Category Archives: Reading

My Favourite Reads of 2017

20/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

Now is the time of year when the media publish ‘Best Of’ lists for a variety of categories, including books, television series, music albums and films, so I thought that I’d join in with a baker’s dozen of favourite reads from 2017. Some were published this year, and all came out recently, so should be readily available.

1) A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman:

It made me laugh and it made me cry. A brilliant portrayal of a grumpy old man, a stickler for petty rules and regulations, who’d be a nightmare to know on brief acquaintance. But, he has a heart of gold concealed within his leaden exterior and is blessed with the love of a good woman.

2) Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders:

Worthy of all the attention it’s received, as much for the unusual way the story is laid out, with scattered thoughts from the spirits of the dead who haven’t quite passed over, but who exist in a state of limbo or ‘bardo’. Some are more aware of their condition than others, and the most confused is Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie who’s just died of typhoid fever in the second year of the Civil War. He’s further unsettled by his father visiting the crypt to hold his corpse, as part of his mourning.

Not an easy read, and if you try, I recommend doing so in at least 20-30 page chunks, to get a sense of who all of the dead spirits are; it’s a very moving experience—horrific, contemplative and loving.

3) The Sixteen Trees of the Somme, by Lars Mytting:

The best novel that I read this year or for many a year. A stunning achievement and just what a novel should be, for it involves the reader in a deep-seated mystery as the naive protagonist tries to unravel a tight knot that hides family identity, wealth, betrayal and who he really is and who he wants to be. Travelling between Norway, the Shetland Isles and the battlefields of northern France, it’s sure to be turned into a film.

4) Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery, by Henry Marsh:

If you want to know what it feels like to be a brain surgeon, this is the book to read. I was immediately in awe of Henry Marsh, and it’s one of the most humbling memoirs I’ve read. Truly terrifying too, it will make you count your blessings. I’m on the waiting list at my local library for the sequel, Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon.

5) The Dry, by Jane Harper:

A highly-praised debut crime novel by a British author, who does a fine job of making the reader feel the heat, claustrophobia and paranoia of an isolated community in the Australian Outback where the murder of a family makes everyone a suspect.

6) The Force, by Don Winslow:

Winslow is without equal when it comes to writing tense crime novels involving the drug trade and the inevitable violent betrayals, paranoia, self-loathing and multiple murders. His The Power of the Dog and The Cartel, about the Mexican drug wars must have the highest body counts of any novels. In The Force, a corrupt detective who’s been taking dirty money and operating as part of an unofficial police unit within the NYPD finally gets his comeuppance. He’s a totally believable flawed hero, compromised by many ‘well-what-would-you-do’ situations.

7) H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald:

Grieving the unexpected death of her father, the author returns to an early love of falconry, by raising a goshawk. Her road to recovery is involving, tearing at your heart as you will her on. Macdonald writes brilliantly about wildlife, the weather and the landscape. I found it captivating.

8) Since We Fell, by Dennis Lehane:

One of the best thrillers that Dennis Lehane has ever written, and that’s saying something when you remember Mystic River and Shutter Island. The plot has more twists and turns than an epileptic snake, carrying the reader along in a state of excited confusion.

9) Golden Hill, by Francis Spufford:

A rollicking good read, that deserves all of the praise and awards it’s received. Spufford knows his stuff historically, and he pens a believable world in 18th-century New York, where things turn frighteningly violent very quickly. I’m eager to read the sequel.

10) The Heavenly Table, by Donald Ray Pollock:

This absorbing novel will probably get lost by being shelved among Westerns in bookshops and libraries, and though it’s set on horseback, the three gormless heroes have adventures that say much about human foibles. It’s lewd and crude in places, but very entertaining.

11) The Ploughmen, by Kim Zupan:

An unusual crime novel, which was unjustly overlooked, and, I fear, will remain a neglected treasure. I only noticed it, as it was the last book shelved in the novel section of my local library! A debut novel by a mature writer, it tells of a strange friendship between an implacable, imprisoned serial killer, a complete psychopath, and a gullible young deputy, who finds missing people in the Montana snow—usually dead. Zupan rivals Helen Macdonald for his descriptions of landscape, and you’ll soon be feeling cold. It’s one of the most memorable stories I’ve read.

12) All Involved, by Ryan Gattis:

I wasn’t sure that I’d enjoy this tale set in the days of the riots in Los Angeles in 1992, mainly as the author had previously written quirky titles for young readers. However, I was swiftly gripped by the dilemmas faced by a dozen different characters, including coppers, drug dealers, store owners, nurses and the homeless. Some scenes were real edge-of-the-seat stuff—and I mean real—much scarier than any imagined dystopian worlds.

13) The Museum of Extraordinary Things, by Alice Hoffman:

The reader is transported to New York in the early 20th-century, where the protagonist works as a mermaid in her father’s museum of freaks, among such as the Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl and a century-old turtle. She meets a handsome Russian immigrant photographer, who has left the confines of his Jewish community to concentrate on his career. When he photographs a tragic factory fire, he gets embroiled in the case of a missing girl and dark forces hunt the two youngsters. Hoffman is superb at summoning up the atmosphere of the streets, river and surrounding countryside of a young city. Best-known for Practical Magic, which was turned into a film, and to which she’s recently published a prequel called The Rules of Magic, Hoffman’s Museum of Extraordinary Things is sure to be filmed too as it’s equally spellbinding.

What books have you enjoyed reading this year? They don’t have to be recent—old favourites that you’ve revisited will do.

Reading

Reading Outside your Writing Genre

20/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

About half of the novels and short story collections that I read are in my chosen writing genre of Crime. I enjoy reading crime stories by foreign writers—not all American or Scandinavian—including Japanese, Korean, Mexican, French, Italian, South African, Australian, Spanish and Canadian. This is going to sound perverse of me, seeing as how my own police stories are set in Cornwall, but I find it hard to engage with many British crime novels. Part of the reason is that they’re so parochial, whereas foreign plots are more free-ranging—with the exception of Japanese novels, where society has even more restrictive social conventions than the U.K.

Although it’s reckoned that male readers tend to avoid the work of female authors, I’m not blinkered; many of my favourite writers are female—Alice Hoffman, Barbara Kingsolver, Annie Dillard, Zadie Smith, Annie Proulx, Helen Dunmore, Rose Tremain, Anne Patchett and poets Sharon Olds, Wendy Cope, Alice Oswald and Sophie Hannah.

There’s loads of overlap in defining genres. What’s the difference between Suspense, Adventure, Mystery and Thriller, for example. And what about separating Chick Lit and Women’s Fiction—does one have a tasteful book cover, while the other is pretty pastels with cute cartoon characters? Romance appears to have gobbled up (pun intended) Erotica.

Of all the genres, Science Fiction stretches me the most. I definitely have an artistic, rather than a scientific mind, but I make myself read several science-fiction novels every year, hoping to activate dormant scientific brain cells that prefer hibernation. Neal Stephenson has challenged me: I’ve read Reamde, Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon and Anathem.

Magical Realism and Fantasy are easier for me to swallow, and I’m fond of Alice Hoffman, Gabriel García Márquez and Robin Hobb. What I get out of these three genres, is the courage to make my plotting devious, with bold unexpected strokes.

I read several novels in the History genre every year. I’ve devoured all of the Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom, set in the reign of King Henry V111. There’s some blurring of the lines in my choice of historical reading, as some titles would be labelled Westerns, such as Donald Ray Pollock’s The Heavenly Table and novels by Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy...that’s if they weren’t described as Literature! Again, I’m inspired by the ever-lurking danger and need for self-defence in their plots, which provides a much-needed jolt to my own stories; it’s very easy in writing a 21st-century crime novel to get bogged down with forensic gubbins and procedural claptrap.

Graphic Novels are a good way for me to get ideas about pacing and synthesising the key elements of a tale, as they don’t waste panels on needless illustrations.

I rarely read modern-day Erotica or Romances, not because I’m unloving or prudish, more because I find the conventions of the writing hard to take, as most of the plots are extremely predictable. I recently borrowed a couple of Mills & Boon novels from my local library, which got me a strange look from the librarian who knows my reading tastes. I found them unexpectedly funny, but I don’t think I was supposed to be laughing. Actually, humour is something I used in my last Cornish Detective novel, when my protagonist finally takes and is taken by, a lover—after seven years of chaste widowhood.

Horror stories rarely horrify me, which might be one of the drawbacks of spending so long researching murders. I can’t take monsters seriously, though I love a slow-building sense of dread, such as H.P. Lovecraft once wrote, or more recently, as Patrick Ness achieved in his Chaos Walking series.

Readers have prejudices about genres other than what they normally read. I was pleased that two of my manuscript readers, who’d avoided crime fiction, thinking they wouldn’t like it, were turned on by my stories which expanded their reading tastes.

I regularly read what is labelled Literature, which might be defined as superior writing of lasting artistic merit, though a cynic might argue that literature wins writing prizes, but sells poorly, while genre writing is commercially lucrative, but is rarely chosen for an award… in the same way that comedy films never win the Best Picture Oscar.

I’m inspired by fine writing, and though I write my Cornish Detective stories with literary flourishes, I respect the conventions of the genre. Mind you, there’s been a rise in literary crime fiction, with authors such as Pierre Lemaitre, Derek B. Miller and Fred Vargas all writing high-quality prose; James Lee Burke has long written rich descriptions of complex characters.

Do you read outside your writing genre?

How does it help to enrich your own stories?

Are there any genres that you avoid?

Which genre provides the greatest escapism for you?

Reading

Nobody Does It Better

19/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

Which writer’s work do you eagerly anticipate reading, impatient for their new novel to be published?

It could be someone who writes a series of novels featuring the same characters, or an author who takes years to pen their new story, which finds itself shortlisted for major literary awards. You might be working your way through a writer’s back catalogue, enthralled by their skills, while still taking glee from the occasional stinker of a title, that simply didn’t work.

We’ve all got our favourite authors, and some of them aren’t highly regarded by the critics, but who cares? If books are like food, why not have the occasional naughty treat?

My own list of got-to-read authors includes Walter Mosley, James Lee Burke, John Connolly, Michael Connelly, Barbara Kingsolver, Andrea Camilleri, Annie Dillard, Alice Hoffman, Dennis Lehane, Henning Mankell, Elizabeth Strout, Jo Nesbø, Justin Cartwright, Haruki Murakami, C. J. Sansom, Ann Patchett, Joe R. Lansdale, Don Winslow, Donald Ray Pollock and Jane Harper.

I read two hugely impressive debut novels in 2017, which whet my appetite for the second titles by Lars Mytting and by Kim Zupan.

My list of authors I seek out is based on those that I like. There are plenty of novelists whose books I admire, but don’t particularly like. As an example of this, I recently re-read Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, which was written in a complex way, with long sections devoted to streams of consciousness. Woolf was experimenting with ways of writing a novel, as part of the Modernist movement, but it doesn’t make for easy reading.

Who floats your boat?

Which author makes you forget what you’re doing, to read their story?

Reading, Writing

That’s Entertainment!?

17/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

Do you have a conscience about what you write? By that, I mean do you ever pause to reflect that your fictional story might have a harmful effect on a reader?

Obviously, we can’t anticipate exactly what will upset someone. A vegetarian might well be horrified at reading about the protagonist of a story butchering a chicken before cooking and eating it.

When writing details of crimes and forensic dissection in my novels, I’ve occasionally wondered why people like reading about such terrible things. I re-wrote a scene where a serial killer recalled strangling a child, simply because I’d put in too much detail of how to kill someone using a garotte. Instead, I made the act horrific by the killer’s quiet contemplation of how he’d proceeded, looking for any mistakes he’d made that might have given him away. Even worse, in a way, was that he derived no pleasure from the girl’s death, for she was simply a pawn in a bizarre roleplay game

British band The Jam released a song called ‘That’s Entertainment’ in 1980, in which lyricist Paul Weller laconically contemplated the sometimes violent distractions that we use to pass time, dismissing them with a chorus of “That’s entertainment, That’s entertainment.” We’re all observers and the observed in these days of CCTV, and as long as whatever nasty thing is happening doesn’t involve personal harm to us, then it’s a form of entertainment.

The Anarchist’s Cookbook is one of the most controversial books published. Dating from 1971, it’s been variously suppressed and freely available, even for sale on Amazon. Because it details how to manufacture explosives and make and distribute drugs, it’s been implicated in criminal acts, which historically has led to simply possessing the book being a prosecutable offence.

I don’t know that anyone would read The Anarchist’s Cookbook as entertainment, but it’s a good example of that old excuse about ‘putting an idea into someone’s head’.

Over the years, many novels have been implicated in real-life crimes. Mark Chapman was obsessed with J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, quoting from it in his defence for shooting John Lennon. President Reagan survived being shot by John Hinckley Jr. who’d also read Salinger’s book. It’s impossible to guarantee that a fictional work, be it a book or a film, will never pass from entertainment to inspiring a tragedy:

I could be cynical, by saying that such dreadful events must have done wonders for sales of the book which planted a demon seed in a criminal’s mind, but I wouldn’t want anything that I wrote to mislead those open to suggestion. Think how horrifying it would be if a criminal stated they’d been inspired by your writing to devastate a community.

One of the founders of the BBC, Lord Reith, proclaimed that the aim of the new television company was to ‘Inform, educate and entertain’—though he never said in what order those things should happen. These days, the educational content of much broadcasting is minimal, while information is manipulated through spin and false news. The entertainment factor is often mindless, bubble gum for the brain—which is preferable to the disgusting violent images available online that ghouls post for fun.

I’m mindful of Reith’s words when I write my Cornish Detective stories, trying to set a scene by the use of facts, and letting the reader into my characters’ thought processes while indulging in some showmanship through humour and enjoyable word choice to keep them reading. One of the pitfalls of novel writing was identified by Iain M. Banks,

“The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn’t.”

So, does that mean that if I create a convincing story which sweeps the reader along, then they might be influenced into breaking the law?

Although I love writing crime stories, exploring what makes the good and the bad tick, I still question why I’m tackling such nasty things. When I do slow down, I remember a Roger McGough poem, called Survivor:

Everyday,

I think about dying.

About disease, starvation,

violence, terrorism, war

the end of the world.

It helps

keep my mind off things.

Do any of you worry about how your stories are not so much entertainment as instruction manuals for the gullible?

Have you changed anything you’ve written, as being too explicit or offensive?

Have you ever read anything, that you thought was too shocking to have been printed?

Reading

Books as Friends

17/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

I recently borrowed two library books by favourite authors, which felt like meeting up with old friends. One is by cult author Richard Brautigan, the other by so-called Liverpool poet Brian Patten.

Brautigan wrote surreal bizarre tales of misfits, and his style is unmistakable and inimitable. I’m enjoying revisiting his Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942 which I haven’t read for twenty years.

Patten writes exquisite verse, some of the finest love poetry around and really entertaining poems for children. I’m currently recalling love affairs from long ago, helped by his Collected Love Poems.

Other favourite books that I’ve read many times over the years include The Wind In The Willows, An Island To Oneself, Those About To Die and any collection of Guy de Maupassant’s short stories.

They all lift my spirit in different ways.

Which books do you think of as friends?

Reading, Writing

Richard Brautigan

17/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

Richard Brautigan is one of the most unusual writers you’ll come across. His style has been described as naive, and he’s certainly surreal, humorous and dark in places. I love his novels, short stories and poetry. He has a unique style, with very short chapters, sometimes of only a couple of sentences. His prose reads like poetry, with clever metaphors.

I discovered him by chance while working at Marylebone public library in Westminster, London in the early 1970s. I was drawn to the unusual title and the cover photo of ‘The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966’. The story is set in a strange library, where the books on the shelves are brought in by the people that wrote them. It reminds me a little of e-publishing, now that I think of it. There’s a romance between the shy librarian and a stunningly beautiful poet. Brautigan poses with a singer called Victoria Damalgoski in the cover photo – she was a folk singer who made a couple of albums but has since disappeared. She’s a dead ringer for Vida in the story.

Brautigan’s writing makes you think, and some of his observations are wistful and chillingly accurate. One of my favourite works is ‘The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western’, which is violent, sexy and funny. It has one of the most amusing entities in fiction. The characters of the cowboy gunmen must surely have influenced Patrick deWitt in his writing of ‘The Sister Brothers’.

Sadly, Brautigan’s sales and fame waned in the late seventies and eighties. He fell prey to various mental maladies including depression and descended into alcoholism. Long obsessed with suicide, he took his own life in 1984. I miss him.

Reading, Writing

Tomi Ungerer

17/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

Tomi Ungerer was an author, who specialised in illustration. He was versatile, making work for children and adults that includes delightful tales, protest posters and books, advertising, surreal cartoons, erotica and autobiography.

Tomi Ungerer

(1931-2019)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomi_Ungerer

He’s good at taking a satirical view on things, and his images are compelling, humorous and occasionally unsettling. For such an enormously talented artist, his work and name are not as well known in the English language as they should be. Thankfully, many of his books are being republished by Phaidon, including the lovely children’s stories.

From ‘The Three Robbers’

His attitude to human sexuality is open-minded, so this sort of illustration is not for the prudish. He believes that if we were free to express our erotic nature, then the problems of pornography would be solved.

Ungerer’s observational humour on human relationships, including power struggles and the search for loving fulfilment, is amusing and well observed.

Tomi Ungerer tried his hand at farming in the early seventies, which he later turned into a book called ‘ Far Out Isn’t Far Enough’. This has some beautiful illustrations of the landscape of Novia Scotia, as well as some gritty depictions of rural poverty and life and death. This title was used for a film about his life.

Reading, Writing

Charles Bukowski

17/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

The career of Charles Bukowski should give encouragement to any writer who starts to apply themselves late in life to writing. He was 49 when he finally quit working at menial jobs, including as a filing clerk at a post office. As he said :

“I have one of two choices – stay in the post office and go crazy … or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve.”

He’s sometimes been referred to as the ‘laureate of American lowlife’, and he was certainly familiar with the seedy side of poverty. An inveterate drunk, he turned his experiences into a script which was filmed as ‘Barfly’, starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway.

He penned an amusing Roman a clef called ‘Hollywood’, in which he wrote of the making of the film adaptation of ‘Barfly’, using pseudonyms to disguise the names of the actors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_(Bukowski_novel)

Bukowski’s weariness with the world meant that he said a lot of truthful things, in what sounds like a cynical way. Even his gravestone is cryptic, with the inscription ‘Don’t Try’. What he intended with this advice was explained as being waiting for inspiration to write something – one shouldn’t try, shouldn’t force work out of one’s system – if it doesn’t come naturally, leave it.

His poem ‘So You Want To Be A Writer’ explains his philosophy well, and should be read by anybody aspiring to be a writer.

‘So You Want To Be A Writer’

Charles Bukowski, 1920 – 1994

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

Reading, Writing

John Kennedy Toole

16/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

The story of John Kennedy Toole is a cautionary one. For years he struggled to get his novel ‘A Confederacy Of Dunces’ published. Following his suicide, it took his mother another eleven years to find a publisher. The following year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

If you’re thinking of giving up, then don’t. As Thomas Edison said: “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kennedy_Toole

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces

Update 2nd March, 2015: Nick Offerman, of ‘Parks and Recreation’ fame, is to take the lead part, playing Ignatius J Reilly in a stage adaptation of ‘A Confederacy Of Dunces’.

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/mar/02/nick-offerman-stage-version-a-confederacy-of-dunces

Humour, Reading, Writing

Snoopy and ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’

16/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

While approaching literary agents and publishers in the last couple of months, my memory drifted back to some old Peanuts cartoon strips.

I’m sure that we all recognise the situations below. Snoopy often begins his stories with the phrase ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ This was coined by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who was an influential English novelist of the nineteenth century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bulwer-Lytton

He also came up with the phrases ‘the great unwashed’, ’the pursuit of the almighty dollar’ and ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’.

He could wax lyrical as well, and as I get older turning into a silver wolf, I take comfort in his observation:

“It is not by the gray of the hair that one knows the age of the heart.”