Reading Matters

Recent acquisitions

Thought I'd share my latest haul with you. Here's what's in the pile from the top down:

• Howard Norman's The Bird Artist (mooched from someone in France -- it's been on my wishlist forever)
  
• Agnes Smedley's Daughter of Earth (a Virago Modern Classic, first published in 1929, which I mooched a couple of weeks ago -- this one appealed because the story, about a woman surviving a troubled childhood who cannot reconcile sexual desire with love and companionship, reminded me of Nuala O'Faolain's My Dream of You)
  
• Nina Bawden's A Woman of My Age (another Virago Modern Classic, this one from 1967, also mooched -- have never read any of Bawden's adult novels, but have fond memories of her children's books, namely Carrie's War)
  
• Jennifer Johnston's Shadows on our Skin (bought from Amazon Marketplace for a few pence, this one was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1977)
  
• J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country (bought today when I visited Hatchards -- couldn't resist the lovely Penguin Modern Classics cover but the story of a damaged survivor of the Great War recuperating in the countryside sounds perfect too)
  
• Martin Amis's The Second Plane (a 3-for-2 purchase from Waterstone's, this one is a collection of 14 pieces -- two short stories and 12 essays and reviews, mainly about the War on Terror -- which has been on my wishlist since I first saw the hardcover edition in 2007)
  
• Nick Davies' Flat Earth News (a 3-for-2 purchase from Waterstone's, this non-fiction title probably won't tell me anything I don't already know about the state of journalism today, but it sounds like a fascinating account of "falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media")
  
• Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah: Italy's Other Media (another 3-for-2 purchase, this one piqued my interest when I saw an interview with the author on The Culture Show last week -- the poor chap's gone into hiding because the Naples mafia want him dead)
  
• Margaret Drabble's The Garrick Year (I mooched this on the basis that I really need to read some Drabble -- I've been enjoying the book reviews she writes for The Guardian lately)

A visit to the oldest bookshop in London

I'm ashamed to admit that after 10 years of living in the capital, I have never ventured inside Hatchards bookshop on Piccadilly which was established in 1797.

I'm not sure why I've never been, other than I always seem to get caught up in Waterstone's flagship store, just a little further down the road, and so I never have time to go book shopping elsewhere.

Today I made an exception and during a little jolly around the West End I decided I might be brave enough to visit the very same bookshop that the Queen gets all her tomes from. Apparently the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales shop here, too, which is why Hatchards bills itself as "booksellers to the Royal Household". Well, laa dee dah!

Anyway, inside there are five rambling floors stocked to the brim with every kind of book you could imagine. It's one of those stores that I imagine you could return to again and again and never get a full sense of what is kept where, because there are little rooms tucked away and tiny passageways leading from one section to another, and it's a bit like going on an adventure to a theme park you've never seen before, and no matter which way you turn you're surprised to find a new ride or a new attraction, except, in this case, it's books.

I made my way slowly up each floor, exploring as I went, and it was only when I got to the top that I wondered where the fiction was. A kindly shop assistant, when I inquired, told me to backtrack all the way down the staircase (beautiful timber balustrades and lush, olive green carpet) to the basement. There, laid out before me, was a series of well stocked rooms filled to the brim with novels, novels, novels!

Like their competitors down the road, Hatchards do a 3-for-2 offer on selected titles, and I was pleasantly surprised to find their selection largely different to what Waterstone's has on offer, mainly of the literary fiction persuasion, including many new Canongate books.

I liked their carefully themed display tables (of full-price fiction), which included "Scandinavian crime", "Pulitzer Prize Winners" and "Books in Translation", among others.

There were very few people in the store, so browsing was wonderful. I think I whiled away a good hour or so just in the fiction section. The shop obviously attracts a certain, shall we say eccentric, clientele, and I chuckled to myself listening to two old gents with cut-glass accents discussing what they should buy. "There's a wonderful section here on erotica!" one of them bellowed to the other. "Do you read that sort of thing, dear chap?"

"Well, no, I can't say that's normally my cup of tea."

"Pity, there's a wonderful title here called 'Between My Thighs'!"

I think everyone on the floor had to bite their cheeks so they wouldn't laugh out loud at that one.

Anyway, I resisted temptation, and only bought one book -- J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country -- but I will definitely return on a regular basis to explore further.

If you're planning a visit, Hatchards is located at 187 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LE.

Sebastian Barry wins £25,000 Costa prize

Yet another reason why I need to bump The Secret Scripture up my reading queue!

More here at The Telegraph, which posted this article just a few minutes after the 10.15pm announcement!

What's in a name?

Quite a lot actually. Especially when you consider this book (currently No.73 on the Amazon bestseller list) which probably has the world's longest (and silliest) title.

John Updike has died

I got home late from work tonight only to discover that American novelist John Updike has died, aged 76.

Channel 4 News, here in the UK, has a nice tribute to him.

I assume the newspapers, on both sides of the Atlantic, will currently be going into over-drive (if they haven't already) penning obituaries and literary eulogies.

And tomorrow, what's the bet Updike's back catalogue will have bumped Stephanie Meyers off Amazon's bestseller list?

Bookish bits

Reading for pleasure is a fundamental human right. So says Michael Morpurgo, a British author and former Children's Laureate. His piece, in The Times, is incredibly sobering:

We may have the best of intentions, yet still in 21st-century Britain vast numbers of children leave school functionally illiterate, condemned to a life of intellectual and emotional poverty, to a dark helplessness and hopelessness that leads all too often to a life on the fringes of society, and sometimes even to prison. Illiteracy is endemic in our prisons. How is it that the country of Shakespeare and Milton, Dickens and Hardy, of Dahl and Pullman, still manages to fail so many of its children?

* * *
Australian writer Chloe Hooper's non-fiction book The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island is reviewed in The Times. I've had this book on my wishlist for ages. I really want to read it now.

* * *
Robert McCrum names three British greats from the past 15 years: WG Sebald, Ted Hughes and Zadie Smith. I've never read Sebald, although I've long been intrigued by him; ditto for Hughes, although I'm not much of a poetry reader; and I very much enjoyed Smith's White Teeth when I read it years and years ago, long before I started this blog!

* * *
Should I read Robert Bolano's 2666? This book seems to be EVERYWHERE, including the New Statesmen, The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Telegraph, and even the Daily Mail has got in on the act, although its review is a little on the weak side. Personally, I'm not convinced I could make my way through 912 pages, masterpiece or not. (If you're tempted, note that Amazon.co.uk is selling it half-price at £10.)

'My Dream of You' by Nuala O'Faolain

Fiction – paperback; Penguin; 464 pages; 2002.

Nuala O'Faolain was an Irish journalist, who died of cancer last year, aged 68. My Dream of You was her critically acclaimed debut novel about a middle-aged woman coming to terms with her past in order to embrace her future. It's one of those big, rambunctious novels that's a bit like an onion, with layer upon layer of meaning to peel back and discover.

It's bawdy and shocking in places, but tempered by good humour throughout. The hugely complicated, multi-layered storyline never feels like hard work. And there's so much going on to provoke and challenge one's own values that I'm sure this book is going to stay with me for a long time to come.

The narrator, Kathleen de Burca, is a highly successful travel writer, who has been the "tenant of a dim basement, half buried at the back of Euston Road, for more than twenty years". When her colleague and best friend Jimmy dies of a heart attack, Kathleen's life seemingly falls apart. She quits her job and returns to her native Ireland for the first time in more than two decades, where she hopes to write a book about a divorce case from history that has long intrigued her.

The Talbot vs Talbot judgement centres on a refined English woman (Mrs Talbot) accused of having an affair with a domestic servant (William Mullan) in 1849 at the height of the Irish potato famine. While undertaking research for the book in rural Ireland (near where the Talbot's once lived), Kathleen finds herself analysing her own life: a 50-year-old spinster who has never settled down with a man, although she has had numerous love affairs and one-night stands.

Estranged from her siblings -- an older sister in New York and a younger brother in Ireland -- she also begins to look back on her family relationships and how they have shaped her personality and tough outlook on life. Her now-dead father was emotionally distant, but it was her mother, who suffered from depression and later died of cancer, with whom she struggled to understand the most.

The book interleaves these very different narrative threads together into one seamless whole. It is so ripe with meaning, you could read My Dream of You ten times and still not get to the bottom of everything buried here.

One of the big themes that runs throughout this remarkably readable novel is sexual love versus romantic love and how Kathleen's "life would be marked by my misunderstanding of passion". It is clear from the outset that Kathleen does not feel she deserves to be loved, which is why she never turns a man down when he asks for sex. But whom to blame for this attitude?

I explained what happened in different ways to myself at different times in my life. My availability, I'd call it, rather than promiscuity, was Daddy's fault for not loving me, or Mammy's fault for having sex with Daddy when they never even talked to each other, or both their faults for showing me no other version of closeness between a man and a woman except sexual closeness. It was Catholic Ireland's fault, for sending me out into the world without a shred of inner moral sense, and it was England's fault, for making me feel inferior and unwelcome except when someone wanted to fuck me. It was the fault of the 1960s, for inventing the pill and the miniskirt; and it was also the fault of history, for making a world in which everyone had to pretend to bow to the bourgeois ideal of fidelity.

There are other themes, too, not the least of which is what it was like to be Irish living in London at the height of the IRA's bombing campaign. At one point, Kathleen recalls an incident in which she was doing a piece on 'Hidden Beauties of the Peak District' for the magazine when she returned to the hotel and found the police waiting for her.  They asked her to open her bag, which was sitting on a packing case in a garage, and then told her to take the battery out of her travelling alarm clock.

Sorry about that, the senior policeman said. They don't get many Irish around here.
It was nothing, that little episode. It didn't take five minutes. They had every right to do it. But for a long time afterwards I thought, they could have set me up! God knows it had happened to other Irish people...
I learned to ask for things -- a meal, a drink, directions to a place -- in a low voice and as neutral an accent as I could manage. I learned to look up at the television -- at the pictures of tape across driveways, shoppers staggering forward with blood on their faces, white ambulances screaming around the curves of quiet housing estates -- with no expression on my face. And to read my newspaper, and smile at everyone, and say nothing noticeable.

But at the very heart of the novel is Kathleen's acceptance of herself as a good person who deserves to be happy without society judging her for it. When she meets the charming Shay, a man with whom she feels a deep affinity, the promise of a secure, loving relationship, albeit it with strings attached, beckons -- but at what price?

'Something Childish But Very Natural' by Katherine Mansfield

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Classics; 110 pages; 2007.

I'm not a great fan of the short story, but knowing that New Zealand-born Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is widely regarded as one of the best short story writers of her generation, I was keen to read some of her work.

This collection, published as part of Penguin's Great Loves series, seemed the perfect opportunity to acquaint myself with her writings. Each of the eight tales revolves around the theme that "love can be innocent" and features one of her more famous short stories, "Something Childish But Very Natural", which was written in 1914 but published after her death.

In this sweet story we meet Harry, a young man ("nearly eighteen") who falls in love with a girl ("over sixteen") on a train, and begins a relationship with her. Unfortunately Edna is very distant with him and shies from his touch. "I feel that if once we did that -- you know -- held each other's hands and kissed, it would all be changed," she tells Harry. "And I feel we wouldn't be free like we are -- we'd be doing something secret. We wouldn't be children any more...silly, isn't it?"

This characterises the rest of their friendship: Edna wants to keep it purely platonic, but Harry, patient and caring, is desperate to take it to the next level. He must always keep his feelings in check, despite the fact he is desperately in love with Edna "with the marigold hair and strange dreamy smile that filled him up to the brim".

One day the pair stumble upon a lovely little cottage in the countryside and fantasise about living in it together. When Harry, in his eagerness to move in immediately, says,  "I have a feeling that it's dangerous to wait for things -- that if you wait for things they only go further and further away" you get the impression he's not just talking about the house.

I won't reveal how the story ends, but the course of true love does not run smoothly!

The other short stories in this slim volume are: "Feuille d'Album", "Mr and Mrs Dove", "Marriage à la Mode", "Bliss", "Honeymoon", "Dill Pickle" and "Widowed".

They are all quite similiar in showing how love can be one-sided and that even in the strongest of relationships there is always one person who loves his or her partner more than is reciprocated.

I particularly enjoyed "Bliss", about a 30-something mother who believes her life in London is completely perfect, until she hosts a dinner party for a small collection of haughty friends and unwittingly discovers that her husband is cheating on her with one of the guests. When she comes to realise what is going on beneath her nose, the reality of the situation is like a strong blow to the stomach. I thought it was a pitch-perfect story and I think I might have actually gasped out loud when I got to the denouement.

All in all, I enjoyed this brief introduction to Mansfield's work, but it hasn't made me rush out to read everything else she's ever written. I'm afraid my bias towards novels is too strong for that.

You can find out more about Katherine Mansfield here and here.

The winner of 'Poisoned Study' is...

Thanks to everyone who entered my competition to win a signed copy of  Maria V. Snyder's 'Poison Study'.

Either not many people were interested in reading this book or very few saw the post, because only nine of you dared enter!

To select the lucky winner I used a playing card shuffler. The deck included all suits (clubs, hearts, spades and diamonds) but only included aces, twos, threes, fours, fives, sixes, sevens, eights and nines. I then allowed the computer to draw a card, and this is what came up:

Scandinavian crime fiction

There was an interesting article in today's Guardian about Scandinavian crime fiction.

Given this genre has been popular for years now (I read my "first"  in May 2005), I thought the piece wasn't exactly surfing the zeitgest. Many of these authors -- such as Arnaldur Indriðason -- have enjoyed enormous popularity in the UK for years.

And the list of recommended authors that accompanied the article neglected to mention a host of names, such as Liza Marklund and Karen Alvtegen.

What's more, the claim that Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are "almost certainly overdue a revival here" seemed to have overlooked the fact that the books have all been recently reprinted by HarperPerennial -- (remember, I was eyeing up that full Martin Beck series a couple of weeks back).

If you're interested in discovering great Scandinavian crime writers you're more likely to get some expert advice via the EuroCrime website,the Scandinavian crime fiction blog or Karen Meek's wonderful list of titles due for publication this year rather than anything the Guardian might have to offer.

One less reader in the world

I discovered some sad news today.

Mad Asthmatic, who left regular comments on this blog and won my signed copy of The Gargoyle last November, died on the weekend. She had been in poor health, but her death was still unexpected. She was only 32.

Her last post, entitled No Regrets, seems strangely prophetic.

Rest in peace, Emma.

'Songs of Blue and Gold' by Deborah Lawrenson

Fiction - paperback; Arrow Books; 384 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the author.

Songs of Blue and Gold is one of those lovely, lush stories that transports you right into the heart of the Mediterranean, or, more accurately, the Greek island of Corfu. Best described as a "literary romance" it has all the hallmarks of a great read: lively, engaging characters; an intriguing back story and mystery to unravel; a strong sense of place; and a solid, believable plot. It's the kind of story you might imagine Maeve Binchy penning if she ditched the fluff for something decidedly more intelligent.

The book tells the story of 30-something Melissa, whose life is slowly falling apart in London. When Elizabeth, her ill mother, thrusts a book called Collected Poems by the famous writer Julian Adie into her hands, she does not understand the significance until she later discovers an inscription by the author: "To Elizabeth, always remembering Corfu, what could have been and what we must both forget".

When her mother unexpectedly dies, Melissa embarks on a voyage of discovery -- literally and figuratively. Fleeing her own crumbling marriage, she visits Corfu for herself, hoping that some much-needed sun may brighten her outlook on life. But here, in the beautiful horseshoe bay of Kalami, she finds out more about her mother than she could have ever imagined. It turns out Elizabeth had a clandestine and tumultuous romance almost 40 years earlier with the infamous womaniser that was Julian Adie.  And here, at the very heart of the affair, Melissa manages to discover a deadly secret that explains why her mother never mentioned Adie's name in her presence...

Lawrenson said she wrote the book based on the late Lawrence Durrell, an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist and travel writer, who "wrote beguilingly, drawing constantly on his own experience and his many subsequent moves across the shores of the Mediterranean".

Interwoven with this background were his many loves and four marriages. He seemed to pack so many different lives into one! And while he was a comet blazing, what of the women he collided with along the way, I wondered? How did their stories end? And what of those he met, whose lives he changed but who did not even rate a footnote in his biography? Soon I was busy inventing Julian Adie and Elizabeth.

But you don't need to know anything about Durrell to appreciate this hugely beguiling novel -- although I'm sure there is added meaning to be gained if you do.

I particularly enjoyed its exploration of biography and "truth" and how we present different images of ourself to different people. Lawrenson achieves this by breaking up the main narrative with various "texts" on Julian Adie's life. This includes official biography, Melissa's own "memoir" and an American academic's exposé of Adie's possible involvement in an unexplained death.

But what I liked most about Songs of Blue and Gold -- aside from the confident narrative -- was the rich, evocative descriptions of Corfu that fill the pages. Here's one of my favourites:

Every hour seemed to make her eyes open wider, her senses more acute. Each time she walked the tiny main road, effectively barely more than a lane, she noticed more: the powerful scent of jasmine escaping over a wall; bright globes in orange and lemon trees; the violet trumpets of morning glory winding through wire fencing; and everywhere the ancient gnarled olive tree, each composites of several intertwining trunks, some so holed and intricately braided you could see right through them. From the balcony of her apartment, she watched the sun set. The mountains across the water, in a reverse of the morning's display, burned red and peach, then pink to purple. Isolated wisps of cloud made brushstrokes of black on the evening canvas.

This is a thoughtful, entertaining read, and a much more literary book than the cover image or blurb conveys. I highly recommend it.

Reading goals for the year ahead

I know the month is almost over, but I've been thinking about my reading goals for the year. I tend to follow my gut instincts and choose books to read on the basis of whether they particularly appeal at that point in time. This can be interesting, because I like the natural, meandering nature of it, but sometimes I think it would be nice to have a little direction.

So many of you join reading challenges, but these aren't really for me because I feel they ruin the spontaneous nature of my reading choices. And because I'm not very good at sticking to plans they're a little demoralising when you look back and see how little you've accomplished. Reading should be fun, not a chore, right?

And, as you may already recall, I'm not even very good at achieving the self-imposed reading challenges I design for myself. Take last year's plan to read more books by "classic" Irish writers. I thought it would be relatively easy to read 12 books by 12 different authors, but by the end of the year I'd only managed to read four. My so-called An Irish Writers' Year is now going to be dubbed An Irish Writers' Perennial, because I'd like to try and read the other eight by the end of 2009.

You may also remember that I purchased the Penguin boxed set of Great Loves last February. There's 20 books in the collection and I've read just three of them. Over the course of the next 12 months I'd like to read one a month. They're all fairly short, novella-types, so this should be very manageable.

And, finally, if I could boost my non-fiction diet by reading one non-fiction book every month, I'd be delighted.

Let's see how I go, shall we? What are your reading goals for the year ahead?

Win a signed copy of 'Poison Study'

Yesterday afternoon I unearthed a brand new copy of Maria V. Snyder's Poison Study which had been sent to me by the publishers for review almost a year ago. Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of fantasy fiction, so it was put aside and forgotten about.

If you fancy winning this copy, which has been signed by the author, then simply leave me a comment below. I will close the comments next Sunday (January 25) and choose the winner using an online random number generator (or some such). The competition is open to anyone, regardless of where you live, but you can only enter once. Good luck!

Thumbs down, thumbs up

I forgot to buy The Guardian today for the third instalment of the 1000 books everyone should read series. I only remembered as I left the office at 6pm. I called into a newsagent near work. Sold out. I tried the kiosk on the tube station. Sold out. I visited the convenience store at the other end of my journey. Sold out. I walked half-a-mile to the nearest newsagent. Sold out. As a last resort I visited my local Tesco Metro. Sold out. I guess I'll just have to print it off the website now. Oh well.

Upon getting home I was immediately cheered up by the presence of two parcels from Amazon: Arnaldur Indriðason's Arctic Chill and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland. The only problem is working out which to read first!

The winner of 'The Story of a Marriage' is...

Thanks to everyone who entered my competition to win a copy of Andrew Sean Greer's The Story of a Marriage. There were 32 of you who put your name in the hat.

To choose the winner I used my favourite online random number generator as per usual.

That means the lucky winner was the 11th person to leave a comment (taking into account Mandy Jenkins "reply" as comment #8).

So congratulations to Tori Wagner -- I'll contact you shortly to find out your postal address.

'The Life of Hunger' by Amélie Nothomb

Fiction/memoir - hardcover; Faber and Faber; 160 pages; 2006. Translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside.

When I read Amélie Nothomb's astonishingly profound Sulphuric Acid last September I was intrigued enough to seek out more work by this Belgian author. I managed to track down a slightly battered second-hand copy of The Life of Hunger and mistakenly thought it would be a straightforward account of the author's battle with anorexia (well, with a title like that you would, wouldn't you?). Instead it's a kind of weird hybrid between memoir and fiction (or, as the Faber & Faber website describes it, an "odd memoir-cum-novel") in which Nothomb tells her life story from the age of four to 21.

This isn't as boring as one might expect, because Nothomb lead a fascinating childhood. Her father was a Belgian diplomat, so she got to live in various exotic places around the world. Indeed, she was born in Kobe, Japan, and then went on to live in China, New York, Bangladesh and Laos.

But the one constant in her life -- aside from her elder sister to whom she feels especially close -- is her hunger which is at odds with her personal affluence:

As far back as my memories go, I have always been dying of hunger. [...] I might add that my hunger should be understood in the broadest sense of the word: had it only been hunger for food, it might not have been so serious. But is it possible only to be hungry for food? Is there a hunger of the belly that is not also a sign of a generalised hunger? By hunger, I mean that terrible lack within the whole being, the gnawing void, the aspiration not so much to a utopian plentitude as to simple reality: where there is nothing, I beg for there to be something.

Reading between the lines I suspect that Nothomb's fierce intelligence lead her to feel, think and experience things more deeply that other people. Indeed, by the time she's a teenager her hunger manifests itself in anorexia, which she welcomes because it "kept me in an ice age in which feelings ceased to grow." She adds: "It was a respite: I stopped hating myself."

(In quite a revealing article in The Independent, published in 2006, she's quoted as saying "I'm totally cured. I eat in a strange way, but I enjoy it. Everything became well when I finally understood that I enjoy being hungry. Normally, I only eat in the evening. It's wonderful. It's like an orgy!")

Unfortunately, any deeper exploration of the disease is absent, as Nothomb skips over her two-and-a-half year battle in just a handful of pages. In fact, much of the book is like this. An incident in the sea when she lived in Bangladesh seems so fleeting, so superficial, I'm not sure what to make of it: was she molested by four men, or was she not?

This floating, dream-like quality to the writing is a double-edged sword: beautiful to read but too vague to interpret factually.

There's also a slightly precocious tone to the writing, and I can imagine that probably reflects what Nothomb was like as a child. (There are, in fact, several references to her early intelligence in the book. But the one that stands out most is a teacher at the French Lycee in New York calling Nothomb's mother to say "Your daughter's brain is overdeveloped. Do you think she suffers?")

On the whole, this is a quirky, somewhat off-beat memoir, one that might mean more to those who have read all of Amélie Nothomb's back catalogue, rather than the single volume I have managed to enjoy. I guess that means I just need to read more of her work... and with at least 10 translated into English I won't be short of choices.

Blast from the past: the books I read in 1999

I was looking for some paperwork earlier and unearthed an old pocket diary from 1999. I'm not one to hold onto things for sentimental reasons, but I think I probably kept this one because it records all my professional engagements for my first full year working in the UK as a senior reporter and later a production editor. (Though flicking through the diary dates now, I can't recall any of the interviews much less the interviewees -- how terrible is that? Nor is there any mention of my first fateful meeting with the Irish chap in mid-June who later became my long-term partner.)

Interestingly enough, there's two bookish lists scrawled on the last two note pages. Under "books to buy/read" I have listed a clutch of books that kind of explains my mindset at the time:

• 'The Evil That Men Do' by Brian Masters
• Stephen Fry's autobiography
• 'Birdsong' by Sebastian Faulks
• 'Notes from a Small Island' by Bill Bryson
• A history book about Britain
• A London tour guide
• A Gallipoli history book

Under "books read in 1999" I have listed:

1. 'A Book of Memories' by Peter Nadas
2. 'As If' by Blake Morrison
3. 'Chickenhawk' by Robert Mason
4. 'Birdsong' by Sebastian Faulks
5. 'Land's Edge' by Tim Winton
6. 'Trainspotting' by Irvine Welsh
7. 'A Spell of Winter' by Helen Dunmore
8. 'The Ogre's Laboratory' by Louis Buss
9. 'Jack Maggs' by Peter Carey
10. 'London, the Lives of the City' by Granta
11. 'Praise' by Andrew McGahan
12. 'Killing Rage' by Eamon Collins
13. 'Charlotte Gray' by Sebastian Faulks
14. 'Eucalpytus' by Murray Bail
15. 'Another World' by Pat Barker
16. 'Into the Void' by John Krakauer
17. 'The Secret World of the Irish Male' by Joseph O'Connor

Funnily enough I can remember each and every book very clearly. I can remember the circumstances in which I read each book. I can remember how I came to possess each book and why I had chosen to read it. Back then I barely had enough money to make ends meet, and books were treasures acquired with much effort.

Looking at this list I'm surprised at the percentage of non-fiction books on it (7 out of 17), as I would have said that I have always dealt (almost) exclusively with fiction...

1000 novels everyone should read, according to 'The Guardian'

Earlier in the week I mentioned that The Guardian was planning on publishing a seven-part series on the 1000 novels everyone should read, which was due to kick-off today.

This morning I got online to see if the first part, about love stories, was available. Either I was blind and missed it, or they hadn't posted it on guardian.co.uk, so I headed off to the local shop to buy myself a hard copy.

I have since discovered it's all online, so if you don't live in the UK or forgot to get your newspaper today, you can find out which love stories you should read here and here and here.

The 1000 novels everyone should read series also has its own dedicated section on the website, which is here. Enjoy!

I'm particularly looking forward to the crime novels tomorrow...

'Manhattan Nocturne' by Colin Harrison

Fiction - paperback; Picador; 358 pages; 2008.

First published in 1996, Manhattan Nocturne is one of those dark, sexy thrillers that pays homage to hardboiled noir. It's a detective story told through the eyes of a journalist (rather than a cop) and has all the key ingredients for a superb story: a slightly narcissistic protagonist, a mysterious femme fatale and a violent murder to solve, all set within the seedy labyrinth of New York City.

The story begins when the improbably named Porter Wren, a 38-year-old newspaper columnist, attends a party thrown by the owner of his tabloid newspaper, a bullish Australian media magnate (who has a passing resemblance to Kerry Packer but is more likely to be a thinly veiled version of Rupert Murdoch), and is approached by a beautiful blonde woman called Caroline Crowley. Porter is happily married to Lisa, a successful hand surgeon, and has two young children, but that doesn't stop him flirting with Caroline and then going back to her luxurious apartment for what he hopes will be an exciting sexual encounter.

What he gets, however, is something else entirely: a story that could reinvigorate his jaded career, because Caroline wants him to discover who murdered her husband, Simon Crowley, a promising film director on the brink of international success. His grossly mutilated body had been found several years earlier on a building site on the Lower Eastside but the police had never been able to track down the killer -- could Porter do it for her?

Of course her challenge is not without ties, and before long the pair are conducting a rather sordid affair that gives Porter a delicious new edge to his otherwise mundane marital life. He is careful, however, to make it clear that he takes full responsibility for acting on his sexual impulses, because...

...what happened to me derived not from my marriage with Lisa but from the actions of four people -- me, Caroline Crowley, Simon Crowley, and one other. We were an odd troupe who found one another across time and space. There were minor players in our little urban drama as well, and I'll get to each other of those people, too, in time. But my wife did not drive events. She simply went to work each day and took care of the kids while I found trouble. This doesn't make her powerless or a flawless innocent,either; and this is not to say that she did not know what was going on; my wife is capable of  powerful, watching stillness. My wife, I hasten to add, is far smarter, far wiser that I.

And:

I was awake with my secret. It was terrifying yet thrilling. A secret is the hoard inside the maze of lies. A secret paints your face into a mask, and makes you watch those who are fooled by your performance. To have a secret is slyly to learn anew the mannerisms of regular conversation, the shuffling chitchat that brilliantly conceals the screamer. A secret organizes your life. Mundane irritations become desirable; by bearing them silently you pay homage to the secret; eyes open, you feed it in the dark. 

The story becomes more than an undercover murder investigation when Porter's boss calls him into his office for a "friendly chat". It seems he, too, has been mixed up with Caroline in the past and he believes she is sending him a mystery video over and over again. The content of that video is not disclosed but Porter, charged with finding it so that it can be destroyed, assumes it must show his boss in a compromising position, perhaps with Caroline herself.

Caught between his lover and the man who pays his wages, Porter's level of discomfort is suddenly ratcheted up a few notches...

This is a multi-layered, occasionally complicated narrative, that feels as gritty and realistic as a dirty back avenue in downtown Manhattan. It's beautifully written, but Harrison especially comes into his own when describing New York:

Morning in Manhattan. Excellent and fair. Washed yellow taxis speeding downtown. Mexican men trimming tulips outside Korean delis. The early walkers to work, pleased with themselves. Subways flashing like information. Brightness unfurling almost perceptibly down the faces of buildings. In the back of the bars and the clubs and restaurants, a hundred thousand conversations are swept up, hosed down, hauled off.

Unfortunately the plot does get a little too messy and incredulous towards the end, and it's slightly difficult to keep track of all the clues and how they fall into place. But the superb characterisation makes up for this, although the main players aren't necessarily likable or admirable in any shape or form.

For the most part Manhattan Nocturne is an exciting, enjoyable romp through the dark, seedy side of New York City life with a lot of sex and a good mystery thrown in to boot -- perfect, if you like that sort of thing.