Decades – Compiling the Ultimate Library with Judith O’Reilly

Welcome back to the Decades Library. It’s an ongoing quest to curate the ultimate collection of “unmissable” books and each week I invite a guest to join me and nominate some of their favouite books to my Decades Library.

The Library came into being back in January 2021 when I challenged debut author Sharon Bairden to put five of her favourite books into my new library. The shelves were bare and she could select ANY five books but she could only select one book per decade from five consecutive decades. Sharon made five brilliant selections (you can make use of the search function on the right of the page to check them out). The Decades Library was up and running. Next up was Dr Heather Martin (author of the definitive biography on Lee Child) who picked her five favourite books from a different five decades than Sharon used. That was 22 months ago and we haven’t looked back.

This week I am delighted to welcome Judith O’Reilly to the Decades Library. I am currently reading Sleep When You’re Dead which is the third in Judith’s excellent Michael North series (written under the name Jude O’Reilly). I have reviewed the first two books here on Grab This Book and you can expect a review of Sleep in due course (mini-spoiler…I am loving it).

Check out all Judith’s books here and if you haven’t encountered the Michael North books yet then you need to get onto Killing State immediately!

Time to pass the Decades Curator Hat to Judith and let her introduce her five recommended reads…

Judith O’Reilly is the author of Wife in the North and A Year of Doing Good (both published by Viking Penguin, 2008 and 2013 respectively). Wife in the North reached number three in the UK bestsellers’ chart and was in the top ten for five weeks. It was also a top ten bestseller in Germany. It sold into ten countries, was serialised by The Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, and was based on Judith’s eponymous blog which was named as one of the top 100 blogs in the world by The Sunday Times. Judith’s blog is credited with kicking off the popularity of domestic blogging in the UK.

Wife in the North and A Year of Doing Good were both non-fiction. Killing State is a commercial political thriller and Judith’s first novel. At least the first one she’s allowed to leave the house without her.

Judith is a former political producer with BBC 2’s Newsnight and ITN’s Channel 4 News, and a former education correspondent with The Sunday Times where she also covered politics, undercover reporting and general news. She still occasionally writes for The Sunday Times.

DECADES

1930s

Rebecca (1938) by Daphne Du Maurier

The pull of Rebecca is a strange one I always think. I remember reading it as a teenager waiting desperately to meet the elusive, charismatic and dead Rebecca. And, of course, you never do. Even though the book is named for her. I remember not being able to drag myself away from it, but also the intense frustration as I closed the covers and put it down. It may be the first novel that made me go back and re-read it – questioning exactly what it was I was reading. But that’s part of the genius. We feel the same fascination with this dead wife as our poor narrator. A narrator who doesn’t even get a name, poor dear. (I’m not counting Mrs de Winter. We all know there was only one Mrs de Winter!) It’s a book that’s never been out of print. For a reason. It’s brilliant. Even now when we read it knowing what Maxim did – the murder, what he did with the body, the fact in the long run he got away with it. I mean, what’s that about? A man murders his wife and we’re okay with that because she was a bitch? There is so much wrong with this picture. But nonetheless, we allow ourselves to be swept up in the gothic romance of it all. And such a simple premise – a dead wife, a new wife, a tragic accident that turns out to be a cover for murder. You make the dead wife compelling and the new wife obsessed. You set it an old house by the sea. Which allows for shipwrecks. There’s a costume ball. Mix in a little romance and a lot of guilt and jealousy and the desire for revenge. Ramp up the sinister and set it against a frisson of unspoken desires. Talking of which – enter Mrs Danvers! Even writing about ‘Danny’ makes me question whether I will ever manage to create any character as sinister as the housekeeper from Hell.

1940s

Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell

I always associate Animal Farm with being 11 and in the first year of grammar school. We studied it. We took it apart and looked at it from every angle. It was a revelation for me. That you didn’t just read a book on your own in your bedroom, and enjoy the story. It was more than that. It was magic. Because the book meant something. It didn’t merely entertain you. It educated you. The writer had a purpose in the story telling. A political purpose moreover. Yes, it’s about animals who take over the farm, but it’s also about the Russian revolution and power. It’s a political allegory. It blew my mind. And you know what – I studied politics at university and then became a political correspondent and a political producer with Channel 4 News and Newsnight. I’m still a Labour party member today and track politics as if my life depended on it. (By the way, your life does depend on politics.) Is the book I read at 11 the reason why? I’d say it is undoubtedly part of it.

At 11 then, courtesy of George Orwell, I woke up to the realities of the haves and have nots, of revolution, of the totalitarian regime, of suffering. I wasn’t from a political family. But we listened to the news every day on the radio when my grocer dad came home from work and we sat down to a tea of Findus savoury mince pancakes and chips. I wasn’t from a political family but my dad got made redundant – twice. I wasn’t from a political family, but everything – as Orwell would tell you himself – is political.

1950s

Madame Serpent (1951) by Jean Plaidy

In Madame Serpent, Catherine de Medici is 14 and about to marry Henry of Orleans, second son of the King of France. Her husband however is in love with another woman. Catherine is humiliated and embittered by Henry’s treatment of her in favour of his mistress Diane de Poitiers. The stage is set for revenge.

I didn’t have books in my house aside from the Bible and the odd condensed Readers’ Digest passed on by an aunt. But I did go to the local library every fortnight and the school library. I also bought graphic novels the size of my hand from a kiosk in the bus station, and I bought second hand books from the bookstall in Leeds market which I passed through on my way home from school. For an avid reader who went through her library books faster than she could change them, it was a great system. Every time you brought the book back to the stall, you got half what you paid for it in exchange, which you promptly spent on books, which you’d return and get back half the money, and so it went on. It was this bookstall that introduced me to Jean Plaidy, Victoria Holt and Philippa Carr – all noms de plumes of Eleanor Hibbert. Madame Serpent is the first in a trilogy about Catherine de Medici. All of Plaidy’s works were rigorously researched and introduced the readers to history in an accessible and real way. I’ve always enjoyed history and the Jean Plaidy novels brought it alive. Not least in how they put women at the centre of history in a way I didn’t see reflected in the textbooks I studied at school.

1960s

Master and Commander (1969) Patrick O’Brian

There are two types of people in this world. Those who have read Patrick O’Brian and those who don’t know what they’re missing and should stop what they are doing immediately and go buy a copy. It doesn’t sound like a book that anyone other than a nautical history buff would love, but in Captain Jack Aubrey and ship’s doctor Stephen Maturin, we have one of the best tag teams in literature. Master and Commander is set during the Napoleonic wars and by the time you’ve read your way through the 20-strong series of Aubrey-Maturin books, you too could sale a sloop-of-war into battle against the damnable French. Aubrey is brave, Maturin is brilliant. Both men are honorable to the core and make my cut of guests I would most like to have to an imaginary dinner party (which also includes Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe by the way). Their vividness is due in part to O’Brian’s research into original sources such as official letters and logbooks from the time. Their humanity, intelligence and charm down to O’Brian himself.

1970s

A Woman of Substance (1979) Barbara Taylor Bradford.

I first read this book when I was 15 and was gripped by the grit, resilience and ambition of its feisty Yorkshire heroine. The tale of Emma Harte, a housemaid turned millionaire retail entrepreneur. A wronged woman who refused to be defined and judged by society. Emma Harte told a generation of women it was okay to want something better and to work to get it. The book is sweeping and glorious, and as her own website describes it, is “a triumphant novel of an unforgettable woman.” It’s a multi million pound juggernaut for a reason, involving illegitimacy, betrayal, great love, suicide, money, more betrayal, and revenge. Love it. I had tea with Taylor Bradford years ago in the Dorchester, having bid for the privilege in a literary auction. You know they say never meet your heroes. Totally not true. She was glorious. I said it was lonely being a writer. She corrected me and said it was a ‘solitary’ occupation. She was interested in all of us (I took two mates along) and when she inscribed a book for me wrote: “Judith, wishing you the best of luck with your writing career, Barbara T. Bradford.” I am 100% being buried with it. She’s 89, every now and then she auctions off her jewellery or Hermes handbags, if she ever auctions off her typewriters or pen collection, I am so in.

I have read Judith’s thoughts on Animal Farm three or four times over the last half hour. I loved reading the impact this book had – this is why I want people to read Decades each week. The thought of someone picking up a book they may not have read and having an experience akin to Judith’s is the dream.

I’d like to thank Judith again for taking time to make her selections. Five big, big books which I am delighted to add to the Decades Library shelves for others to enjoy.

DECADES WILL RETURN

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September 30

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Guy Morpuss

Try to imagine being tasked with the responsibility of filing the shelves of a brand new library. You can add any books to the shelves but you want to ensure only the very best titles are available to readers. That was the challenge I set myself back in January 2021. It didn’t take long for me to realise I could not possibly fill a library without enlisting some help – the Decades Library was born.

Each week I am joined by a guest curator who is asked to nominate five books which I add to the Library shelves. My guests are authors, publishers, bloggers and journalists – all booklovers. There are just two rules governing the selections:

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

Rule two is why my library is called the Decades Library – apparently restricing choices to one book per decade over (any) fifty year publication span causes some head scratching. The end results are always fascinating.

This week I am delighted to welcome Guy Morpuss to the Decades Library. I loved Guy’s debut novel (Five Minds) which was published in 2021. Five Minds blew my mind with the fabulous concept of multiple people sharing a body, each of the people get their own window of awareness over the course of a day. It’s one of the most memorable books I have featured in 8 years of blogging.

Time to pass the curators hat to Guy and let him introduce his selections….

Guy writes speculative crime fiction: twisting one aspect of the real world, adding a dead body, and playing with the consequences.

His first novel, Five Minds (2021), is about five people sharing one body, one of whom is trying to murder the others. It was a Financial Times Book of the Year and a Kindle Number 1 Bestseller in Technothrillers and Post-Apocalyptic SF. Translation rights have been sold in seven territories.

His recently-published second novel, Black Lake Manor (2022), is a locked room murder mystery set on Vancouver Island, where the killer can unwind time – which makes it difficult for the detective trying (repeatedly) to solve the murder. It was a Financial Times Book of the Month.

Before taking up full-time writing Guy practised as a barrister/QC in London.

DECADES

In adding to the Decades Library I have chosen books that inspired me to read – and ultimately, therefore, to write. I started out with my father’s library of fast-paced detective stories and thrillers; and then I branched out into science-fiction.

Sadly, though, I have no space for some fantastic authors that I grew up reading: Alistair MacLean, Captain W.E. Johns, Desmond Bagley, Mary Shelley, Arthur Conan Doyle, Baroness Orczy, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Iain M Banks.

Although, curiously no Agatha Christie, which didn’t feature on my father’s bookshelves. It was only after Viper Books offered me a publishing deal that I confessed to my editor that I had never read any of her books – an omission which I have since corrected.

I have chosen the 1920s to the 1960s, as the end of the classic crime era and the rise of science-fiction neatly mark my journey as a reader.

1920s

The Door With Seven Locks (1926) – Edgar Wallace

Although probably best known now as a co-author of King Kong, Edgar Wallace was one of the most prolific crime writers of the early twentieth century. His output was prodigious, with many of his novels being written over two or three days. It is said that a friend phoned him once to be told that he was in the middle of writing a book, and responded: ‘I’ll hang on till he’s finished it.’

I was tempted to add Room 13 – the first outing of his brilliant detective JG Reeder – but in the end opted for The Door With Seven Locks, written in a year when he published more than one book per month.

The intriguing title also sums up the premise of the book: a Scotland Yard detective is told by a small-time criminal of his failed attempts to open the door in a tomb which has seven locks. The lock-picker is murdered, and the detective gets caught up in a search for the seven keys. This is typical Edgar Wallace: fast-paced, easy to read, a crime thriller with a dash of romance thrown in.

1930s

Adele & Co (1931) – Dornford Yates

One of the first books I ever read on my own was Blind Corner by Dornford Yates: a chase across Europe in the hunt for treasure hidden in a secret chamber at the bottom of a castle well.

However, I have opted to include Adele & Co, which neatly combines the two sides of Yates’s writing: on the one hand the ‘Chandos’ books (such as Blind Corner) – fast-paced thrillers often compared to the works of John Buchan; on the other the ‘Berry’ books – humorous laments to the declining fortunes of the English upper-classes after the First World War. I remember reading Berry & Co in class once, and being unable to stop laughing out loud.

In Adele & Co Major Bertram Pleydell (Berry) and his family wake in Paris to discover that they have been drugged and had their jewellery stolen. There follows a chase across France which culminates in the Pyrenees. It is both tense and funny, best showcasing Yates’s skill as a writer.

As with Edgar Wallace, Dornford Yates was a very popular author whose books have largely fallen out of favour: partly, it has to be said, because of some of the attitudes displayed particularly in his later books. But they were part of my childhood – and I firmly believe that we can learn from other writers even if we don’t agree with everything they said.

1940s

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) – George Orwell

I was torn between this and Animal Farm, but the dystopian themes of Nineteen Eighty-Four make it the better book in my view.

As someone who will try pretty much any genre one of my frustrations is people who say: ‘I don’t read science-fiction.’ For me Nineteen Eighty-Four is the perfect illustration of what they are missing. It changes the world in a way that only science-fiction/speculative fiction can do – by imagining a future in which political ideas have been taken to a more extreme, but entirely plausible, level. It then explores the consequences in a way that sheds light on our own world.

It is an eye-opening and ultimately rather depressing book. But still, to my mind, a must-read, especially for those who think they won’t like science-fiction.

1950s

Flowers for Algernon (1959) – Daniel Keyes

Algernon is a laboratory mouse who is super-intelligent following experimental surgery. When Charlie, a janitor with low IQ, has the same surgery, his IQ triples. At first this seems like a good thing, but his newfound genius brings its own problems.

And then Algernon starts to decline.

This is another book which is ultimately sad. However, it raises profound issues of mental illness, happiness, scientific ethics, and foreseeing one’s own end.

Flowers for Algernon was first published as a short story in the 1950s, then expanded to a novel in the 1960s. Whilst both are worth reading, for me in many ways the short story is better: it deals with all the same issues as the novel, but even more succinctly.

1960s

We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1966) – Philip K Dick

I can’t remember the first book by Philip K Dick that I read, but once I’d found one I wanted to read them all. At the heart of his writing is the question: ‘What is real?’

Many of his books are now better known by their film titles: Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, The Adjustment Bureau. The books are often very different – and generally better.

We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (the inspiration for Total Recall) challenges the reliability of memory, and questions identity. It also neatly turns the classic boyhood dream – ‘I want to be James Bond’ – into reality. The protagonist, an office worker with a desire to visit Mars, discovers that he is actually a secret agent who used to work there.

I like the idea of playing with the human mind, and it is something I have tried to explore in my own novels. If you can’t trust your mind and memories, what can you trust?

My thanks to Guy for these fantastic additions to the Decades Library. I suspect Flowers For Algernon will trigger some strong memories for many readers. And I feel I should have known Philip K Dick wrote the story behind Total Recall – this is why I could not be trusted to make the Decades selections alone.

DECADES WILL RETURN

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April 30

Decades: Compilling the Ultimate Library with Imogen Church

The very best libraries are the ones which offer a broad selection of books to choose from. Since January I have been inviting guests to join me in a quest to determine which books should be added to the Ultimate Library. I started the Ultimate Library with no books so there was a clean slate (or empty shelves if you prefer) and I ask each guest to nominate the books they feel should be represented.

There are just two rules governing the selections each guest can make.

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

In the past I have been made aware my two rules are “frustrating” and cause much gnashing of teeth. Imagine then, if you will, my delight at hearing my guest this week found making her selections “easy” and the experience to be fun!

If you visit the blog outwith my Decades posts then you will know I am a massive fan of audiobooks and enjoy nothing more than having someone read me a brilliant story. If you were to peruse my Audbile Library you would see one name repeated over and over: Imogen Church. If I am selecting my next listen and I see Imogen is the narrator (which happens often) then I am more likely to select that book over others.

I ask my guests to introduce themselves before they introduce their books so it is with great pleasure I hand you over to Imogen Church.

DECADES

Well, hello there! My name is Imogen Church and I’m an actor and writer. If you are a massive bookworm (like me) then you may know me as the narrator of roughly a gabillion audiobooks. Possibly you know my voice from audio dramas like Dr Who (for Big Finish), or as the voice of the Harry Potter Quiz on Alexa UK? Probably you don’t know me at all, which is fine too, we’re all busy and you must have better things to do with your time than knowing who I am.

Basically, I’m a storyteller. Sometimes I tell that story with my voice, sometimes with my body and sometimes by tippidy–tappedy-tap-tapping away on a computer screen and writing my brain out. Mostly, I get paid to talk to myself in a recording studio all day and, for a somewhat shy actor who is obsessed with books, that’s the greatest job in the world. I just can’t get enough of books; I read all day every day, in my head and out loud into a microphone. I also write. Most of my writing has been screenplays for films, particularly satirical horror comedy, but last year Audible commissioned me to write a novel for Audible Originals, to be narrated by moi. They asked me to write a crime novel, so obviously I wrote a satirical comedy crime caper set in an alternate world of steampunk and strippers, called Death and the Burlesque Maiden. I mean, obviously, I did that. The book was inspired by my experiences as a burlesque performer combining satirical poetry and striptease, and my experiences of life as an intersectional feminist. For those of you who have listened to Death and the Burlesque Maiden, I suspect the below literary selection may make some small sense of my writing style… the things that inspire me are comedy, social satire, black humour, the macabre, and explorations of what it is to be a woman. Also, being rude.

If you fancy finding out more about the weird world of Imogen, here are the links you need:

Instagram: @imogenchurchgobshite

Twitter: @ImogenChurch

Website: www.imogenchurch.com

And here (drumroll please) are my chosen books!

1920’s
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (published 1926)

Women have always been funny; with the crap our bodies put us through, we have to have a sense of humour. A century ago, one genius of a woman wrote a brilliantly acerbic, funny satire about the attention certain women get from men and what that means for those women and for all the women who are trying desperately to become those women. It is so funny, so biting, so sharp and witty. And she wrote it a century ago. One hundred years in the past. Yet it is still relevant… *Imogen sighs and stares off into the middle distance for a while*

1930’s
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (published 1932)

Did I mention that women are funny? It’s always my objective in life, to try and ‘do a Gibbons’ at any given point in time. In Death and the Burlesque Maiden I got the chance to ‘do a Gibbons’ by breaking the fourth wall and having the narrator talk directly to the reader, about the novel, mostly deriding the quality of the writing. I remember when I first read Cold Comfort Farm, the shocking oh-my-god-did-she-just-do-that joy I felt when Stella declared that she was going to help the literary critics out, by highlighting the sections she’d written rather well thank you very much, making it easier for them to pluck out and glorify her name. Throughout the novel there are moments when a particularly flowery and pretentious sentence is flagged by an asterisk or three: for our consideration. I mean… the genius! It made me die laughing and I wanted to write my own homage when I got the chance. Cold Comfort Farm is a warm and quirky pastoral parody, a silly, eccentric, heartfelt satirical joy and easily one of the greatest books I have ever read. Obviously, you can disagree with me, but I’m afraid you’d be wrong. You would be wrong.

1940’s
1984 by George Orwell (published 1949)

Orwell. Just… Orwell. I first read 1984 as a teenager and it blew the top right off my head. As I scooped my brains back inside my skull, I realised that the book had changed the shape of my brains, for life. Nowadays, any satirical dystopia has me drooling to consume it, all because of 1984. I think 1984 was the first novel to give shape to the feeling I had, that we are extremely lucky, to be alive at this point in history, in this place in history, in a world where we can access and read someone like Orwell, and the very keen feeling that I must never take that for granted. Orwell knew how small we all are, but also how important every small person can be and his writing is the most wonderful combination of misery and hope, humour and horror. Orwell. Just… Orwell.

1950’s
Wasp by Eric Frank Russell (published 1957)

I initially tracked down and read this book when I met my (now) husband and my (now) father–in–law told me it was his favourite book and he read it every single year.

Was I trying to impress him? Possibly!

Did it work? Certainly!

But did I also genuinely love the subversive, dystopian nature of it and the reminder that even the smallest individual matters? Absolutely!

Terry Pratchett chose Wasp as one of his favourite books of all time and said that he “can’t imagine a funnier terrorists’ handbook”. I rest my case.

1960’s
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (published 1961)

If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. Or kill yourself. This book makes you do the first two, but hopefully not the third. How else can you process the horrors of war, but to laugh through the pain? There are true horrors in Catch 22, true horrors and legitimately insane humour and those two are essential bedfellows.

Why?

Why does satire have such a hold on me? I think it’s all about power. Power, and impact for change. Satirising the terrifying, the inhumane, the oppressive, is a way to gain mastery over it. I love work that satirizes bigotry, predators, misogyny, Nazis… because mocking them gives me a feeling of power over them, that to laugh in the face of horrors, emboldens us. Also, satire is an entertaining inroad that makes for powerful impact. Humour softens an audience, it helps them relax and let down their barriers, the act of laughing releases endorphins that make us so much more susceptible… when an audience has let go of the stresses of real life, it enables the artist to get right in there, right under the ribs, right up in to the soft squishy heart of a person with ideas, ideas about cruelty and society and how to avoid moving backwards into persecution, racism, misogyny, fascism, all the things we really should be too grown up by now to be playing around with. I love art as entertainment, but I also want art to be something that helps us understand more about our lives, our world, our humanity.

I think this is why these are some of my favourite books of all time; stories that are beyond precious to me and have clubbed together to form part of who I am.

Which is why I love books.

My thanks to Imogen for her time and for these excellent additions to my Library

You can see all the books which have been added to the Library if you click this handy wee link: https://grabthisbook.net/?p=5113

DECADES WILL RETURN

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March 26

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Chris McVeigh

Time for a new guest to nominate the five books they want added to my Ultimate Library. Today I am delighted to welcome Chris McVeigh to Grab This Book. Chris is Fahrenheit Press. He runs the show, decides which books they publish and will light up your Twitter feed with his feisty, punkish attitude.

Fahrenheit Press offer noir, thrillers, chillers and even some “spice”. They also do a cracking line in bookish merch. You can visit their website here – http://www.fahrenheit-press.com/ Buy some books and support an indy publisher. If you buy a physical copy of any of their books then Fahrenheit also give you a digital copy to upload to your favourite e-book reader.

What’s the deal with my Ultimate Library? Well for new visitors a quick recap: If a Librarian (me) wanted to fill a brand new Library starting with zero books I wondered which books I should be looking to put on the shelves. I wanted the unmissable, the best, the essential reads. But I knew I could not take on this task alone so I am inviting bookloving guests to help me with this mammoth undertaking – there are two rules which each guest must follow:

Rule 1 – Select Five Books
Rule 2 – They can only select one book per decade over any five consecutive decades

I call this my Decades project. If you are on Twitter search for online conversations using the #Decades hashtag.

Just two rules yet Chris joins previous guest-curator Heather Martin in finding a way to “flex” those rules. I may need to crack down on anthologies in future!

You can visit the Library here: https://grabthisbook.net/?p=5113

Decades

It’s fair to say books have always been a big part of my life.

Professionally I’ve been involved in the publishing industry for the best part of 30 years but my relationship with books stretches back even further to my weekly visits to the local library when I was a kid. Like a lot of working-class households, we didn’t actually own any books of our own. That doesn’t mean we weren’t well-read though. My ma & da came from a background of the self-taught, politically aware, working class that was such a feature of Glasgow life right through the first half of the 20th century. There was very much an attitude of “we might be poor, but we’re not stupid” – the public libraries in Glasgow were the backbone of that philosophy.

I started reading voraciously as soon as I was old enough to get my library ticket and I haven’t really stopped since.

The books on this list are the ones that have endured for me through my own 5 decades – though looking at the list I realise I found most of them in my late 20s & early 30s.

Keep The Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell (1936)

Like most people, I’d been aware of George Orwell from school where Animal Farm and 1984 were on the curriculum. I didn’t come across Keep The Aspidistra Flying though until I’d skipped off to London to seek my fortune and picked I up a battered old 23^rd hand copy somewhere on Camden High Street.

I was a cocky little shit – thought I was smarter than I was and was certain I was destined for better things. As far as I could see the only thing that kept getting in my way was a total lack of opportunity and the enduring absence of any funds – nothing to do with me poncing about in dive bars all day, talking about becoming a Rockstar – clearly it was all Thatcher’s fault.

The main protagonist of the book is fella called Gordon Comstock and it was his constant tallying and re-tallying of resources – cigarettes left, booze in hand, booze desired, number of days till payday – that first caught my attention because that was basically my life at the time. I’ll be honest though, the finesse and the fierce deep satire which Orwell throws at almost every character in the book was lost on me until I went back and re-read it in my 30s. Since then I’ve gone back to it time and time again and I always find something new to enjoy.

The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse (1943)

This book, honestly don’t know where to start.

The impact this book has had on my life is frankly ridiculous. I came to it young (too young) when I found a battered copy my hippy older brother had squirrelled away somewhere. It’s probably the book I’ve bought most often – in different editions for myself, or more usually as gifts for the people closest to me – but no matter where I’ve been or what’s happened in my life that very first copy, now battered beyond belief and pretty much spineless, has stayed with me – it’s on the shelf right in front of me now as I’m writing this.

As a precocious 14-year old I didn’t know much more than I liked the cover and the title sounded cool – both those things are still true btw.

The scope of the book is huge and takes in themes ranging from Eastern mysticism, classical music, mathematics, art, power structures, free will, and the challenges faced by individuals when faced with forces of fate that seem so much bigger than any person on their own could hope to overcome.

Obviously at 14 I didn’t have a clue about any of this and I didn’t really get stuck into the meat of the book first time around, it was really just a bedroom prop that made me look a bit smarter and cooler than your average Glasgow Joe (at least that’s what I imagine I thought).

A couple of years later I read an interview with David Bowie where he name-checked The Glass Bead Game, Herman Hesse and the I Ching – that was it – I was hooked – bought myself some yarrow stalks (okay, a box of toothpicks) and set myself up as part-drunk, part-punk & part mystic. Honestly, I really was a precocious little turd back then. Great cheekbones though.

Anyway, point is that once I stopped using the book as a fashion accessory and actually got stuck into it properly in my late 20s/early 30s it genuinely changed my life. It helped me change the way I looked at the world, it helped me celebrate and make peace with the dozens of different selves that were living in my head at that time. This book was only one part of my journey through some very difficult times, but it was an important one and it’s become a talisman for me because of it.

Oh, and it won Herman Hesse the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946 – so it’s not just me.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)

It’d be weird if this wasn’t on my list, right?

Only those closest to me know this because I keep it on the down-low but I’m a total Science Fiction geek. Always have been. When I want some time away from the world, you’ll find me slumped on the sofa working my way through a 20-episode binge of Star Trek, Stargate or BattleStar – not to fussy which – as long as it’s got shiny spaceships and lycra uniforms, I’m totally on board.

Fahrenheit 451 wasn’t the sci-fi book that kicked me off on this lifelong secret pleasure (that was probably Asimov’s Foundation series) but it’s the one I keep going back to.

Its importance in my life isn’t all about the book itself though it’s got a lot to do with the way it’s been re-imagined graphically by so many artists over the years. I must have collected 20+ different editions with different covers over the years.

The imagery of 451 Degrees Fahrenheit being the temperature when paper combusts has always fascinated me and when I set up a digital publishing consultancy it seemed like a no-brainer to call it FourFiftyOne – remember these were the days of 2008/9 when many people thought eBooks would replace paper entirely within a decade. Those who go way back with me will remember that my social media handle for the first ten years social media existed was @4fifty1. When I decided to set up a new publishing company back in 2015 it seemed only natural to continue the brand and that’s how Fahrenheit Press came to named.

The book’s not bad either.

A State Of Denmark by Derek Raymond (1964)

For many people crime writer Derek Raymond is regarded as the founder of British Noir (though mention this in the vicinity of a Ted Lewis fan and they’ll most likely dispose of your body in the trunk of a crushed car). Suffice to say though that if you like your crime fiction gritty you should definitely read Derek Raymond’s Factory Series.

A State Of Denmark though, isn’t part of that series, it was published some twenty years before back in the mid-60s under his original pen-name Robin Cook. Brought back into print by Serpent’s Tail in the mid-80s I first came across it in the early 1990s.

It’s literally a book in 2 parts – the story is split between Italy and the UK – and set in a dystopian near-future where Italy has become a sort of haven for bohemian free-thinkers while back in Britain, Scotland, Ireland & Wales have declared independence and England has sleepwalked itself into a dictatorship where political dissenters are held in internment camps and all non-white immigrants have been deported.

It’s pretty grim stuff in parts to be fair but the writing, particularly about Italy, will raise you up – I first read it on a trip around Sicily and the book and the island have been intertwined for me ever since.

Politics in recent years has thrown this book back into sharp relief and when I re-read it again last year I found it more relevant than ever.

A proper hidden gem which I promise you wont regret hunting out.

The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies (1970-1975)

Fifth Business
The Manticore
World of Wonders

Bit of a cheat this one as it’s really 3 books in 1 but as I first read it in a single-volume I’m going to include it anyway.

I didn’t go to university or college, closest I ever got to a qualification was my City & Guilds in Floristry. In almost all the ways that matter, these books were my university.

I was first given a copy of this trilogy in the late 80s by the father of a girlfriend. They were one of those hugely posh, well-off, North London, liberal families. Christ knows what they must have thought when their beloved daughter dragged me back to them – all leather, and make-up, and carrying working-class chips on both shoulders. The romance didn’t last long but against all the odds me and her dad hit it off. He noticed I was smarter than I was pretending to be, and he started lending me a few books he thought I’d like. They weren’t really the sort of books I’d come into contact with before but I’d read them and then we’d chat about them.

The Deptford Trilogy was his ace in the hole – he suggested that whenever I came across a word or anything I didn’t recognise I should go and look it up and see where it took me. There was no internet in the 80s so that meant more trips to the library and that’s exactly what I did. All those years I spent boozing it up in Camden and trying to be a rock-star I was also spending afternoons in the library reading up on Rabelias, Hieronymus Bosch, Bach, Rimbaud and a hundred other subjects that I’d scribbled down in my notebooks while reading The Deptford Trilogy (and subsequently the other two trilogies in the series). Every time I came across anything I didn’t know I looked it up and each time I did my knowledge spread like a spider’s web. The internet definitely makes research quicker, but I’m really pleased it didn’t exist back then because every single book I read sank deep into my brain, it was an effort to find out the stuff I wanted to know and it lodged inside. The whole process set a habit that became a pattern ever since and to this day I still don’t really trust anyone who never asks questions or pretends they know everything.

This probably makes these books by Roberston Davies sound worthy and dry – I promise they’re anything but, the storytelling is better than almost anything else I’ve ever read, they’re funny and joyful and mischievous and wise. I’m always constantly surprised that he isn’t more well known than he is. If you haven’t read them you’re in for a real treat.

Okay, that’s my 5 books from 5 decades, thanks to Gordon for asking me to take part in this – such a belting idea – I’ve really enjoyed the whole thing.

I am extremely grateful to Chris for giving up some of his time to share his selections. He did suggest a bottle of bourbon may be needed to help him remove some of his favourite books from his final five, I hope the decicion making process wasn’t too traumatic.

Decades Will Return

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