Thursday 20 December 2007

Booking Through Thursday

Today's questions are:

1 What fiction book (or books) would you nominate to be the best new book published in 2007? (Older books that you read for the first time in 2007 don’t
count.)
2 What non-fiction book (or books) would you nominate to be the best new book published in 2007? (Older books that you read for the first time in 2007 don’t count.)
3 And, do “best of” lists influence your reading?

Fiction
1 The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell
2 The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
3 The Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower

Non-fiction
The Gift by Lewis Hyde (I haven't quite finished it, but it just can't go wrong.)

The first two in fiction were published in paperback in 2007, as was The Gift. I hope that's not cheating! And on the copyright page of Sarah Bower's book, Snowbooks write: 'Proudly published in 2007', which is lovely, isn't it?

Am I influenced by 'best of' lists?
Yes, I think I am. Although I'm more influenced by blog reviews and friends saying, 'You just must read this.'

2 comments:

Lesley said...

Hello Angela! I've seen your book getting plenty of wonderful praise on the UK book blogs (congratulations!), so I thought it would be interesting to see what your best-of list would comprise.
I've ordered 'Needle in the Blood' through amazon.com after reading Random Jottings' reviews. It'll get to me in May, I'm told!
Any chance 'Speaking of Love' will be released in the US?
Isn't Maggie O'Farrell wonderful? 'After You'd Gone' remains one of my all-time favourites.

Angela Young said...

Thanks so much for your comment, Lesley. You can buy Speaking of Love through amazon.com now ... last time I looked there were copies available before Christmas. Although it hasn't officially been released in the States yet, copies have travelled across the pond anyway.

And I love Maggie O'Farrell. After I'd read After You'd Gone - I agree it's one of my all time favourites too - I wrote to her and said how wonderful I thought the book was, and that reading it had given me the courage to write Speaking of Love achronologically. She replied saying she'd always thought chronology overrated!