Day 12 – A book or series of books you’ve read more than five times

Lord of the Rings – once a year for a few years, less often more recently.

I know, I know… lots of you will be rolling your eyes… but I. Don’t. Care.

Day 10 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving

Pride and Prejudice.

Some well-meaning adult gave me a copy of P&P when I was all of ten, and I Just Could Not get past the first few pages. So I gave up and got a bit cranky when people talked about Austen.

Cue the TV series, and now… well. We loves it, precious.

Day 09 – Best scene ever

OH THE CHOICES. Darcy and Elizabeth finally admitting their love? The darling cosy love scene at the end of Mahy’s The Changeover? The amazing ending to Alastair Reynold’s House of Suns? Tiffany Aching staring everybody down? The first time Owen and Hazel meet in Deathstalker, or the arrival of Hawk and Fisher at the castle?

This is a really hard question, and is partly why I didn’t post this on the right day. Oops. But I’ve been re-reading the entire Belgariad, and there’s a moment where the reader is introduced to Vella, the remarkable Nadrak woman who gets much more air time in the Mallorean. And it suddenly occurred to me that one of, at least, my favourite scenes ever is right at the end of Seeress of Kell, where the ugly little Beldin, who has the soul of an artist, and Vella – gorgeous and rough and in need of love – fly away as hawks, having found what they always wanted. And you know what? I think that’s just about one of the loveliest scenes I’ve ever read. So it gets my vote.

Day 08 – A book everyone should read at least once

I guess it would be cheating to repeat myself, by saying The Book Thief, although I’m awfully tempted, because I think you should. Instead, I will spread myself around and instead Fahrenheit 451.

It might be a bit clunky, to the modern reader, and there are futuristic ideas that might amuse. But there are some ideas that are scary for how close they come to being real even now, and you can see how things could go that step further into crazyland. And, of course, it’s a marvellous, salutary, terrifying look at what the world could become. I don’t really think for a moment that Australia could ever become what Bradbury was imagining… surely?… but little bits and pieces….

It is likely to give anyone who loves books screaming nightmares, but I think that should just make us appreciate them all the better. And work at improving our memories.

Day 7: least favourite plot device in books you’ve otherwise enjoyed.

Do catch-phrases count as plot devices? I say they do. And after a while, they drive me mad. Eddings used Garion’s whining “why me?” to good effect, mostly, but that still didn’t stop him sounding like a whiny little boy (which he was). The worst offender, though, is Simon Green. Especially in the Deathstalker series, which is not helped by being so very long. Now I adore the Deathstalker books, with bright-eyed passion, but by book three every time Owen opened his mouth I was cringing, anticipating that he was going to use on those stock phrases that he’d used the last million times. Jack, Ruby, and oh Hazel – all with the same problem. I understand that it can help build character, but I would actually prefer characters with a greater vocabulary.*

*all of you who know and love The Fifth Element, insert your best Ruby Rod impersonation at this point.

Day 6: favourite book of favourite series OR favourite book of all time

What a terrible, terrible thing to have to decide. For a long time my automatic answer has been Lord of the Rings, and… I think I still have to go with it. I know this is simultaneously not a popular answer, and a too-popular answer, but too bad; I love it. I love Aragorn; when I can forget Elijah Wood, I love Frodo; the Rohirrim make me happy and so does Lothlorien. I love that the ending is bittersweet. Yes, there are too few women characters; yes, the bit from final battle to final page is a bit too long. I don’t care. If I had to take just one book to that desert island, I think this would be it. Also, it’s so long, I could make a good few torches out of it, if I had to.

(There was no way I could do the ‘favourite book of favourite series’ idea, because for me, they usually blur together. That’s like asking me to define exactly what happens in Episodes Iv, V, and VI of Star Wars. Could do it, but it would hurt my brain.)

Day 5: a book/series you hate

Books I’ve not actually managed to finish? I hate James Joyce’s Ulysses, and yes I did indeed begin it, for an English subject. I got to the point where I was bribing myself to read it: “get through 20 pages, and you can read a chapter of that Eddings book.” Didn’t work. Hated the lack of punctuation (which I KNOW is a stylistic thing, I don’t care), hated the characters, BORED BORED BORED by the lack of plot.

That I have actually finished: A Thousand Acres, and consequently King Lear. Another I had to read for an English subject. This puts the story of Lear into the American Midwest, I think, sometime in the middle of the twentieth century. Again, I loathed the characters… and when it added memories of incest, it lost me completely. Can’t watch Lear ever again, by association (sorry, Amy).

Day 4: favourite book/series ever

I’ll go with series here, but it’s still an awfully difficult question: I mean, what criteria do I use? Eddings and McCaffrey bug me a little too much these days; Jasper Fforde has never quite peaked into the besotted stakes; Douglas Adams amuses me, but isn’t quite an absolute favourite.

I think I have to go with the Deathstalker series, by Simon Green, even though I think I’ve read them only once. It’s space opera at its finest, for me. Space ships; crazy technology; an empire ruled by a seriously terrifying Iron Bitch. A somewhat-bumbling hero who grows up beautifully; a tough and scary female lead (you know, I wonder if Joss Whedon has read these? Zoe has some awfully Hazel-like characteristics… but then again, not really); backed up by a marvellous, generally broken but grimly determined ensemble who just make me happy.

Also, there are awesome adventures, some not-overwhelming but inherently wonderful romances, witty banter, and some of the greatest worldbuilding ever.

Day 3: the best book you’re read in the 12 months

This is very hard, and over the last little while I may have mentioned quite a few books I think fall in to this category. In my head, the battle is currently between China Mieville’s The City and the City, and William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. I think that Mieville wins in this case.

As well as being a SF fan, I have long harboured detective-story-love. This doesn’t often get exercised; I am not up on the good, modern stuff; there’s so much SF stuff I want to read that it gets precedence; I just feed it with a bit of CSI or NCIS and I’m basically happy. After reading and enjoying Perdido Street Station, I had no idea that this Mieville story would deliver on my other genre. But it does, and indeed to the point where the SF is so slight (although I definitely think it’s there) that a primarily detective-book lover could probably read this and, after an initial confusion, love it as much as me. It’s one of those books where if you come with SF expectations, you get an SF vibe; if you don’t, you don’t.

Anyway, it’s brilliant. The characters are well-rounded and not flawless; the plot is sneaky and deceptive and entertaining. The star, of course, is the doubled city. This is a place where there are two cities existing in the same place: not like a fairy city co-existing with a human one, but two actual human cities, both on the map, share the same geographical space. But you have to go through customs to ‘get’ from one to the other, and noticing one while in the other… well, that’s the biggest no-no there is. I know, sounds ridiculous, but seriously: Mieville writes it so slickly, so convincingly, that I can almost imagine it working (almost).

This is the book I’ve been raving about for a while, and will continue to do so.