Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Noelle Holten

When I first started blogging I knew I needed people to help me. I could do the reading and I knew what I wanted to say about the books but once you start releasing content into the world you do want to check that the delivery and promotion elements are correct. Also, getting established in the blogging community and Book Twitter needs a wee bit of understanding – I enlisted the help of a few bloggers that I felt were doing what I (one day) wanted to be able to do.

One of these very helpful souls was the CrimeBookJunkie – Noelle Holten. Noelle was supportive, generous with her time and her advice and helped me to shape this blog into the award winning ramble it has become. When I started my Decades project I knew Noelle was one of the booklovers I wanted to have in my team of curators helping to build my Ultimate Library.

A quick recap for new visitors. I am building the Ulitmate Library from a starting point of zero books. I am asking booklovers to help me select the books I should include in the Library. There are just two rules governing their selections…pick any five books…only one book per decade over any five consecutive decades.

Enough from me, you want the books. I will hand over to Noelle and allow her to introduce herself and her work and then she will share her (excellent) selections.

Decades

Hi! My name is Noelle Holten and I live in a small village in North Warwickshire. My author bio states I am an award-winning blogger at www.crimebookjunkie.co.uk and I have won a few awards so I guess that’s true! I am a PR & Social Media Manager for Bookouture, a leading digital publisher in the UK, and before this I worked as a Senior Probation Officer (for eighteen years), covering a variety of risk cases as well as working in a multi-agency setting. I have three Hons BA’s – Philosophy, Sociology (Crime & Deviance) and Community Justice, a Diploma in Probation Studies and a Masters in Criminology. My hobbies include reading, attending as many book festivals as I can afford and sharing the #booklove via my blog. In 2017 I started writing my first crime novel and in 2019, Dead Inside – my debut novel with One More Chapter/Harper Collins UK was published and is an international kindle bestseller. It is the start of a new series featuring DC Maggie Jamieson – Dead Wrong and Dead Perfect followed and Dead Secret is now available for pre order.

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I hear Sharon Bairden set the bar for this, so I hope I can meet those expectations. The fabulous Gordon of Grab this Book asked me to pick five of my favourite books, one from each decade over five decades – WTAF? So simple then, right? It’s a lot harder than you think, especially as I just wrote a piece which some of the same books fall into – but I am going to choose different ones because I love so many. So here goes – My range is the 1970’s through to present day and it was tough – but I focused on books that had memorable characters to me – as characters are what keep me hooked on a book/series!

1970- 1980

(Published 1974) Mystery of The Glowing Eye – Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew Mystery series)

I was a HUGE Nancy Drew fan and this book creeped me right out as I read it on a family trip to our cottage in the summer. I was probably eight or nine, and we had no tv so books were how we entertained ourselves. This book made me slightly afraid of the dark and every time I had to go outside to the loo (no indoor plumbing) I was convinced I saw that damn glowing eye! This book was ahead of it’s time for sure as it touched upon robotics but it is the characters and how they work together that really brings this story and series to life. There was danger, abduction and a good old fashion mystery to solve and I was addicted despite my fear.

1980 – 1990

Pet Sematary – Stephen King (published 1983)

Just thinking of this book sends shivers down my spine. The whole idea of bringing back our loved ones in theory is a nice thought – but what they may return as – well they are better off dead for ebveryone’s sake. I loved the dynamics of the characters in this story – a lovin family find what they think could be their dream home – and then of course…the cemetery for loved pets…a phenomenal read and one of my favourites. As the tagline says: Sometimes dead is better…

1990 – 2000

The Silence of the Lambs – Thomas Harris (Published 1991)

OMFG what can I say about this book that hasn’t already been said. A crime thriller with one of the best serial killers ever created – Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lecter. I have read this book a zillion times and watched the movie just as many times. The sheer fear I had as I raced through the pages was addictive. I wanted to be Clarice Starling and even looked into what I needed to do to become an FBI agent – no joke. She was living my dream! This book has everything – psychological, crime, horror – really set my heart racing. I had always had a fascination with serial killers and loved how this book almost showed the process in tracking and arresting those elusive killers. The characterisation was everything I could hope for and so much more.

2000 – 2010’s

Fleshmarket Close / Alley by Ian Rankin (published 2008)

Another one of my favourite series – I particularly liked Fleshmarket Close (also known as Flesh Market Alley) because of the setting (the darker side of Edinburgh is brought to life) and how we see a different Rebus and Siobhan to the ones we are first introduced to in earlier books in this series. Issues of racism, illegal immigration, and corruption are all tackled along with so much more. What I love about this book is it is quite complex and the characters complement each other even when conflict arises. If you haven’t met one of the grumpiest, old school detectives going – you really need to as he gets under your skin and you’ll find you will be hooked.

2010 – 2020

Lennox – Craig Russell (published 2010)

I was recommended this series by a friend and fell in love with it immediately. Lennox was born in Glasgow but raised in Canada so when he returns to Glasgow in the 1950’s we see the cultural differences immediately. It’s dark and littered with dry humour and the characters are just amazing. A very raw, gritty, violent and intoxicating read. The author is a master at bringing the reader into the stories – and I’ve been a fan of his work ever since.

My thanks, once again, to Noelle for these marvellous selections. This is the closest I have come to having read all five selections made by one of my guests – I have read four of these books and the fifth is still in my TBR (so close).

You can see all the books which have been added to my Library here: https://grabthisbook.net/?p=5113

Decades Will Return

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March 12

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Chris Lloyd

Decades is into its third month and my Library is growing. Library? What Library?

Late last year I pondered the dilemma a librarian may face if they were asked to create a new library. They have absolutely no books, none, a blank slate. Where would you start? From here my challenge began – compile the Ulimate Library, invite guests to join me in selecting the books they feel should be added to the shelves. But we must have rules to govern this venture or we risk anarchy.

Rule 1 – Guests can pick any five books.

Rule 2 – Only one book per decade for any five consecutive decades.

That’s it. Easy! Or seemingly not as when my guests try to make their five choices I am told there can be cussing and indecision.

Today I am thrilled to be joined by Chris Lloyd. When I compiled my favourite Audiobooks of 2020 there was never a doubt in my mind that The Unwanted Dead, published by Orion, would feature. Chris tells me that the paperback of The Unwanted Dead is out on March 18th so I could think of no better guest to invite to participate in my Decades challenge this week. Before I get Chris to introduce himself I would urge you to seek out The Unwanted Dead this week and when you have finished and enjoyed that one here are some of his other books to get your teeth into: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chris-Lloyd/e/B01GQH7Q5C?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1615537791&sr=8-1

Decades

My name’s Chris Lloyd and I have a tendency to go around in circles. I grew up in South Wales, where my parents moved from their native mid-Wales after more than a decade of living abroad, so when it came to my turn, I went and lived in Catalonia for twenty-four years. I lived in Girona and then Barcelona, where I taught English, worked in educational publishing, wrote guide books, almost appeared on TV three times and translated. Interspersed with this, I also lived in Bilbao and Madrid, and I spent six months as a student in Grenoble researching the French Resistance, even though I kept coming back to Catalonia. I told you I went around in circles. As yet more proof of that, I moved back to Wales a few years ago, where I live near enough to the Brecon Beacons to feel the cold, but not so close as to enjoy the scenery. But never mind that as I’m about to move with my wife to my childhood home by the sea, which we’ve been trying to do for years.

I spend part of my day translating academic texts from Catalan and Spanish and another more fun part of the day writing crime fiction. I wrote a trilogy for Canelo set in Girona, featuring Elisenda Domènech, a detective with the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police force, which is about to come out in audiobook.

The result of my lifelong fascination with resistance and collaboration in Occupied France, I now write the Eddie Giral series, set in Paris in World War Two and featuring a Paris police detective forced to come to terms with the Nazi Occupation of the city. Seeking to negotiate a path between the occupier and the occupied, Eddie struggles to retain some semblance of humanity while walking a fine line between resistance and collaboration. The first book in the series, The Unwanted Dead, published by Orion, comes out in paperback on 18 March.

You can come and say hello on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrislloydbcn or take a look at my website at https://chrislloydauthor.com/

I want to thank Gordon for inviting me to contribute to this brilliant idea, and also for setting me the completely impossible task of finding my favourite book from each decade over five decades – I felt actual pain every time I had to eliminate a book I loved from the list to arrive at the five below. I’ve gone for the 1950s to the 1990s, and even that decision was tough. I hope you like some of my choices.

1950s – The Daughter of Time – Josephine Tey This is the perfect crime book, the Lord Reith of crime writing – it informs, educates and entertains. A story of a police detective confined to a hospital bed who decides to investigate the murder of the princes in the tower, it’s a textbook showcase of the limitless possibilities that crime fiction can offer. It not only contributed to the historical debate about the role of villain that history had assigned to Richard III, it’s also a powerful insight into character and, quite simply, a bloody good detective story

1960s – The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré

The lesson this book taught us is that heroes can be amoral, unpalatable people, and you don’t have to root for them any the less because of it. Le Carré changed the rules with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and I firmly believe we as readers and writers have been benefiting from it ever since. He made it all right for main characters to be fundamentally flawed and unlikeable – even ordinary – and for the supposed good that they are striving for to be

achieved using methods that are no less morally reprehensible than the supposed evil they are fighting against. It was a sea change in depth and understanding of character and of heroes and villains.

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

From the very first line with its “unfashionable” end of the galaxy to Marvin the Paranoid Android with a brain the size of a small planet, The Hitchhiker’s Guide taught me that it was perfectly all right for a book to be both very intelligent and delightfully silly. In fact, the silliness is born out of the intelligence and really isn’t that silly anyway when you look close enough. Quite apart from that, it’s also a hymn to playfulness not just with story, but with language. Read this book and your view of the universe will be altered forever – in a good way.

1980s – The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco

There are few books that can compare with The Name of the Rose when it comes to creating an unsettling atmosphere. The harshness of the setting and the description of the weather outside the confines of the monastery conjure up a sense of brooding malevolence that is both exacerbated and symbolised by one of the most bizarre casts of characters in any book. Also, I started reading it alone at night in a Spanish castle, which might not have been the best idea, but it certainly helped set the mood.

1990s – Fatherland – Robert Harris

I’m beginning and ending these decades by closing the circle with a celebration of just how far you can go with crime fiction. My favourite ‘What if…’ story, Fatherland takes place in a 1960s Berlin in a world where the Nazis won. A police detective is investigating a case that leads him to suspect a far greater crime, one that we all know with the hindsight of history but that he doesn’t. And that’s the power and brilliance of the book – to be able to take one of the most evil moments in history and reveal it once again with renewed horror as it becomes apparent to the protagonist.

My most sincere thanks to Chris for his excellent selections and for taking time to join my Decades challenge. The Unquiet Dead is released in paperback on 18th March – 1940, a Paris cop investigating murders while his city is taken under Nazi control…I don’t do it justice when I say I found it a brilliant read.

If you want to catch up on which books have already been added to my Library then you can visit it here: https://grabthisbook.net/?p=5113

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March 5

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Ian Patrick Robinson

I am inviting guests to select five books which they feel should be included in my Ultimate Library. When I started this quest back in January all the Library shelves were bare so I recruited some guest curators to add the books – the only rules:

1 – Choose five books

2 – Only one book per decade over any five consecutive decades

I am told it is causing a great deal of soul searching.

So far we have had contributions from Sharon Bairden, Heather Martin and Chris McDonald – all their books are in the Library (here)

Today I am thrilled to be joined by Ian Patrick Robinson. Returning visitors will know that Ian’s books have been firm favourites of mine and How the Wired Weep made it into my Top Ten reads of 2020.

Ian’s Batford books can be bought here: http://fahrenheit-press.com/authors_ian_patrick.html
or through his own website where you can also get the phenomonal How the Wired Weep: https://www.ianpatrick.co.uk/books

His new series (Nash and Moretti) can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ian-Robinson/e/B08V37PGVX?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1614897678&sr=8-1

So I leave you in Ian’s company as he makes his five selections.

DECADES

My name’s Ian Patrick Robinson, a retired DS who now writes fiction. I wrote under the name Ian Patrick for my Batford series: Rubicon, Stoned Love and Fools Gold (Fahrenheit Press) as well as How the Wired Weep, which is a standalone of mine.

I have a new crime series out at the moment under the name Ian Robinson (The Book Folks) that follows DI Pippa Nash and DS Nick Moretti who investigate murder in London. Latent Damage is the first and Cover Blown is out on the 22nd February.

I try to bring authenticity to my work as well as a character driven storyline that draws on the experience of departments I worked within while in the police.

I thought the task of selecting five books across consecutive decades would be easy – I was wrong!

Here are my five choices starting at the latest and ending at the earliest. These aren’t my top five books, but I decided to use books I own as a physical copy. (There’s an anomaly later but I’m certain you’ll forgive me)

Each book explores a flawed character within a unique world. The very aim I try to achieve with my own novels. What this exercise has shown me is the influence literature has had on my own writing experience. Something I’d recognised but hadn’t fully appreciated.

As with all these things it’s subjective and anything I say here is my own opinion and to be taken as such.

Thank you, Gordon, for the invite and I’m very proud to be part of this venture.

2010 – 2020

Drive – James Sallis No Exit Press 2011

I’m using the film tie-in edition for this as it was published in 2011. Like the film of the same name this 191p novel is just superb. I watched the film before picking up the book and, as Rubicon has been optioned by the BBC for six-part TV series, I was interested to see how close they stuck to the book’s central lead. For me the book’s opening lines are incredible. I was drawn into the world of Driver (main lead) within the first paragraph. Trust me when I say it’s a skill to accomplish for any writer and Sallis just continues with this throughout. The tagline – GET IN. GET OUT. GET AWAY, is weaved throughout the book like a charm. It surfaces in Driver’s role as wheelsman for hire and in his personal life. It’s an emotional exploration of what it is to be human and how to survive in an uncertain world.

2000 – 2010

The Road – Cormac McCarthy – Picador 2006

This book blew my mind when I first read it. The setting is as desolate as the writing. McCarthy gets away with not using speech marks throughout the book and yet the story flows so well. The book explores the journey of father and son on a road following an apocalyptic event. McCarthy was asked what the event was, and his reply went something like – What happened doesn’t matter it’s what will they do now that does. To me it’s a masterclass in storytelling. I’ve sent this book to so many people and some get it, and others don’t. That’s the beauty of the prose. The flawed character for me was the father. Although he was doing all he could to protect his son McCarthy lets the reader know that the father is struggling in both mind and body and at some point, he will need to make a choice. Sometimes he will be right other times not so.

1990 – 2000

Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk – Norton 1996

A different writer from the first two but a phenomenal one at that. In Fight Club Palahniuk explores masculinity. It examines our cultures obsession with fame, possessions, violence, recognition, ego, affirmation and mental health. I would hazard a guess it contains some of the most quoted lines from book and film for my generation. Jim Uhls wrote the script for the film and he did an excellent job of bringing Tyler Durden to life using many of the lines Palahniuk had written in the book. This book is probably one of my favourites as I own two signed editions of it. One is a limited edition that could only be purchased in the US and Canada. I begged a relative to get it for me.

The line from the book that has stayed with me is: It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we are free to do anything.

I was diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy around 2011 and had to retire from the police in 2015 when it became physically too much for me to manage. I have this quote on my desk and this book got me through some tough times. I’m now writing my ninth novel as a result. Books are powerful tools for hope and change. We should never underestimate a book’s worth at the right time in life.

1980 – 1989

The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro – Faber 1989

What a beautiful tale of unrequited love this book is. Narrated in the first person we’re taken on a journey of discovery through the eyes of Stevens an aging butler at Darlington hall in the fifties. I saw this as an exploration of love, friendship, missed opportunity, class and social conditioning. The setting is unique and in stark contrast to that of Du-Maurier’s Rebecca. I was taken to a time I didn’t know and felt alive within the world Steven’s inhabits. His dynamic with Miss Kenton is inspired and wonderfully told. A loving and sensual book that’s gentle on the mind but has stayed with me for so long. I read this again during the first lockdown for pure escapism.

1970 – 1979

Jaws – Peter Benchley – Bantam 1974

Last but by no means least, Jaws was probably one of the first books I appreciated reading as a youth. A change from Sven Hassell novels and I fell in love with the cover art. What boy wouldn’t fall for a book with the snout and teeth of a huge shark pointing towards a swimmer on the surface of the sea? This was another book I re-read during lockdown and I’m so glad I did. Here’s the thing with the book v the film – it’s not all about the shark! The shark story is secondary to the main tale of Chief Brody’s decaying marriage and how will he hold it all together while his wife has an affair? I found the book to be way better than the film for the human side of the narrative. It’s an exploration of one man’s grip on a life that’s falling apart. Benchley did a great job with this. Here’s the anomaly I mentioned in the beginning that you’ve forgotten if you’ve read this far – I don’t own a physical copy of Jaws only Jaws 2 written by Hank Searls.

Huge thanks to Ian for sharing these wonderful selections. Linking them with the flawed character theme added an extra level of complexity to the challenge – I think if I asked some of my future guests to link their selections it may cause a bit of a backlash!

My personal completion ratio for these selections is just 20% – I read Jaws while I was in my mid-teens and was reading every horror novel I could get my paws on.

All five books will be added to The Library.

Decades Will Return

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February 19

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Chris McDonald

As you may be aware, I am inviting guests to join me here at Grab This Book to help me curate the Ultimate Libary. It is a feature I have dubbed Decades, the reason for which will soon become apparent. Each guest gets to nominate five books which they believe should be included in the definitive collection of unmissable reads. Other than limiting my guest to five books (Rule One), I also insist that they only select one book per decade over five consecutive decades (Rule Two).

Simple!

Or apparently not as everyone who starts making a list suddenly finds choosing just five books is HARD. Then choosing only one book per decade is also HARD. But there have to be rules or anarchy ensues.

You can visit the Library HERE.

Today I am thrilled to welcome Chris McDonald. Chris grew up in Northern Ireland before settling in Manchester via Lancaster and London. He is the author of the excellent DI Erika Piper series, A Wash of Black, Whispers In The Dark as well as the forthcoming third – Roses For The Dead. He has also recently dabbled in writing cosy crimes, as a remedy for the darkness. The first in the Stonebridge Mysteries was released in early 2021. He is a full time teacher, husband, father to two beautiful girls and a regular voice on The Blood Brothers Podcast. He is a fan of 5-a-side football, heavy metal and dogs.

You can (and should) visit Chris’s Amazon Page here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chris-McDonald/e/B083VRLYPM?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2&qid=1613758627&sr=8-2

The Archive of Blood Brothers podcasts can be found here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-blood-brothers-podcast/id1504641524

And without futher ado – Chris’s wonderful choices…the first guest to take us up to a 2020 release

DECADES

1987 – Misery – Stephen King

I wasn’t alive when this was published! I only read my first King book last year, and very quickly read more. I’m a scaredy cat, and starting with The Shining was a bad idea! Misery was a masterclass in tension – the action happens in a house but never grows dull. Annie is a terrifying character and does some shocking things! King made it scary, funny, tense and pacy and blew my mind in the process. I ordered The Stand off the back of reading this but was overawed by the sheer size of it!! Maybe this year…

1997 – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – JK Rowling

Harry Potter is where my love affair with reading started. I remember the moment I set eyes on the cover – I was passing Easons in Ballymena on my way back from the toilet. I was ten years old and was entranced by the display. I ran back to my mum who gave me the money to go and buy it. I was blown away by this story, as millions were and continue to be. It led to me queuing at midnight outside Waterstones for the latter books, where I would go home with my cherished copy and read until the morning. The world was massive and main characters were frequently in peril. It was eye opening stuff and I truly believe that without this eureka moment, I wouldn’t enjoy books like I do!

2001 – Heavier Than Heaven – Charles R Ross

This is a non-fiction book. It’s a biography of Kirt Cobain and one of the books I re-read regularly. Nirvana were a massive part of my teenage years, and continue to be one of the bands I come back to regularly. Kurt was an extraordinary human being – flawed and talented in equal measure. This book is a warts and all account – it paints him in a very fair light and is a perfect read for any music fan.

2010 – Slow Horses – Mick Herron

Foolishly, I’ve waited 11 years to discover this man’s genius. The Slough House series features MI5 rejects, all of whom have made a massive mistake and ended up as Jackson Lamb’s underling. Again, the characters make this book – the plot is great, but I could easily read 300 pages of the cast having a chat over a cup of coffee! As the series has worn on, Herron has tackled bigger political issues, though the characters have remained as acerbic as ever!

2020 – We Begin At The End – Chris Whitaker

We Begin At The End blew me away. It won our Blood Brothers book of the year award and was my vote. It’s a story set in small town America. The story is wonderful, but the book will be remembered for the characters – Duchess Radley in particular. Chris’s writing is just so, so good and will be fully deserving of all the awards he will inevitably win!

My thanks to Chris for these brilliant selections – I have read three of the five which is my highest personal completion percentage so far! I will add all five books to The Library where they join the ten books selected by Sharon Bairden and Heather Martin.

Decades Will Return

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February 12

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Heather Martin

If you were to fill a library from scratch which books would you put onto the shelves? That was the question which first crossed my mind one wintery day during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. I wouldn’t know where to start.

Well that’s not quite true as Terry Pratchett, Lee Child and Agatha Christie could command well over 15o books between them and they are just my first three picks. But after that I would simply go into a frenzy of dropping author names and a library of nothing but crime novels from Ed McBain to Val McDermid would emerge. Satisfying, but not really a true reflection of the Ultimate Library.

I decided I needed help. I would invite book lovers, authors, bloggers and publishers to help me pick the books which need to go into the Ultimate Library. I have two rules:

Rule 1 – Nominate Five Books which should be included in my Ultimate Library

Rule 2 – You can only select one title per decade and the decades must be consecutive so we get a 50 year publication span.

Today I am delighted to welcome Heather Martin to Grab This Book. As I haven’t given Heather the opportunity to talk about her own book, I asked if she could introduce herself and make sure she took the opportunity to plug The Reacher Guy.

I’m an Australian long since settled in England, a willed displacement that I have in common with my biographical subject, Lee Child. Just as he wrote Killing Floor after a long first-act career in television, I wrote his authorised biography The Reacher Guy (out now from Constable at Little, Brown in hardback, ebook and audiobook, with Juliet Stevenson narrating), after many dedicated years as a student and teacher of languages and literature. But there’s one big difference: it’s unlikely my book will be the first in a twenty-four-book continuous bestselling series. The Reacher Guy is the intertwined history of three men: James Dover Grant CBE, and his two great fictional creations, Jack Reacher and Lee Child.

Thank you to Gordon at Grab This Book for inviting me to contribute to the Ultimate Library. Which seductive concept reminds me of one of Lee’s crazier pipe dreams: to build a bespoke library somewhere in the English countryside big enough to house all his books and still leave room for a full-size Bentley parked in the middle.

So … It’s the kind of question that, once asked, you can’t put out of your mind. If you could only choose five books, one from each of five consecutive decades, what would they be? I knew immediately I was doomed to frustration. And much as I respect the literary discipline of working within constraints, somehow that imposition of historical continuity made it all the more difficult. In drawing up this list, I found I spent most of my time thinking of ways to cheat the system. How much could I get away with?

I ruled out the present day: I’ve read too many books in the last year that I loved. Better to go further back, where there was more chance of having forgotten. Back before the nineties, which was when Lee wrote Killing Floor, which could only cause complications. But the eighties … How would I choose between Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, between The Color Purple and Beloved, to (sneakily) name just two?

I love all five of the following books, but a small part of me now hates them as well, because they pushed all the other ones out.

DECADES

1930s

Federico García Lorca 1898-1936

Three Tragedies: Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba

I fell in love with Andalusia in my early teens, which was what led me to play the guitar, which was what brought me from Perth to London, and thence to Cambridge to study languages. In the early thirties, Lorca became director of La Barraca, a touring company whose mission was to bring theatre to rural audiences free of charge. Lorca defined theatre as ‘poetry that arises from the book and becomes human’. I love these plays for their lyricism and intensity, their boldness, their powerful portrayal of women. The cheat? A reading of the plays will surely lead on to his poetry.

1949

Simone de Beauvoir 1908-1986

The Second Sex

Philosopher Simone de Beauvoir was, in her day, the youngest woman ever to pass the fiercely competitive postgraduate ‘agrégation’ examination in France, coming second only to lifelong partner Jean-Paul Sartre. De Beauvoir was fearless, with all the courage of her convictions. And she wrote a big book exploring a very big idea: ‘One is not born a woman but becomes one.’ The Second Sex has extraordinary scope, reaching back to Aristotle and Aquinas and anticipating Germaine Greer and Margaret Atwood, and still holds its own today.

1952

E. B. White 1899-1985

Charlotte’s Web

A favourite when I read it as a child, a favourite to read aloud to my own children, and no doubt still a favourite were I to reread it today. Everything about this deeply compassionate book is life-affirming and life-enhancing: the lightness of touch, the playful language, the enchanting line drawings, the humour, the cycle of love and loss. And every single character unforgettable. Cheat: It brings to mind my treasured collection of Puffin paperbacks, many of which I brought with me when I left home years ago.

1962

Jorge Luis Borges 1899-1986

Labyrinths

If I’d been allowed only one book, this would have been it. Not because I once met Borges, a few years before he died, and supplied him with a Japanese word he’d forgotten. But because every Borges story, like his aleph, contains ‘the inconceivable universe’. This anthology includes three of the best. ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’, a highly condensed thriller and detective story in which all possible outcomes of an event occur simultaneously, with each then leading to further proliferations of possibilities. ‘Funes the Memorious’, my go-to story on memory, whose nineteen-year-old antihero (who for some reason reminds me a bit of Lee) is ‘as monumental as bronze, more ancient than Egypt, older than the prophecies and the pyramids’, and whose poignant moral is ‘to think is to forget’. And ‘The Library of Babel’, ruled by divine disorder, in which is to be found – somewhere, no one knows quite where – the book of books, containing all other possible books. The biggest cheat of all.

1979

William Styron 1925-2006

Sophie’s Choice

‘If you read only one book,’ Lee Child once said to me, ‘make it these three’, writing a dedication in a copy of Sophie’s Choice. So I did. And by the time I got to the end I knew exactly what those cryptic words meant. I read it in New York in 2019, while I was deep in writing The Reacher Guy (Lee had told me that the red house of Echo Burning was inspired by Styron’s pink house in Brooklyn). Not much got written that weekend. I didn’t go out. I didn’t eat much either. Not sure I got out of my pyjamas. No matter that the story of Stingo and Sophie and Nathan was more than six hundred pages long, I could barely put it down. And by the end I was heartbroken – in a good way.

Huge thanks to Heather for adding books six to ten to my Library. It’s taking shape! The first five books, selected by Sharon Bairden, can be found here: https://grabthisbook.net/?p=5056

I would like to add my personal recommendation to read or (as I am currently doing) listen to, The Reacher Guy: The Authorised Biography of Lee Child. It’s a terrific book and the audiobook narration by Juliet Stevenson is aural nectar. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B086L3VD1T/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

Decades will return

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January 20

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Sharon Bairden

Imagine you were tasked with the impossible responsibility of stocking a library from scratch but you were only allowed to include the very best books. Where would you start? Could you do it? Would you include that book everyone loves but you don’t understand why?

I wanted to know which books would be in the Ultimate Library so I decided to find out. But I don’t get to choose – I want others to do the hard work for me. Readers, writers, bloggers, publishers – I am going to ask people to help me in my epic task but I am going to set my guests two rules:

Rule 1 – Nominate Five Books which should be included in my Ultimate Library

Rule 2 – You can only select one title per decade and the decades must be consecutive so we get a 50 year publication span

Easy!

To kick things off I asked my blogger pal, and debut author, Sharon Bairden to make the first five selections. I hand over to Sharon to introduce herself and I asked her to include some self-promotion before she speaks about other people’s books.

Hi, my name is Sharon and I live just outside of Glasgow. By day I am a manager in a small independent advocacy service and by night I have a passion for all things crime! Some of you may know me as Chapterinmylife Book Blogger https://chapterinmylife.wordpress.com where I blog about the books that I love and book festivals and launches I attend.

I have also just stepped over to the other side and my debut novel, Sins of the Father was published by Red Dog Press on 27th November 2020. It is a dark psychological thriller/suspense set in Glasgow and it explores the impact of trauma through the eyes of Rebecca Findlay – a woman who has married her husband, not out of love, but to destroy him. Book two, another standalone psychological thriller, will be out later this year.

Gordon set me an almost impossible task! He has asked me to pick five of my favourite books and tasked me to choose one from each decade over five consecutive decades, from the 60s through to the noughties! So here goes!

DECADES

1960s – it has got to be Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. Not only is this a damn good read, it has an important message and one that resonates with me deeply. Social justice and inequality are the themes that drive this book forward and outside of reading, upholding social justice, challenging inequality, discrimination and stigma are my passions.

1970s – Stephen King’s The Shining. Before I delved into crime, horror was my go to read and there was nothing better than curling up with a good Stephen King novel. The Shining is probably the only book and film which has terrified me throughout my life, the isolation, the addictions, the supernatural, God, it still sends shivers down my spine!

1980s William McIllvaney’s The Papers of Tony Veitch, what can I say, McIlvanney was, and in many respects, still is the icon of Scottish crime fiction. I’m currently rereading this series and realise that when I read it many years ago, I did not appreciate the beauty of his writing.

1990s – Martina Cole’s The Ladykiller, this ignited a love of crime, gritty gang life and saw me down at my library on an almost daily basis to get my fix. I’d fallen away from reading as much in my later teen years and Martina Cole set me back on track!

2000 – Lin Anderson’s Driftnet. Lin’s books cemented my love of Scottish crime fiction and it was my love of her writing which led me to start to go along to book events and festivals, which in turn brought me into contact with bloggers, writers and gave me the confidence to make the first steps in realising my dream to write my own book.

My thanks to Sharon for starting the curation process. Decades will return and more books will be added to The Library.

Until then I’d recommend picking up Sharon’s book Sins of the Father. Click through this link and grab a copy today: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sharon-Bairden/e/B0899BQMJX?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1611164121&sr=1-1

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