Susie's Picks - Can you really choose a favourite book?

When you truly love books and adore reading it’s impossible to choose a favourite book. You could, however, select particular types of books for specific moods or periods of your life. You may love thrillers but occasionally fancy a smooshy romance or enjoy historical novels but sometimes relish a sci-fi novel.

You might swing between full-on, fast paced, thought-provoking reads and gentler, calmer, easy-to-digest writing. There are days for quirky, days for heavy, days for literary, for beautiful, for heart-wrenching. Days for funny, for passion, for adventure.

When I think of my favourite books I imagine my bookshelves with my prized possessions sitting upon them, lined up, fighting for my attention. And I simply cannot pick favourites. They are all there because I love them dearly. The only thing I can choose is what I fancy reading NOW.

But, do all books that you love warrant a second reading? Can you enjoy them as much once you know what happens? When you know how the couple end up together? When you know which dastardly fiend committed the crime? When you know that your hero dies? Or do you revel in the security of the familiar? Do you find the writing so delectable that you savour every sentence, every phrase, every perfectly chosen word?

When you don’t get much time to read, would you rather plump for an old favourite, or explore something new?

I love many books but what I really treasure is finding a book that feels like it was written just for me. When its writing style, flavour, content, characters and storyline is completely my cup of tea.

There are only a few books that fit into this narrow category and I would like to share one in particular with you. It is written for children but the writing style and content would satisfy adults too. The author, Geraldine McCaughrean is a real artist of a writer; deftly weaving stories intricately around character, setting and circumstance that draw you in and hold you tight long after the final page. The book is The Middle of Nowhere, and is the epitome of all that I love about books.

 

Set in the Australian Outback, with wild danger on every side, this story follows a young girl called Comity Pinny, daughter of a telegraph operator, living at an isolated telegraph station in the early 20^th century. As the book opens, Comity loses her mother to a snake, and we follow her painful struggle to cope without her. As her father withdraws further and further into his important work, Comity becomes more and more isolated. When a new member of staff arrives to help her father with his work, Comity is in greater danger than ever. As her world crumbles she seeks solutions as only a child would, and draws closer to a dramatic and unexpected climax, caught between the native Aboriginals and a bunch of soldiers, all armed and very dangerous.

Geraldine McCaughrean is gifted at finding a new voice for each of her unique novels. This one has a distinct tone of its own and I urge you to listen to it.

 

If you have any books you want to share with us and with the borrowers of Cullompton, comment under this blog post or write a post on our facebook page.