Top Ten Tuesday – Books on my summer 2014 to-read list

17 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

Tags

grisha, luminaries, neil gaiman, outlander, ruin and rising, summer reads, top ten tuesday

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Top Ten Tuesday List – see http://www.brokeandbookish.com/p/top-ten-tuesday-other-features.html for more information -but today I’ve made a special effort, as it’s Top Ten Books On My Summer TBR list. I always find I end up reading more in those months that I’ve covered off in one of these lists, as getting through them feels like a nice little challenge.

Over the summer though, I intend to get some serious reading done. Apart from anything else, my honeymoon in August apparently involves a seriously longhaul flight (no one will tell me where I’m going, so don’t ask) which seems like the perfect opportunity to work my way through some of the longer books I’ve been avoiding recently because they felt like such a commitment.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s my list.

1) Ruin and Rising – The Grisha 3 (Leigh Bardugo) – The first two books in this Russian-themed fantasy series were some of my absolute favorite reads of last year and I’ve been eagerly awaiting this final installment. There’s not much longer to wait – it’s out on Thursday, which also happens to be my birthday. The perfect present! Except that some of the pre-release reviews on Amazon are making me a little bit nervous about just how it’s going to play out.

2) The Girl on the Golden Coin (Marci Jefferson)- Precisely because I love history so much, I tend to be slightly wary of historical fiction, but from what I hear, this Restoration-era novel about Lady Frances Stewart is both well written and well researched, as well as full of intrigue. And more importantly, the main character marries the son of the real-life Lord George Stewart.

3) Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)- I’m dubious about this one, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book recommended so many times, both generally on blogs and specifically to me. The length of both the first book and the seemingly never ending series have made me wary of getting drawn in, and summaries of the time-travel love triangle based plot make me unsure whether I’m going to love it or hate it, but people keep telling me it’s much better than that bizarre genre makes it sound, and this summer, I intend to finally give in and give it a go.

4) Doomsday Book (Connie Willis) – And while we’re on the subject of time travel, this one is about an Oxford history student in 2054 who travels back to the 1320s as part of her course. I’ve heard good things despite the weird premise, but this is basically wish fulfillment for me. I feel very short-changed that my college didn’t have a time machine.

5) The Luminaries (Eleanor Catton) – I always pride myself on liking literary and genre fiction in roughly equal measure, but my reading habits have definitely tipped towards the latter recently. I’ve just finished the Goldfinch (review tomorrow, hopefully) which is this year’s other Famous Eight-Hundred Page Literary Success Story and enjoyed it far more than I was expecting, so now I’m going to give this one a whirl. Friends and reviewers with very high literary tolerance warn that it’s quite hard work, so I’l consider myself fairly warned…

6)Crewel (Gennifer Albin)– And then back to something lighter. This seems to be basically a standard YA dystopia/fantasy, but I read a glowing review of it from someone whose opinions I broadly trust, and the way it seems to bring in the story of the fates who weave the world intrigued me.

7)Stardust (Neil Gaiman) – I’ve been slowly working my way through Gaiman’s back catalogue, and this adult fairytale is next on the list. I enjoyed the film, and while I’ve enjoyed some of his books more than others, the author never really lets me down.

8)Changeless – PArasol Protectorate 2(Gail Carriger) – I read Soulless, the first book in this (wait for it) steampunk paranormal mystery comedy series a few years ago, and found it a really funny, enjoyable read. Somehow though, I’ve never felt motivated to read the sequel, but I think this Victorian comedy of manners and vampires will be the perfect beach read in Mystery Destination.

9)Whispers Under Ground – Rivers of London 3 (Ben Aaronovitch) – I’ve had a similar experience with this series about a wizard policeman in modern day London, enjoying it but never feeling a pressing urge to pick up the next installment.

There is no one book pressing for the number ten slot and lots I’m tempted by that I could include. With some really epic books on there, ten is probably ambitious anyway, and I’d like to allow myself a bit of flexibility to go off-list if the mood takes me.

Are there any that you’ve already read that you’d push me towards or nudge me away from? Or are you planning to give any of these a try this summer? In particular, who else is going to be reading Ruin and Rising on Thursday? I suspect I’m going to need a support group.

Top Ten Tuesday – Unique Books

08 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

before I go to sleep, behind the scenes at the museum, blind assassin, cloud atlas, gone girl, goon squad, life after life, room, sarum, top ten tuesday, unique books, what a carve up

It’s been far too long since I’ve taken part in Top Ten Tuesday, (see http://www.brokeandbookish.com/p/top-ten-tuesday-other-features.html) but I’m excited to have such a good subject to work with this week. I suppose unique books is a little ambiguous, but I’m mainly thinking in terms of structure and style rather than plot. If there’s one thing I really and truly love, it’s books that are written in an unusual way, be it a non-linear narrative, multiple points of view, or something even stranger. Many of my all-time favourite books fall into this category. Of course, if it doesn’t quite work, the result can be awful, but I still respect authors who give it a go.

Ones I Loved

1) Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell – Five short stories (each written in a wildly different style and genre, and spanning centuries) are interrupted halfway through by the next story. Each protagonist is reading the previous text, may or may not be the reincarnation of the previous hero or heroine, and is interrupted at the same point as the reader. In the second half, the protagonists resume their adventures an their reading, and we work our way back through time and through the story. In between all the cleverness of the mindbending structure is some seriously good writing and several engaging plots. As regular readers may have picked up, if I was forced to pick a favourite book, it’d probably be this one.

2) The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood – Parts of this story is the first person narrative of the eighty-something narrator. Other parts are her reminiscing about her childhood, the famous author sister who killed herself the day WW2 ended, and her unpleasant industrialist husband. Newspaper articles and other documents from the time about the three of them are interspersed. And every few chapters, we get The Blind Assassin itself – the science fiction novel that made the heroine’s sister’s name, which is itself a book within a book. The four (at least – it depends how you count them) aspects work together to tell the full story, and it results in a brilliant mash-up of contemporary, historical and sci-fi literature.

3) Sarum – Edward Rutherford – Sets out to tell the story of 10 000 years of human history via lots of interwoven stories featuring the same families and the same area (Salisbury Plain) over centuries. The scope is jawdropping, and somehow, the author makes you care about almost everyone of the cast of (probably literally) thousands.

4) What a Carve Up – Jonathan Coe – The hero is employed to write a history of the Winshaw Family, a clan of borderline evil aristocrats, by one of their members. Chapters alternate between modern day (well, early nineties) scenes of him researching, writing, obsessing over the eponymous film and being let down by the Government; some flashbacks to his younger years, and the story of each member of the family, told through diary entries, newspapers articles, and various other forms. And then from about two thirds in, the hero and the family meet, and things get very strange. It’s as laugh out loud hilarious, cleverly plotted, and viciously political.

5) Before I Go to Sleep – AJ Watson – I reviewed this only a few weeks ago. The main character wakes up each morning with no memory of the last few decades or real understanding of who she is. The story is told through the diary she has secretly begun to keep, and the fact that she (and therefore the reader) has no idea what is or isn’t true makes for a disorientating experience.

6) Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn – Obviously, this book has been wildly popular recently. For me, it’s not so much the (really rather far-fetched) plot that made me enjoy it, but the clever structure (and some great prose and killer lines). Chapters alternate between Nick’s (the husband) narration, starting with the day of his wife’s disappearance, and Amy’s (the wife) diary entries, dating back from the day the two first met years before, and gradually working up to a few days before her mysterious disappearance. The two storylines didn’t quite mesh, showing what a different perspective two people can have on the same event and keeping me guessing about what was really going on in the main characters’ relationship and what had happened on the day of Amy’s disappearance.

7a) Behind the Scenes at the Museum – Kate Atkinson – A chronological story of a girl growing up in Yorkshire in the sixties and seventies is interspersed with stories of her extended family stretching back to about 1900, and told out of order, so that the full picture only gradually becomes clear.

Ones I didn’t enjoy so much but that I admire for trying

7b) Life after Life – Kate Atkinson – The above author’s latest book was a bit of a let down to me, though it’s received rave reviews from many people and is certainly both unique and ambitious. The heroine is born, and dies moments later, choked by her umbilical cord. She is born again, and lives for a few months. The book endlessly returns to the scene of the baby being born, and to numerous scenes of her death – as a baby, a toddler, a teen, an adult. From smallpox, accidents, violence, war. It’s never quite clear whether these are reincarnations, parallel lives, or something in between.

8) A Visit From the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan – It may have won the Pulitzer Prize, but I just couldn’t fall in love with this. Certainly written in an unusual way though. It consists of several stories, spanning about fifty years, and each centring around a different character, although each of them have links to some of the others, and one seems to be the key connecting link. The stories are told out of chronological order, which makes for some thought provoking moments, and uses different styles, perhaps most noteworthily, the story told in PowerPoint slide format!

9) Room – Emma Donughue – Not one of my favourites, but certainly unique and memorable. It’s narrated by a five year old boy, who has been imprisoned in a single room ever since he was born to his kidnapped and raped mother. The fact that he believes the room to be the whole world, that he has his own names for things, and that he is utterly innocent about the horrors that are really going on makes for a truly unusual voice.

10) The Lovely Bones – the heroine dies (horribly) in the first chapter, and then narrates the rest of the novel from heaven. A little mawkish in parts, but a pretty clever concept.

Top Ten Tuesday – Books of 2013

31 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

best books of 2013, new year, top ten tuesday

It’s time for the last Top Ten Tuesday of the year. For those who haven’t come across it before, it’s organised by The Broke and the Bookish http://brokeandbookish.blogspot.co.uk/p/top-ten-tuesday-other-features.html and the idea is quite simple. Every week, they provide a book-related theme and bloggers have to pick their top ten. This week, it’s a nice straightforward one for New Year’s Eve: Top Ten books read this year.

This year’s been a pretty good year for reading. Last year, I’d have struggled to find ten books that I’d really loved, this year, it’s hard to narrow my selection down that far from the 34 books I’ve read. You can find my reviews of all these books here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/pdp/profile/A1M4SYONBR2PXM Some also have more detailed reviews on this blog – I was going to link to them but I’m now rushing off to a party!

Shadow and Bone – Leigh Bardugo – I picked this up expecting a fairly clichéd bit of YA fantasy fun – love triangle and chosen one – and ended up absolutely blown away. It’s hard to pinpoint what made me like this better than any number of similar books, but it’s some combination of the setting (a fantasy world based on Tsarist Russia), the author’s style, and the characters, especially the Darking, a fascinating character who treads a fine line between villain and love interest and whose scenes I would love to have written. I wrote a superlative-filled review of this after my first read, and since then, I’ve dipped in and out whenever I’ve been between books, bored, or struggling to finish Ivory Terrors, and it’s perked me up every time.
Anno Dracula – Kim Newman -This was lent to me by a work friend, who wholeheartedly recommended it. The pulpy eighties cover put me off for ages, but as soon as I started, it reminded me why I first fell in love with vampire novels. Queen Victoria has married Count Dracula, and every historical and literary character from the Victorian era gets drawn into the sometimes funny, sometimes scary but always brilliantly imagined plot.
Nights of Blood and Starlight – Laini Taylor -The first book in this series, Daughter of Smoke and Bone (no relation to the abovementioned Shadow and Bone) was a strange paranormal tale set in Prague, featuring a war between angels and demons with our heroine on the demonic side. The brilliant premise and enthralling first half gradually descended into a second-rate angel/human romance, leaving me very disappointed. This sequel drops the urban fantasy tropes in favour of full-blown high fantasy in another world, introduces interesting shades of grey to both sides, and adds an interesting dimension to the romance angle. It’s one of those books I just wanted to tell people about non-stop, and spent lunchbreaks at work manically reading.
Grave Mercy – Robin La Fevers -This is one of the first books I’ve been introduced to directly through various book blogs. Everyone suddenly seemed to be talking about the book with MEDIEVAL ASSASSIN NUNS. I struggled to believe a book could live up to that jaw-dropping premise, but it really did, combining a realistic portrayal of the high politics of fifteenth-century Brittany (now there’s an unusual setting) with a carefully imagined world of a set of nuns dedicated to the patron saint of death. I immediately read the sequel, Dark Triumph which had a rather different tone but was just as good.
Sisterland – Curtis Sittenfeld – Regular readers of this blog might have gathered that Curtis Sittenfeld is one of my all-time favourite authors, despite her generally writing realistic, contemporary fiction while my tastes tend towards the fantastical. This tale of (possibly) psychic sisters in the modern day US combines the best of both worlds. It’s mostly a soul-baring tale of real life – love, loss, family, fitting in – which makes the paranormal touches all the more fascinating. It’s beautifully written and makes brilliant use of flashbacks in its not-quite-linear narrative.
Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovitch – This tale of a wonderfully three-dimensional mixed-race policeman in London who discovers he is a wizard neatly mixes fantasy/paranormal elements, the sort of twisty police procedurals that would put CSI to shame, and humour that reminded me of early Discworld. It’s an unusual read that I’d recommend to people who don’t normally like fantasy, especially Londoners or serious Anglophiles, as the author’s love of the city radiates out of the pages. The sequel, Moon over Soho, was also good but the plot didn’t grab me in quite the same way.
Fangirl – Rainbow Rowell – I’ve never actually written fanfiction, but I’m certainly a serious book geek. This story of an extremely socially anxious girl trying to make it at college and having to find the right balance between fandom and real life was an unusual premise that was well-executed, mixing the main story with excerpts from the heroine’s fanfiction and the (imaginary) books she’s obsessed by. The book was very funny in parts, but almost painful to read in others. It has some of the most pleasant characters that I’ve read about this year, and is a must read for anyone who writes fanfiction, writes their own novels, or has ever loved a book slightly too much. (Incidentally, I read this shortly after reading Shadow and Bone, and the combination made me come dangerously close to writing a fic for the first time!)
Bring up the Bodies – Hilary Mantel – I’m not sure what more can be said about one of the most noteworthy books of recent years. This literary tale of the fall of Anne Boleyn and the rise of Thomas Cromwell is a hard slog, even if you love the Tudor period as much as I do, but it more than repays the effort readers have to put in. I’ve never known a book that gets so thoroughly inside a character’s head – I could almost believe Mantel either knew Cromwell or had been him in a past life – and finishing it felt like stepping out of a time machine. I enjoyed this one a lot better than the first book in the series, Wolf Hall.
MaddAddam – Margaret Atwood – This is the most recent book I’ve read, and I said most of what I wanted to say in yesterday’s review. It’s not as good as its predecessors, Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, but it’s still a clever and entertaining end to one of the finest dystopian series I’ve ever read.
Life after Life – Kate Atkinson -Unlike the other books on this list, which all got four or five stars from me, this was a 3 star review, and I stand by that rating, as I think the book had a lot of flaws. Even so, I think it deserves a place on this list for its intriguing premise – a woman is born again and again in 1910, and each time, things are subtly different. It’s stuck in my mind more than many books that I enjoyed more at the time of reading, and I think it’s better to read something interesting that doe
sn’t quite do it for you than the same old plots all of the time.

Finally, a special mention to Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea – Barbara Demick. This was my one foray into non-fiction, and it was every bit as compelling as the best thriller and as moving as the best tearjerker. I’ve always been quite interested in North Korea, and this served as both a great summary of its recent history and political situation, and, as the name suggests, as a story of ordinary people. Some of the things they go through are horrific, but it’s ultimately a celebration of ingenuity and the human spirit. It didn’t seem quite appropriate to rate it alongside the other books, but I’d wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.

Happy new year everyone, and here’s to lots more great books in 2014.

Top Ten Tuesday – Sequels I can’t wait to get my hands on

06 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

books, reading, sequels, top ten tuesday

It’s time for Top Ten Tuesday. Well actually, it’s not, as it’s quite clearly Wednesday, but yesterday I was too busy posting about Bonfire Night, and I really didn’t want to miss this one: Top Ten Sequels I Can’t Wait to Get My Hands On. For anyone unfamiliar with TTT, it’s organised by The Broke and the Bookish http://brokeandbookish.blogspot.co.uk/p/top-ten-tuesday-other-features.html and the idea is quite simple. Every week, they provide a book-related theme and bloggers have to pick their top ten.

Top Ten Sequels I can’t wait to get my hands on:

The Epic Fantasy follow-ons I’ve been waiting for ages for – sadly neither of these have a release date yet, and both authors had huge gaps between their last two books, so I won’t be expecting to read these any time soon.

1) The Winds of Winter (A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones) – George RR. Martin

2) The Doors of Stone (The Kingkiller Chronicles) – Patrick Ruthfuss

The final books of trilogies I’ve loved this year – luckily, all of them are due next year and the authors seem pretty reliable. I think they come out around the same sort of time – that’s going to be an intense month’s reading!

3) Ruin and Rising (The Grisha) – Leigh Bardugo

4) Dreams of Gods and Monsters (Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy) – Lauri Taylor

5) Mortal Heart (His Fair Assassin Trilogy) – RL LaFevers

The one I have been waiting half my life for, to the extent that it’s never going to live up to my expectations

6) Strange Fate (Nightworld Series) – Nine Nightworld books came out in quick succession in the late nineties. Te tenth and final book in the Nightworld series was meant to be released in 1998, when I was 13. Since then, it’s been delayed and delayed. Release dates have been announced and dropped. After the awfulness that was the new Vampire Diaries trilogy, I’m not even that keen to read this any more, but I know that the second it’s published (if that ever happens) I will buy it, just to get some sort of closure!

Top Ten Tuesday – Autumn Reading List

22 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Top Ten Tuesday

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

books, reading, top ten tuesday

Here’s my entry for Top Ten Tuesday a weekly feature hosted by the blog, The Broke and the Bookish – http://brokeandbookish.blogspot.co.uk/

Each week they ask people to write a top ten list of something on a literary theme. this week, it’s Autumn Reading. It’s five days late, but in my defence, I recently started a new job and my brain feels like it’s about to melt. Nonetheless, I had to get involved with this week’s TTT. My favourite entry so far was summer reading, which really gave my vague reading plans focus and a hint of a challenge. Once I’m back from Furore I’m planning to write a post about how I found the ten books I listed here: Summer Reading

Top Ten Tuesday – Summer Reading List

18 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Top Ten Tuesday

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

booker prize, books, curtis sittenfeld, fantasy, grave mercy, neil gaiman, rivers of london, shining girls, summer reading, top ten tuesday, ya

It’s time for Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly feature hosted by the blog, The Broke and the Bookish – http://brokeandbookish.blogspot.co.uk/

Each week they ask people to write a top ten list of something on a literary theme. It’s a nice simple one this week: books you’re planning to read over the summer. I’ve kept this down to eight on the basis that there are bound to be things I want to read on a random, spur-of-the-moment basis, not to mention things I suddenly find myself desperate to read once I start browsing other people’s lists:

1) The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman) – the new Neil Gaiman. I think that’s enough said.

2) Sisterland (Curtis Sittenfeld)- and the new Curtis Sittenfeld. A few months ago, when there was a Top Ten Tuesday about autobuy authors, she was high up my list. Besides which, the theme of psychic twin sisters sounds intriguing, even if it’s a bit too similar to my favourite story in Girl Reading.

3) Rivers of London (Ben Aaronovitch) – London based urban fantasy (in the most literal sense of both words) that was recommended to me by someone whose taste in books hasn’t failed me yet. And since they expectantly lent me their copy, I’ve kept seeing praise lavished on it from all quarters.

4) Seraphina (Rachel Hartman) – All through my teens, Seraphina was my favourite name. I used it as the name of the character in my first novel (which possibly tells you everything you need to know about said novel!), used it as my default internet screen name and seriously planned to lumber my first born daughter with it – actually, don’t tell my fiancé, but I’ve still not entirely ruled that out. When I saw there was a fantasy novel with this title, I almost wondered if I’d written and published it myself whilst drunk. Beyond the name though, I’ve heard good things about this, and I love the idea of a proper hardcore fantasy novel written by a woman.

5) Throne of Glass (Sarah Maas) – And while we’re on the subject of female-authored fantasy, this always seems to be mentioned in the same breath as Seraphina, and also sounds potentially fantastic.

6) Grave Mercy (RL LaFevers)- the more reviews I’ve read, the less sure I’ve been, but when I hear there’s a novel about an assassin nun in fifteenth century France, I’m sold.

7) The Shining Girls – as a general rule, I hate books about serial killers (books about crime full-stop really) but love books that make clever use of time travel. I’m desperate to see which side wins out when I read this tale of a time-travelling serial killer.

8) The Teleportation Accident (Ned Beauman) – I always try and read my way though those bits of the Booker Prize shortlist that look vaguely interesting, and this entry from last year with what appears to be a weird, time-bending structure has been hanging around on my TBR list for months.

So, anyone want to warn me off any of these or encourage me to hurry up and start one of them?

Top Ten Tuesday – Words or phrases that make me pick up a book

30 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

books, class, cornwall, medici, Oxford, reading, sheffield, time, top ten tuesday, vampires

It’s time for Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly feature hosted by the blog, The Broke and the Bookish – http://brokeandbookish.blogspot.co.uk/

Each week they ask people to write a top ten list of something on a literary theme. This week, it’s one of the most intriguing ones I’ve come across so far – Word and Phrases that make you pick up a book.

Places

1. Oxford – Yes, I happen to have written a series of books set in Oxford, but this isn’t even a fix. Long before and long after I wrote Oxford Blood, I’ve been attracted to books set at England’s premier university (I don’t want to hear it, Cambridge fans). Partly, it’s that combination of recognition and nostalgia. Knowing exactly what a road a character is walking down looks like or what beers they serve in a pub a character visits really helps you identify with them, and a book that captures the Oxford experience well brings back wonderful memories of some of the best years of my life.

Above and beyond my personal preferences however, I think Oxford is objectively a great place to set a book, or indeed, a TV series. Firstly, it’s an utterly beautiful town, and everyone loves a picturesque setting. But most importantly, it’s a place where hundreds of people who are some combination of rich, clever, young, ambitious, good-looking and eccentric come together and live in close proximity under large amounts of stress, creating the perfect recipe for drama.

Examples: Brideshead Revisited (basically invented the “isn’t Oxford lovely” genre, even though only a small proportion of the book features posh boys at university whilst the rest is really fairly depressing). Career Girls (Only the first few chapters of this are actually set at Oxford, but those few chapters give the best representation of Oxford Union politics and student journalist I’ve ever come across)

2)Sheffield/Yorkshire – Before there was Oxford, there was Sheffield. And on the whole, novels about the two couldn’t be more different. One evokes images of floppy haired youths frolicking on manicured lawns, the other, surely men downing a pint before going down t’pit or t’factory. If I see a book about Sheffield, I pick it up with a sinking heart, because I know that it’s probably going to be grim, but for the same reasons around recognition as above, I’ll usually read it anyway.

There actually aren’t that many books about Sheffield specifically (if anyone has any recommendations, let me know) but when I expand out into Yorkshire more generally, it suddenly becomes quite a wide genre. I guess all the novelists live in Leeds. And once you’re further out, whilst there’s usually still a touch of grinding poverty, you also get fantastic moorland scenery.

Examples: The Northern Clemency (set in Sheffield and a rare example of looking at middle class northerners); A Woman of Substance (servant girl from the Yorkshire Moors founds her own company and becomes billionairess. I inherently approve); Wuthering Heights (the classic tale of being a bit northern).

3) St Mawes/Cornwall – I have far less claim on this area than on the other two, but my family always used to holiday in St Mawes, and that area in particular, and the whole of Cornwall more generally, has always managed to exert a hold over my imagination. Cornwall is beautiful, in a wild, windswept way, and to me, it always has this sense of otherness about it. I like it’s odd mythology and it’s saints that aren’t recognised by any established churches. I think it’s pretty much the best place in the UK to set an adventure story.

Examples: Over Sea, Under Stone; The King’s General

Time periods and historical people

4) The Medici/Renaissance Florence – there’s something about the Medici family (the Renaissance rulers of Florence) that has always caught my interest. Lorenzo the Magnificent always seems to me to be one of the few examples in history of something approaching a benevolent dictator. A novel set in Renaissance Florence (especially one featuring the Medici family) is always going to feature beautiful buildings, political scheming, brutality, philosophy and stunning art. What’s not to like?

5) Historical Women – I’m the sort of person who sees history in terms of characters, and there’s no archetype I like better than the women who defies the narrow box she’s been put into by society to gain power. Stories featuring genuinely strong modern women are quite interesting too, but it’s the historical ones that really get me. I wrote my thesis on an eighteenth/early-nineteenth century political player called Jane Osbaldeston, and one day I’d love to write a fictionalised, sexed up account of her life.

Themes

6) Vampires – there’s not a lot to say that I haven’t said at length on this blog previously (see this link for at an-length discussion of my thoughts on the genre). Nowadays, there are far too many vampire books that don’t really do it for me at all, but there’s still something about the genre that intrigues my enough to at least check out anything vampire related, even if I then hastily cast it aside.

7)Mythology – As a kid, I was obsessed with mythology, mainly Greek, but any ancient myths were fair game. In my teens, I dabbled with paganism, and although I abandoned that long ago, I still find the concept fascinating. My areas of interest change all the time. At the moment, it’s mainly the Celtic side of things that really gets to me. If it’s well researched, mythology, either as the main focus or as a side plot, can totally make a book for me, but few things annoy me as much as authors throwing mythological names into the mix seemingly based on a few minutes on Wikipedia.

Examples: The Dark is Rising (Celtic loveliness), The Forbidden Game/The Secret Circle (One of the things that made me first admire LJ Smith’s books over and above all the other YA paranormal writers was her brilliant grasp of, respectively, Norse and Greek mythology in these books)

8. Class – There’s something about class in all it’s complexity that I find oddly compelling. Sometimes, a simple story of rich, titled folk is enough, but what I usually crave is a tale of worlds colliding, of someone struggling to fit in or pretending to be something they are not. This can be fun in a historical context, but I actually prefer this sort of thing in a contemporary, or at least twentieth century, setting, where I can really appreciate the nuances.

Examples- Snobs/Past Imperfect Prep (The writer of Downton Abbey is the absolute master of this genre. Snobs is the perfect read for anyone who likes those “girls meets earl” type novels – a relatively realistic take on marrying into the aristocracy, and Past Imperfect tells the story of five debutantes in the 1960s and how they are faring in the modern world.

9. Unconventional narratives – a bit of a pretentious one this, but anything that’s told from multiple perspectives or jumps back and forth in times or is told through newspaper articles etc etc tends to make me want to give it a go. It’s usually then about a fifty/fifty chance between me loving it or hating it, but I always admire the author for giving it a go.

Examples: The Blind Assassin, Cloud Atlas, What a Carve Up

10. Time – I couldn’t think of a better way to express this one. I sort of mean any book in which time plays a major part, whether it’s telling the tale of a town over hundreds of years, following the entire life of one person, featuring time travel or just lots of flashbacks. For some reason, these sorts of ideas make me feel fascinated and intrigued in roughly equal measure.

Examples: Sarum (tells the story of the area around Stonehenge over 10 000 years, featuring a cast of thousands); The Time Travellers Wife (obviously); The Spoils of Time (runs from the 1900s to the 1960s, and it just kills me to watch the main character grow old)

Top Ten Tuesdays – Books that were better or worse than I was expecting

23 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

book reviews, top ten tuesday

It’s time for Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly feature hosted by the blog, The Broke and the Bookish – http://brokeandbookish.blogspot.co.uk/

Each week they ask people to write a top ten list of something on a literary theme. This week it’s books that were better or worse than expected.

I don’t actually find that this is something that happens to me very often. I try to carefully pick out books I think I’m genuinely going to enjoy, and my radar tends to be quite accurate. I expect most books I read to be roughly three or four stars. In this list, however, I’ve got some that were better than expected and some that were worse. Almost all of them, in both categories, can be blamed on either recommendations by friends or having previously read something by the same author – and ultimately, on me massively judging books by their covers.

Note that better doesn’t necessarily mean “amazing” nor does “worse” mean awful. These are all based on my pre-conceptions versus my actual verdict. To make this clearer I’ve tried to give a rough estimation of what star rating I was expecting to give the book and what I actually gave it/would have given it if I’d written a review.

BETTER

1)The Book of the New Sun – Gene Wolfe (read 2008 – expected 2 stars, verdict 5 stars) and A Song of Ice and Fire – George RR Martin (read 2010 – expected 3 stars, verdict 5 stars) – my then new boyfriend (now fiancé) said Urth of the New Sun was his favourite series of books. I like a touch of fantasy but from the cover and the blurb this looked like the proper hardcore variety – at best dull, at worst ultra-trashy (or should that be the otherway round?) Nonetheless, I decided to read all four books in an effort to impress him AND ABSOLUTELY LOVED THEM. Absolute undoubted five stars. They have a fascinatingly complex plot, are written in beautiful language and are undoubtedly the most literary and post-modern genre novel I’ve ever read.

Dear man in sinister cape with massive sword – you are not filling me with confidence about the contents of this book

Despite this revelation I was unconvinced about the merits of my boyfriend’s second favourite series, ASoIaF, but decided to give them a whirl and devoured the whole series back to back. Needless to say, I now unquestioningly listen to all his book recommendations.

2)Anno Dracula – Kim Newman (read 2012 – expected 2/3 stars, verdict 5 stars)- I had a conversation with a friend at work that basically went, “you write vampire books. You have to read this.” From the eighties front cover it looked like pulpy horror and it took me ages to actually get around to reading it, but it turned out to be a brilliantly researched piece of Victoriana by an expert in pop culture and vampire lore.

Seriously, this does not look like a good book

This is the new cover, which would have left me much more enthusiastic from the outset

3)Sparkles – Louise Bagshawe (read 2008 -expected 1 star, verdict 4 stars) – I don’t really do “Chick-lit.” I read this for one reason and one reason only – when I was on the Oxford Union committee, its author, Louise Bagshawe (Mensch) was coming to participate in a debate we were holding about Tory women. I’d mainly invited her because she’d been selected as a ministerial candidate, but thought it would be rude not to read one of her books.

I picked up the book, with its pink sparkly cover, through gritted teeth, to the amusement of everyone who saw me with it. But it was actually great fun – obviously not great literature, but surprisingly well-plotted, with some wild twists and turns , and above all, absolutely addictive. When no one was looking, I read most of her other books in quick succession.

It’s so very pink and sparkly

4) The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins (read 2011 – expected 1/2 stars, verdict 4 stars) – the more hyped-up this series became, the more I determined to avoid it. The premise didn’t really appeal and I generally find that supposed “must-read” books don’t live up to expectations. I finally cracked after a friend persuaded me. I’m not saying it became an all-time favourite or anything, just that I was expecting it to be awful and it was actually quite engaging.

5) Vampire Diaries 1 – LJ Smith (read 2000-ish – expected 2/3 stars, verdict 5 stars)- As a young teenager, I read LJ Smith’s Secret Circle. It was about witches and Greek mythology, two things that hugely appealed to me and I predictably loved it. I read the whole trilogy back to back and then desperately went looking for any other books by the same author. The only other series was described as “vampire romance.” I distinctly remember the way that neither term appealed – one sounded too scary, the other too sappy. But I’d love the Secret Circle so much that I forced myself to read them – and to this day I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed reading something to quite the extent I experienced that weekend. Other books quickly replaced them in my favourites list and there are a lot of books I’d regard as objectively better, but for sheer love at the time there’s little competition. I spent most of the next two years reading any vampire romance I could get my hands on, but nothing ever quite hit the spot in the same way. It’s probably the only time a book hasn’t just changed my preconception of itself, but of an entire genre.

WORSE

1) Vampire Diaries 5-7 – LJ Smith(read 2011 – expected 4 stars, verdict 2 stars) Following on from the above, I was excited (if slightly nervous) to hear there was going to be a new trilogy, about twenty years after the first were published and ten years after I read them. The first was disappointing, the second was actually quite good but still massively below expectations and the third was a train wreck. If they’d been a different series by a different author, I could have dismissed them as a diverting but disappointing read, as it was I was actually left slightly traumatised. Perhaps the saddest thing was that there were the odd splashes of the old brilliance here and there.

2) Number 9 Dream – David Mitchell ( read 2006 – expected 5 stars, verdict 3 stars) This wasn’t terrible, it’s just that I’ve loved ever other book by David Mitchell and this one just didn’t work for me. There were some good bits, but lots that was surreal, lots that was a bit dull and lots of extremely odd plot devices.

Not being as good as Cloud Atlas does not make you a bad book but I’m going to resent you for it anyway

3)Anita Blake -Laurell K Hamilton (read 2009 – expected 4/5 stars, verdict 2 stars) Ever since I expressed an interest in vampire novels as a teenage and more so since I started writing them myself, everyone on the internet was telling me I should read these (albeit with some warning that they go rapidly downhill as the series goes on). They sounded great – vampires that were attractive and scary in equal measure, a strong heroine and lots of sexy scenes. And when I finally read the first book all of that was there, but somehow it just didn’t work for me at all. You know how sometimes you meet someone who is attractive and nice and you have loads in common with them but there’s just no chemistry – well, it was a bit like that.

4) A Visit From the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan (read 2010 – expected 5 stars, verdict 3 star) – with a Pulitzer Prize win and just the sort of multiple-perspectives and non-chronological narrative I like in a literary novel, plus a rock music theme, I was expecting to love this. Instead I just read it, vaguely enjoyed it and instantly forgot about it. Which is almost worse than hating a book.

5)The Blade Itself – Joe Abercrombie (2011, exp. 4/5, verdict DNF) and The Lies of Locke Lamora – Scott Lynch (2012, exp 4/5, verdict 3)- I’m clubbing these together partly because I’m rapidly running out of entries, partly because everyone seems to mention them in the same breath and partly because I had a similar problem with both books. Basically, I’d seen lots of people say “If you like Game of Thrones and/or Kingkiller Chronicles, you’ve got to read these.” I was expecting clever, modern, epic fantasy, but I found both of them quite predictable and clichéd.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with a bit of clichéd genre writing (says the girl who unashamedly has a vampire love triangle all over her books) but I couldn’t understand why everyone was claiming these books redefined the genre or were anything like the favourites they were being compared with.

The man with the big sword would have put me off had the other book not lulled me into a false sense of security

Top Ten Tuesday – Characters I Would Crush On If I Were Also a Fictional Character

02 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Books

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

books, cavaliers, cloud atlas, curtis sittenfeld, discworld, forbidden game, game of thrones, hilary mantel, kingkiller chronicles, lord vetinari, sandman, thomas cromwell, top ten tuesday

It’s time for Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly feature hosted by the blog, The Broke and the Bookish – http://brokeandbookish.blogspot.co.uk/

Each week they ask people to write a top ten list of something on a literary theme. This week it’s characters you have a crush on. I’ve been waiting for this topic for weeks. All I can say is that it’s a good job I’m not writing this ten years ago or I’d never have kept it down to ten. In my mid-teens, I just couldn’t read a book without falling in love with someone in it, and I was reading everything from literary classics to the trashiest of the trashy novels.

Now my hormones have calmed down and I’m freshly engaged, I’m not quite so easily impressed, and indeed, I’ve read several books recently with someone who’s meant to be a great romantic hero and felt a bit non-plussed. This list however seems to stand the test of time.

It’s probably worth bearing in mind that I havea slightly worrying taste in book boyfriends. This lot are nearly universally arrogant/power-mad; a good few of them are outright evil or at least highly amoral , and in one especially worrying case, after reading I found out that a character was meant to be based on George Bush. Oh, and one is about 90% based on my actual boyfriend. You can draw your own conclusions about whether he’s an exception to this rule or not…

Also, at least four are dead by the end of the series they appear in (don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of spoiling the books by saying which ones). I strongly suspect that two more are going to join this list by the time their series’ are completed. I’m just a glutton for punishment.

1 – Julian – LJ Smith – The Forbidden Game

There’s no way I could write a list about book boyfriends and not start with an LJ Smith character. I don’t think any author has so consistently managed to write characters that I felt a wild attraction to. Yes, the fact that I read all her books in my teens helped, but I read lots of similar paranormal romance around the same time and no one had quite the same effect on me. If I let myself, I could quite easily have filled the whole list with her dark romantic leads, filled a back up list with the lighter side of her inevitable love triangles and probably have got a good way through a third on the strength of her random supporting characters.

However, I’m restricting myself to one character per author (except me, because I make my own rules), so there’s really only one choice. Julian from the Forbidden Game. In many ways, Julian is a bit of a stock character, artfully balancing being hot, evil, charming and utterly in love with the heroine. I can’t quite put my finger on why he is so much more memorable than all the other sexy paranormal cads out there, but somehow he is. Partly, it’s just because he has such a good storyline to work with. Partly because he’s such an unusual character, being a Shadow Man, a creature from Norse Mythology, rather than a vampire/werewolf/angel/fairy. Partly it’s because he gets some great lines. And partly, as with really life, I guess sometimes the chemistry is just right.

2)Morpheus/Sandman – Neil Gaiman – Sandman Series

This one scores even higher on the “you really wouldn’t want to go out with him in real life” scale. His girlfriends all seem to end up in hell or cursed or trapped somewhere, which isn’t really what you want. On the plus side, he’s good-looking, romantic, more powerful than any god and a great storyteller. And whileever the ill-fated girlfriends are still in favour, they seem to be utterly adored. I don’t usually go in for graphic novels, but the nice thing about them is that they let me see exactly what he’s supposed to look like and in general, I absolutely approve. Except that the way some of the artists draw him, he looks disturbingly like my brother. (Using a picture to illustrate this fact has been vetoed!).

3) Ned Stark – A Game of Thrones – George RR Martin

I read Game of Thrones and the rest of the series so far before the TV show and adored it. As a good northern lass one of my favourite things about it was the cold frozen north full of grimly self-sufficient men and the way it was initially contrasted with and ultimately plunged into war with the softly indulgent south. I was rooting for the north all the way, especially House Stark and especially their wonderful patriarch Ned.

Unlike most of my selections here, who are basically terrible people once you strip away the glamour and the power, Ned seems like a really nice chap. He has a castle, a private army and huge reserves of power and respect. But he’s also a family man, fiercely loyal and utterly honourable. Plus he’s good at fighting (though by no means the best, which is a touch I like) and the sort of dad who gives his kids giant wolves as a present, but also remembers to tell them they have to look after them properly. He also, in one of my favourite minor scenes, gets up from his overheated bed in the middle of a freezing night and stands by his open window to cool down. I do that all the time. We’d be the perfect match.

The TV series only solidified this for me, because a)I love Sean Bean and b)he played him with a Sheffield accent, which was the way I’d always imagined lovely lovely Ned.

4 Thomas Cromwell – Wolf Hall/Bring up the Bodies – Hilary Mantel

Even more so than literary characters, I have a tendency to fall head over heels in love with historical characters. That said, despite taking a final paper on Tudor History, I never gave Thomas Cromwell a second thought. But on reading Hilary Mantel’s twin masterpieces, I suddenly thought he was amazing. Much like Ned Stark, he seems to be the only decent man in a world of total dicks. Unlike Ned, he knows when to admit defeat and arrange someone’s execution in order to stay on the king’s side. I like a bit of pragmatism in my men.

What I really love about him though is the way he starts life as the son of a blacksmith and through his own intelligence, ambition and energy becomes one of the most powerful men in England. He supports apprentices. He educates his daughters in Latin and maths. He throws great parties. He tries to set up a proto-welfare state. He’s probably the least physically attractive man on this list but I emphatically do not care. On the basis that you can’t spoil history, I think it’s fair to say he’s going to join my list of horrible deaths in Book Three. I’m not sure I can physically face reading that.

Note – definitely not to be confused with Oliver Cromwell, who I absolutely do not have a crush on as either a historical or fictional character. I didn’t call my series The Cavaliers for nothing.

5 Lord Vetinari – Discworld Series – Terry Pratchett

This is actually Lorenzo de’Medici

This one’s in a similar vein, only with an extra streak of cunning and evil. I’ve always thought of Terry Pratchett’s (mostly)benevolent dictator as being based on Lorenzo De’Medici, one of my top five history boyfriends and I think that was the author’s intention too. However, writing these two paragraphs side by side has made me realise that’s he’s actually uncannily like Mantel’s version of Cromwell. He’s ruthlessly ambitious, but treats personal power and the good of the country he’s governing roughly equally. He’s startlingly clever, and you know he’s always going to overcome any crisis he faces and beat anyone in a battle of wits. He doesn’t seem to have any kind of family and I’ve always thought he could do with a nice supportive girlfriend to help him run Ankh-Morpork.

6 Robert Frobisher – Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

I’ve touched on this in another blog post recently (by touched on I actually mean “stuck pictures of Ben Whishaw playing him in the recent film all over the place”) so I’ll keep this one short. Frobisher’s story is set in the early 1930s. He’s good-looking, well-dressed, a musical genius, an old Etonian, a Cambridge drop-out, a manic-depressive, a writer of beautiful witty letters, an accomplished seducer and a fan of Nietsche.

That’s not necessarily a universally positive list but the end result is that he’s utterly fascinating. In real life I think I’d end up hitting him within about five minutes of speaking to him (though I did once know someone who massively reminded me of him and who I kept trying to force this book on)but he’s a perfect book crush.

7 Kvothe – The Kingkiller Chronicles – Patrick Rothfuss

Some people say Kvothe’s a bit of a Mary Sue. I say, “Fine, I’ll keep this guy who is: a brilliant musician; an amazing storyteller; pretty much the most naturally talented practitioner of magic in the world; trained in sex by a love goddess and trained in fighting by the world’s best assassins, ALL FOR MYSELF.” Because that’s basically exactly the qualities I look for in a man. On the downside, he has ginger hair, but you can’t have it all.

8 Charlie Blackwell – American Wife – Curtis Sittenfeld

This one only gets to stay on the list because it wins my “biggest romantic head fuck of all time” award. Alice Lindgren is quiet and prim and proper. Her glamorous friend gets all the men. She goes to a BBQ and Charlie, the richest, best looking, most popular guy at the party falls totally and utterly in love with her. He takes her to his Cape Cod mansion where she meets his glamorous and sprawling family, including his senator father. At this point in the book I wanted to be Alice so much. Charlie seems so lovely. And then the book carries on and suddenly it’s clear that Charlie is based on George W Bush and I have the horrible realisation that I’d just developed a crush on young George Bush. I couldn’t watch any news featuring American politics for about five years afterwards.

Joint 9 and 10 . The Hon. Tom Flyte and Lord George Stewart – Georgiana Derwent -The Cavaliers Series

Forgive me a moment of self-publicising, but this list honestly wouldn’t be complete if I couldn’t include these two. After all, if there’s one thing better than coming across a character you fall in love with, it’s writing one to your exact specifications. And I know I said I was restricting myself to only one character per author, but it’s all or nothing here, I couldn’t possibly show any favouritism.

George and Tom are both aristocratic vampires, from the English Civil War and the 1920s respectively. As members of the Cavaliers, an elite dining society, they are pretending to be ordinary Oxford University students whilst secretly recruiting promising students that they can turn into vampires and use to run the country.

Tom has floppy dark hair and deep blue eyes. He went to Eton followed by Oxford. He likes indie music, partying and culture. He’s also extremely good at fencing, punting and apparently rowing. Oh, not to mention sex. He’s generally dressed extremely smartly, up to and including white tie. If I were single, you could probably take that description and set an online dating profile up for me. On the downside, he likes seducing people for their blood (including one person he killed) and being only eighty years old isn’t that powerful.

George has long blond hair and was basically brought up to be a soldier, but ended up cultured somewhere along the way. He’s half French and half Scottish (though speaks with a cut glass English accent), Catholic but pretty thoroughly lapsed, and fervently loyal to the monarch of the time from Charles I onwards. He hates the Roundheads for killing the king, killing his brother (even though that made him the heir to his father’s Dukedom) and for generally being dull and lacking in style. He has a reputation around Oxford as being both exceptionally attractive and charming and a total womaniser, even by the standards of the Cavaliers. As a Senior Member of the Cavaliers, he oversees the creation of the new vampires (who all have to kill someone to be turned) so he has a lot of blood on his hands. He has exceptionally strong mind control powers and tends to solve most problems with mesmerisms or duels.

End

So, do you like any of these characters or have I just shown what incredibly odd taste I have? And indulge me – if you’ve ever read my books, which of the two characters do you prefer?

Top Ten Tuesday – Autobuy Authors

26 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

books, curtis sittenfeld, david mitchell, george rr martin, jonathan coe, lj smith, margaret atwood, neil gaiman, patrick rothfuss, terry pratchett, top ten tuesday

I’ve been meaning to get involved with this for weeks, and finally, here’s my contribution to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly feature hosted by the blog, The Broke and the Bookish – http://brokeandbookish.blogspot.co.uk/

Each week they ask people to write a top ten list of something on a literary theme. This week it’s top ten auto-buy authors. That is, those authors whose latest books you would buy without giving much consideration to genre, blurb, reviews etc – you’d just trust in the fact that because it was by them, it was probably worth a read.

I got to five entries on this list in seconds (not what’s now my top five) because like everyone, I have favourites. Beyond that, I started to struggle and I eventually ground to a halt at nine. I generally like to discover new books, series, and authors. Unless I really love an author, I find that either all their books are basically the same and it all gets a bit dull, or most of what they write isn’t as good as the book that got me interested in them in the first place. I also find that it’s a rare series that doesn’t start to get bad if it goes on for more than four or five books.

Nonetheless, the second any of these good people announce another book, I’m heading straight to Amazon, in some cases with slight trepidation, in others in full confidence that whatever they’ve released, it’s going to be amazing.

1)Terry Pratchett is probably the single best example on this list of putting my auto-buy policy into practise. He’s written over forty books and I’ve read them all. For years, he churned out works that were hysterically funny, brilliantly plotted and strangely profound at a rate of around two books a year.

The Discworld books aren’t as good as they used to be, but a sub-par Terry Pratchett novel is still a pretty entertaining read and I don’t think I’ll ever stop buying them as they come out.

2)George R. Martin – like seemingly everyone else in the world, I’m desperately waiting for the final two A Song of Ice and Fire novels. A Dance with Dragons is probably the only book I can remember ordering in advance of publication to make sure I got it on release day.

Over and above that though, I’ve started reading through his back catalogue and the man just has a real gift for storytelling. Fevre Dream is basically a book about steamships, a subject I have pretty much zero interest in, but his writing made it fascinating. (Okay, it also had vampires, which I admittedly love, but they were definitely playing second fiddle to the steamships!) If I heard he had a new book out, in pretty much any genre, I’d give it a whirl.

3)Patrick Rothfuss – Patrick is probably the least tried and tested member of this list. He has written precisely two book, both of which are part of the same series, The Kingkiller Chronicles. I will be buying the third and final instalment the second it is released, no question. In fact it’s probably now beaten even A Song of Ice and Fire Book 6 into second place in my “books I cannot wait for list.” Maybe I’m wrong, but as it’s his writing style I love as much as the plot, I think I’d like anything else he wrote too.

4)David Mitchell – I wrote quite enough over the weekend about how much I love Cloud Atlas, DM’s finest work, so I won’t go on about that again. Whilst I don’t think any of his other books, earlier or later, can quite beat that, I’ve read and enjoyed them all. These include: a collection of loosely joined stories about ghosts; a tale of a young man’s search for his father in modern Japan; a coming of age tale in 1980s England; and an adventure story set in eighteenth century Japan. That’s probably the most varied genre jumping on this list, so I think it’s fair to say that I’ll give anything he writes a go and he can write an astonishingly good book about almost anything.

5)Curtis Sittenfeld -In contract, Curtis Sittenfeld seems to write about one thing and one thing only – Preppy, WASPY types coming of age and falling in love. But if that sounds like trashy chick-lit, think again. Her books are inevitably beautifully written and really clever – I definitely file them as literary in my mind. I happen to like stories about posh folk (I prefer the English variety, but American will do in a pinch!) but if her next book happened to be a gritty drama about starving refugees, I’d still snap it up immediately, because this girl can Write.

6)Jonathan Coe – I loved Jonathan Coe for What a Carve Up, which battles it out with Cloud Atlas in my best book ever award. The Rotters Club is also amazing. Since then though, he seems to have gone steadily downhill. Nonetheless, I can always find something to enjoy in his books, and I keep on giving him a chance without really checking what his new releases are about, just in case it’s another Carve Up.

7)Margaret Atwood – Great writer, and one of the few who can neatly blur the lines between literary and genre fiction. I prefer her when she veers closer towards the latter, but I always give her new books a go.

8)Neil Gaiman – I love all his books, and he even made me read a children’s book (Coraline) and give graphic novels a go (Sandman Series). In both cases, I enjoyed something not just outside of my usual genre but completely outside of the sort of book I’d normally consider.

9)LJ Smith – One upon a time Ms Smith would have been near the top of this list. I’ve written before about how her Vampire Diaries series triggered my love of vampire literature and that’s not even my favourite series of hers . That honour falls to the Forbidden Game, the best paranormal series ever. Having read and loved a few of her books, I sought out and devoured the rest in a frenzy. I physically couldn’t read anything else until I’d read everything she’d ever written.
This was all over a decade ago. Then a few years back I heard there was a new VD trilogy coming out and was beyond excited. Except to my horror, it turned out to be absolutely awful. Now I’d approach any new book of hers with caution, though an extract on her website from something she’s working on looks great, so maybe there’s hope yet. Either way, I know full well I’d still buy it. Especially the final book of Night World, which I’ve been waiting for for twelve years. George R Martin fans don’t know the meaning of suffering 😉

The Posh, the Privileged and the Paranormal

Tag Archives: top ten tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday – Books on my summer 2014 to-read list

Top Ten Tuesday – Books of 2013

Top Ten Tuesday – Sequels I can’t wait to get my hands on

Top Ten Tuesday – Autumn Reading List

Top Ten Tuesday – Summer Reading List

Top Ten Tuesday – Words or phrases that make me pick up a book

Top Ten Tuesdays – Books that were better or worse than I was expecting

Top Ten Tuesday – Autobuy Authors