My local library yesterday
So, just wanted to say 5,502 thank-yous for each and every time someone took one of my novels out of a library over the last twelve months. Youu’ve kept me in whisky and the kids in sweeties for a wee bit longer!
Dx
OK, so here are some books I’m looking forward to getting my grubby mitts on this year. Not an exhaustive list by any stretch, just the first ones that caught my eye. Note, these are mostly fiction, I’m still hunting out the non-fiction (see my last post).
What are you looking forward to?
JANUARY
Warren Ellis, Gun Machine (Mulholland)
Peter Leonard, Back from the Dead (Faber)
Erin Kelly, The Burning Air (Hodder & Stoughton)
Chloe Hooper, The Engagement (Jonathan Cape)
Belinda Bauer, Rubbernecker (Bantam)FEBRUARY
Niall Griffiths, A Great Big Shining Star (Jonathan Cape)
Dan Rhodes, Marry Me (Canongate)
Woody Guthrie, House of Earth (Fourth Estate)
Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King (Hamish Hamilton)
Lucy Ellmann, Mimi (Bloomsbury)
Amy Sackville, Orkney (Granta)
Sophie Hannah, The Carrier (Hodder & Stoughton)
Joyce Carol Oates, Daddy Love (Head of Zeus)MARCH
Kate Atkinson, Life After Life (Doubleday)
John Jeremiah Sullivan, Blood Horses (Yellow Jersey)
JM Coetzee, The Childhood of Jesus (Harvill Secker)
Karen Campbell, This is Where I Am (Bloomsbury)
Amity Gaige, Schroder (Faber)APRIL
Emma Brockes, She Left Me the Gun (Faber)
Frank Bill, Donnybrook (Heinemann)
Ron Rash, Nothing Gold Can Stay (Canongate)MAY
Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Someone to Watch Over Me (Hodder & Stoughton)
Marcel Theroux, Strange Bodies (Faber)
Jens Lapidus, Never Screw Up (Macmillan)JUNE
Evie Wyld, All the Birds, Singing (Jonathan Cape)
D.W. Wilson, Ballistics (Bloomsbury)
Alan Glynn, Graveland (Faber)
Craig Davidson, Cataract City (Atlantic)FURTHER AHEAD
Steve Mosby, Untitled (Orion)
Denise Mina, Untitled (Orion)
Helen FitzGerald, The Cry (Faber)
Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam (Bloomsbury)
Stephen King, Doctor Sleep (Hodder & Stoughton)
Sheila Heti – a woman who writes books!
OK, so one of the things I do as a part-living is review books for various papers and magazines. I am at the mercy of various editors, but I try to pitch to each of them as varied a list of books as possible – fiction and non-fiction, male and female authors, writers from around the world, etc.
BUT. Publishers sometimes don’t get it. The vast majority of books I get sent are novels written by men. I get it. I’m a man and I write novels. But that doesn’t mean that’s all I read, ferchrissakes.
A quick glance at the bookshelf of 2013 titles says it all. There are 45 books, 34 written by men, 11 by women. Similarly, 35 of the books are novels, the rest non-fiction. And even these ratios are slightly skewed because they include the books I have specifically requested for review for January, which had an even balance across both those spreads.
So. Please, publishers, try to alert me to a wider range of titles and authors, eh? Ta. Much appreciated.
Dx
My review of Stuart Neville’s excellent RATLINES ran in yesterday’s Independent on Sunday. Click on through for the details. The thing that struck me most about it, is that I never really appreciated Ireland’s thorny relationship with the Second World War. Neville uses that as a brilliant backdrop for a cracking thriller. I don’t always find historical fiction engaging or credible, but RATLINES was definitely both those things and more.
Folks,
My most recent novel, HIT & RUN, has been on this 12 Days of Kindle promotion for the last, well, 12 days, I guess. Along with a bunch of other books, it’s only 99p. I presume today is the last chance to get it at that price, so click on the link or pic above to get on it, if yer so inclined.
Cheers,
Dx
Here is a random round up of some chat and stuff:
Here I am in The Herald talking about my favourite books of the year.
Here I am in The Scotsman, naming different books as my favourite of the year.
Here I am naming at least one more different book of the year on Faber’s blog.
Here is a very nice mention of my next novel, GONE AGAIN, by Declan Burke on his blog. He names it as one of his books of 2012, which is clever, cos it isn’t out till March 2013.
Here is another very nice mention of GONE AGAIN by Rhian Davies over on It’s A Crime. “Will be one of the big books of 2013,” she says. Oof.
I tend to read more novels than non-fiction, but I did read plenty of cracking non-fic books this year, and a real mixed bag of topics and styles. Here are the best:
1. John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead (Vintage)
Essays from a brilliant new American talent. Like Hunter S. Thompson but with research, class, empathy and drive. If that makes any sense.
2. Ewan Morrison, Tales From The Mall (Cargo)
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? A brand new hybrid book – part urban folk tales, part stories, part sociological study – and a brilliant, poignant look at that strangest of modern phenomena, shopping malls.
3. Ioan Grillo, El Narco (Bloomsbury)
Mexico is fucked. How fucked? Very fucked. Drug cartels run everything. This book tells you how much. Fucked.
4. Kathleen Jamie, Sightlines (Profile)
Ooh, I love Kathleen Jamie. These seemingly unassuming essays on nature and humankind wind up being profound and full of insight. Genius.
5. Richard King, How Soon is Now? (Faber)
I love indie music. Always have, always will. This is a fantastic trawl through the indie labels of Britain over the last forty years. Worth it for the KLF chat alone.
6. William Gibson, Distrust That Particular Flavor (Viking)
Welcome to the future. Great essays, reviews, and general cultural missives from a guy who knows a thing or two about the bleeding edge of technology.
7. Jean Sprackland, Strands (Jonathan Cape)
Beautiful nature writing, as Sprackland spends a year writing about what she finds on her local beach. Surprisingly resonant and touching.
8. David Trilling, Bloody Nasty People (Verso)
The BNP are pricks. This is not a nice book, but it is a necessary one, because it highlights just how much of a bunch of pricks the BNP are.
9. David Byrne, How Music Works (Canongate)
David Byrne. Writing about music. Several thousand years’ worth of music. What a great fucking idea for a book.
10. Matt Thorne, Prince (Faber)
His name is Prince. And he is funky. The definitive book on the man.
Aye so, it’s that time of year again, when we arbitrarily hold pieces of writing up against each other and decide which is best! So let’s crack on! Click on the book cover to go through to my review in whichever publication it appeared, if it’s online.
1. Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Brilliant thriller about a missing wife and a marriage gone seriously awry. I was a big fan of Flynn’s two previous novels, but this was a step up into a different league.
2. Megan Abbott, Dare Me (Picador)
A thriller set against the backdrop of American high school cheerleading? Yes, indeed. Nerve-shredding and psychologically astute. Abbott is a class act. Apparently she’s working on a novel about mass hysteria – cannae wait.
3. Denis Johnson, Train Dreams (Granta)
Hard to even describe this – a weird fable about America’s relationship with nature, or something. And some crazy wolf stuff. Hypnotic and assured. This should’ve won the Pulitzer, easy.
4. A.M. Homes, May We Be Forgiven (Granta)
The opposite end of American writing from Denis Johnson, this sprawling, manic, touching novel is the ultimate 21st century dysfunctional family tale.
5. Don Winslow, Kings of Cool (William Heinemann)
Prequel to the amazing Savages, this is a fantastic, lyrical, brutal piece of writing as good drug dealers fight bad drug dealers over generations. Cool indeed.
6. Jens Lapidus, Easy Money (Macmillan)
Wonderfully panoramic piece of Swedish noir, set against the snowy backdrop of Stockholm. Reminiscent of James Ellroy at his visceral, cutting best.
7. Shalom Auslander, Hope: A Tragedy (Picador)
Neurotic Jewish guy finds Anne Frank hiding in his loft in modern America. Blackly humorous chaos ensues. Funniest thing I read all year.
8. Irvine Welsh, Skagboys (Jonathan Cape)
The big man back on rip-roaring, coruscating form. Big, bold, manic and powerful writing.
9. Frank Bill, Crimes in Southern Indiana (William Heinemann)
It’s not all meth labs and in-bred shoot ’em ups, you know. But it mostly is. Shocking, brutal debut collection of stories from a talent to watch.
10. Ron Rash, The Cove (Canongate)
Weird, atmospheric rural American drama, set in 1917 amid a witch-hunt for German war sympathisers.
In the tradition of No Time For Goodbye, The Vanishing and Tell No One comes a brilliant, unnerving, psychological thriller.
‘It’s just to say that no-one has come to pick Nathan up from school, and we were wondering if there was a problem of some kind?’
As Mark Douglas photographs a pod of whales stranded in the waters off Edinburgh’s Portobello Beach, he is called by his son’s school: his wife, Lauren, hasn’t turned up to collect their son.
With brilliantly controlled reveals, we learn some of the painful secrets of the couple’s shared past, not least that it isn’t the first time Lauren has disappeared. And as Mark struggles to care for his son and shield him from the truth of what’s going on, the police seem dangerously short of leads. That is, until a shocking discovery…
Following Hit & Run (a #1 Kindle bestseller and a 2012 Fiction Uncovered pick) and Smokeheads (shortlisted for the Goldsboro Last Laugh Award), Gone Again is Doug Johnstone’s darkest and most emotionally charged thriller yet.
Just realised I have four book gigs in six days coming up at the end of the month. That’s like a tour. Kind of. Anyway, here are the dates, hopefully see some of you out and about:
24th November, Fife Libraries Readers’ Day, Rothes Hall, Glenrothes 1.30pm. This sounds interesting – seven authors reading, talking about their work with small groups, and some Q&A stuff as well.
26th November, Newington Library, Edinburgh 6.30pm. A hometown gig for me, this should be great. I’ll probably bring the guitar – consider yourselves warned. This event is part of Book Week Scotland.
27th November, St Ninians Library 7.30pm. I have been specifically asked to bring my guitar to this one. So I will. This event is part of Book Week Scotland.
29th November, Port Glasgow Library 6.30pm. An Evening with Cargo Publishing. There’s me and writing amigos Kirstin Innes and Alan Bissett. Should be a good ‘un. This event is part of Book Week Scotland.
Doug Johnstone 