Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Steve Cavanagh

It was around this time last year the Decades Library was first imagined. You’ve likely heard this before but to welcome new visitors I will explain my Decades Challenge and the ultimate goal.

Something happened which made me ponder the question: Where would you begin if you were asked to assemble a library but had to start with nothing but empty shelves. You have no books. None. Not one. Which books would you add to the library shelves to make sure readers would have nothing but the very best books to choose from?

I quickly realised that I could not possibly answer this question alone so I decided I would ask some guests to help me. Each week I am joined by a booklover (authors, bloggers, publishers and journalists have all lent their time to assist) and I ask them to nomimate some “unmissable” books. To make their selection process slightly more complicated I set two rules which each guest must follow:

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

And that’s the Decades Challenge. Selecting five favourite books. If you think it’s easy then try to narrow down your own five choices.

All that remains now is for me to pass the Curator’s Hat to my guest. It’s my absolute delight to welcome Steve Cavanagh to the Library.

Steve Cavanagh is a critically acclaimed, Sunday Times best-selling author of the Eddie Flynn series. All of his novels have been nominated for major awards. His third novel, The Liar, won the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Novel of the year 2018. Thirteen won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime novel of the year 2019. The Eddie Flynn novels have been translated into 26 languages. His latest book is The Devil’s Advocate.

You can order any of Steve’s books here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Steve-Cavanagh/e/B00OAGCA62?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1642111903&sr=8-1

DECADES

The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes (1950)

Chester Himes had an extraordinary life of hardship and adversity. I can think of few writers who experienced half of what he had to endure. I am a huge fan of Raymond Chandler, but I think enough people will have read and marveled at Chandler already, and not nearly enough people have read Chester Himes. On his best day, Himes can make words dance. He is one of the very few writers that can turn prose into music. This novel is the second outing in the Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones detective series. By all means start with A Rage in Harlem, but I think some of the best prose work is in this one.

The Chill by Ross MacDonald (1964)

Ross MacDonald had his own personal troubles. He poured his heart and his empathy for his fellow human beings into his work, and specifically, his fictional hero PI Lew Archer. Writing a long-running detective series is an incredibly difficult undertaking. I remember Dennis Lehane remarking that writing a series can yield diminishing returns when it comes to the quality of each book, “how many people say the twelfth book in a series is their favourite?” This is a fair point, but some writers beat those odds. The Chill is the eleventh Lew Archer novel, and many people say it’s the best.

Ripley’s Game by Patricia Highsmith (1974)

Few authors have had such an impact on the genre as Patricia Highsmith. She was perhaps one of the finest proponents of the psychological thriller. In Strangers On A Train, she used a high concept hook as the engine for the novel and wrote many more standalones. She also wrote a brilliant short series about the killer and conman Tom Ripley. In Ripley’s game, she combines the two elements of her craft. What if you had a terminal illness? What if someone, perhaps with dark motives, came to you and offered a vast sum of money if you killed someone? You family will need that money when you’re gone. What if what began as a psychological game turned into something much more terrifying? A brilliant book, and one that I return to again and again.

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (1988)

There’s not much to say about this one other than it’s the book that made me love crime and thrillers. I’d read Sherlock Holmes, and detective comics, but it wasn’t until I was around twelve or thirteen that I read this one. My mum gave it to me. I know some people think Red Dragon is a better thriller, but for me Clarice Starling is an equally brilliant creation as Hannibal. This is the book that started it all for me. If you’ve just seen the movie, then do yourself a favour and read the book.

Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding (1996)

Because life isn’t all detectives and murders, it’s good to have an injection of humour now and again. I think this is one of the great comic novels. Maybe the last great one. It is so brilliantly well written, laugh-out-loud funny and touching and made all the more real by the style and structure. Again, if you’ve only seen the movie – please read the book.

It’s hard to believe it has taken twelve months of Decades selections for Patricia Highsmith make her debut. Five terrific reads and this is what I consider the “perfect” mix of titles – some books I know and love but there are also a couple of new recommendations which I immediately felt I needed to read. A weekly assult on my TBR! My thanks to Steve for taking on the Decades challenge.

DECADES WILL RETURN

Category: Decades, From The Bookshelf | Comments Off

December 10

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Susi Holliday

Imagine being tasked with starting a brand new library. You don’t have any books yet but know you want to fill the shelves of your new library with the very best books so that visitors know each title they select has been loved and recommended. Where would you start? Which books would you pick?

That was the challenge I set myself back in January. But I knew there was no way I could undertake this task alone so each week I invite a new guest to join me and I ask them to nominate five books they would want to see on the shelves of my Decades Library. I have had recommendations from authors, publishers, bloggers, journalists – all booklovers. Eleven months later there are around 200 books in my Library but the challenge continues.

Why is it a Decades Library? Well each guest has two simple rules to follow when choosing their books:

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

This week it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Susi Holliday back to Grab This Book. Regular readers will know I am a big fan of Susi’s books so I had a pretty good idea which authors I would see appearing in her selections – but I was totally wrong! That said there are new authors making their debut in my Library who I am astonished have not been mentioned thus far. I will let Susi take it from here:

Susi (SJI) Holliday is a Scottish writer of dark fiction. She cut her teeth on flash fiction and short stories, and was shortlisted for the inaugural CWA Margery Allingham Prize in 2014. She is the UK bestselling author of the creepy and claustrophobic Banktoun trilogy (Black Wood, Willow Walk and The Damselfly), the festive serial killer thriller The Deaths of December, the supernatural mystery The Lingering, a psychological thriller set on the Trans-Siberian Express (Violet) and a horror novella (Mr Sandman). Her latest two novels (The Last Resort and Substitute) contain a speculative science edge. Her short stories have been published in magazines, newspapers and anthologies. By day, she works as a clinical research statistician. Susi divides her time between London and Edinburgh. She loves travelling, long walks, and scaring herself with horror movies.

DECADES

1970s – Flowers in the Attic – Viginia Andrews

I think I actually read this in the 80s, but I was definitely very young and definitely slightly confused (and wrongly titillated, I suspect) by the subject matter. Given that this was one of my early reads when I was probably about 12 years old, it’s really no wonder I have so far only managed to write very dark stories. With sex bits.

1980s – Stephen King and Jackie Collins – Lucky

I know, I am cheating here by picking authors from the same decade, but they were both hugely influential at the time, for very different reasons (no details required). OK, OK – if I have to pick one book and one author, I’m going with Jackie Collins’s Lucky – for pure escapist filth and glamour. No wait, I’m choosing Stephen King’s Christine – for its underrated horror. I mean, who could be scared of a possessed car?! (Answer: me!) Also, I’m starting to see a strong pattern emerging here through the decades, where sex and horror are combined… Virginia Andrews, Stephen King, Jackie Collins… and moving on to…

1990s – Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

This is one of those books that is just the perfect example of right story, right decade. I was at the age where all of Bridget’s concerns with the world were my concerns with the world – such as, have I smoked/drank too much – should I really have slept with him – am I ever going to make a success of my life… it was laugh out loud funny and so relatable to my generation. I remember a friend of mine rushing home from the pub one night after being sure she’d pulled, so she could shave her legs before the bloke made it back to her flat. I think I was very much anti-Bridget when I told her that I doubt her fella would care too much about her hairy legs. Anyway, there have been many contenders since then, but no one could create a character like Bridget like Helen Fielding did. Legend. Can I just point out that this is the decade where I became a Goth so the earlier decade influences followed by Bridget’s sweetness must’ve tipped me over the edge.

2000s – The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

Spurious link: Could this be described as a modern gothic novel? All that religion and secrets and whatever? This may be one of the first books where I vividly remember being sucked in by ‘the hype’ and I absolutely devoured it. This would not normally have been my type of book at all, but the marketing spin/rumours about how much of it was true was what swung it. Wildly entertaining, and of course, complete baloney – but I loved it at the time but don’t think I would re-read it now. Dan Brown gets a bad press sometimes, but honestly, writing something that gets the whole world talking is hardly to be sniffed at!

2010s – Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman

One of the big things that draws me into a book is the character’s voice, and this is where Eleanor absolutely grabbed me. Like a miserable version of Bridget, there was something relatable and compelling about her story that had me unable to put the book down… and then of course it has a very clever unpeeling of the onion that makes it 100% worthy of all the massive acclaim. Again, many have tried since to replicate this, and failed. There are some characters that can only be written once, and both Eleanor and Bridget are those for me. I also think Eleanor perfectly encapsulates my light/dark elements that have clearly been signposted heavily throughout this piece. Thanks, Gordon – I may have reached the path to enlightenment!

Huge thanks to Susi for these brilliant selections. I cannot believe it has taken 11 months of Decades before Bridgit Jones made her debut in the Decades Library and as for Flowers in the Attic – wasnt’t there a rule every house had to have a copy of this in the early 1980s? Flowers takes its place on my library shelves too.

DECADES WILL RETURN

Category: Decades | Comments Off