library with Rod Reynolds

This is Decades. It’s a challenge I set myself to assemble the Ultimate Library, a library which began with zero books and was to be filled with nothing but the very best reading recommendations. Which books should be included? What have been the essential reads over the years?

I knew this was not a task I could undertake myself so each week I invite a booklover to join me and I ask them to nominate books which they feel should be added to my Decades Library. There are two rules which govern the selection of their five books:

1 – You may choose any five books
2 – You may only select one book per decade over five consecutive decades

Easy? This week’s guest began his email reply to me with “I can see now why people are getting so mad about this”. This may well be why I am asking my guests to select the books and not taking this challenge on myself!

The Decades Library is also a bookshop as I have set up a store page over at Bookshop.Org. If you fancy reading any of the recommendations made by my Decades curators you can purchase the books through this handy link: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/grab-this-book-the-decades-library 10% of the cover price goes towards supporting independent booksellers. This is an affiliate link.

This week the Decades curator hat passes to Rod Reynolds. Back in the early days of Grab This Book I was offered the opportunity to read Rod’s first Charlie Yates book. The Dark Inside, which utterly blew me away. Two more books followed in the series and I loved them both. The Guardian described the books as “pitch-perfect American noir” which is a near perfect way to describe how I felt when I read them. Last year Rod released his first novel set in the UK, London based Blood Red City was another terrific page turner and his latest, Black Reed Bay continues to set a high bar for tension and thrills.

You can see all Rod’s books here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rod-Reynolds/e/B01BHZGQ5E?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1628926594&sr=8-1

DECADES

1980s – The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke

Burke is arguably the finest prose sytlist in all of crime fiction, writing in a lyrical, poetic and mystical way about violent, damaged and gritty individuals. This is the first in his Robicheaux series, which I think is his best work. Although I can take or leave the titular protagonist, there’s no character I enjoy more in crime fiction than his fearsome partner, Clete Purcel.

1990s – 1974 by David Peace

The first of Peace’s Red Riding Quartet, a monumental achievement from a writer who is criminally underappreciated (at least in his home country). An intense portrayal of journalist Eddie Dunford’s harrowing journey through greed, murder and obsession to the dark heart of 1970s Yorkshire.

2000s – The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy

The book that changed everything for me with its raw power. I’d never read Ellroy before and, in retrospect, this is the worst place to start because it represents the high (or low, depending on your personal taste) point of his ‘telegraphic’, jive-heavy style, making it at times almost impenetrable to the uninitiated. At first, I had no idea what I was reading, and it made no sense. By the end of it, I wanted to be a writer.

2010 – November Road by Lou Berney

A book set in the aftermath of the JFK assassination was always going to catch my eye because it’s the same territory Ellroy’s best work treads. But this is a very different type of novel, one with that examines what happens when a lifelong mobster realises he’s run out of road with the bosses – just as he falls in love for the first time. A beautiful and beautifully written novel about life, regret and the redemptive power of love.

2020 – We Begin At The End by Chris Whitaker

All I can say about this book is that if you’ve already met Duchess Day Radley, you know why it’s here. And if you haven’t, you’re missing out on a novel that raises the bar for modern crime fiction.

My thanks to Rod for sharing his selections. I have never read James Ellroy so this is clearly something I need to rectify as soon as possible. The latest consequence of Rod reading The Cold Six Thousand is called Black Reed Bay, the first book in the Detective Casey Wray series and published by Orenda Books. You can order Rod’s new book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08T65D9XX/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

DECADES WILL RETURN

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August 7

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Karen Sullivan

The Decades Library is growing beyond anything I could have imagined. I started this project back in January when it was dark outside and the rain was lashing against my windows. Now here we are in August, it is still dark outside and the rain is still lashing against my windows (I live in Scotland) but every week since February a new guest curator has joined me to add new books to my Library.

The five books which follow will bring the number of Decades book recommendations made by authors, bloggers, publishers and journalists to 130 – there have been fewer than five titles nominated by more than one person. As readers we are blessed for choice.

What is the Decades Library? My guests are all given the same challenge. Nominate five books to my Decades Library which they consider to be essential reading. But they can only pick one book per decade over five consecutive decades. Easy? Have a go and see if you can pick five of your favourite books from a fifty year publication span.

A further reminder that the Library is now also a Decades Bookshop over at Bookshop.org. You can buy any of the nominated titles through this link (which is an affiliate site): https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/grab-this-book-the-decades-library

This week’s guest needs no introduction (which is lucky as I forgot to ask her to write one). If I say Orenda Books you will surely know the force of nature that is Karen Sullivan.

Karen founded Orenda Books in 2014 and the first books were published in 2015. In 2016, Karen was a Bookseller Rising Star, and Orenda Books was shortlisted for the IPG Nick Robinson Newcomer Award in 2015 and 2016. Orenda won the CWA Crime & Mystery Publisher of the Year Dagger in 2020 and were a regional finalist for the Small Press of the Year Award in the British Book Awards in 2021.

DECADES

Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery (1908)

The ultimate coming-of-age novel, classic children’s literature that appeals to readers of all ages. Anne Shirley is an unforgettable character – tragic, unwittingly feminist, eternally optimistic, accident-prone, proud, intelligent, funny – and the snapshot of (my native) rural Canada at the turn of the century is immensely evocative. My own personal manta is drawn from this book: ‘Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?’

The Rainbow, D H Lawerence (1915)

D H Lawrence won my teenaged heart while I was at university, appearing to encapsulate what I perceived to be the human condition and all its existential angst in every book. This is a book about love in many forms, about relationships, about desire, and the fact that it was banned when it was published indicates its forward thinking. It also gives us an invaluable insight into life in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (1920)

My high-school English teacher described this book as ‘ravishing’, and the story and its themes have stayed in my mind ever since. It’s about desire and deception, about rebelling against society and the decimation of innocence – a metaphor for the growing disillusionment about the ‘American Dream’. Its sophistication is breathtaking.

Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder (1932)

Another children’s book, and one that lays bare the struggles of American settlers, with bold, inspirational themes of survival, the importance of family, and the power of hope. It’s a classic for good reason, and although there are often shocking and dated attitudes towards Native Americans, it does serve a purpose in enlightening us to cultural beliefs and mores at that time, fed largely by ignorance and fear, and is upon reflection a lot more positive than it might seem. Few can fail to be inspired by this book.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith (1943)

A beautifully written coming-of-age story about a young immigrant girl in early 20^th-century Brooklyn, it embodies the bright, often blind hope of the American Dream, and highlights a period of vast social change. Its inspirational messages – that anything is possible if you persevere, believe – provided comfort to and renewed determination for the American people during the war.

It’s been an absolute delight to have Karen take part in my Decades challenge. When I was struggling to get Grab This Book established Karen was hugely supportive and entrusted me with early review copies of the first Orenda books which were making their way into the world. Watching Orenda Books grow has been a joy and Karen’s support and encouragement still keeps me going.

DECADES WILL RETURN

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July 30

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Nick Triplow

So soon we are back! I have the honour of welcoming a new guest to Grab This Book today. Another booklover who has five wonderful books to add to the shelves of my Decades Library. Five books which Nick Triplow feels no self-respecting book collection should be without.

Before I allow Nick to introduce himself and share his five chosen books I will quickly recap the Decades challenge. In assembling the Decades Library I ask each guest to nominate ANY five books they would like to see added to the collection. However, there may only be one book per decade over any five consecutive decades. So it’s five books from a 50 year publication span. I want the Library to give readers the best reading choices.

I would also like to remind you that all the books which feature in my Decades collection can be purchased through the Grab This Book Decades page at bookshop.org : https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/grab-this-book-the-decades-library This is an affiliate site and 10% of the cover price will go towards supporting Indy Bookshops. I also get a small cut. You can visit the site to see all the books which have been nominated by my guests. If you see a book which takes your fancy you can see the guest responsible for nominating that book (I have added this info) and return here to read their original post. The search function in the top left of this page is your friend.

This week brings news that Nick Triplow will be writing a forward to two Ted Lewis novels which will be returned to print by No Exit Press. E-books are out next month for Jack Carter’s Law and Billy Rags, paperbacks following in Spring 2022. I am thrilled that Nick is joining me today so it’s time I shuffled off and handed him the microphone…

DECADES

I’m Nick Triplow, author of the biography of noir fiction pioneer, Ted Lewis, Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir; the South London crime noir novel, Frank’s Wild Years; and the social history books Family Ties, The Women They Left Behind, Distant Water, and Pattie Slappers; well as short stories, including Face Value, a winner of the Northern Crime Short Story competition.

Along with Nick Quantrill and Nikki East, I’m a founder/director of Hull Noir Crime Fiction Festival and co-host of Hull Noir’s Three Book Friday (Hull Noir YouTube channel). I’m a graduate of Middlesex University’s English, Writing & Publishing degree and the MA Writing course at Sheffield Hallam.

Originally from South East London, I moved to Barton upon Humber (still south of the river) in 2001.

PHILIP LARKIN – THE WHITSUN WEDDINGS 1964

Larkin had arrived in Hull in 1955. Interviewed some years later, he said, ‘I never thought about Hull until I was here. Having got here, it suits me in many ways. It is a little on the edge of things.’ Exactly that. The poems are about the reality of Larkin’s life and reflections on the society that surrounds hi. They have a sense of Saturday teatime melancholy: a recognition of how time and tide diminishes each of us and of the details that matter fleetingly along the way.

Many of the poems in The Whitsun Weddings have an anecdotal, conversational tone. The language is colloquial, the poems entirely accessible. To capture a sense of the place and how perfectly Larkin walks us into the lives of people mostly like us, I can recommend watching Dave Lee’s short film of Here, read by Tom Courtenay:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZEgh5vhPVk]

JOHN LE CARRE – TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY 1974

In John Le Carré’s classic cold war novel, the spymaster George Smiley has a classic ‘tell’. In moments of reflection, the man charged with hunting for the Soviet agent buried deep inside the British secret intelligence service, cleans his glasses with ‘the fat end of his tie’, a character trait, from which we infer that somehow, beneath the multiple layers of his intellect, Smiley has access to a deeper tier of perception than those around him.

I’m on my third copy, the other two having fallen apart on the road somewhere. It has been, by turns, a companion novel on suburban commutes, through sleepless nights in box rooms in shared flats, in London parks on summer afternoons. You get the picture: it’s a book for life.

TED LEWIS – GBH 1980

As Ted Lewis’s biographer, I should register an interest.

The critical reappraisal that followed the No Exit Press reissue of GBH last year rightly regarded it as an overlooked noir classic. A brief biographical note: by 1979, Lewis was unwell, coping with diabetes and the effects of alcoholism. Taking himself to the places GBH inhabits demanded commitment to the depths of his own imagination and experience. This is the book about which Derek Raymond, himself no stranger to dark themes in his writing, wrote, was ‘a novel as direct as it is stunning … which never relaxes its grip for a paragraph … an example of how dangerous writing can really be when it is done properly.’

PAT BARKER – REGENERATION 1991

A quite extraordinary piece of historical fiction that says as much to us now about the insanity of mental health and its treatment and it does the course and causes of the trauma among First World War combatants, and the humanity of the doctors, namely W.H. Rivers, who pioneered approaches that regard patients as individuals, rather than the sum of their symptoms.

It’s a superbly written story whose historical detail blends seamlessly into the narrative texture. It’s immediate, alarming, thought provoking and thoroughly entertaining. It’s also a go-to for me as a writer. If I’m stuck, I’ll take Regeneration down from the shelf and ask: how does Pat do it?

CATHI UNSWORTH – BAD PENNY BLUES 2009

Republished by Strange Attractor Press earlier this year with a striking mod-noir cover design and an introduction by author, music journalist and cultural critic, Greil Marcus, Bad Penny Blues is a fictionalised account of the case of a killer (or killers) who, between June 1959 and February 1965, murdered eight women and left their bodies in or along the Thames in West London.

Seen through the eyes of Stella Reade, a young art student and designer haunted by visions of the murdered women and Pete Bradley, an aid to the CID at Notting Hill Police Station transferred to the notorious West End Central, Cathi Unsworth shows what the crime novel, particularly one so committed to the truth, is capable of. It’s complex and coercive, a classic London noir.

My thanks to Nick for these five brilliant recommendations. Regeneration released when I was a young bookseller working my way through university holidays. I remember selling dozens of copies and every single time I rang a sale of Regeneration through the till I was reminded of my colleagues mocking me as when I first heard about it as I thought it was a new book about Doctor Who. I was very much a young geek in training – happy days.

DECADES WILL RETURN

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July 25

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Marina Sofia

My favourite part of the week is when I get to share another Decades post. Over the past few weeks I have received more selections which I shall share with you soon and will ensure Decades continues well into August. I still have a long wishlist of guests I would love to join me in the future.

The only downside to having a pipeline of new guest posts is that I know which books are coming up each week. So imagine my surprise and delight when Decades left the building and a selection of five titles appeared on Marina Sophia’s blog over at Finding Time To Write. I offered Marina the opportunity to make her selections official and join me as a guest to curate her titles into the Library. But I also offered the opportunity to make five different selections. So this week you can scroll down for the five “official” Library additions but also use the links provided to see the initial five too – it’s a double win for sharing the booklove.

If the Decades Library is new to you then let me quickly explain what happens. I am populating the Ultimate Library starting from zero books and inviting booklovers to join me each week to add new books to the Library. Each guest has just two rules to follow when making their selections:

1 – Select ANY five books
2 – You can only select one book per decade from any five consecutive decades.

Easy – five books published over a fifty year span.

Time for me to step back and allow Marina Sophia to introduce herself and to share her five choices.

DECADES

Five Books in Five Decades: 1920-1960

Translated Fiction

I should confess that I am a thief! I enjoyed the concept of Decades so much that I ‘borrowed’ it for my own blog, using the five most recent decades. In an attempt to halt any further poaching, Gordon kindly invited me to participate in the proper version of it. I couldn’t resist, since it gives me the chance to add to the favourites I missed last time round.

I started using the pseudonym Marina Sofia for all of my literary endeavours because I was working in a very competitive and strait-laced corporate environment at the time, but now I’ve become so fond of the name that it even features on the novels that I translate. I write mainly poetry and crime fiction, although I have yet to publish a full-length volume of either. For many years I was an avid reviewer for Crime Fiction Lover before embarking on a third (fourth? fifth?) career as publisher of translated crime fiction with a social edge at Corylus Books. So it might surprise you that I did not pick crime fiction for each decade, although I did focus entirely on translated literature. I also chose five earlier decades than I featured on my blog, since these decades are among my favourites in world literature.

1920s

The Threepenny Opera – Bertolt Brecht

The First World War and its aftermath featured quite heavily in the literature of the Roaring Twenties, so I was going to suggest The Forest of the Hanged by Liviu Rebreanu (1922), one of the most poignant descriptions of having to fight against your countrymen when you are part of a declining Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, the English translation is obsolete and out of print, so I cannot recommend it with a clear conscience. Instead, I will suggest a far-better known piece of work. Bertolt Brecht’s Dreigroschenoper (1928) is a translation and modernisation of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, so is supposedly set in London, but it describes the folly, hedonism and poverty of Berlin during the Weimar Republic superlatively well – and in fact, any society undergoing profound social transformation, as I discovered with Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. Better still, go and see this performed if you can, because the Kurt Weill music is fantastic!

1930s

Vol de Nuit – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It might surprise you to know that under duress I might have to confess that my favourite book in the whole wide world is The Little Prince, which always makes me cry no matter how many times I reread it. However, that was published in the 1940s, so instead I’ve picked another book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Vol de Nuit (Night Flight) (1931). With its themes of loyalty, courage and sacrificing individual lives for a greater cause, it was a timely novel which hit all the right nerves and become a great bestseller, was turned into a film and Guerlain even had a perfume created in its honour, with an iconic inverted heart bottle.

1940s

A Shameful Life – Dazai Osamu

Another decade, another war to ponder over and few do it better than Japanese writer Dazai Osamu. His two major novels, which are still hugely successful and influential in Japan, were both published immediately after the war and are tales of defeat and despair. Setting Sun (1947) is not just the portrait of a family, but also describes the directionless anomie of post-war Japan, while No Longer Human (1948) is far more personal – in fact, the author committed suicide shortly after completing it. There is flicker of hope in the former novel, while the latter is relentless in its gloom. Nevertheless, I would recommend the latter, not least because it’s out in an exhilarating fresh translation by Mark Gibeau under the title A Shameful Life.

1950s:

The Waiting Years – Enchi Fumiko

After so many men, it’s finally time to bring in a woman author, and I’ll stick to Japan. Enchi Fumiko’s The Waiting Years (1957) is a subtle study of unequal marriages and the challenges of ageing for women. Although Japanese society still discriminates against women, this book shows us how much worse it used to be a few decades earlier. The devoted wife of a government official has to not only resign herself to him taking on a second wife or concubine but also has to actively select the suitable bride herself. This novel tells the story of how they accommodate themselves to each other over time, in a restrained, beautiful style, sad, without soap-opera melodramas.

1960s:

The Sculptor’s Daughter – Tove Jansson

I had to fit in one of my favourite authors somehow, even though she wasn’t quite as productive in the 1960s as one might have expected. Tove Jansson’s Moomin days were largely behind her (published in the 1940s and 50s), while her novels for adults started coming out in the 1970s. However, she did publish a collection of semi-autobiographical short stories in 1968 entitled The Sculptor’s Daughter, which give a fascinating insight into her life as the daughter of two extremely creative parents. Needless to say, Tove is a painter both with her brushes and with her words: nobody can capture the beauty and loneliness of snowfall quite like her!

You can find me on my somewhat optimistically named blog Finding Time to Write or far too frequently on Twitter as @MarinaSofia8 and do please follow us also at @CorylusB.

My thanks to Marina for sharing her selections and be sure to check out her original post too. Although these five are the titles which will officially enter the Library, the selections are part of the fun too and there can never be too much booklove!

Something new now. I have set up a Decades Library over at Bookshop.org . Over the next few days I will add all the previous Decades selections to a Grab This Book Decades store. This will allow everyone to see all the selections which have been made since I began this challenge back in January. Sophia’s selections are already uploaded.

Grab This Book Decades allows you opportunity to purchase any of the books which have been added to the Decades Library. I also list each person that nominated the books so you can return here if you want to learn more about why any title was nominated. It is an affiliate account and this means that 10% of the cover price of the book goes to support indy bookshops, if you buy through my Decades Library shop I also get paid a percentage. I am not going to retire on any sum I may receive from this but any way to support independent booksellers is a bonus as far as I am concerned. The Decades Library is here: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/grab-this-book-the-decades-library

DECADES WILL RETURN

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July 17

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Derek Farrell

It is a thrill to welcome Derek Farrell back to Grab This Book, particularly as I can welcome Derek in his latest publication week. The new Danny Bird novel, Death at Dukes Halt, released yesterday and the book with accompanying (very cool) merch is available from the Fahrenheit Press website.

Full introduction and purchase links in a second, first a quick introduction to the challenge I set Mr Farrell.

This is Decades. I am inviting book lovers to join me and asking them to help me assemble the best library of books. I began this quest back in January and I had no books on my library shelves. Each week I invite a guest to join me and they are asked to select five of their favourite books to be added to my Ulitmate Library.

Now picking five books is a little too easy so I add a second rule which governs the choices each guest makes. They can only select one book per decade over five consecutive decades. I am told this leads to some angst.

So it is time to hand you over to Derek to introduce his selections. One of my all-time favourite reads is in the mix today, can you guess which?

Derek Farrell is the author of the Danny Bird mysteries ‘Death of a Diva’ ‘Death of a Nobody,’ ‘Death of a Devil,’ ‘Death of an Angel,’ and ‘Death at Dukes Halt,’ as well as the novellas ‘Death of a Sinner,’ and ‘What goes around.’

Derek is married and lives with his husband in West Sussex. They have no cats dogs goats or children, though they do have every Kylie Minogue record ever recorded. Twice.

He can be reached on twitter @derekifarrell or via his website www.derekfarrell.co.uk

His books can be purchased directly from the publisher here https://fahrenheit-press.myshopify.com/search?type=product&q=derek+farrell

Or from Amazon here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Derek-Farrell/e/B06XJ9C6XB?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1603393406&sr=8-1

DECADES

Thanks so much for having me on this feature. I’m honoured to have my submissions joining those of so many amazing contributors before me.

I have always loved libraries and in fact my first book ‘Death of a Diva’ was dedicated to my dad, who took me to the library and gave me a universe to play in. Public Libraries are what made it possible for a kid like me to read any- and everything I wanted, to find the stuff I loved, and to dream of being a writer.

But it was my dad who showed me that reading is a joyful activity, and should always be joyful. “Read the classics, if you want to,” he told me once. “Or don’t, if you don’t want to. The key thing is to love what you read.”

My choices are below, and I hope they inspire some of your readers to find some new loves.

60s – The Jewel in the Skull by Michael Moorcock (1967)

What’s it about: In a post-nuclear holocaust future, where science and sorcery co-exist. the Dark Empire of Granbretan  is expanding across Europe. Baron Meliadus, an emissary of the empire, is sent to the castle of Count Brass to try to persuade him to side with the empire against the other European courts. While in the castle, he begins to court the Count’s daughter, Yisselda, but she refuses to elope with him. Meliadus attempts to kidnap her, but is defeated by Count Brass and swears an oath on the legendary Runestaff to gain power over Count Brass, gain Yisselda and destroy their lands.

In order to achieve these ends, he sends a newly-captured Rebel – Duke Dorian Hawkmoon Von Koln – to the castle, and to ensure Hawkmoon does not betray him, he uses dark sorcery to embed a black jewel in the middle of Hawkmoon’s skull, the jewel acting as a camera that will transmit everything Hawkmoon sees and hears back to Meliadus…

Why it should be in the Library: I discovered these books in the early 80s, having never been much of a sci-fi or fantasy fan. I’m still not a huge reader of those genres, but I spent a summer reading this seies (“The High History of the Runestaff”). The stories, the characters and the feeling of just HAVING to know what happens next, has never left me. This book taught me that regardless of genre, a great story is a great story, and these are great great stories.

70s – Curtain by Agatha Christie (1975 – or was it?)

What’s it about? The novel features Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings in their final appearances in Christie’s works. It is a country house novel, with all the characters and the murder set in one house. Not only does the novel return the characters to the setting of her first, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but it reunites Poirot and Hastings, who last appeared together in Dumb Witness in 1937 as they hunt for a serial killer who has already gotten away with murder five times. But this time, Porot is determined that justice will be served.

Christie actually wrote this book in the middle of the Blitz as bombs rained down around her. A sign of how deeply a writer can become enmeshed with their characters is that instead of worrying about her own safety, she began to worry about what would happen to Poirot if she were to be killed in a bombing.

So she wrote the final Poirot novel, which was delivered with instructions that it was to be published only after she had died. The manuscript was then then kept in a safe (with a copy in a similar safe at her New York publishers) for over thirty years.

Why Should it be in the Library? Because whatever your feelings about Christie’s work, her impact on the crime genre is unarguable, and Curtain is a wonderful mystery novel, the clues woven seamlessly through an admittedly somewhat contrived scenario. Poirot has always been an old man, but here he’s close to decrepit, wheelchair-bound at times, and raging at the cruelty of time that can decay a body but leave his little grey cells as vital as they ever were. Plus, the ending <no spoilers> is a genuine GASP moment that stays with anyone who knows Poirot long after the book.

80s – Blue Heaven by Joe Keenan (1988)

What’s it about? Philip Cavanaugh is surprised to hear that his best friend Gilbert is engaged to be married to Moira. There are two reasons for his surprise: Gilbert loathes Moira with every fibre of his being. But more importantly, Gilbert is flamingly gay.

Gilbert finally confides in Phillip that the entire marriage is a sham designed to maximise the cash gifts from the family of his new Italian-American stepfather, and by the time the trio realise that said family are the Mafia, and that their little attempted fraud may well end up with the three of them wearing concrete overcoats and taking a dip in the East River, they are in too deep to walk away.

Joe Keenan wrote three novels featuring Gilbert and Phillip as well as a rather sweet Broadway musical before becoming a writer and Executive Producer for Fraser and working on Desperate Housewives and Glee.

Why Should it be in the Library? Because it’s quite simply one of the funniest and best plotted / paced / written books of all time. I read it they year it was first published and it has never been off my bookshelves since.

90s – The Burglar in the Library (1997)

What’s it about? For Bernie Rhodenbarr, bookseller and compulsive burglar, a weekend at a country bed & breakfast inn takes an unexpected twist when a valuable book is stolen and dead body turns up in the library.

Why Should it be in the Library? In the early 2000s I attended a crime fiction course at City Lit in London. On the first night we each had to declare our favourite crime writer. I, of course, made my case for Agatha Christie. But a woman who would eventually become a dear friend and mentor to me talked about this guy called Lawrence Block – an American who had written dozens of books and won dozens of prizes. Block’s not James Joyce. His career was not built on groundbreaking origination, but on consistently and conscientiously producing excellent work within a genre he clearly loves. This has to necessitate, at times, playing with the tropes of that genre, and here we find Bernie in basically a Golden Age country house mystery. Every character is not only a suspect, but suspicious; everyone has both a motive and an alibi; and circumstances conspire to ensure that the murderer must be one of the people trapped in the inn.

Block is normally recognised for his darker Matt Scudder novels, but I think that the Bernie the Burglar books more openly reflect his sheer joy in the genre. This one’s playful but fiendishly well plotted, and I’m putting this one in to the library because it’s a book that has given me much joy by a writer whose work I admire greatly. And really, if you can’t love the books in your library, what’s the point in having a library?

00s – The Lost Army of Cambyses by Paul Sussman (2002)

What’s it about? 523 BC: the Persian pharaoh Cambyses dispatches an army across Egypt’s western desert to destroy the oracle at Siwa. Legend has it that somewhere in the middle of the Great Dune Sea his army is overwhelmed by a sandstorm and lost forever.

Two and a half millennia later, a mutilated corpse is washed up on the banks of the Nile at Luxor, an antiques dealer is savagely murdered in Cairo, and a British archaeologist is found dead at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara.

The incidents appear unconnected, but Inspector Yusuf Khalifa of the Luxor police is not so sure.

And so he begins an investigation that will lead him into the forbidding, barren heart of the western desert, and the answer to one of the greatest mysteries of the ancient world…

Why Should it be in the Library? Because it’s a brilliant thriller nobody’s ever heard of from a writer who was taken from us tragically early. Paul Sussman was an archaeologist, a journalist and an author whose Middle-Eastern set thrillers mixed high octane page turners with genuine humanity, and confronted the heart-breaking complexities of the region while never losing sight of their primary function: To keep you turning those pages.

He died of a ruptured aneyurism just weeks before his 46th birthday, and days before his final novel “The Labyrinth of Osiris” was published. That book, in particular, is one of the best and most heartbreaking thrillers I’ve ever read.

Sussman’s work is pacy, tight, thrilling, and human. It carries a vast amount of historical research so lightly that the reader doesn’t even know how much they’re learning as they read these hugely enjoyable books. And his tragically early death is a reminder to each and every one of us to strive every day to live the best life possible, and to write the best book we possibly can.

Huge thanks to Derek for adding a great mix of titles to my Library. I know each week someone’s TBR grows thanks to the recommendations of my guests – I hope that you will also add Death at Dukes Halt to your shopping this week.

DECADES WILL RETURN

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July 9

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Neil Lancaster

This week I am delighted to introduce Neil Lancaster who has kindly agreed to take on my Decades challenge. In what could almost be considered a bit of careful planning, Neil is the first of two back-to-back guests who are making their decades selections in publication week of their new novel. This gives you six days to get your pre-order placed for Neil’s terrific thriller Dead Man’s Grave and a full week to work out who next week’s guest could possibly be!

If you haven’t come across my Decades challenge yet then let me explain what I asked Neil to help with. I am trying to build a new library of the very best books but started with nothing on the shelves. Each week since January I have been joined by a guest (authors, bloggers, journalists and publishers) and I ask them to help me fill the Library shelves by nominating their favourite reads. But each guest must follow two rules:

1 – Select ANY five books
2 – My guests may only choose one book per decade over five consecutive decades.

I shall leave you in Neil’s capable hands…

Neil Lancaster is the No.1 Audible bestselling author of the Tom Novak series. He has served in the RAF as a Military Policeman, in the UK, Germany, Cyprus and the Falkland Islands. He has worked for the Metropolitan Police as a Detective, investigating serious crimes in the capital and beyond. As a covert policing specialist, he has used a variety of tactics to obtain evidence against murderers, human traffickers, drug dealers and fraudsters.

He now lives in the Scottish Highlands, writes crime and thriller novels and works as a broadcaster and commentator on true crime documentaries. He is a key expert on two Sky Crime TV series, Meet, Marry, Murder and Made for Murder.

Twitter: www.twitter.com/@neillancaster66
Facebook: www.facebook.com/@NeilLancasterCrime
Website: www.neillancastercrime.co.uk

You can visit Neil’s Amazon page here:

Neil’s new novel Dead Man’s Grave has been included on the 2021 Bloody Scotland MacIlvanney Prize Longlist. It releases in digital format on Thursday 16th July and my review (with a pre-order link) is here: https://grabthisbook.net/?p=5620

DECADES

1950’s My family and Other Animals- Gerald Durrell- 1956

This book means so much to me that I find it hard to explain myself, which for a writer is a bit daft. I first came across this book aged about ten years old when my older sister was doing English Lit for O’ Level. As anyone of a certain age will tell you, this book was a feature on the syllabus for many years, and as a result it is widely loved and loathed in equal measures. I fall very much into the first category. It’s a magical, sunlit tale of the Durrell family’s five-year sojourn to Corfu in the 1930’s during that period between the world wars. My Mum, a real bookworm basically ordered me to read it. Up until this point, my reading had been limited to The Beano, The Dandy and occasionally Sparky, but as soon as I began reading, I was completely transfixed by the tale of the eccentric Durrell family and their life in Corfu. All at once the book was warm, sunlit, funny, intriguing and sometimes heart-rending. I learned from the book just what words on a page could conjure in my young mind. I was instantly transported to pre-war Corfu with the beautifully written descriptions of the landscape, flora and faunae. A magical book that will live with me forever.

1960’s- The Spoilers-Desmond Bagley- 1969

Desmond Bagley. Well, what can I say about him?

It’s pretty clear to me that without this author, I’d never had opened a laptop with the idea of writing a novel. Perhaps not as well known as Alistair Maclean or Len Deighton, Bagley was still a multi-million seller of fast paced thrillers, typical of that era.

This one, The Spoilers is a real knockabout rollercoaster of a thriller. A millionaire businessman’s daughter dies from a heroin overdose. He’s not satisfied, so puts together a team of individuals to take the fight to the heroin importers. A proper boys own tale of daring, risk, adventure and loss. The baddies are REALLY bad, the heroes as disparate as could be imagined. It just grabs you by the lapels and drags you in. Bagley was the master story teller of the thriller that featured an ordinary guy thrust into an extra-ordinary situation. Just a phenomenal book.

1970’s Running blind – Desmond Bagley-1970

My whole #Decades list was constructed around this book, that I maintain is Baglley’s best. I just HAD to have Running Blind in. I have read it more than any other book.

This presented me with an enormous problem, as I could have had a whole list of books just from the 1970’s, but as there are rules, even if there’s only two of them, I had to build my list around Running Blind. Just think of the other 1970’s books I could have included. The Moon’s a Balloon, Legionnaire, most of the Alistair MacLean’s, Deighton, Francis and loads of other Bagley’s, but rules is rules, so here we is.

I first read this book after watching the 1979 dramatisation of the book, which starred Stuart Wilson and George Sewell. I was only 13 at the time, but it had a profound effect on me. The story of a lapsed British intelligence agent forced into one last mission by a corrupt spy boss. He travels to Iceland to complete a simple task, but all is clearly not as it seems and he finds himself at the heart of a conspiracy involving KGB, CIA, double agents, and triple agents. It was just tremendous (look it up on YouTube. My Mum found the book in a charity shop and I devoured it. From that moment on, I was hooked on thrillers, and simply never looked back Bagley was a master craftsman at twists, revelation and pace and no one has influenced my journey as a writer more.

To my mind the opener of Running Blind has never been bettered, so I hope you’ll indulge me.

“To be encumbered with a corpse is to be in a difficult position. True, any doctor, even one just out of medical school, would have been able to diagnose the cause of death. The man had died of heart failure or what the doctors call cardiac arrest. The cause of his heart having stopped pumping blood was that someone had slid a sharp sliver of steel between his ribs just far enough to penetrate the great muscle of the heart and to cause a serious and irreversible leakage of blood so that it stopped beating. Cardiac arrest, as I said.

I wasn’t too anxious to find a doctor because the knife was mine and the hilt had been in my hand when he died. I stood on the open road with the body at my feet and I was scared, so scared that the nausea rose in my throat to choke me. This particular body had been a stranger — I had never seen him before in my life.”

BEAT THAT ! ! !

1980’s Policeman’s Lot- Harry Cole -1981

Harry Cole was a Bermondsey boy born before the war. After brief service in the army, and a time as a stone mason, he joined the Metropolitan Police in the 1950s. After training he was posted to Carter Street Police Station in Bermondsey, South London where he remained for thirty years.

His account of policing London in those decades has never been bettered in my opinion. All at once uproariously funny, touching, and often sad. He knitted together his decades of experiences into a beautifully written collection of disparate stories. I was dead set on joining the Met, and I read this book until it fell to pieces. It should still be required reading for anyone seeking to become a cop. There is more wisdom in those yellowed pages than in any official “how to” manual.

1990’s Killing Floor-Lee Child-1997

What can I say? I simply have loved everything that Lee Child has written. The hook of Reacher is just irresistible. The lone gunman coming into town is always an attractive prospect because of what it represents. Freedom. Reacher has nothing beyond his folding toothbrush, and a desire to travel America, where he just runs into situations that are there for him to solve. He’s what we all would secretly like to be (or so we tell ourselves) as in, free. No ties, no money worries, no washing clothes, no job, just the open road and an innate sense of discovery.

Child is a brilliant storyteller. His prose is lean and spare with no words wasted and Killing Floor is as good, if not better than any of his books. The tale of corrupt cops, murder money and deception. I could prattle on forever here, but we’ve all read it, right?

As long as you can continue to suspend belief that the same shit keeps happening to the same guy, the Reacher series is there forever, and for everyone.

Huge thanks to Neil for taking time to select five new books for my Library. I think this is the first time someone has managed to get two books by one author into their selections (still waiting for someone to do a clean sweep of Stephen King). I am also hugely excited to see Killing Floor appear – if I were to ever make my selections then this could well have been a contender for my own list.

If you want to visit my Library, see all the previous selections and meet the guests who selected each of the books then you can click this handy link: https://grabthisbook.net/?p=5113

DECADES WILL RETURN

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July 3

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Sara Sheridan

Welcome to the Decades challenge. It didn’t begin life as a challenge but as each week goes by I am becoming increasingly aware of the scale of the task I have started.

In January I asked myself the question “Which books would be added to the Ultimate Library? If I were to build a brand-new Library and start with no books, which titles should I add to the empty shelves to get the very best selection available for the Library visitors?”

I knew this was not something I could undertake alone so I have been inviting authors, bloggers, journalists and publishers to join me and help me decide which books should be added to the Library. Each guest is asked to nominate five of their favourite books to add to my Ultimate Library. But there is a small catch – my guests can only select one book per decade over five consecutive decades.

So while my challenge is to get the best books. My guests have the harder challenge – they have to decide which 50-year span they want to choose from and then work out which book best represents each decade within those 50 years. I am told this is a “frustrating” process.

This week I am delighted to welcome Sara Sheridan to Grab This Book.

Sara Sheridan writes history – both fiction and nonfiction. Her Mirabelle Bevan murder mystery series is set in the 50s and she also writes in the late Georgian/early Victorian period – her latest novel The Fair Botanists is out in August and is an intrigue set in 1820s Edinburgh. She remapped Scotland according to women’s history in Where are the Women. You can find her on twitter @sarasheridan where she posts historical research, writing snippets and ice cream tips. Sara’s own books and reading picks are available on her curated page at: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/sarasheridan

DECADES

4.50 From Paddington by Agatha Christie 1950s I mean there had to be a Miss Marple, right? Long term role model and Queen of Mystery. Right on brand for me and I’m obsessed with the 50s (among other things)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark 1960s I’m so conflicted about Muriel. Gawd. She was unbelievably uncomfortable in her own skin and was super-mean to her son but I love this book, which speaks so much of mid century Edinburgh where I was brought up.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison 1970s and a book which racists keep trying to ban. Morrison’s first novel and so ahead of the game. An absolute must-read.

Water Music by TC Boyle 1980s The single most rambunctious, dirty, tough historical novel I’ve read. I recommend this book to everybody who is interested in British culture. It’s all about where we came from.

The Morning Gift by Eva Ibbotson 1990s Never mind the Queen, God Save Eva Ibbotson. All her adult fiction is gorgeous, good hearted and full of love. The. Best.

My thanks to Sara for these fabulous selections. Some new reading for me in these selections and but some old favourites too. The best moments for me are when I first read the five choices my new guests have made and I nod and smile my way down the list. Opening with Agatha Christie got the smile in place from the outset.

You can visit the Decades Library and see all the selections which have been made thus far by clicking here: https://grabthisbook.net/?p=5113

DECADES WILL RETURN

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June 25

Decades: Compiling the Ulitmate Library with R.J. Barker

How quickly Friday comes around these days! It gives me enormous pleasure to bring another Decades Curator to Grab This Book. For those keeping track of the guests who enjoyed making their selections and those who cursed me – this is 100% a cursing week.

If you are new to Decades and have no idea what I am wittering on about then Welcome. In January I set myself the challenge of filling a new library with the very best books. We started with no books on the shelves and each week I invite a new guest to join me and add five of their favourite reads (the books which MUST be represented in any self-respecting library) to my Decades Library.

Why is it a Decades Library? Well guests have just two rules to follow…they can choose ANY five books but their selections must include just one book per decade over any five consecutive decades. Simple I thought. But there has been much cursing of those two rules.

My guest this week won the 2020 British Fantasy Society (BFS) Robert Holdstock award for Best Novel with his fourth novel The Bone Ships. This was after his debut trilogy (collectively known as The Wounded Kingdom) garnered rave reviews from readers and industry press.

Somewhat confusingly he lives somewhere South of here in “The North” in a home he is filling with taxidermy, “odd art” and lots of music. Having decided a music career was not to happen RJ Barker started writing the books we love.

It is a little known fact that RJ has an Evil Twin who writes crime thrillers (A Numbers Game recently released and available now). But we don’t talk about him here. Today it is all about R.J. Barker:

DECADES

CJ Cherryh. Gate of Ivrel (1976)

I’m starting with this cos this list is in date order but I didn’t start with this.

I was absolutely shocked to find out this was Cherryh’s debut when I was looking into the book, as her tale of the interdimensional Sorcerer Morgaine and her companion the barbarian, Vanye, is incredibly accomplished and one of those books that has just stuck with me. The platonic male/female friendship is something I’ve carried through six books now and I put that at the feet of Cherryh. Not only that but also the way she wrote it, it’s not an easy book to approach, the text is very mannered and in her other books she matches text to subject which I love. It also goes places that were totally unexpected. At the time I’d read a lot of the things that are considered ‘classic’ and that owe a clear debt of allegiance to Tolkien but in Gate of Ivrel (and the sequels) Cherryh offered me something new that, for me, had far more depth and surprises in it and was doing it without a massive series.

TL/DR I owe C.J. Cherryh a drink.

IAN M. BANKS Consider Phlebas 1987

Well. The Culture. Few are the things that set my mind alight in the way Iain M Banks work did. In fact, my first professional level novel was turned down for being too Banksish. Which, you know, high compliment, I thought anyway. I’ve chosen Phlebas because it was the first but it could be any of them. And I always read Consider in tandem with Look to Windward as the two books talk to one another. I’m not going to go on at length about Bank’s SF, other people have done that and they have done it with far more depth than I can. But Banks’ work just fills me with joy, at his worlds, at his characters and at the real love of people it contains. It’s sad that I will never get to tell him what a profound influence his books were on me, but I am very happy that with them.

CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO Darker Jewels. 1993

You can, to be quite frank, keep Anne Rice. If you want to read about vampires that struggle with what it is to be human then Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Comte St Germain is where to go. This particular book is set in Russia in the court of Ivan the Terrible, it is dense and dark and as its heart is a creature we are taught to think of as a monster when he is anything but. St Germain is often the most human character within Yarbro’s books, his centuries of existence give him a perspective on the historical events surrounding him the other players lack. His learning and attempts to bring a sense of decency are ultimately doomed when he comes upon people who are fundamentally not decent. Is it magical creatures flying around murdering people and drinking blood? No. Is it darker and more horrific than any other vampire story you’ll come across? For my money, yes.

Dissolution C.J. Sansom 2004

There is so much of this book which I lifted for my own Wounded Kingdom books. That sense of melancholy, an overarching feeling that things are not going to go well for these people no matter what they do. Enter from stage left, Matthew Shardlake, hunchback lawyer in the court of King Henry VIII. I love Sansom’s work and it is that sense of melancholy within them that draws me in. There’s a real sense, as Shardlake becomes more and more entangled in the lethal politics of Henry’s court that the absolute best outcome Shardlake is ever going to be capable of is to simply get out alive and that he knows that. He is a small and unimportant person moving among vast and powerful men who would think nothing of crushing him. These are wonderful books and I adore them.

James Lee Burke Robicheaux. 2018

Now, I actually wanted to write about A Private Cathedral which, although written in 2019 was published in 2020 and fell foul of the rules. But It’s an amazing book where JLB sneaks an urban fantasy novel past the literary establishment as a crime novel. BUT, I can’t, so I will talk about an earlier book in the series, Robicheaux. This is a book I never want to read again. It’s good, don’t get me wrong. It shows just what an outstanding writer JLB is, but my god it is grim. I’m glad I read it but I’m not going back. In fact, if you had told me that just as he started writing this the author was told he had a few months to live I would have believed you. It has that feel to it. All the way through I thought the author was going to end it with this book, that no one would survive. It is an exercise in tension that I hugely enjoyed upon reading, but have no wish to put myself through again.

A Private Cathedral is a stunner though.

Huge thanks to RJ for joining in with my Decades Challenge. He was extremely polite despite my astonishing ability to only contact him at the most inconvenient times and has brought some fabulous new recommendations to my Library. If you haven’t read any of RJ’s books yet then you can find them all here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/RJ-Barker/e/B005LVVCTQ/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1

The Decades Library continues to grow and you can see all the previous selections here: https://grabthisbook.net/?p=5113

DECADES WILL RETURN

Category: Decades, From The Bookshelf | Comments Off