Paul Magrs's Blog, page 45

Advent Day 11: A.J Fikry

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF A.J FIKRY by Gabrielle Levin.

I knew as soon as I read this that it would end up being one of my books of the year.

It's a lovely tale of a widowed bookshop owner and a rep he falls in love with. How many novels have I read this year that have bookshops as their settings..? Deborah Meyler, Melissa Hill... I've loved each of them, but this one is the one I hope to make time to reread. (I've already bought it twice for presents and that's always a good sign.)

Here's what I said back in March...

"This is slightly hip and quirky literary fiction – but about characters we actually care about and with a great deal happening. But it’s also about fiction itself, and poses big, big questions and it’s unashamedly about love, loss and second chances – and it’s got a couple of good mystery plots winding through there, too."

Advent Day 10 - Engines of War!

THE ENGINES OF WAR by George Mann
Somehow in the early part of the year George Mann sat down and wrote the Doctor Who novel we’d all been waiting for. Set slap bang in the middle of the ghastly cosmic ructions of the Time War, this novel extrapolates from the bits of info we got about the ‘missing’ John Hurt incarnation in the TV Fiftieth Anniversary special and tells a rollicking good tale of its own. It’s Daleks and Time Lords a-g-go. Plus, it returns us to one of my very favourite Dr Who places – the Death Zone on Gallifrey – where it’s all swirling mist and mountains, zombie Gallifreyans and things called Degradations… What I love most of all is that it’s a novel set exactly between the old series and the current show. We see moments and meetings that we’ve all vaguely imagined – and here we get to see them happening (as it were) ‘live’…  This book is the best of both worlds for the old and new at last – and, quite deservedly, has been a great success. But where on earth is the novel series continuing the story from where this one leaves off…? We need to know what happened / happens / is happening next…!

Advent day nine - The New Arrival

THE NEW ARRIVAL by Sarah Beeson

Here's a lovely memoir I read back in the spring - one written by one of my favourite UEA students from back in the day, along with her mum - and all about her mum's early years as a student nurse in London. I confidently predicted a great success for this one - and I was right. Here's what I wrote back in the earl part of the year:

"It’s a very warm, touching memoir. It never becomes misty-eyed with nostalgia or sentimentality and I think this is a result of the quality of the writing but also Sarah’s gumption and determination to inspire others to the same or similar work. The book is saying that nursing is hard physically, intellectually and emotionally, and the reader feels throughout that we’re being told this by someone who has never for a moment lost her passion for that work."

And the good news is that the sequel is on its way, early next year!

Advent Day 8: Man on the Run

MAN ON THE RUN – Tom Doyle
This is a book drawn from long interviews with Paul McCartney, focusing on his strange career in the Seventies – a decade in which he tried to play down his fame, start it all again, and wound up once more mega-successful. It’s quite surprisingly unguarded, I thought. And the description of Lennon and McCartney’s last evening together in New York – watching Saturday Night Live and daring each other to rush downtown to the studio and suddenly announce a reunion, but deciding they were too wasted – is worth the cover price alone.

Advent Day 7: The Beach Reading Series by Mark Abramson

The Beach Reading series by Mark Abramson
With Armistead Maupin’s ‘Tales’ series finally winding up this year I turned to another soapy chronicler of queer life in San Francisco. I read the first three novels in this series and loved them all. They’re mysteries, really – starring a sexy waiter and his eccentric aunt, both discovering that there are stiffs almost everywhere you turn.

Advent day 6:

THE GOLDFINCH by Donna Tartt
‘Did you notice anything going wrong with your eyes?’ the eye specialist asked in August. ‘Any extra floaters or shadows dropping past your eyes? It would have been a few months ago… maybe March?’
And when I thought about it, I had. I switched from reading actual books with tiny print and started reading almost everything on my Ipad, which lit up the pages and I could blow up the font so it was huge. And from them on, much of what I read was bang-up-to-the-minute, recently-released novels. It became a bit of an unwitting project – reading almost everything that was in Wh Smiths’ Top Ten. And first among these was this immense and absorbing book.
Some episodes are way too long (hello, Las Vegas) but she recreates places and times so vividly on the page, we feel we’ve lived through these hectic phases of life with the characters. I really felt I’d lived through every page of this one.

Avent day 5: The Fault in our Stars

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS – John Green
Judging by the book charts this year, everyonehas read this. I really loved it. I loved the lead characters in all their mumbly coolness and horrific situations. I’m not sure I even want to see a film that will crowd out the version in my head. Was it any good?  The book feels like one I want to reread.

Advent books no.4: Adventures with the Wife in Space

ADVENTURES WITH THE WIFE IN SPACE by Neil Perryman
The blog was funny and smart, with the Perrymans commentating on every Twentieth Century Doctor Who episode in wonderful, slightly loopy detail. The book is a properly touching memoir of a family, an increasingly shared obsession – and some excruciating adventures into fandom.

Advent books no.3: Fan Girl

FAN GIRL by Rainbow Rowell
I remember nipping out during dark afternoons in the early part of the year, sitting in the Starbucks in Fallowfield, and reading this great big YA novel on my kindle for hours. It’s an extended love letter to homoeroticized fantasy fan fiction, a wonderful novel about going to college and a family saga where everyone’s going off the rails.

Advent day 2: Annuals!

A big part of my reading at the very start of the year was all about continuing my marathon read of twenty years’ worth of Dr Who Annuals, as published by World Distributors between the mid-Sixties and the mid-Eighties. What a wonderful, nonsensical, psychedelic odyssey that was! I’d take a different Annual with me each day into town and sit in the cafes of Manchester trying to figure out what each and every one of those stories was actually about. I realized how all those Annuals had somehow stayed in my mind, and were an indelible part of not only what I think of as Dr Who, but also what I think about narrative and how to tell a story… which was slightly scary.
One of the best things I discovered – as I turned all this reading and research into a book – was that the Annuals were created right here, in Manchester, in a street in the very centre of the city, very close to where I was reading them every day during last winter.
(The book that came from all of this – ‘The Annual Years’ – is available from obversebooks.co.uk)