The 20 Best Books I Read in 2017 (Part One).

In my first blog Evidently I'm Going to Regret This I said that I'd read 52 books in 2017 as part of the Popsugar Reading Challenge.  I honestly surprised myself by reaching that goal. 

Anyway now's as good a time as any to share my favourite books from last year.  I say 'from last year' but honestly I read more books that are 10 to 50 years old than books read the year they're published.  Anyway, here are ten of the books I gave 4 stars to (in the order that I read them).

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN  - Lindqvist (2004). 
From the start, I am not a fan of Vampires.  But I'd seen the movies (and probably don't need to say that the original is better than the remake) and really enjoyed them, so I thought I'd give it a go.  and it was great.  Really dark and creepy, almost Lolita levels of creepy, basically.  What was great about it was how it was not the usual vampire story.  The protagonist was a boy in Sweden who was bullied at school and befriends a young girl in their apartment complex.  Who turns out to be a vampire.  There is a lot of killings and brutality, and at the centre of it all are these sweet kids who help each other out of nothing but friendship.  It's tense, it gritty, it's written really well. 

THE COLLECTOR - Fowles (1963).
This was a really clever book set in England about a socially awkward clerk who comes into a large sum of money and his plans to win the affections of Miranda, a middle-class Art student he has long admired.  He eventually convinces himself to kidnap her, and win her affection by being nothing but a gentleman to her.  But he didn't think his plan through, nor count on the intelligence and desperation of his prey.  The second part of the novel is told from Miranda's POV and is entirely compelling.  It it well written, it gives one the chills, and leaves you breathless.  Highly recommended.

MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN - Riggs (2011).
Miss Peregrine's is a really fun YA novel, where Jacob finds there might be some truth to his grandfather's crazy stories shortly after his disturbing death.  When he has an opportunity to go to a place that was special to his grandfather with his dad, he jumps at the chance, and starts putting together pieces to a mystery lost in time.
It's a different take on the standard YA fantasy, it's engaging, and feels quite familiar all the way through.  Meeting the 'Peculiar' children (and Miss Peregrine, of course) is a delight, however the further you go, the darker and scarier it gets.

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK - Lindsay (1967).
The very first few pages absolutely transported me to my youth, growing up in country Victoria, the sights, the sounds, the scents are exactly as Lindsay described.  This novel actually featured in a recent blog post of mine, Books and Movies that I Love.  Basically Picnic at Hanging Rock is a superb mystery full of eerie events, curious characters and sinister undertones. 

LAVINIA - Le Guin (2008).
Ursula K. Le Guin, one of my all-time favourite authors, wrote Lavinia in 2008.  It is an unusual book in a sense, as the titular character is a character in Virgil's Aeneid.  A significant character, too - the wife of the hero Aeneas, yet in the Aeneid she was not given a line.  Le Guin gave her a voice, and made her real - but not only that, but brought her family and community of Laurentum to life, and describe's not only Lavinia's conflict with her family marvellously, but also the war between Laurentum and her neighbours and the invading Trojans, lead by Aeneas. 

RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA - Clarke (1973). 
This was a childhood favourite of mine, I am not ashamed to admit.  The imagination that Clarke had, the skills to bring such wonders to life, absolutely phenomenal.  Anyway, Rendezvous With Rama  tells the classic sci-fi story of first contact with alien intelligence.  An unidentified object - a massive cylinder - enteres out Solar System and slows down, and a crew of astronauts is dispatched to investigate it.  The tale of the crew and their exploration of the cylinder is so clever, and the ending is just so perfect, that I can't say a bad word about it.

PERFUME:  THE STORY OF A MURDERER - Suskind (1985).
Another novel that I had read after seeing the movie.  This is an original story though, in that it tells the tale of a man whose sense of smell is so powerful that his perspective of the world is unique.  He becomes a perfumer, one who creates perfumes, and becomes obsessed with capturing all the scents and creating perfumes to make people see him as angelic or god-like.  Unfortunately, some of the scents he must capture and use he can only obtain my murder.  The whole thing is very clever and really well-written.

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY - Adams (1979).
I have to say that I used this book for the 'about an immigrant or refugee' prompt.  I don't think there's much for me to say about this one.  There's no dispute it's hilarious and an absolute sci-fi comedy classic. 

THE KING'S JUSTICE - Donaldson (2016).
This was a very interesting fantasy story.  A man rides into a town in the Kingdom attempting to solve a disturbing murder, which soon turn into a series of murders.  The characters are great, the story is captivating and complex with many twists and turns, and Donaldson has created another amazing fantasy world with a brilliant system of magic.

MARTIAN TIME-SLIP - Dick (1964).
I have to say Philip K. Dick is one of my favourite authors.  I have read most of his 44 novels and 120 short stories, and this is one of the ones that I think is the most under-rated.  What Dick does so well is really get right into the day-to-day life and concerns of the average person in whatever insane world he comes up with.  In Martian Time-Slip, the protagonist Bohlen is a repairman on a struggling colony on Mars.  His relationship with his wife is on a downward spiral, his employer is taking advantage of him, but what can he do?  Just get through as best he can and try keep his schizophrenic episodes at bay.  When Bohlen's path crosses with Arnie Kott's, the leader of the Water Worker's Union, his life gets turned upside down.  The most outstanding yet terrifying part of this book is Dick's description of what Manfred Steiner, an autistic child who becomes one of Arnie Kott's many pawns perceives. 


So that's the first ten books of my top twenty.
Next week I'll summarise the top ten, and share which six books I gave 5 star reviews to.

Please comment on whether you agree or disagree with my reviews, or the best books that you read last year!

How important are titles, anyway?

The novel I have been working of for some time now is currently titled 'Emma and the Madhouse Kids' and sure, it sounds good.

It means there's going to be:
*an Emma.
*Kids, possibly from some "madhouse" -  whatever that means.

And those things are true.  But, believe it or not, there's actually a lot more to it than that.  Firstly, while there is an Emma, she actually isn't the main character.  She thinks she is, and in a way it is all about her, but the main character is actually Alex.  So should I call it 'Alex and the Madhouse Kids' instead?

What about those Madhouse Kids?  Well yes.  I mean, no.  There is a bunch of kids at a medical facility where experiments are done on their brain, but never once is it referred to as a 'Madhouse'.  Maybe I need to work on that.  Maybe I should just call it 'Emma'.

But maybe I can keep it as is.  I mean, think of all the books with misleading titles.  Wait.  Don't even think.  Here is a list.

The Six Most Misleading Book Titles.

1. 'To Kill A Mockingbird' -  Not a story about killing birds.
2. 'The Neverending Story' - Well the main gripe I have with this title is that it ended.
3. 'Trainspotting' - Unless that actually is a term for Heroin that I've never heard of.
4. 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus' - Just nope.
5. 'The Man in the High Castle' - Amazing book, but no.  The title is all wrong.
6.  'Breakfast at Tiffany's' - No.  No-one had breakfast there in the entire book.  I don't even know if you can have breakfast there. I thought it was a Jewellery store.

But you know what?  Despite having titles that just make no sense, most books on that list are amazing.  So I will stick with that title for now.  And you know what?  When I write the sequels, their titles won't make sense either.  'Kiara under the Reichstag' and 'Devendra versus the Tokyo Traitor' - well until I think of something better anyway.

Which I am certainly going to do at some point after they've been published.