Category: Booking through Thursday

Not easy, because first of all I have to decide who are my favourite author(s). On a different day and in a different mood I’d tell you different authors from the ones I’m going to write about now.

In no particular order of preference these authors come to my mind today:

• Jane Austen – I first saw Pride and Prejudice serialised many years ago (in black and white – Alan Badel was Mr Darcy) and loved it. My mother had a copy and so I read it for the first time. I’ve read it many times since then and writing about it now I think I’m due to read it again soon.
• Louisa May Alcott – a childhood favourite. I was given Little Women either for Christmas or a birthday present and went on to read Good Wives, Jo’s Boys and Little Men.
• Robert Louis Stevenson – another present – Treasure Island and then I read Kidnapped a set book for school.
• Thomas Hardy – I didn’t think much of Hardy on first reading – that was The Trumpet Major another set book for school, but later I read The Mayor of Casterbridge and was hooked.
• Leo Tolstoy – I can’t really remember how I came across Tolstoy. He’s one of those authors that I’ve always known about and never read, that is until a few years ago when I bought a cheap edition of Anna Karenina and wondered why I hadn’t read it before. I followed this with War and Peace and was bowled over.
• Carol Shields – I remember this distinctly. I’d never heard of her and picked up Happenstance at Gatwick Airport, whilst waiting for a plane to Tunisia, read it in the departure lounge, on the plane and round the hotel pool, then passed it on to my husband. If you don’t know it, it’s written in two halves – one by the wife, then turn the book round and upside down and there is the second half by the husband. Both tell their stories of a certain period in their lives from their own point of view. I read the wife’s side first. I didn’t talk about it to my husband just gave him the book and he read the husband’s side first. Then we discussed it and of course we both had different views on it.
• Barbara Kingsolver – The Poisonwood Bible another airport buy and another book we’ve both read. This is about an evangelical Baptist missionary who takes his family to the Belgian Congo. I started reading it on the plane and collapsed at the thought of wearing many layers of clothes on the plane like the family have to as they are over the luggage allowance. This is a great book.
• Margaret Atwood – this one is thanks to my son and daughter-in-law who gave me Cat’s Eye. I read as many of hers as I can find.
• Ian McEwan – the first one was Enduring Love. I bought it because I liked the cover and the title, which is not normally how I choose books, but I’m glad I did. I think it’s still my favourite of his books.
• Penelope Lively – I can’t remember, I think I must have seen one of her books in the library. The last one I’ve just read is The Photograph – loved it. I’ll write more about it soon.

Once I started writing this it was easy after all and I could go on and on. Looking back, it was love at first sight for all these authors, apart from Thomas Hardy, but he’s a firm favourite now.

• Last week we talked about the books you liked best from 2007. So this week, what with it being a new year, and all, we’™re looking forward’¦.
• What new books are you looking forward to most in 2008? Something new being published this year? Something you got as a gift for the holidays? Anything in particular that you’™re planning to read in 2008 that you’™re looking forward to? A classic, or maybe a best-seller from 2007 that you’™re waiting to appear in paperback?

This is my first post in 2008 – Happy New Year everyone.

I’m looking forward to reading C J Sansom’s new book Revelation, which will be published in April. This is the fourth book featuring Matthew Shardlake and is set in Spring, 1543, when King Henry VIII is wooing Lady Catherine Parr, whom he wants for his sixth wife. It’s a time of religious mania when the insane are considered as heretics, imprisoned in Bedlam and burnt at the stake. When an old friend is horrifically murdered Shardlake, a lawer-cum-detective, promises to bring the killer to justice. His search leads him to connections not only with a boy in Bedlam but with Cranmer and Catherine Parr and with the dark prophecies of the Book of Revelation. I’ve loved the other Matthew Shardlake books and expect this one will be just as good.

I’m also looking forward to reading another book not yet published – Nothing to be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes. I read about it in the paper at the weekend. It’s a meditation and memoir, about God, death and art, which sounds fascinating. It’s out in March.

Then I have lots of books on my wish list and loads on my ‘to be read’ list – plenty to keep me going. Some of these I’ve included in the ‘What’s in a Name’ and ‘Celebrate the Author’ Challenges. I’ve already read two of the books I had for Christmas Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve and The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill, both of which I’ve been looking forward to reading and both were compelling and very enjoyable – worth waiting for. I am now reading a third Christmas present, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I first read this as a teenager, but after all that time it’s like reading it for the first time.

What fiction book (or books) would you nominate to be the best new book published in 2007?(Older books that you read for the first time in 2007 don’™t count.)
What non-fiction book (or books) would you nominate to be the best new book published in 2007?(Older books that you read for the first time in 2007 don’™t count.)
And, do ‘œbest of’ lists influence your reading?
Looking through the list of books I’™ve read this year I see that most of them are not new books published in 2007, so I don’™t have much difficulty in deciding which ones I would nominate.

In the fiction category my nominations are:

1. Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert, about mystery, magic, memory, full of psychological tension
2. Playing with the Moon by Eliza Graham, about memories, bereavement and the legacy of war
3. Speaking of Love by Angela Young, about misunderstandings, loss and above all love
4. Over by Margaret Forster about grief and death, heart-breakingly sad

My brief descriptions only give a flavour of the books and although they are all different it seems they have a lot in common ‘“ love and memories and loss.

I have only one nomination in the non-fiction category and that is:

The Verneys by Adrian Tinniswood ‘“ the lives of the Buckinghamshire Verney family in turbulent seventeenth century during the English Civil War ‘“ love, war and madness.

‘œBest of’ lists are interesting and I suppose they do influence my reading to a certain extent. Since I started reading blogs, about two years ago now, I am more influenced by recommendations from bloggers, particularly when I know they have similar reading tastes to mine. I’™m also influenced by books I see in bookshops and especially in my local library. Sometimes I prefer to pick up a book without knowing anything about it or the author and am often surprised by how much I enjoy it.