The Guardian's Blog, page 157

10. Magpies

Our festive countdown, extracted from Rogerson's Book of Numbers, today looks at the traditional lore surrounding magpies

One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a wedding
Four for a death
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret not to be told
Eight for Heaven
Nine for Hell
And ten for the devil coming for your soul

It is tempting to see the counting of magpies, and the chanting of verses about what the number of these distinctive black and white birds might mean, as a tenuous but still active strand of traditional lore that links us directly to the ancient art of divination by watching the flight of birds (augury). We know that priests throughout the ancient world attempted to read the future by watching the passage of birds pass some sacred feature, such as a temple sanctuary, a headland or the gates of a city. The direction of their flight, their species, their number, the month, the hour and the shape of the flocks must all have had a significance that is now lost to us. One has only to think of the shapes formed by starlings at dusk, the vast squadrons of migrating geese or gulls returning every night to the sea, to touch upon the complexities of this art, let alone what the chance sighting of an erratic might configure...

The counting of magpies encountered on an English pathway drops us into a more homely version of this lost science, concerned with the fate of an immediate family. As with any ancient oral tradition, there is a considerable variety after the first two lines. The most popular version in use today stops at seven. It is also worth noting that the magpie is a meat-eating corvid, and that the British have always tended to weave gloomy references around magpies and their bigger cousins, such as crows and most especially the raven. All these birds would have been seen to feed off the dead of the battlefield, or those left swinging on the gallows, exhibited on the gibbet or impaled on a pike.

Tomorrow: Eleven footballers

• Taken from Rogerson's Book of Numbers by Barnaby Rogerson (Profile).

Reading on mobile? Listen to the pop song Magpie

Reference and languagesFairytalesNumeracyBarnaby Rogerson
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Comfort reading: Crusoe's Daughter by Jane Gardam

Kicking off a series on writers and readers' favourite books to curl up with on biting winter nights, Claire Armitstead salutes a playful, very bookish tale

Why do some books seem comforting? It may be because they take you back to a particular time or place, or perhaps they have that magic carpet capacity, found in the best children's books, to fly you out of yourself. Sometimes it's even consoling to read about people more scared, cold and miserable than oneself – think of all those orphans and consumptives in Victorian literature.

Here on the books desk, Dumbledore's wretchedness in Harry Potter comes to mind: "One can never have enough socks … Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books." Well, books are what we're stuck with too, Dumbledore. So we'll be cheering ourselves through the sockless season with a series of "comfort read" blogs from a range of Guardian writers and readers.

My own choice is a novel I first read more than 20 years ago and have kept close ever since. As part of a panel to celebrate the Booker's 40th anniversary I even proposed that it could - and should - have won the Booker prize. (Published in 1985, it would have ousted Keri Hulme's The Bone People.) The suggestion didn't go down very well with my fellow panellists, for reasons its author Jane Gardam playfully anticipates in the novel itself.

As its title suggests, this is the most bookish of books, the richly parented progeny of a literary heritage that goes back to Robinson Crusoe's island. Polly Flint is the biological daughter of a sea captain, who in 1904 takes the six-year-old girl to stay with two maiden aunts on the saltmarshes of England's north-east coast and then promptly goes down with his ship. But Polly's spiritual father is Daniel Defoe. She discovers a copy of Robinson Crusoe in the gloomy study of her aunts' house, and the book comes with her when she is taken off to a new home on the plains of York by Mr Thwaite, an elderly relative whose relationship to her is a mystery. There he and his effete sister – a nod to Ottoline Morrell – play host to impoverished artists and writers.

While they urge Tennyson and Dickens upon her, she stays true to the plainness of Defoe, arguing that Robinson Crusoe is "full of poetic truth … and an attempt at a universal truth very differently expressed".

As Polly pursues her literary infatuation, the 20th century rages in the distance. One admirer turns out, after his death in the first world war, to have been a mediocre poet whose love lyrics about "strawberries and nipples" shock her, while his war poetry prompts the barbed reflection that "under the mud of France there was dust that might have become of great account". Another beau, Theo Zeit, from a wealthy Jewish industrialist family, returns to Germany only to die in Auschwitz.

Polly struggles with what it means to be a woman in the modern world, worrying that without male advantages, or a husband, she will become part of the landscape. Unable to love, her constant companion becomes three inches of whisky, from which she is only rescued in middle age when her maid marries a headmaster, thus upturning the social order and enabling Polly to become a teacher.

Quirky, opinionated and gloriously solipsistic, Polly is a comic character whose struggles with identity reflect the struggles of England to come to terms with the end of empire. She is also a literary cipher who is incarnated – and proscribed – by the fiction in which she finds herself.

Being a creature of the 20th century, she rejects a life of bucolic peace on a Hardy-esque dairy farm, but cannot find a home in more modern scenarios either. The final chapter is written as a dramatic dialogue between Polly and Crusoe himself. The novel, she tells him, will have to change: "It's become quite canonically boring. All about politics or marital discord. The minutiae … We don't have heroes now."

By this time Polly is in her eighties and has taken to direct action, barricading herself into her house to protest against dumping of nuclear waste. Crusoe's Daughter makes a similar stand, as it transforms itself into a playscript. Every time I return to it, I am comforted by its refusal to conform, its wonderful, boisterous bolshiness, and the intelligence with which it demonstrates that we are what we read.

FictionJane GardamClaire Armitstead
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Poem of the week: Free Fall by Thomas Kinsella

An expressly late poem, this is a dreamlike and oddly peaceful contemplation of last things

Born in 1928, Thomas Kinsella has significantly helped shape the course of poetry in Ireland, and beyond. His collections span more than 60 years, beginning in 1952 with The Starlit Eye, and much of his best-known work brings myth and history as living forces into the narrative of the particular or personal.

In his most recent volume, Late Poems, the poet pursues an increasingly meditative path. This week's poem, Free Fall, is exemplary. Neither abstract nor laden with concrete detail, it demonstrates an unerring judgment about what can and can't be dispensed with when carving a hard-edged, archetypal shape from the grey recesses of the subconscious.

The poem has a dreamlike quality. Dreams, whether or not they involve sensations of falling (as they too often do) represent a suspension of logical control. In physics, the meaning of free fall is not dissimilar: the term refers to a fall subject to no interference or resistance to the sheer force of gravity. Kinsella studied science as a young man, and, while the poem seems ultimately metaphysical, the "physics" definition is not inappropriate. Initially, the descent seems unstoppable, the long lines of the first tercet creating sensations of headlong motion.

The tone is that of an anecdote told in plain, authoritative, natural speech. The past continuous tense ("I was falling") adds immediacy to the speaker's recollection, as well as continuity to the actions. Less temporally conclusive than the past historic, it almost suggests that, somewhere, the dream or vision goes on. It helps transport the reader into the story, and suggests that the experience, re-lived, displaces the speaker, too, shifting him out of local time and space.

The imagery is sparsely sketched. We're not told the nature of the "shower of waste" which contributes to the initial sense of devastation. Waste matter from bodies, buildings or even planets may be implied. There's also waste in the metaphorical sense of wasted time, hopes, efforts. All earthly attachment would be "waste" from the Buddhist's point-of-view – a view which may be contributory to the metaphysics of this poem.

The speaker is not alone, and the fact that he is both "helpless" and reaching out his arms "toward the others" implies shared emotion as well as process. This human connection, at least initially, is no stay against chaos. The "disorder" and the unknown but fast-approaching surface signal nightmare. But a "turn" in the second stanza brings transformation. The new rhythmical brevity of these lines acts as a timely block to the pace of descent. The gently complicated assonance of the revelation that "the fall slowed suddenly" almost suggests an air-current which lifts and cushions those falling. Now the nightmare is a dream where everything comes beautifully right. The slower pace suggests the figures might be floating. We imagine something kindly in their faces, replacing a very different earlier look, a despair not described but implied.

The diction remains understated: "unconcerned", "regarding" and "approval" are quiet sorts of word. But the placing of "unconcerned" singly on its own line makes it a perfect point of rest. Echoing "all" in a subtle end-rhyme, the "approval" that's wordlessly shared between the participants seems to offer extended beatitude. The communicative, generous nature of the look they exchange not only seals salvation: it appears to be part of what has made the salvation possible. In common with other poems in the collection, Free Fall finds a hard-won serenity. It's a poem of late-life consciousness, but with none of Yeats's rage against the dying of the light. In fact, it seems to open into light.

Late Poems collects the contents of five recent Peppercanister publications to form its astringently meditative cycle. Free Fall originally appeared in the pamphlet Fat Master published in 2011.

No discussion of a Thomas Kinsella poem would be complete without a word about the press he founded in 1972 and which is so closely associated with his endeavours. Kinsella writes that Peppercanister was "established as a small publishing enterprise, with the purpose of issuing occasional special items from our home in Dublin, across the Grand Canal from St Stephen's Church, known locally as 'The Peppercanister'."

Peppercanister editions have continued  as a form of draft publication;  collections are issued occasionally in book form, most recently as Late Poems, 2013, Carcanet Press." Let's wish the two poetry presses and their founders a continued happy association in the forthcoming New Year.

Free Fall

I was falling helpless in a shower of waste,
reaching my arms out toward the others
falling in disorder everywhere around me.

At the last instant,
approaching the surface,
the fall slowed suddenly,

and we were all
unconcerned,
regarding one another in approval.

PoetryCarol Rumens
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9. The Chinese power of nine

Our festive countdown, extracted from Rogerson's Book of Numbers, considers why the number nine has powerful resonance in China

Nine has always been respected by the Chinese, for it has tonal resonance with "long-lasting" and was also associated with the emperor, who had nine dragons embroidered on his robes and ruled over a court divided between nine ranks of courtiers who could gain nine sorts of reward.

This respect for the power of nine led to many social listings of nine, often charged with an observant sense of humour, as well as the more serious concept of how individuals were bound ninefold to their family, clan and community.

Here are the Nine Admirable Social Habits:
• Relieving tension
• Courteous attention
• Discreet mention
• Tenacious retention
• Assiduousness
• Wise abstention
• Calculated prevention
• Truthful intervention
• A sense of dimension.

The Nine Virtues:
As defined for the near-legendary Emperor Yu (2205–2100BC) by his chief minister Kao-Yao.
• Affability combined with dignity
• Mildness with firmness
• Bluntness with respectfulness
• Ability with reverence
• Docility with boldness
• Straightforwardness with gentleness
• Easiness with discrimination
• Vigour with sincerity
• Valour with goodness.

The Nine Follies:
• To think oneself immortal
• To think investments are secure
• To mistake conventional good manners for friendship
• To expect any reward for doing right
• To imagine the rich regard you as an equal
• To continue to drink after you have begun to declare that you are sober
• To recite your own verse
• To lend money and expect its return
• To travel with too much luggage.

The Nine Jollities of a Peasant:
• To laugh
• To fight
• To fill the stomach
• To forget
• To sing
• To take vengeance
• To discuss
• To boast
• To fall asleep.

The Nine Deplorable Public Habits:
• Drunkenness
• Dirtiness
• Shuffling
• Over-loud voice
• Scratching
• Unpunctuality
• Peevishness
• Spitting
• Repeated jests.

And the Nine Final Griefs:
• Disappointed expectations
• Irretrievable loss
• Inevitable fatigue
• Unanswered prayers
• Unrequited service
• Ineradicable doubt
• Perpetual dereliction
• Death
• Judgment.

Reference and languagesChinaNumeracyBarnaby Rogerson
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8. Cherry stones

Our festive countdown, extracted from Rogerson's Book of Numbers, continues with a childhood rhyme

Tinker
Tailor
Soldier
Sailor
Rich man
Poor man
Beggarman
Thief

This childhood rhyme helps make the eating of a thick slice of cherry tart, or a bag of fruit, an even more enjoyable task. For you hoard your cherry stones at the side of the plate, which, once you have finished, are counted out to an eightfold repeating rhythm to reveal your future career, or that of your partner.

In England it normally goes as above, though I have heard variations like 'tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, gentleman, apothecary, plough-boy, thief', or the Scots version, which goes, "a laird, a lord, a richman, a thief, a tailor, a tinker, a drummer-boy, a stealer o'beef". In America, thief has been replaced with "Indian chief" and the invidious choice between rich man and poor man by a choice of the professions, "doctor, lawyer or merchant".

My mother used to chant out a genteel English version of this winners' eight, where all future partners could be considered gentlemen. It went: "Soldier brave, sailor true, skilled physician, Oxford blue, gouty nobleman, squire-so-hale, dashing airman, curate pale."

Writers have been consistently drawn to the fateful roll call of destiny, either including the rhythm in their works or playing around with variations. So there are references to the oral chant to be found in titles and works by Thomas Hardy, Dorothy Sayers, Virginia Woolf, Michael Ondaatje, William Congreve, AA Milne and, most famously, John Le Carré.

One of the more intriguing references to a list of eight is also the earliest. In William Caxtons's edition of The Game and Playe of the Chesse, made around 1475, he names the eight pawns on the chess board as "labourer, smith, clerk, merchant, physician, taverner, guard and ribald" – which might just be the origin of the whole chant.

Tomorrow: the Chinese power of nine

• Taken from Rogerson's Book of Numbers by Barnaby Rogerson (Profile).

Reference and languagesBarnaby Rogerson
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7. Days of the week

Our festive countdown, extracted from Rogerson's Book of Numbers, continues with the history of the seven-day week

Our seven-day week is a straight inheritance from very ancient Babylonian and Jewish traditions that took the seven planets as one of the ordering principles of humanity and divinity. The main alternatives were the Egyptian 10-day week, the Germano-Celtic nine-night week and the eight-day week of the Etruscans. The latter was inherited by the Romans, for it allowed for a specific market-day, which enabled country-dwellers to come to the cities and sell fruit and vegetables (which lasted only eight days). During Julius Caesar's calendar reforms the seven-day week was introduced from the near East, though it ran alongside the old Etruscan traditions until the time of Constantine.

And some time during that period, between AD 200 and 600, the current charming muddle of English names was hatched out, part honouring the Roman pantheon and part the Norse-German deities. For Monday is moon day, Tuesday is the day of Tiw/Tyr's day (the heroic Teutonic sky god), Wednesday is Woden/Odin's day (the Teutonic/Norse god of knowledge and war), Thursday is the day of Thor (the Teutonic smith god of thunder), Friday is the day of Frija/Freyr (the Teutonic goddess of fertility), Saturday is Saturn (the father of Zeus)'s day, and Sunday is of course the sun's day.

The same process happened in France, ossifying that peculiar junction point between Roman paganism and the new Christian order. So the French have lundi (from the Latin dies Lunae, or moon day), mardi (dies Martis, or Mars day), mercredi (dies Mercurii, or Mercury day), jeudi (dies Jovis, or Jupiter day), vendredi (dies Veneris, Venus day), samedi (dies Saturni, Saturn day) and dimanche (dies Dominicus, day of the Lord).

In the well-ordered Christian state of Byzantium, all these pagan relics were ditched in favour of days one, two, three and four, followed by Paraskene (preparation), Sabbaton and finally Kyriaki (God's day). These remain the days in modern Greek.

Tomorrow: Eight cherry stones

• Taken from Rogerson's Book of Numbers by Barnaby Rogerson (Profile).

Reference and languagesBarnaby Rogerson
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Literary fiction has a problem with happy endings

Do serious novels really have to be so bleak?

Speaking just after he'd won the Guardian first book award, Donal Ryan wasn't sure if he should say that the novel he's working on at the moment has "a very happy ending". I didn't like to enquire further – he had a party to get back to after all – but there seemed to be more to his reticence than the usual authorial reluctance to discuss work in progress. It was as if Ryan was almost embarrassed to admit that after all the anger and despair of The Spinning Heart, and the dangerous greed of The Thing About December, his next book is looking a little more upbeat. But then literary fiction has had a problem with happy endings for years.

It wasn't always this way. I'm not sure what Jane Austen would have made of the genre of "literary fiction", but there's no doubting Pride and Prejudice is going to end with Mrs Bennet getting "rid of her two most deserving daughters". Charles Dickens may have at first dashed all Pip's Great Expectations, but he soon bowed to Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "good reasons" and chose an ending with "no shadow of another parting".

These days writers put themselves through all sorts of angst as they approach the final act. Paul Murray, another Irish novelist of boom and bust, says he suffered heartache over the fate of his characters in his sprawling tragicomedy, Skippy Dies. Joanna Kavenna admits she agonised over the balance between hope and less hope as she wove together four narratives in The Birth of Love. But the most unabashed apologist for the gloomy finish I've talked to recently is Ben Marcus.

According to Marcus, while a lot of entertainment helps us "not think about the worst", literature can "occasionally take this darker task up and try to illustrate a nightmare".

I suppose I'm not so attracted to very happy stories, nor can I really think of too many examples in literature of safe, easy stories that make us feel good. Maybe it's just a form of narcissism to want to tell stories about your demise, maybe you're just getting a chance to write your tombstone before you die.

He cites Kafka's dictum that "the positive is already given" – a theme he returns to in discussing his harrowing short story Rollingwood with the New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, arguing that "what's left for writers is to depict the negative, the darkness, the bleakest possibilities".

Judging by the sackfuls of novels coming through the door at the Guardian, many authors have bought into this project as wholeheartedly as Marcus over the past few years. Maybe I've just been picking up the wrong books, but I'm hard pressed to think of anything I've read recently with a straightforwardly happy ending. These days the best a character unfortunate enough to find themselves trapped in a literary novel can expect is the kind of lethal transcendence which Tom McCarthy finds for the cryptic narrator of his haunting debut, The Remainder.

Life is complicated I know, and perhaps fictions which aspire to measure up to those complexities will struggle to find straightforwardness in anything much at all, let alone in the sense of an ending. But the territory Marcus stakes out is too small, too constricted to capture all the richness of lived experience. Happiness may write in white ink on white pages as Henry de Montherlant's Don Juan suggests, but Kavenna must be right when she suggests it should be possible to write a great novel with a happy ending. Perhaps Ryan, who says his "overriding aim" in The Spinning Heart was "to say things that were true", should be less embarrassed that he's trying to redress the balance.

FictionClassicsDonal RyanRichard Lea
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Poster poems: heroes

As we mourn the loss of Nelson Mandela, our attention turns to inspirational figures of all stripe. Your boldest, bravest work, please

After our foray into villainy last month I thought it might be a good idea to round off the year on a more positive note with a celebration of heroes. While it is tempting to think that the baddies are always the more interesting characters in any story, this isn't always the case and poetry frequently celebrates those who are on the side of the light. This month, let's round off our dozen by singing the praises of the good eggs.

The original hero-figure in English poetry has to be Beowulf, with his almost supernatural ability to slay monsters and save the oppressed. Beowulf's great strengths are his fighting prowess and his adherence to the heroic code, the set of rules that defined what it meant to do the right thing when called into action. These strengths are also the cause of his downfall. Weakened by age and aware of his impending death, he is constrained by the code to take on one last fight. Deserted by all but one of his men, who take their social responsibilities less seriously than he does, he is victorious in death. It's a salutatory reminder of the dangers of heroism.

If Beowulf was a hero because of his adherence to the code that underpinned his social status, then Andreas Hofer was cut from a rather different cloth. An innkeeper turned politician and military leader, in 1809 Hofer led a series of Tyrolean revolts against Napoleon and his Bavarian allies. His exploits were marked in a poem by William Wordsworth, who was no fan of the French dictator. Despite a number of famous victories, Hofer was captured in 1810 and the order came from the Emperor to "give him a fair trial and then shoot him". Like Beowulf, Hofer found an early hero's grave.

Both Beowulf and Hofer conform to a kind of standard template of heroism. They each have a clearly defined enemy and go to face them in the full knowledge of the dangers they face and their reasons for deciding to face them. There are, however, other possible models of bravery. The protagonist of Robert Browning's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came exemplifies one such alternative kind of heroic behaviour. He does not know who his enemies are and his quest is indeterminate; not only is he uncertain of where the tower is, he seems to have no idea of what awaits him there. Yet he pursues his destiny in spite of everything, which includes a sense of his own inadequacy to the task in hand, whatever it may turn out to be.

Childe Roland's position may not fit with epic ideas of heroism, but it seems to me to be much closer to the reality of modern warfare. Soldiers like Jack in Siegfried Sassoon's The Hero tend to be more or less reluctant participants in events that are beyond their control and understanding, stumbling almost accidentally into the heroic role that society assigns to them to make itself feel less bad about their actual fate.

Another thing about heroism is that it can tend to be a touch subjective; one person's hero can be another's villain. Take, for instance, Oliver Cromwell, the great hero of British Republicanism who was praised in poems by John Milton and Andrew Marvell. In Ireland his reputation is somewhat different; Yeats sums it up neatly in the phrase "Cromwell's murderous crew" from his poem The Curse of Cromwell. Hero or villain; it all depends on where you're standing.

Last month we saw a number of political villains, but sometimes statesmen can be on the side of the good. One leader who inspired poetry was Abraham Lincoln, with Walt Whitman being chief amongst his bards. Lincoln tried his hand at verse himself, but it's probably just as well he didn't give up the day job.

Very often bravery has nothing to do with war or defeating dragons or changing the world. The greatest heroes can be those who defeat the monsters inside themselves, those who, as Emily Dickinson puts it, "grow accustomed to the Dark" and defeat it through a sheer effort of will. This kind of heroism is open to all of us.

So this month's Poster poems challenge is to write poems in praise of your hero or heroes. You might admire some great figure form history or myth, or it may be one of those unknown everyday heroes you want to celebrate. Whoever it is, share your poems with the rest of us here.

PoetryWilliam WordsworthWalt WhitmanEmily DickinsonSiegfried SassoonBilly Mills
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6: The days of Genesis

Our Christmas countdown continues with a calculation of the world's divine Creation

Light
Firmament
Land and vegetation
Heavenly bodies
Fishes and birds
Animals and man

The story of the creation of the world was recorded in the book of Genesis in the seventh century BC by Jewish exiles working up their own ancient traditions under the strong influence of the 2,000-year-old urban culture of Mesopotamia. So, inevitably, it bears the strong imprint of Babylonian literary forms, albeit one imbued with an energy and conviction all its own – so much so that two similar but not identical tales are told in chapter one and chapter two.
One of the more curious literary aspects of the story is the way of describing God like a king on his throne, commanding his courtiers to "Let there be" – and it happens, though due to the strict monotheism of the Jews there is no lower pantheon of gods to assist. This tale is familiar from older Babylonian texts which describe the creation of the world, notably the Enuma Elish and Atra-Hasis. The central device is the concept of the speaking of a thing (logos) being the necessary prelude to its creation.
The first three acts of Genesis are also depicted in the nature of a separation of the yet unformed but existing cosmos, such as the separating of darkness from light on day one, the waters above from the waters below in day two, and on day three the sea from the land. The next three "creations" fill this universe with the different forms of life, concluding with the creation of man and woman, where the Genesis myth departs from its Babylonian models which have men and women as divine and equal (rather than woman as an adjunct of man – a concept in bizarre opposition to tens of thousands of years of veneration of the Mother Goddess).

Tomorrow: Seven days of the week

Taken from Rogerson's Book of Numbers by Barnaby Rogerson (Profile)

Reference and languagesJudaismThe BibleReligionBarnaby Rogerson
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Readers' recommended self-published authors

Self-publishing has taken off in 2013, but how to you begin to sort the diamonds from the duds? Here are some of the books our readers have tipped

Back in June, we started a new series dedicated to highlighting the best English language self-published books. To make our self-publishing showcase a success, we asked you to tell us about the good self-published books you had discovered.

There are hundreds of thousands of books published each year: we needed the wisdom of the crowd to find the needles in that towering, intimidating haystack. Thanks to everyone who has added a recommendation to our list. Our spreadsheet now contains over 3,200 authors, enabling us to find and feature some great authors.

As we learned earlier this week, many more people are choosing to self-publish on their own work. It's clear from the 19 million fans who propelled Welsh teenager Beth Reeks into Times Magazine's list of the world's 16 most influential teenagers, that readers are buying into self-published books as well. But sometimes it is tricky to know where to start, and one of two bad experiences may be enough to put you off for life. This is where our list of reader recommendations may be able to help.

At 3,347 entries, it's too large to publish in full, so we have been through the list and picked out the titles that have been recommended a few times by different people, with interesting reviews from the recommenders. Not a fool- proof method we know, and certainly not immune to gaming, but it is one way of trying to present a useful reading list. At this point I must also stress that we have not read the books on this list, we are merely the messengers, so if you have read any of the titles mentioned and either agree or disagree with the recommendations, please do let us know.

So, here's the very edited list, in alphabetical order:

• [No Title] by Lisa Carver, recommended by many including lofi26: 'Lisa Carver is, on the one hand, a totally rockin', devil may care '90s punk rock performance artist, and on the other, an incredibly deep, moving and touching wordsmith. Her untitled memoir is heartbreaking and heartwarming'

• A Beautiful Mess by TK Leigh (romance) recommended by majjst: 'I stayed up all night to finish it. She has a written a series and I'm looking forward to the sequel [...] She's my favourite newly discovered author.'

• A Different Melody by Jane Mullooly recommended by HattieB: 'She has a lovely style and writes an entertaining tale that is funny and moving [...] She deserves to be more widely recognised.'

• A New World series by John O'Brien, recommended by WmbgGirl: 'His books are very detailed and interesting. [O'Brien] has taken the Zombie genre and put a whole new twist on it. His characters are funny, engaging and intelligent.'

• Abandoned But Not Alone by Theresa L Henry, recommended by many including dlbrown: 'There is humour, romance, thrills and some action in this story and I do feel it is very good for a first time author.'

• Alfonzo series by SW Frank, recommended by Trish: 'The author touches on social concerns with an unapologetic delivery. Bold and unafraid in a sea of tepid writing, the beauty of prose delivered within the drama and entertainment stays with you for a long time after reading.'

• Ancestors and Angels by Jane Cranmer, recommended by Britt Jagger: 'Jane Cranmer has the great art of a Northern Storyteller… Her book Ancestors & Angels took me right back to nights by the coal fire with my granny and granddad, delighting us with tales of family past and present… [she] recounts tales from the time her family left Traveller/Gypsy life to join society, and has tales spanning the generations... As you might expect with such a background, synchronicity and supernatural events are nothing out of the ordinary.'

• Behind Closed Doors by JJ Marsh, recommended by Martin Horler: 'JJ Marsh writes thrillers that are so much more than just fast paced action packed stories [...] You can see that she has spent huge amounts of time researching the areas she writes about. As good as anything I've read.'

• Bring Me Sunshine by Wendy Storer, recommended by many including Marnie Riches: 'Lovely writing and interesting, moving subject matter. My daughter adored this book. Wendy clearly has great skill. It would be great to get this book the attention it deserves.'

• Cathedral of Lies by John Pye, recommended by Paintermac: 'He has written a novel which leaves the reader breathless with its pace and fantastic storyline.'

• Cherries from Chauvet's Orchard: A Memoir of Provence by Ruth Phillips, recommended by many readers including Universe33: 'I lost myself in this Provençal memoir… I loved her writing style and thought the concept was refreshing. An insight into not only life in the south of France, but even more so the highs and lows of artists at work. Loved it!'

• Childhunt by Faith Mortimer, recommended by Beeshon: 'Faith has an easy-going fluid style. It's crisp and clean. The stories are well planned, well told and the characters well developed. There's always an element of surprise in them and the quality is consistent.'

• Dead Men Should Know Better by Dominic Canty. Recommneded by many including Viel_R: 'A fresh and amusing comedy spy thriller that was just great fun to read.'

• Dear Sister by Judith Summers, recommended by booksRmyBag: 'This author has been traditionally published by publishers such as Penguin for years and then she decided to go it alone and digitally publish some of her older titles.'

• Dinosaurs and Prime Numbers by Tom Moran, recommended by many including Thakey: 'This truly is a hilarious romp of a story and I recommend it to anyone looking for a genuinely funny book. Think Douglas Adams and then some, for the Facebook generation.'

• Evensong's Heir by L.S. Baird, recommended by Eider: 'She has such a way with words that I find myself remembering passages and wanting to read scenes over and over again! [...] A marvelous author; one of my very, very favorites.'

• Gren Peppard & The Lost Boy by Pip Mulgrue recommended by many including brouhahaha: 'This author has a great grasp of dialogue - her characters talk believably and amusingly, progressing their story in a well-paced and compelling way.'

• Gunshot Glitter by Yasmin Selena Butt recommended by lots of readers including cdloanio: 'She is a talented and engaging author. My normal life went on hold whilst I was addicted to her first self published novel.'

• Harold the King by Helen Hollick, recommended by EarlGodwin: 'In 2008 I picked up Harold the King by accident. I thought it was "true history", rather than historical fiction, and subsequently tossed it across the room in disgust. Six months later, after tripping on it and nearly breaking my neck, I decided to give it a glance… What I discovered was a tremendously well written and historically honest story that I could not put down.'

• Haymarket Square by John Kolchak recommended by gbaum: 'This retelling of Alfred Doblin's "Berlin Alexanderplatz" set in post - Soviet Russia is completely unique...I've never read a novel in verse and John Kolchak's writing was superb and transporting.'

• I Stopped Time by Jane Davis, recommended by Amanda J: 'Jane's books are so vibrant, with such great characters and interesting story lines. They are not run of the mill in any way, but beautifully written.'

• Iceland Defrosted by Edward Hancox recommended by Mary1: 'Writes with wit and humor. Wonderful descriptions of Iceland as a country and as his home from home.'

• In the Blood by Steve Robinson recommended by N. Sanderson: 'Thorough background research, great writing and excellent story telling. And the concept is quite original, as well. What more do you want?'

• Limerence by Claire C Riley recommended by neilpeters:'First time author that knows how to tell a story that keeps a reader interested.'

• Losing It All by Marsha Cornelius recommended by kakp: 'Marsha has done a very admirable job of inspiring compassion for the homeless and their plight through a very well-written, well-researched and entertaining novel... All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed her book.'

• More Ketchup than Salsa by Joe Cawley recommended by Abby: 'We've all believed that the 'grass is always greener on the other side', and this book takes the reader through a sweaty, fun and disastrous way to disprove it. Intelligently written, witty and easy to read.'

• Mr Tim by Peter George recommended by VW mum: 'I loved this book about an English land agent who finds himself in a rural Cardiganshire farming community in the '50s. Funny, moving and a real insight into a lost way of life written with a bucket full of affection and a trailer load of characters you recognise - if James Herriot had chosen to write about West Wales, this would be it!'

• My Memories Of A Future Life by Roz Morris recommended by gbowdish: 'This novel was extremely well written. The story and tone reminded me of one of my favorite authors, Marie Corelli, albeit in a more modern voice.'

• Nobody's Poodle by Nikki and Richard Attree, recommended by Barmyaunt: 'A light-hearted, whimsical, dog's eye view of a popular Atlantic holiday island and its community, both homo sapiens and canine.'

• One Among the Sleepless by Mike Bennett, recommended by many readers including The Velvet Glove: 'Mike Bennett is a fabulously entertaining writer of thrillers, scary stories and vampire fiction and is probably one of the most underrated and talented writers in the UK today. Pacy, scary, black-humoured books that keep you turning the electronic pages right to the end… This man is a consummate entertainer as well as writer of exciting novels.'

• Paradigm by Helen Stringer recommended by Justine: 'I love her not-dumbed-down young adult fiction. So imaginative, well-written and non-gimmicky.'

• Pass the Parcel by Delilah des Anges recommended by many readers including nkkingston: 'Her morally-compromised characters feel real for their flaws and you sympathise with them'

• Play Something Dancy by Dee Simon recommended by many, many people including Johnny Meyer: 'The book was given to me from a friend when I had to fly over seas. It was so fantastic that I tried to read the whole book before landing! I couldn't stop flipping the pages until I reached the end. I haven't read such a page thumper since I read 'On The Road'. It truly was a great read.'

• The Ghost Hunters' Club by LK Jay, recommended by many including spinandjive: 'Funny, compulsive reading, that is well written and entertaining.'

Self-publishingGuardian readersHannah Freeman
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