Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Caron McKinlay
It isn’t Friday but it IS time for a return to the Decades Library. It has been a while since we last visited the Library and I apologise for the brief hiatus which just so happened to coincide with a change of role in the day job (same job, new work), exam season in Scotland (teenager Grab has been working hard and we have been supporting where we can) plus lots of other fun reading things which I simply cannot talk about just yet.
But it’s time the Library welcomed a new curator and as it is Publication Day for The Storytellers I wanted to share Caron McKinlay’s selections today – rather than wait for Friday to roll around.
As it has been a couple of weeks I will recap what the Decades Library is all about. I am assembling a Library of the very best books. I started this project back in January 2021 and I had no books on my Library shelves. I did not know which books would represent the “very best” and I knew that I would not be able to fill a Library with just my personal selections so I invite guests to join me and ask them to nominate their selections for inclusion within the Decades Library. I ask them to pick their favourite or memorable reads or the books which they believe the best libraries should offer to readers.
Each guest must follow just two simple rules when nominating books to the Decades Library:
1 – Select ANY Five Books
2 – You May Only Select One Book Per Decade From Five Consecutive Decades.
So with a huge congratulations on publication day I pass to Caron McKinlay for five new selections.
Caron grew up in a mining town on the east coast of Scotland where her dad would return from the pit and fill her life with his tall tales. She never thought about making a career in writing – that was what posh people did, not someone from a working-class council estate.
However, her father’s death was the cause of deep introspection and her emotions gave birth to a short story, Cash, which was published in the Scottish Book Trust’s anthology, Blether. This gave her the confidence to try and believe in herself.
When not blogging, reading, and writing, Caron spends her time with her daughters. She doesn’t enjoy exercise – but loves running around after her grandsons, Lyle and Noah, to whom she is devoted.
Caron had three childhood dreams in life: to become a published author, to become a teacher, and for David Essex to fall in love with her. Two out of three ain’t bad, and she’s delighted with that.
You can buy The Storytellers here: https://geni.us/theStorytellers
And Find Caron here:
www.instagram.com/caronmckinlay
www.facebook.com/mckinlaycaron
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZML8bGo9h/
Good Reads
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60844999-the-storytellers
Website
Decades
The 1980s
‘The Silence of the Lambs’ by Thomas Harris
Contemporary takes on the novel focus on Hannibal Lecter, the fearsome imprisoned serial murderer antagonist. But as the title suggests, the book is as much about the FBI agent Clarice Starling, her childhood as an orphan, and the screaming of slaughtered lambs on her cousin’s farm she experienced as a child. An eerie relationship grows between Starling and Lecter, as, perhaps for the first time in his life, he experiences empathy for another. Not exactly a love story, but a fascinating depiction of the way that relationships can grow, like weeds, in the unlikeliest of places as, at the end, he writes to her that he hopes, for her, the lambs have stopped screaming. I will never forget a section of the narrative where I thought “Huh what just happened” and had to turn back to read the pages again. I loved that!
The 1990s
‘The Notebook’ by Nicholas Sparks
I have always been swept away by grand romances. One of my favourite books is Wuthering Heights. In its own way, ‘The Notebook’ evokes the same sense, for me, of two people whose love transcends the passage of time and events. “I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough”. How romantic? Of course, like all the best books, the story is unfolded in ways that you would never expect, beginning with an old man reading a ’story’ to an old woman in a nursing home. But who are they, and who are the characters in the story he tells her? It’s such a beautiful story that makes me cry every time I read it.
The 2000s
‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ by Audrey Niffenegger
Write a book that involves time travel, and you already have me halfway there. But this is so much more. The poignant story of how Clare waits, as the years roll by, to be reunited with her one true love as he is flung across history and back again is both heart-breaking and uplifting. The love story is what captures you. But it only works because of the superb manner in which Niffenegger deals with the time travel element, allowing you to suspend disbelief long enough to become enthralled with Clare and Henry’s relationship. Another one that had me sobbing at the end.
The 2010s
‘11/22/63’ by Stephen King
This mix of time travel and one of the world’s great storytellers is just hard to beat. As ever, with King, the characters leap off the page, and their stories are never as straightforward as you would have imagined. The central character, Jake, has set himself the task of using a time portal to travel back in time to prevent John F. Kennedy’s assassination. But life, for a character in one of King’s novels, is never easy and, in the end, he is forced to confront a moral dilemma. This was brilliantly plotted.
The 2020s
‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue’ by V.E. Schwab
Yet more twisty time travels. There might be a theme developing here. In the eighteenth century, a young woman barters her soul to avoid an enforced marriage. Consigned by the Devil, to live forever but be remembered by no one. We follow her life and struggles as she learns to live a lonely life. But in the twenty-first century, she finally finds love with someone, Henry, who does remember her. What will the Devil do now? Such gorgeous prose and the book I wish I had the talent to write. It was always remain one of my favourite books.
I am reading The Storytellers at the moment and enjoying it immensely. Unfortunatley the secret reading I am doing is keeping me away from finishing it for the present but a review will be forthcoming as soon as I can catch up!
As for these magnificent Decades selections – I am delighted that another Stephen King book has made its way onto the Library shelves (particularly as it is one of my favourites). And The Notebook! That’s a real crowd pleaser too.