Readers log 2024?

 

Two weeks ago I was in Gran Canaria.  An edit for a difficult book was coming back and it would be good to have some peace and quiet and sunshine to do the work required. One edit was coming in from my editor plus one from my agent. I was to compare and contrast and see what I thought, and then rewrite accordingly.

In the end the two edits were 98% in concurrence. While they enjoyed reading my ‘soft landing’  ( I did warn them that they might not like it!), they both thought I had prepared the reader for a violent knock- out, last man standing type of ending and if that’s what the reader expects, they might be disappointed if they don’t get it.

The timimg didn’t quite work, one edit didn't arrive until I was on my way home, and I was suffering from 2 broken ribs ( don't ask)  so it was sensible to get out the 7 books I had taken on holiday to read and get them started.

                                                    

Have you seen the notebooks on the net where a reader can track the books they read in a year? They give themselves a reading target and see how far they can get. Sometimes it’s 80 to 100 books a year. Are they fast readers ?    

So years ago I bought a notebook specially for charting the books read and what I thought of them. I have decided to fill it in for 2024. This notebook is supposed to stop you reading the same book twice by accident – does anybody actually do that? Or is that an issue when you read 100 books a year I wonder?

Here are the books I took away with me...

                                                        

Gone by Mo Hayder. I read Mo way back in the day.  Met her a few times as we had the same agent. For such a stunning woman, playing such bubbly characters when she was acting, she was very quiet and reserved in real life. She passed away in 2021 from Motor Neorone Disease at the age of 59. 

This was an opportunity to read a book of hers that I had on my shelf but had never gotten round to. One of her books was recently filmed TV. I  confess that I couldn’t watch it. The black humour on the page just came across as cruelty on the screen, but that might have been more to do with the production.  'Gone' was a great read.  Everybody says write about what you know. Mo's hubby was a underwater search diver working for the police and that light touch of "expertise with drama" was superb. Mo nailed it everytime.

                                                      

Joyce Woollcott

I read this book the week after the San Diego Bouchercon when I was in Carlsbad. It was fabulous. I took it away with me to read again. Joyce was at Bouchercon, I think her event was on the Sunday.  

I'm going to digress a wee bit. I was asked at an event recently about writing about a place – setting - when the author does not come from that place. I think the questioner was having a wee go at me as I set my books somewhere 70 miles away from my front door. But Douglas Skelton answered as he sets his books in the 18^th centuary and he doesn’t come from there. So he says but he is very old!

Anyway, I'd read that J was a Canadian, writing about Ireland. Was she an Irish Canadian I wondered? As soon as she started talking on that panel that accent was there, clear and strong. With a lot of Canadian mixed in. 

Anyway, the book was, as I said wonderful. It’s not easy to describe or define the ingredient that makes Irish writing so ....Irish. Brian Gilloway and Joyce Woollcoot both so it so well. It’s murder against bad weather, always a strong familial storyline going through, always a very bossy granny with foul language, grass, and some reference to sectarianism- all crime fiction does/should reflect the society of its setting. And of couse a really good puzzle.

                                                         

JD Kirk? I read Thicker Than Water and Dead Men Walking. JD is the man who writes while on a treadmill. How does that compare to a standing desk I wonder!  JD's irreverend plots skip along but the swearing is top class, fabulous in fact. It’s that Scottish non offensive swearing, just a way of talking rather than words used with any vitriol. My favourite, when speaking of a rather useless young detective was the DCI calling him  ‘that talking f!!ktrumpet over there.’   I know many of them.

                                                             

He was the author I was intervewing and he said that there was an watershed for normal swearing on the TV but his character Bob Hoon would need a watershed of his own at 2 am just because of the quality, and quantity of his profanity.

                                                          

The Verdict Nick Stone. This book is good, long but good.  I read it because Nick and I were signed at the same time. Our hardbacks were on the same train at Penguin. He wrote Mr Clarinet which went stratospheric. I wrote Absolution which did well and was shortlisted for New Blood Dagger but never reached the heights that Nick's books did.

Then he wrote a follow up to Mr Clarinet, then The Verdict for another publisher and then….. what happened to that talent? 

I recall being really impressed that he ordered champagne by name and then by year. I was still working out what fork to use. (That's a joke but you get the gist)

                                                      

We Begin at the End by Chris Whittaker

Crime book of the year and 22k postive reviews. I was really looking foreward to this. Probably too much and it was then bound to disappoint.  Beautifully written but I could tell that it wasn't written by an American, though it was set there. The language isn’t quite true – nothing that spoiled the enjoyment of the book but I think it did annoy a few folk when it was published to such acclaim.

It wasn’t the book I expected, it reminded me very much of 'Stand By Me'.

And it breaks one of the golden rules I teach new writers about naming characters. The cop in this book is called Walk. Short for Walker. Everytime the author wants that character to get from A to B, he has to hurry, nip, ambulate, hasten, stroll, trot, amble, bounce, clump, falter, hike, hobble, leg it, limp, lumber, lurch,  march, mosey, pace, perambulate, peregrinate, plod, prance, ramble, saunter, stagger, stride, or strut.

                                                            

Merry Christmas,

If you get a reader's log from Santa, now you know the fun you can have!

Cheers

C