Top 10 Books to Read From my Kindle

While I prefer reading a physical paperback copy of a book, I do quite a bit of reading on my Kindle too, for the sheer convenience (I can read in the lunchtime sandwich queue, waiting at the bus stop and even while walking home from work although that takes some skill). I'm a addictive buyer of books, physical and e-books. For real books I'm constantly reminded what they are as I see my bookshelves every day. For e-books though it is easy to forget what I've got on there, especially impulse 99p deals or free books. I have 236 books on my Kindle currently, and between half and three quarters of them I haven't read. So I decided to do a Top 10 list of the books from my Kindle that I most want to read. This isn't my Top 10 must read books by any stretch of the imagination, that is for another post, if anything it's my Top 10 Forgotten About Should Reads!

1. 'The Sins of the Father' by Jeffrey Archer. This is Book Two in his Clifton Chronicles, following the life of Harry Clifton through most of the 20th century. I really enjoyed book 1, Only Time Will Tell. Archer gets a bad rep for being too commercial, formulaic etc and that may be true, but I enjoy them!
2. 'Emperor: The Gates of Rome' by Conn Iggulden. I enjoyed his series about Ghengis Khan, and I really like Roman history, so this first book in his Roman historical fiction series should be good.
3. 'The Last Grain Race' by Eric Newby. The author went on to become one of the best travel writers of the 20th century, but before all that as an 18 year old he signed on for a sailing round trip from Europe to Australia on one of the last voyages of its kind. I really enjoyed his book 'Love and War in the Appenines' so hoping this will be good too.
4. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. A short story cycle, all the stories in this anthology link together and portray the life and people of a small town in Ohio.
5. 'Raven Black' by Ann Cleeves. The first in her crime series set in the Scottish Shetland islands, now a popular TV series. I've heard a lot of good things about her books but never read any.
6. The Time Machine by H G Wells - a short sci-fi classic I'm almost ashamed I've not read yet.
7. 'Dark Star Safari' by Paul Theroux - Travel writer Paul Theroux journeys across the length of Africa.
8. We Need to Talk About Kelvin by Marcus Chown - A science book about what the everyday can teach us about the universe (not to be mistaken with 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' which is about a kid who shoots loads of people at his school'!)
9. 'The Card' by Arnold Bennett - a humorous classic about a confidence man/con artist. Set in the area my wife grew up in, so a - tenuous - personal connection!
10. 'The Rain' by Joseph A Turkot - A post apocalypse novel, first in a series. Two-a-penny but this one looks really good.

So this is a bit of an eclectic mix, but some gems here for sure.

10 Books That Have Stayed With Me...

I've been nominated on Facebook to come up with a list of 10 books that have stayed with me for some reason. My interpretation of this is that it's a bit different to a 'favourite books list'. There's some great books that I've loved, but don't really stay with me. To get on to this list, it must have had a big effect on me and not been forgotten. There's a wide variety of genres on this list, both fiction and non-fiction, reflecting my broad reading tastes.

1. 'Sarum' by Edward Rutherford. This is a giant of an historical fiction novel, weighing in at over 1,000 pages. It can be loosely described as the story of England from the end of the last ice age to the early part of the 20th century, quite a long time span! It follows the fortunes of several families through the ages. It is an episodic book, and there can be long gaps in time between each episode, but through the fortunes of the families in the book they all link together quite nicely. This is a book that really has stayed with me, and I've often talked about and recommended to people.
2. 'A Time of Gifts' by Patrick Leigh Fermor. Travel book. In the early 1930s the author, aged 18, decided to walk from Rotterdam to Constantinople (now Istanbul). This is his account of the first part of his journey. A lot of the book chronicles his journey across pre WW2 Germany, a lost world of sleepy villages, dark castles and a way of life stretching back hundreds of years. This world was wiped out forever by the World War 2. A Time of Gifts is widely considered one of the best travel books ever written in the English language.
3. 'Cold Mountain' by Charles Frazier. Set during the American Civil War, it features Ada, a young woman struggling make a living from her small farmstead, and Inman a war veteran journeying back home to her. Simply one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read, really makes me feel like I'm there.
4. 'Ready Player One' by Ernest Cline. Ostensibly science fiction, simply because it is set 50 years in the future, it is basically one huge nostalgia-fest for the 1980s, which I caught the tail end of growing up (I was born in 1980). Really fun book.
5. 'Remains of the Day' by Kazuo Ishiguro. This is the best book where nothing happens that I've ever read. It is about an aging butler reflecting on his life. It sounds dull, but is utterly captivating and feels so real. I've only read this recently, but I think it will stay with me for a long time.
6. 'On Writing' by Stephen King. Part memoir, part advice for wannabe writers. It cuts through the cr*p like no other book of its type I've ever come across. Through numerous clear outs and book purges it has remained firmly on my shelves for over a decade.
7. 'Small Island' by Andrea Levy. An incredible novel set several years after the end of World War 2, about Jamaican immigrants to Britain and the struggles they faced. I was born more than 30 years after this was set, and until I read this I truly had no idea of the racial prejudice in this country in the post-war years, and what it must have been like for those immigrants, but this book showed me. Truly eye opening, and a great, fascinating novel.
8. 'Cider with Rosie' by Laurie Lee. Memoir of growing up in a Cotswolds village. Very famous book which has been on many a school curriculum however I've only recently read it and loved it. Really takes you back to the dying embers of a bygone era.
9. 'Jennifer Government' by Max Barry. This book might not make it into my list of absolute favourites, but it is a novel stuffed full of ideas that really make you think. It is set in a future where corporations are far more powerful than governments and employees surnames are named after the companies they work for. It's a book in the same vein as 1984 and Brave New World, but easier to read and more fun!
10. 'Magician' by Raymond E. Feist. I read a lot of fantasy books as a teenager, but this was by far my favourite. Despite being 800 pages, I must have read it at least half a dozen times before I was 20 and thought about it a lot since. So as much as any books on this list, Magician has stayed with me.

So there it is, 10 books that have stayed with me. A mix of different genres, they won't all be everyone's cup of tea, but then it's my list... As part of this nomination thing, I'll be nominating 10 people myself to come up with their own list over on Facebook...