Great reads

some favourite books

I’ve been a bookseller for more than ten years and it has proven to be one of those careers that people want to talk about at parties. I’m not always at work when I get to hear ‘Tell me a good book!’ or ‘Give me an idea for a good read…’

I’ve always thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if I could just give folks a link to a list of books and they can work through them as a ‘tickable’ list?’

Though I no longer work in a bookshop, I still work in the book trade and ultimately, my job as a buyer of fiction books is still about selling books and so I find that I still think of myself as a ‘bookseller’ – right or wrong, I just haven’t been able to shake off that way of thinking about books.

There are a number of things I considered when making up the list because the debate about what exactly constitutes a good book is always going to be something folk can argue about.  I started with the same format as the Desert Island Discs radio show .ie. what ten books couldn’t I live without.  Nope.  Too many to squeeze in even if I doubled the size of the list.  I decided instead to go for those books I would recommend to someone who claimed no preference as to what to read next because I believe that someone who genuinely loves a good book will read anything, regardless of genre.

In essence, a good read is a book that:

  • grips you from the first page – if you struggle with the first sentence, the chances are you won’t be reading the last;
  • beats off the competition from your favourite TV program;
  • is most often from a genre of books that you think you ‘hate’ – but have never tried;
  • the characters seem real: when they suffer, your heart aches and when they triumph, you punch the air like you were one of the team;
  • the imagery: like a cinema in your head but one you can touch, taste and smell
  • and last, I’ve picked books which – for the most part – would work really, really well in a reading group because sharing a book is sometimes the key to unlocking the heart of a book.

Remember that not only do publishers have to pay for the adverts you see in newspapers and on TV but they have invested a significant amount of money to ‘develop the project’.  Development costs will include – variously – a huge advance to the author; art work – despite the shocking number of atrociously ill-considered jackets, every book jacket is subject to a rigorous design process; printing – the cost of paper and ink is going up all the time; transport – taking the book from the printer to the warehouse to the shops; the cost of employing all the staff involved, and last but not least; bungs to the buyers at the large retailers.  These bungs can be anything from lunch and/ or a night out (cheap) to trips abroad for conferences and presentations (not so cheap) to paying for the space in the windows of WHSmiths and Waterstones.  Dear Reader: don’t believe you can rely on the reviews you see in newspapers either: the ‘good reviews’ in newspapers are most often written by friends of the author (and bad reviews by authors previously given bad reviews themselves).  For the most part, if a book hasn’t been personally recommended by someone you know and trust then likely the tagline on the front of the book is going to be a complete baloney.  When you have a spare few moments on your next visit to a bookshop, ask a bookseller what they would personally recommend: if you’re not already in an independent but in one of the big chain stores, the bookseller will take you away from the front-of-store promotions to the overlooked stuff at the back.  I’d bet your next year’s salary on it.

Back to the list: if a book isn’t on the list then either I haven’t read it (yet) or I did try and I found it to be something other than ‘great’. If a book says ‘nf’ next to it, it’s non-fiction and if it says ‘OP’, it’s Out-of-Print (and therefore unavailable as ‘new’) in the UK but you should still be able to get it second-hand or in digital, e-reader format.

So, without further ado, here is a list of books I think you should try if you haven’t already:

Responses

  1. really? is that all?? you make me smile. how many life-times do you think we have, exactly? can we please also see the condensed version, say a top three?
    nice to read you are so passionate about books, though…

    By: kristine on July 9, 2007
    at 11:03 pm

    Reply


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