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by K. M. Lockwood
Grey January skies bustle around The Garret. Damp and salty wind agitates bare-branched trees. The sea tumbles the shingle in one long rush of foam. Winter here is a time for wrapping up warm and pondering . . . Continue reading
by K. M. Lockwood
Grey January skies bustle around The Garret. Damp and salty wind agitates bare-branched trees. The sea tumbles the shingle in one long rush of foam. Winter here is a time for wrapping up warm and pondering . . . Continue reading
The very first #WritersReview! (There may be spoilers.) Continue reading
On deciding to have a Reading Month . . . Continue reading
After my break in Portugal, I’ve come up with an idea. I love to read. I love to review. I love my fellow writers. But until now, my reading journal has been a secret pleasure . . . Continue reading
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her?Hamlet, Act II sc ii Shakespeare
Why does the death of someone I did not know reduce me to tears? Continue reading
Amongst all the debate about Kathleen Hale’s piece in the Guardian and the Goodreads reviewer allegedly* hit over the head with a bottle by an enraged author, I want to put my emphasis on the positive aspects of reading and reviewing.
*it is under police investigation at present
10 reasons to review – with examples
I mostly write for Serendipity Reviews and occasionally for Fantasy Book Review. I read the whole book – or I don’t review it. Why not join me?
A shameless variation on Janet Potter’s great idea found here.
WRITERS!
Are you stuck for an idea?
Do your settings lack oomph?
Could your characters do with a fillip?
Still using the same old phrases?
LOOK NO FURTHER-the solution is at hand…
Semmelweis – as a boy in 1830.
The best answer I know is in reading:
Of course you want more book suggestions to feed your habit…
You want a courageous heroine – here’s a baker’s dozen of them:
Escape to the country?
Each of these is so evocative of the place you will either want to dash there immediately – or avoid it like a sink-hole.
Some more thoughts on The 100-book Challenge.
Of course, I reserve the right to alter, update and generally mess around with my own list. Inevitably, I found dreadful omissions – and I have reconsidered putting other forms of writing in. Surely they deserve their own list?
The most interesting thing for me was seeing the connections and clusters of influences on my own writing – sparkling like dewdrops on a cobweb. None of that will make sense to you, Dear Reader, if I do not spell out what I see as the highlights. A heap of books is quite interesting in itself – but how much more so if someone enthuses with joy and detail.
So here goes.
The first book leads me to a facet I admire in other writers – but haven’t even attempted – humour. Douglas Adams’ Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had such unexpected comedy – it was a new and startling thing. Could you do that in Science Fiction? It appeared you could. The vigour of it all is something I aspire to – and the joyous use of words. Such characters ! Who can forget Slartibartfast and the coast of Norway, Marvin the Paranoid Android – or Vogon Poetry?
In this batch, I’m going to include the anarchic and bitter Catch-22 by Joseph Heller , Henry Tumour by Anthony McGowan, and The Radleys by Matt Haig. They all deal with dark and important things – without being po-faced. Any book that can make me laugh and cry has to be good.
Some where close by, I’d have to stack Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons – replete with Starkadders, sukebind, and Graceless, Aimless, Feckless, and Pointless the cows. There’d have to be The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster – with the Jules Fieffer illustrations too. I love the ridiculous puns and have a very soft spot for the likes of Tock the Watch-dog Faintly Macabre, the not-so Wicked Which and The Mathemagician – and there’s a proper story .
Richard Adams’ Watership Down comes next. I had to have this for three main reasons: it’s a saga, there’s a deep sense of landscape and there are animals that aren’t twee. I shall focus on the latter.
I am not a vegetarian – but I have thought hard about it. Generally, I don’t eat meat that I don’t know the provenance of – I buy organic or free range or do without. Part of this is down to such reading. Almost anything by Dick King-Smith delights me – but The Sheep-Pig just tops the list. I foolishly omitted Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty [guaranteed to make me weep buckets ] and Lloyd Alexander’s Book of Three where we meet Hen Wen the Oracular Pig for the first time from my original list. Mea culpa.
Good animal writing is tricky to pull off – but I’d have to say I still get great pleasure from Rudyard Kipling’s Just-So Stories [not to mention the wonderful, unpatronising language]. The valiant Reepicheep made ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ just reach the top of my C.S.Lewis pile. [It has to have the original Pauline Baynes illustrations, of course.]
Third on the alphabetical list came Joan Aiken and I picked The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Two things I particularly cherish in it – alternate history (I read it late and had not known that you could do such a thing) and Winter. The use of a different ‘trouser leg of time’ [T. Pratchett, The Night Watch] leads to such wonders as much of Sir Terry’s work, and the haunting if flawed Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell by Susanna Clarke.
Ah but Winter! How that speaks to my Yorkshire soul. Three books I left out feature glorious evocations of snow: Dark Matter by Michelle Paver, Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg and Vendela Vida’s Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. All of these took me to crisply shown worlds and looked at them through strange and unsettling angles.
I’d have to have Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights as part of this Venn diagram – Serafina Pekkala, Iorek Byrnison, and Svalbard all inhabit my Winter imagination. So indeed does the White Witch but I can’t have another Narnia – but I will garner both The Box of Delights by John Masefield and The Children of Green Knowe into this corner. Both of these very different yet imaginative works finish a conflict between good and evil on Christmas Eve. I find it hard to think of a much more appropriate time. I’d better include Dicken’s A Christmas Carol – I do love a redemption story and I can be shamelessly sentimental at times.
I can’t believe I left out Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen – how could I forget brave Gerda and the Little Robber Girl? A wonderful Scandinavian adventure – with heroines.
Next time – from Frankenstein to Sir Gawain.
Do let me know any suggestions you might have – or comments.
Exploring the books that make me.
I am indebted to David Rain – you can find the article about his reasoning and the original challenge here.
The Challenge
WARNING: this can take hours of happy research.
Here’s mine, purely in alphabetical order:
Adams, Douglas | The Hitch-hikers’ Guide to the Universe |
Adams, Richard | Watership Down |
Aiken, Joan | The Wolves of Willoughby Chase |
Aldiss, Bryan | Frankenstein Unbound |
Allende, Isabel | The House of the Spirits |
Almond, David | My Name is Mina |
Anon | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight |
Atkinson, Kate | Behind the scenes at the Museum |
Barber, Antonia | The Ghosts |
Bathurst, Bella | The Lighthouse Stevensons |
Blake, Quentin | Mrs Armitage on Wheels |
Boston, L. M. | The Children of Green Knowe |
Briggs, K. M. | Hobberdy Dick |
Bronte, Charlotte | Jane Eyre |
Butler-Greenfield, Amy | Chantress |
Clarke, Susanna | Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell |
Connolly, John | The Book of Lost Things |
Cooper, Susan | Greenwitch |
Crane, Nicholas | Two Degrees West |
Dahl, Roald | Matilda |
Doherty, Berlie | Daughter of the Sea |
Dowd, Siobhan | The Ransom of Dond |
Dunmore, Helen | The Greatcoat |
Dunsany, Lord | The King of Elfland’s Daughter |
Fox, Essie | Elijah’s Mermaid |
Francis, Sarah | Odd Fish and Englishmen |
Gaiman, Neil | Coraline |
Gardner, Sally | Tinder |
Garner, Alan | The Stone Book Quartet |
Gavin, Jamila | Coram Boy |
Gibbons, Stella | Cold Comfort Farm |
Gutterson, David | Snow falling on Cedars |
Haddon, Mark | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time |
Haig, Matt | The Radleys |
Hardinge, Frances | A Face like Glass |
Hardy, Thomas | Collected Poetry |
Harris, Joanne | The Lollipop Shoes |
Heller,Joseph | Catch 22 |
Hill, Susan | In the Springtime of the Year |
Hodgson Burnett, Francis | The Secret Garden |
Hughes, Ted | Remains of Elmet |
Ihimaera, Witi | The Whale Rider |
Jansson, Tove | The Summer Book |
Juster, Norton | The Phantom Tollbooth |
Kemp, Gene | The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler |
Kingsley, Charles | The Waterbabies |
King-Smith, Dick | The Sheep-Pig |
Kipling, Rudyard | The Just-So Stories |
Lanagan, Margot | The Brides of Rollrock Island |
Langrish, Katherine, | West of the Moon |
LeGuin, Ursula | A Wizard of Earthsea |
Lewis, C. S. | The Voyage of the Dawn Treader |
Lively, Penelope | Astercote |
Macdonald, George | The Princess and Curdie |
MacFarlane, Robert | The Old Ways |
Mackay Brown, George | Greenvoe |
Manley-Hopkins, Gerald | Major Poems |
Mantel, Hilary | Beyond Black |
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia | Love in the Time of Cholera |
Mascull, Rebecca | The Visitors |
Masefield, John | The Box of Delights |
Mayne, William | The Blue Book of Hob Stories |
McCaughrean, Geraldine | The White Darkness |
McGowan, Anthony | Henry Tumour |
Meade Faulkner, J. | Moonfleet |
Mieville, China | Railsea |
Monk Kidd, Susan | The Secret Life of Bees |
Morpurgo, Michael | Grania O’Malley |
Mosse, Kate | The Mistletoe Bride |
Murphy, Jill | Five Minutes’ Peace |
Newbery, Linda | Lob |
Nimmo, Jenny | The Snow Spider |
Norton, Trevor | Reflections on a Summer Sea |
Paver, Michelle | Dark Matter |
Pollock, Tom | The City’s Son |
Pratchett, Terry | I shall wear Midnight |
Price, Susan | The Sterkarm Handshake |
Priestley, Chris | Mister Creecher |
Proulx, Annie | The Shipping News |
Prue, Sally | Cold Tom |
Pullman, Philip | The Northern Lights |
Ruiz Zafon, Carlos | The Name of the Wind |
Seuss, Dr | The Lorax |
Shelley, Mary | Frankenstein |
Shreve, Anita | Sea Glass |
Sommer-Bodenburg, Angela | The Little Vampire |
Sutcliff, Rosemary | Beowulf |
Swift, Graham | Waterland |
Thomas, Edward | Collected Poetry |
Thompson, Kate | The New Policeman |
Thomson, David | The People of the Sea |
Tolkien, J.R.R. | The Lord of the Rings |
Tremain, Rose | Restoration |
Valente, Catherynne M. | The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland |
Vickers, Salley | Miss Garnett’s Angel |
Vipont, Elfrida | The Elephant and the Bad Baby |
Walsh, Pat | The Crowfield Curse |
Wells, Philip | Horsewhispering in the Military-Industrial Complex |
Westall, Robert | The Kingdom by the Sea |
White, E.B. | Charlotte’s Web |
Zusak, Markus | The Book Thief |
So unsurprisingly, there are a fair few with more than a hint of fantasy or magical realism. There’s poetry and word-play in many, and definitely a sense of place pervading this selection. The sea and ghosts have a tendency to crop up – and heroines.
I am happy to put in links to The Hive ( which supports independent bookshops) for any title if you are interested – just let me know.
Now – go and do likewise. You might be surprised what you find out.