Some tweet chains have been running on Twitter this past week or so, linking up people's favourite books. The idea is that you post a picture of the cover of a book you love - and that's it. No explanation as to why you love it, just a picture.
I thought I'd add a few more of my favourites here, but this time with a few words alongside.
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This is the book cover I tweeted. Shattered Silk by Barbara Michaels (who also writes as Elizabeth Peters).
It is a suspense novel with a touch of humour, but don't let that fool you - it is genuinely tense and scary. The reason I love it in particular is that its background is to do with setting up a vintage clothing business - the history of costume being one of my interests. |  h |
But I could just as easily have tweeted any of these books....
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| The Religious Body by Catherine Aird, written in the 1960s, is a brilliant whodunnit - or rather, it is a howdunnit. This is quite simply the cleverest way ever of killing someone. Trust me: you will never guess what the murder weapon was. |  |
 | For me, EF Benson's Miss Mapp is the best comic novel ever. With Mapp and Lucia, I know you are supposed to prefer Lucia, but I always much preferred Miss Mapp and this book (Lucia-free) is superb. The scene where Diva opens the cupboard made me laugh out loud the first time I read it back in the 1980s and it still makes me chuckle today.
(On the subject of laughing out loud at a book, I laughed so much at one bit of A Year of New Adventures by Maddie Please, my current bedtime reading, that the cat declined to remain on the bed. Sorry, Cassie.) |
| As a lover of sagas both as a reader and as a writer, I have to ask: is this the best saga ever? I rather think it is. |  |
 | A Wartime Christmas by Carol Rivers kept me up reading long into the night several nights in a row. It is more than a family saga - it contains a clever mystery that is sustained right to the end and when the truth is revealed, it is as surprising as it is satisfying. Well worth those sleepless nights! |
| Minty by Christina Banach is a remarkable book. Written for the YA market, it tackles a difficult subject, possibly the most difficult subject of all - death and bereavement - head-on with confidence, honesty, compassion and even with humour.
I used to be a librarian specialising in work with children and schools. Reading Minty made me wish I still was, so I could take it into secondary schools and give it the promotion it deserves. I'd even provide the boxes of tissues needed for reading the ending. |
| Okay, it's time to stop, but before I do - I had to include this one. The first book I ever loved - Tippy Runs Away. How much did I love it? So much that I insisted upon being called Tippy for some time afterwards. |  |
A very self-indulgent blog this week. Do you have a favourite book to share? How easy or hard is it to choose just one?
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As for favourite books, there are too many to share. In childhood, though, I loved Beatrix Potter's 'The Tale of Two Bad Mice' and my interest in dolls' houses stems from that story.