Category: Slaughterhouse 5 is amazing

Book of the Year 2009

Right. I’ve thought long and I’ve thought hard about this. I even went back to some of the books listed yesterday and dipped into them for a reminder, in case I’d missed something.

 

And I have come to my decision.

 

Here are my top 3 books of the year.

 

 

 

 

At number 3.

 

Black Boxes by Caroline Smailes. 

 

I read this right at the beginning of the year and it’s stayed with me since.

 

Haunting, heart breaking, brave, believable and brilliant.

Number 2.

The Girl on The Fridge by Etgar Keret.

 

Along with Aimee Bender, Keret’s work has changed how I write and what I write about. This is an amazing collection of short fiction. 

 

Different, funny, sad, brilliant and written by someone with the most wonderful of imaginations. 

And the winner is…
1.


Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut.

 

When I finished this I remember saying that it could be my favourite book ever. So, well, it must be my favourite of the year.

 

Brilliantly imaginative, in terms of story and structure, brilliantly written, moving and funny. It’s a classic.

***

 

And a few honourable mentions.

 

An A-Z of Possible Worlds, by A C Tillyer for being a brilliant short story collection and brilliantly packaged.

 

Heaven Can Wait, by Cally Taylor for being funny and incredibly moving and for making me love it despite it being outside of what I normally read.

 

Elephants in Our Bedroom, by Michael Czyzniejewski, for having superbly crafted stories, written by someone with an imagination up there with the best.

 

Dear Everybody, by Michael Kimball, which could be the American companion to Black Boxes.

 

And Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout for being a brilliant and moving story about a life and having just about the perfect opening chapter I’ve read.

***

So there you have it. Anyone else going to share?

I Think It All Began Somewhere Near Here

When I was little I drew a lot. I drew, I didn’t write stories. Only, at some point, the two combined and I started writing and drawing comic strips. And I wonder whether it was at that point where It all began.
But until yesterday, when I found the above, I hadn’t seen any of my creations in almost twenty years, I’d assumed they’d been thrown out. Until yesterday, when I found the above, which, oddly enough, is the one I can clearly, vividly, remember drawing. I drew it on my bedroom floor on a Saturday afternoon. I was somewhere between 8 and 10 years old. It was spring. I drew it with a silver Parker propelling pencil I’d been bought for my birthday and I seem to remember that I mispelled ‘pirates’ intentionally. (Yes folks, I was An Individual even then!)
The Pirots and Hunters was a one-off (which, I suppose, makes it even cooler to have found it). I did considerably more editions of an Addams Family/Munsters inspired one (which I can still draw today) – as well as a robot one which looked spookily like Wall.E (which I can also still draw). I do hope they turn up one day.
So there you are, folks. A glimpse into my childhood. 
Below is what’s on the back of the above. I think I must have thought it important that people know EXACTLY what it was, which must be why I wrote everything twice. So it goes.