“If you were kitting out a holiday cottage (vacation rental)
what would you put on the bookshelf for rainy days?"
1) There’s
ONE bookshelf in this place??? What sort of a rental service am I running??
2) If space
is tight, I’ll have to go with a small but wide(ish) selection
3) I’ll
assume I’m only going to rent the place to people who like to read what I like
to read!
In no
particular order (and hoping you like crime, spies and mythologies):
Agatha Christie: “And Then There Were None”
– a lot of people have seen a TV or stage production, but many haven’t read the
book! They should :-)
Colin Dexter: “Last Bus to Woodstock” –
written during a rainy holiday in Wales, this is the first Inspector Morse book…as
with Christie’s book, above, I find many people have watched Morse but fewer
have read the books. They are excellent!
Elly Griffiths: “The Chalk Pit” – any Elly
Griffiths book is a joy to read, but this was the last one I read, so it’s on
the list!
Lee Child: “Worth Dying For” – I enjoy all the Reacher books, but this is the
most recent I read
PD James: “The Murder Room” – same as
above (though in this case it was RE-read!)
The Mabinogion – Welsh mythological
tales, which take a LONG time to read (just in case it’s raining for weeks!)
JRR Tolkein: “The Lord of the Rings” –
it’s always worth having this book around, because it’s a wonderful read from
cover to cover, and takes a long time to get through!
John le Carré: “A Legacy of Spies” – I haven’t
read it yet, but George Smiley is back and I cannot wait….so I’ll buy it, read
it and pop it into the cottage
Len Deighton: the Bernard Samson trilogy “Faith”,
“Hope”, and “Charity” – I cannot
get enough of this man’s writing, hence needing three books of his on the shelf…besides,
it’s only fair to allow a reader to finish a trilogy.
Linwood Barclay: the Promise Falls trilogy
– same as above!
Cathy Ace is the Bony Blithe Award-winning author of The
Cait Morgan Mysteries and The WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries (#4, The
Case of the Unsuitable Suitor will be released in hardcover in the UK in
September 2017 and in the
USA & Canada on January 1st 2018). You can
find out more about Cathy, her work and her characters at her website, where
you can also sign up for her newsletter with news, updates and special offers: http://cathyace.com/
Thanks for the list of recommendations. I loved the Morse show and the books. Also love the Frost shows - have you seen? I haven't actually read a Frost book yet...
ReplyDeleteI'll look for that Christie novel you mention - I don't think I've read it or seen the movies.
Always good to have a stack of good books for those rainy Vancouver days.
ReplyDeleteHi Rae - the Frost books are excellent. Like Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe books, Peter Robinson's Banks books, and, of course, the Morse books, they are much more complex than the TV adaptations. Which is to be expected. If you haven't read that Christie book, you're in for a treat...it's probably THE classic closed-room mystery, even though it's set on an island. And if you don't know the famous ending - excellent!
ReplyDeleteHi Dietrich - not enough rainy days this past summer :-( So says the woman with a well that ran dry in June and five acres all planted for our "moist" climate!
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more with your mention of the Promise Falls trilogy. Each book is entertaining, and all three are cleverly knit together. You recommended them to me a while back and turned me into a Barclay fan!
ReplyDeleteHi Allan - so pleased to steer you toward Linwood Barclay's writing. It's engrossing, entertaining and he makes complex, small-town, thriller-writing look deceptively easy :-)
ReplyDelete