The other day I started to prepare for our impending hoday by stocking up on some reading matter. Our last holiday was a bit of a disaster in that department: Jayne took one book, thinking it would last her but finished it after a couple of days. I thought I was better prepared with my Sony Reader but hadn’t read the manual so when I plugged it into a USB mains adaptor it sucked the remaining power out of it instead of recharging.
This time we both have Kindles, which you can charge without a computer, though with a full charge before setting off we could go the whole time without needing to charge.I have a few unread books on my Kindle, but some are not holiday reading: a couple of JS Mill books, Christopher Hitchens, a couple of ‘lost’ Shakespeare plays, the Koran. There is also a bit of Dickens and Sherlock Holmes which are always good for emergencies. Apart from that I have a few books that I snapped up while they were free downloads but which I have read in paper form. I would rather read something new, but they are a good fallback, and I als have loads of already-read books on there too just in case.
The new stuff is mostly science fiction and The Life of Pi, which doesn’t appeal to me so I started downloading some new books, a mixture of free books, special offers and normal-priced, but I’m really wishing I had left it to the last minute because I opened one of the new ones just for a look, and how I am halfway through it already.
I ought to download some more, but am practically paralysed by the choice. WHy do I get the feeling I will end up with PG Wodehouse, Dickens and Sherlock Holmes (again)? I am open to suggestions.
Look at Hugh Howey – Wool, Silo and Dust. I’ve read the first two and I’m waiting (on tenterhooks) for an e-proof of the third. Its not quite sci-fi but definitely dystopian. I have also recently been reminded of how amazingly good Robin Jarvis is – Dancing Jax and Freax and Rejex. Don’t let the fact they are nominally teen fiction put you off.
Matt Haig has done some good stuff recently – The Radleys and The Humans – and Warm Bodies (Isaac Marion) was a fun zobmie love story. The Shining Girls (a time-travelling serial killer – like Dr Who gone really bad) was interesting.
Apart from that I have mostly been reading history (from the Plantagenets to the Tudors….)
Bother. Second book in the Hugh Howey trilogy is Shift not Silo…..
I’ll have a look for Hugh Howey.
As for the teen fiction… I had a bad experience with Alice in Zombieland which has put me off the whole field. Too much swooning over the bad boy hero getting in the way of the blood and guts.
Having said that, The Savages by Matt Whyman has been tempting me a bit but then I do follow him on Twitter so got bombarded with publicity about it.
Nobody swoons in Dancing Jax. They *do* get made into sausages in Freax & Rejex but these are completely horrible teenagers on the whole. I would also suggest Casual Vacancy – again don’t let the J K Rowling name put you off. Not a wizard in sight and, again, some incredibly accurately drawn teenagers…