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