As a child, I could often be found with my mind wedged firmly in a book. I distinctively recall reading The Twits whilst everyone else read Postman books when I was in primary school, which is a particularly proud and smug memory. (I don’t have many of those so I must take what I can get). Alas, as I grew older and gained more responsibilities - and by ‘responsibilities’ I mean access to Netflix - I read less and less.
So, one of my new year’s resolutions this year was to read at least some books that were gathering metaphorical dust on my Goodreads to-read shelf. There is without a doubt a theme to the books that I read, which I didn’t actually pick up on until writing this. If you enjoy novels in which reality entwines with fantasy, magic and suspense then you are in for a treat!
“Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it’s really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.”
- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Night Circus arrives without warning and leaves when it pleases. To miss the circus is to miss a world of enchantment and mystery, and although the experience may stay with you throughout your lifetime, the circus itself may never return. Immersed in the eccentric arena of The Night Circus, we follow the lives of two rivals Celia and Marcus as they battle under undefined rules and baffling motives established long before by their guardians.
I don’t want to give much away but by far, The Night Circus was my favourite book this year and I recommend that everyone interested in a unique, eccentric, strange, sentimental story give it a go.
“Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”
- The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman
If you spend a lot of time looking at Amazon’s Top 25 books because you don’t have a lot else going on like I do, chances are you’ve seen Neil Gaiman’s wonderful ‘The Ocean At The End Of The Lane‘ knocking around up there.
Without a doubt Ocean is the oddest book I’ve read this year. There is a strange feeling that creeps up inside you as you explore the warped world that’s being laid out before you. It’s as though you were meant to be reading a fairytale or a joyous childhood story, but Gaiman’s source material was Cartoon Network shows… and he was tripping balls the whole time.
I’m probably not selling Ocean very well but it really is a very, very interesting read, albeit for slightly peculiar reasons. If you like something a little different that will make you think and feel then this is a book you should pick up.
“It’s not just Pandora who had that inescapable flaw. It seems like everyone has been built in a way that sometimes makes them do wrong and stupid things.”
- The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey
Melanie is 10-years-old, attends class with her friends, loves her teachers and enjoys reading. Her existence seems pretty typical, except for the fact she is strapped into a wheelchair a lot of the time and is under almost constant military surveillance.
Zombies have always had a large cinematic presence but they have always been overshadowed - depending upon which rules apply - by vampires when it comes to popular literary fiction. Obviously, this is because vampires appeal more to the ‘romantics’ of the world, whereas zombies are well… a bit gross. Or incredibly dull if The Walking Dead is anything to go by.
Thankfully, The Girl With All The Gifts challenges this idea and finally supplies us with an enjoyable but most importantly different dystopian world to explore. This original, sweet, scary tale of one little girl’s journey is wonderful and worth the read.
“Mental illness turns people inwards. That’s what I reckon. It keeps us forever trapped by the pain of our own minds, in the same way that the pain of a broken leg or a cut thumb will grab your attention, holding it so tightly that your good leg or your good thumb seem to cease to exist.”
- The Shock Of The Fall by Nathan Filer
Perhaps the darkest novel on my list, The Shock Of The Fall focuses on the writing therapy of Matt Homes, a 19-year-old schizophrenic, as he processes the death of his brother and deals with his mental illness.
Winner of the Costa Best Novel prize, this book is not for the faint-hearted. As someone who has often indulged in writing therapy and also read other people’s during psychiatry, I found it astounding how incredibly realistic and believable The Shock Of The Fall was. It is honest, worrying, even frightening at times when our narrator gets lost in his own mind. So, although I do recommend this book I would definitely like to issue a trigger warning and suggest you give it a miss if you’re easily swayed.
“Some mornings, she’d wake and vow, Today, I will get it right. I won’t be such an awful mess of a girl. I won’t lose my temper or make unkind remarks. I won’t go too far with a joke and feel the room go quiet with disapproval. I’ll be good and kind and sensible and patient. The sort everyone loves. But by evening, her good intentions would have unraveled. She’d say the wrong thing or talk a little too loudly. She’d take a dare she shouldn’t, just to be noticed. Perhaps Mabel was right, and she was selfish. But what was the point of living so quietly you made no noise at all? “Oh, Evie, you’re too much,” people said, and it wasn’t complimentary. Yes, she was too much. She felt like too much inside all the time. So why wasn’t she ever enough?”
- The Diviners by Libba Bray
After her mischief becomes too much for her parents to handle, Evie O’Neill is sent to live with her uncle in New York City and work at the ‘Museum of American Folklore, Superstition and the Occult’. Yep, it’s one of those Young Adult novels about a young girl who finds herself in a supernatural world, but bear with me: The Diviners is different.
This tale is deep, even scary at times and very rarely harks back to YA clichés. Libba Bray’s voice is rich and addictive, but by no means overly complicated or frilly. It’s a delightfully easy - and slightly frightening - read.
“When angels go bad they are worse than anyone else. Remember Lucifer used to be an angel.”
- Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Despite the fact this novel is an adaption of a 1996 BBC show of the same name I had never heard of Neverwhere before I got stuck in a Neil Gaiman-hole after reading Ocean.
Neverwhere focuses on the delightfully oblivious Scottish manchild Richard Mayhew as he deals with the repercussions of helping a random girl named Door. Throughout Neverwhere we explore the absolutely unfathomable, clandestine world of London Below - which I’m assuming must have been referred to as Neverwhere at some point during pre-production.
Although it deals with some heavy topics and ideas, Neverwhere actually felt like a light, fun read.
“Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries—but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.”
- Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Not only does Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children have the best title I’ve ever read, it also embraces the tricky task of entwining photography with narrative and thankfully: it does it well. Miss Peregrine’s has some of the scariest photos I’ve ever seen, leaving me frightened to read it at night before bed. Although I haven’t read the sequel Hollow City yet, this first instalment does leave you both curious and satisfied.
The reason I’m yet to read the sequel and why Miss Peregrine’s is so far down on my Reading List due to one reason alone: no matter how hard I tried I could not relate to the main character Jacob. His attitude attempts to be that of a moody teenager, but sometimes edges upon whiny, immature and above all: selfish. He is a pitiable character, even a believable character, but he is not a likeable character. By all means I’m glad I read Miss Peregrine’s and would encourage you to do so too, but I am just so sick of teenagers in books: get a grip.
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
- 1984 by George Orwell
Last but certainly not least, I had to include George Orwell’s legendary 1984 not only because I only just read it, but because it is without a doubt one of the best novels I’ve ever read. I also hadn’t read The Great Gatsby until recently, but I’m just going to call that out as wildly overrated. But that’s probably because it doesn’t take place in a dystopian world or include supernatural people. I have very highbrow standards. Anywho, what I meant to say is: if you haven’t read 1984 yet - according to QI two-thirds of those who claim to have read it have not! - you really should!
If anyone has any recommendations for me based on these ten books, please let me know either on the comments or on Twitter!
