Stuart Aken

Odd Thomas (novel) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, it's been a bit of a marathon, but hopefully has made some readers consider using their local independent bookshop (if you're lucky enough to have one!) to purchase their books. The Books Are My Bag.com promotion has lasted the entire month of October, and I've tried to post on each theme as it's occurred.

Todays, more or less inevitably, I suppose, is 'Spookiest read'. Spookiest? Well, I've read a lot of books that have set my nerves jangling, made me look over my shoulder for that vague sound behind me, got me twitching the curtains to see who is lurking in the back garden. Can I recall the title of a single one? Not today (but it has been a rather peculiar day with an early morning journey to rescue my daughter after she crashed her car - no injury, but a bit of a bent car. Didn't get to bed until 03:15 and then up at 08:00 to get the car recovered and into the garage for repairs!).

So, it looks as though I've had to call on Goodreads to remind me. And I've come up with Dean Koontz and Odd Thomas. Let's face it, a book about a guy who sees dead people is pretty spooky. It's a good read and I'd recommend you try it.

The penultimate day of the Books Are My Bag.com promotion for independent bookshops. I hope it's encouraged lots of readers to support these bastions of literature and entertainment.

Today's theme is 'Favourite experimental book'.  Not something I've ever been really keen on. Most such volumes turn out to be more or less unreadable or incomprehensible. I have no problem with the artist allowing him/herself some freedom in the manner of expression, of course. But language, and therefore writing, is a means of communication and it seems to me that w work of literature that fails to communicate is ineffective.
So, I won't cite James Joyce's Ulysses, here. I started to read it and gave it up as a bad job, much like his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I found decidedly self-absorbed and puerile.

Instead, I'll nominate the rather charming, if slightly cheesy, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It was, at the time, an interesting idea, portraying the story through words and pictures on different types of paper and in different ways. I recall enjoying it at the time, though that was a very long time ago and, for reasons I won't bore you with, I no longer have the book.

If you haven't come across it and can find a copy, it's certainly worth a read.

The Books Are My Bag.com promotion to support independent bookshops is coming to a close.

Today's theme is 'Most memorable fashion moment'. For me, this is a difficult one, since I am of the same mind as Oscar Wilde on the issue of fashion. He said: 'Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.' In fact, I'd go further. Fashion is probably one of the most irresponsible industries that we have to endure. It makes women, and more recently, many younger men, feel inadequate and unsatisfied with their bodies. It demands that people replace their wardrobes with increasing frequency, thus wasting valuable resources in a world with finite supplies of almost everything. And it grants an inappropriate status to those who simply have the good fortune to be today's accepted version of beauty.

However, since this is actually about book shops, and therefore books, I shall have to find something that has some mention of fashion or at least clothing in its content. To be honest, since the issue doesn't interest me, I'm struggling. And the only book I can recall with any sort of mention of clothing is one of my own. So, I'll shamelessly promote my own book, which can be ordered from your local book shop. It's received a lot of 5* reviews, so it must be considered a good read. Try Breaking Faith: you never know, you might enjoy it!

The theme for today is 'Has the best advice'. For me, this was a simple one. Some time ago, I read Oliver James' They F**k You Up: How to Survive Family Life. It's a singularly informative book. The case studies, mostly regarding well-known people, or celebrities, as we are required to know them, are enlightening as well as informative. But it is the advice that the author gives to readers that is most useful and helpful.

This is a book that I feel everyone should read. If it doesn't inform you about your own life and the reasons for some of your failures, hang-ups and prejudices, it will at least help you understand why some people are so odd, angry, depressed or apparently insane. I strongly advise everyone to read this. I took it on holiday and, although it is far from normal sunbed reading, it is a fascinating study with great insight into the human condition. Really, try it!

You'll find my review of the book if you click on this link.

Coraline (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The theme for today is actually quite straightforward. It's 'Favourite epigraph', which, as the Books Are My Bag.com promotion relates to books, I assume to mean a literary epigraph. So, I've chosen the following, though I haven't yet read the book:

'Fairy Tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.'  G.K. Chesterton
Quoted by Neil Gaiman in Coraline.

Of course, as a writer of fiction, and especially of speculative fiction, I am always in favour of any sensible quote that elevates the status of stories. But the quote is accurate. That's what stories do for us; they tell us what is possible.

Don't forget to use the #tag, #bookadayUK if you decide to join this promotion. But, more importantly, don't forget to visit your local independent bookshop (if you're lucky enough to have one in your vicinity) and BUY a book there. It's the only way we'll keep these vital outlets going and a wonderful way to erode the growing power and control of the online retail giants.

The Time Traveler's Wife (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today's theme, somewhat lately responded to, is 'Clocks go back! Best book on time-travel'. Now, of course, I could cite the classic H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, but that's bound to be promoted by thousands. Mind you, my own choice here is also likely to be very popular. I've chosen The Time Traveller's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. It's a great story and well written. I reviewed it on here after reading it and you can read that review by clicking on this link, should you feel so inclined.

I missed yesterday's piece on the #bookadayUK topic - too busy with other things. But I'll do a brief piece now, before I do today's.
The theme was 'Mmmmm! Most memorable food/drink moment in literature'. I could point out the pre-sex scene in Tom Jones, but I suspect that's very well known.  Beyond that, I couldn't think of anything to begin with. Then I recalled the spoof restaurant critic review that takes the form of a darkly humorous story in my speculative fiction collection, Ten Tales for Tomorrow.
The story, A Gastronomic Treat at the Edge of the Galaxy, details the experiences of an alien restaurant critic on a tour of our solar system and discovering some edible delights on planet Earth. Those who've read the story have enjoyed it. Might be worth a look.

Today, following the daily threads proposed by the Books Are My Bag.com promotion of
independent bookshops, we are urged to consider, 'A hidden gem'.

Now, what is hidden for some may well be openly on show for others. So, this, like so many of the others in this series, has to be a personal perception. I've decided to go with a book written by a friend, a work I think deserves a wider readership than it has so far achieved. Many books today fail to reach the readership they deserve simply because there are so many books published. This book, the second in a series, is a real gem. So, I nominate Linda Acaster's The Bull at the Gate. You can read my review of it here on the blog by clicking on this link.

The theme for today is 'Best book on diversity'. I confess to being a little puzzled by this particular label. Diversity is a term that can be applied in many different ways. So, I looked it up on Goodreads and discovered that, in this context, it's a label indicating that a major character is of a non-Caucasian origin.

I suppose I could have been silly, and nominated something like Lord of the Rings, with it's hobbits and other mythical creatures. But that hardly seems in the spirit of the thing. When I considered, I realised I'd read a fair number of books featuring non-Caucasian heroes, heroines and others. Salman Rushdie's Oeuvre is generally centred on races other than the Caucasian, and I've enjoyed a few of his works.

And, of course, I could have nominated the recent anthology of Epitaphs to which I contributed as one of seventy-two poets, many of whom were Indian, but that's not really what this is about either.

In line with what I've tried to do here in most cases, I decided to select the book most recently read that falls under this label. So, it looks as though it's going to be the Life of Pi, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Okay, so what happened to day 21? Well, the truth is that I was rather otherwise occupied. A neighbour, who was kind and influential during my teenage years, died last week and I attended her funeral, some distance away, yesterday.

But you managed the 'Word tips' post! Yes, that was scheduled, you see?

Anyway, today's theme is 'Makes me want to travel'. Once again, I am persuaded to delve into the past. There is no doubt that reading The Kon-Tiki expedition as a young man fired up my desire to travel. That I was hampered by my first wife, who would neither fly nor travel by sea, somewhat restricted me to this island home. However, my lovely second wife, with whom I've shared 26 years of happiness, is a traveller and treated me to my first trip overseas on my 40th birthday. A fortnight in Rhodes was a real eye-opener and we've visited many more of the Greek islands subsequently.

But it was undoubtedly Thor Heyerdahl's account of his adventures on the oceans that inspired me to travel. It's decades since I read his first book, and I've read most of his others since. Great stuff. If you haven't sampled this author, I suggest you do. You'll learn a little history and geography along the way.

The Reader of Novels by Antoine Wiertz. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today's theme is: 'Favourite bookworm in literature'. As with so many of these ideas, I find myself spoilt for choice.

I was initially tempted to choose Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader, which gives a delightful picture of our own Queen as a reader. But it's a while since I read that one.

So, for this theme, I'll again select the most recent example I can recall. In this case I'll go for the eponymous The Reader in The Reader of Acheron, by Walter Rhein. This character is a mystery figure loathed by those in authority and more or less worshipped by others. The Reader lives in a world where books are banned and reading is a crime punishable by death.

So far our own culture has largely avoided such excess. But there are various sects in existence that would evoke such a rule if they had the power. The recently evolved Islamic State is such a threat - the only reading allowed by these extremists is the Qur'an, and, one suspects, a modified and censored version at that. As those of us who've witnessed and learned from history know, such censorship never results in lasting authoritarianism, since human beings are thirsty for knowledge by nature. The imposition of such restrictions is generally guided by a combination of fear and ignorance coupled with a desire to reduce the intellectual standards of everyone to the lowest possible in order to impose control. The leaders of such cultures invariably fall foul of their natural greed and hunger for power and fall as a result. Unfortunately many ordinary people suffer horribly along the way. Such is the nature of politics and the cult of leadership, however.

The theme for today is, 'Made me laugh in public'. And, although this is true of many of the books I've read (Tom Sharpe's novels come to mind), the one that stands out for me is Seers by Karen Wolfe. A comic tale of a community existing within a normal social stratum but with the advantage of telepathy and other magical skills, it uses humour to examine certain human traits. Entertaining and full of earthy humour, it's a book I thoroughly enjoyed at the time. If you haven't read it, give it a go. You can find a link here, by clicking these words.

Don't forget to use the #tag, #bookadayUK if you're going to share this post by Twitter, will you?

The theme for today is, 'Most memorable adventure/journey in literature.' Now, that's a pretty tall order, since so many books involve either a journey or adventure, often both. Obvious choices include The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, almost any epic fantasy book, including my own trilogy, A Seared Sky, most thrillers, some crime novels and a number of literary works. Faced with such diversity and numbers, I decided on a book that I've returned to more often than most. Richard Adam's Maia tracks the journey of the eponymous heroine from a social backwater, where she's a neglected daughter put upon by her mother and seduced by her step-father, through sexual slavery and abuse to a life as consort to powerful men and a friendship with the beautiful, brilliant, tough and savvy Occula. It's an engaging and fascinating read, with an undercurrent of moral message about sexual inequality, slavery, and the corruptive nature of power. A great read.

Not my edition, but mine has lost its dust jacket and a plain blue cover makes no sense.

What do we have for today, in the #BookadayUK promotion for independent book shops?
This event, run by the Books Are My Bag.com website, suggests for today the following: 'Best home in literature'

I could choose Bilbo's house in Lord of the Rings, I suppose, but I like to look out of the windows. There are many opulent homes in many of the novels I've read, but I'm not too keen on excess. Hundreds of different homes must've been described in the thousands of novels I've read over the last 50/60 years. But the one that sticks in my mind, possibly enhanced and romanticised by the passage of the years, is a house called 'Heronswood' (I think) in Howard Spring's novel, My Son, My Son. The house is set on the upper slope of a headland in Cornwall, with one side of the wooded land leading to the sea coast and the other leading down to a private quay on the River Fowey. So, this place has all the elements I would love in a house. It's surrounded, but not enclosed, by trees. It's in an elevated position. It's within walking distance of the sea, and it has a river frontage free from the danger of flooding. What else could a civilised human being require, except, perhaps, now I'm reaching that age when I feel the cold, a location in a warmer clime?
So, that's my choice. What's yours?