Author Love #3

Today is a day of appreciation for no reason other then love. Therefore I am sharing with you one of my absolute favourite authors. His work is amazing and has been translated from Spanish to many different languages. You will find him at the very end of every fiction shelf, always with a recommendation or two. In fact, that was where I first found him.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón (yay! I worked out how to make the 'o' accented!).

I love find new and interesting things to read, but I hardly ever get any recommendations. However, one day I was browsing the Waterstones shelves looking for something interesting when my eye caught a recommendation card sitting in front of the book. I will never know what possessed me to kneel down and read it, but I am glad I did, or I'd have never found this incredible writer.

The first book I read was The Shadow of the Wind, because the one thing that came from that recommendation card was the idea of a book about books. Naturally, as a self-confessed bibliophile the idea never left me. In fact it stagnated until one day I went back into Waterstones a few months later simply to buy the book that I had read about only once. I could not put it down.

Zafón is a truly imaginative writer who writes very thought-provoking books. He has beautifully descriptive prose, a great sense of suspense and very complex stories. Perhaps his best work, though, is in his YA books, which are ghost stories. The Prince of Mist, for example, is incredibly chilling and has never left my mind. It is definitely on the re-read pile.

Please go read one of his books!

I cannot wait to read Marina, his most recent children's book (see it on Goodreads here).

Carlos Ruiz Zafón on Goodreads

Kyra_x

Author Love #2

Ben Aaronovitch

So today I want to talk to you about a man whose imagination knows no bounds; Ben Aaronovitch. His name may be a mouthful, but once you've registered and gotten over that, you can have a good look at his writing instead.

His Peter Grant novels, a series about a London police officer who happens to find himself in a good few supernatural situations, is pure genius. The books are well thought-through, tense with mystery, indulgent in terms of relationships and funny, too.

Here's an example of his work, the first line of Rivers of London:

'It started at one thirty on a cold Tuesday morning in January when Martin Turner, street performer and, in his own words, apprentice gigolo, tripped over a body in front of the East Portico of St Paul's at Covent Garden... [He] had just pegged the body as a drunk when he noticed that it was in fact missing its head.'

Now if that doesn't shake up the morbid (and I mean that literally) fascination in your mind I don't know what will.

This series is exciting and brilliant for anyone who likes their fantasy based in the real world and for people who like a mixture of ghosts, deities and magic, all rolled into a familiar setting. I love the stories and can't wait to get my hands on Broken Homes, the most recent addition to the series.

Oh, and have you seen the covers? They're awesome!

Rivers of London on Goodreads

Kyra_x

Author Love

I have hardly reviewed any of her books on this blog, but if I had, they would get nines and tens all around. You may have heard of Chocolat, and you may have watched the film (made more wonderful by the acting efforts of Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, not to mention a few other recognisable faces), but have you ever read the book?

Have you guessed who it is yet? Joanne Harris is the author I am giving love to today, because she is an utter marvel. Her books are wonderfully emotive, flawlessly descriptive and very distinctive. She will never give you the same book twice, and none of her stories seem to be regurgitated from other authors. She can write about murderers, online messaging, vampires, norse mythology and food, and make it all enthralling.

But enough gush, the real way to show you all what an incredible writer she is, is to give you a few quotes from her books, my favourite books.

Chocolat: 
'Nests of spun caramel with hard-shelled sugar eggs, each topped with a triumphantly plump chocolate hen; piebald rabbits heavy with gilded almonds stand in rows, ready to be wrapped and boxed; marzipan creatures march across the shelves.'

Blackberry Wine:
'The wasp crawled thickly against the glass, it's wings were clotted with syrup. He thought he could hear the insect inside the bottle. buzzing in a growing frenzy, but perhaps that was the wine itself calling, its hot bright scent distressing the air.'

Five Quarters of the Orange:
'This is something different again. A feeling of peace. The feeling you get when a recipe turns out perfectly right, a perfectly risen souffle, a  flawless sauce hollandaise. It's a feeling which tells me that any woman can be beautiful in the eyes of a man who loves her.'

As you can probably tell, my favourites are the foodie one, but I have to say that Gentlemen and Players is also an exceptional read. The story is intense and intriguing, leaving you hanging on a thread to find out how the book will finally fit together.

If you do one thing this year, pick up a Joanne Harris book and give it a read.