Books With My Favourite Colour on the Cover
This is not a topic I would usually ever decide to blog about, but I said I was going to take part in Top Ten Tuesday and skipping my second week seems like setting myself up for failure, so here we are. These are my top ten books with green on the cover, in no particular order.
The Eyes Of The Dragon - Stephen King
I read this book years before I had ever heard of the Dark Tower series and absolutely adored it. When I finally got around the the Dark Tower I think recognising that it was set in the same world as Eyes Of The Dragon was one of the things that made me love that series as much as I did. For some reason I got this mixed up with Wizard and Glass for years, and I'm not quite sure why.
Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno Garcia
I read this in January 2023 and I think it's fair to say that it directly contributed to me coming out of my reading slump. It's really nothing like anything else I've ever read, and the ending is the sort of weird that I absolutely didn't see coming but completely loved the second I realised what was going on.
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
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Endlessly divisive and often dismissed as disgusting by people who haven't read it, Lolita remains one of the best novels ever written in the English language. Nabokov's prose is like nobody else's. Yes, the subject matter is abhorrent and yes, that's the point. Easily one of my favourite novels.
The Savage - David Almond and Dave McKean
Blue Baker starts to write a story about the savage boy who lives in the woods near his house, and then the story starts to come true. It's an incredibly simple premise, but Almond's execution combined with McKean's lush, urgent artwork make this a book I come back to time and time again.
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
The first Bradbury I ever read, and still my favourite of his. There's something really magical about this novel. I've probably given this as a gift more often than any other book.
Waterland - Graham Swift
I first read Waterland on my English Lit undergrad, and I'd never read anything like it. I think this is the book responsible for me finding a way into literary fiction. It's all about history and memory and how that helps us construct meaning, and this has become a favourite theme in fiction for me ever since.
The Lies Of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch
I read this in 2007, round about the time that I started to get back into fantasy in a big way. I remember placing a massive order from Amazon that included this, The Name of The Wind, and The Blade Itself, and thinking that fantasy was in a really exciting place at the time. What a shame that of the three series I started with that order only one of them was ever actually completed. Still, this first book in the Gentleman Bastard's sequence is still fantastic.
A Book of Brownies - Enid Blyton
I think Enid Blyton books were hugely formative for a lot of British kids my age, but as with all things in my life I've always been drawn to the less obvious choices for some reason. While everyone else was reading The Secret Seven and The Famous Five, I was obsessed with The Five Find Outers, The Enchanted Wood, and A Book of Brownies. It's been over 20 years since I last opened this book but I can still remember certain scenes from it in vivid detail, and it had a massive influence on the sorts of stores I seek out.
In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan
One of the weirdest books I've ever read, and one of my all-time favourites. You can't adequately describe a Brautigan book to someone, they just have to read it. The vignettes that form In Watermelon Sugar are tiny, delicate little things that build together into something that you can't quite see the whole shape of. It's wonderful.
Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer
There's something about the first book in the Southern Reach trilogy that the sequels don't quite manage to live up to. The quiet weirdness, the slow still creeping horror, the feeling of stepping into an alien world that doesn't want you there, it all oozes off the page and grips hold of you. It's a very special book and I wish I'd loved the rest of the series as much as this.