1001 books or authors to read before you die...the first 10

Just to recap, these are the first 10 Authors or books on my own personal list of 1001 you need to read before you die! Remember, they are not in any significant order but listed simply as I remember them and decide to add them to my list!

1) The Terror by Dan Simmons
2) The complete work of fantasy author, Robin Hobb
3) From A Buick 8 by Stephen King
4) Mao and Wild Swans by Jung Chang
5) IT by Stephen King
6) A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
7) Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay
8) Ways To Live Forever by Sally Nicholls
9) Charlotte Grey by Sebastian Faulks
10) Headhunter by Michael Slade


Now, onto the next 10............

Somebody's hunting heads....

Number (10) in my list of 1001 authors and books you really need to read before you die is Headhunter by Michael Slade; a superior horror-thriller that is notable for the fact that it is so exceptionally written and chock-full of nasty twists, turns and surprises! Set in and around Vancouver, it follows a task-force of Canadian Mounties as they struggle to track down a vicious and deadly serial killer admidst a wholescale media frenzy....nothing new in that you might think, but this is one thriller that if you have not come across before, you really really need to pick up! Just when you think everything has been resolved and that the story is all over, Slade takes everything you thought you knew and throws it on its head for a shocking and gruesome finale that leaves you positively reeling with shock and excitement!

Michael Slade was the pseudonym for a team of Canadian Criminal lawyers who teamed together to turn writer and wrote a whole series of dark thriller novels known as the Special X series featuring a cast of characters who, for the most part, all got their first debut here! Special X are not actually formed until the third novel in the series, Cutthroat, but events in this book have repercussions all the way through the series right up until the last novel written by the original team which was Shrink, or Primal Scream as it would later be known. Following Shrink, the original team disbanded and writing duties were taken up by just one of the lawyers alongside his daughter, Rebecca Clarke. Arguably, after this acromonial split from his colleagues, the books slightly went down in quality whilst still featuring those characters of the original Special X team who had managed to survive. Headhunter though, remains to this day the strongest and most shocking of all the novels that followed and is right up there with my favourite books of all time!

Honestly when it comes to dark thrillers, they don't get much darker than this.....!

Sometime in the near future.....

Well, Face book has been a bit slow uploading my Blog of late so if you are reading this via My Notes on Face book then the year is probably now 3000. Not much has changed but we live underwater. Oh and your great great great great granddaughter?....Yes, she's pretty fine!

But seriously...it's been over a week since the Election fiasco and we finally now have a new government! Of course, the big news was all those people who didn't get in to vote before the booths shut at 22:00 and got turned away but I see this has mostly been forgotten about now in the press. Mind you, if you had 15 hours or so in which to vote, surely it's your own fault if you didn't get there in time? I know they say that there were big queues in some constituencies but I am sure that this was as much down to people leaving things right to the last minute as it was the "fact" being bandied around that more people turned out to vote than was expected. Hell, they had a big drive going on days before encouraging people to get off their backsides and vote, so honestly what did they expect? Like..duh! "Oh yes, we know we persuaded you to turn out to vote but like we weren't really expecting you to do so...we were just like saying y'know? We didn't mean it?" Cretins!!!!

So yeah, even though Conservatives didn't win the majority, (they got the most seats but apparently you need to get 51% to be in power and they didn't quite make that margin- yeah, I don't get it either ~ how can you get more seats than anyone else and still not win? Fracked up isn't it?) David Cameron is now our new Prime Minister after having to near enough boot a reluctant Gordon Brown out the door of No 10! But hey, good news for us Lib Dems because that lack of majority has meant that the two parties have had to join a coalition. A bit like Chamberlain and Hitler, one supposes....two opposing forces trying desperately to find middle ground. But which is which? Only time will tell.....but it is a interesting time to be living in right now, I can tell you! America has a black President, we spent almost a whole week with no official Government and now we have got a Government but it is being run by the two runners-ups because no one, in a General Election, could decide who they actually wanted to vote for!

Wouldn't it have been interesting to see what would have happened if all those people who didn't get a chance to vote actually voted? I suspect the results may have been just that little bit different....

A fair debate....

Just to say, I did try to find comedy posters of the other Political Partys but they seem strangely absent! There's not even any poking fun at the B.N.P that I could see,,,,very disappointing!

That is, until I visited B3ta.....

Vote None Of The Above....

So, it's Election day and I'd thought I'd have a little fun with some comedy campaign posters I have found posted on the net! You may have seen some of these already, but I found them rather amusing!! Please note, this in no way indicates who I am voting for...it's just that Cameron's Campaign posters have great comedy value!!

Now if Party Political campaigns were more like this below, then I would be more inclined to know who to vote for! This is what we need to bring in all of those people who don't bother to go to the polls! We need to Sex things up a bit! If Politicians looked more like this first image, then loads of blokes would vote in their millions!! Yes, it's sexist; yes, it's chauvinistic but yes, we all know it's also true! But don't worry, I haven't forgotten you girls...wouldn't you be more inclined to vote for a particular Political Party if your candidate looked like the second image below...?

My next choice on my list of 1001 books and authors you need to read before you die (9) is Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks of which some of you may have seen the movie starring Cate Blamchette in the title role.

Charlotte falls in love with a British Airman who is promptly shot down over occupied France during The Second World War. Determined to discover his fate, Charlotte travels overseas as a British Courier to work with the French Resistance Movement and try and locate her lost love but gets caught up in the events around her and soon learns some of the true horrors of war. Especially when she becomes involved with a number of Jewish families who are being hounded by their own friends, neighbours and countrymen!!

This was far different from what I was expecting and is no simple romantic spy drama but in reality a gripping portrait of a very grim period in our recent history! The pieces with some of the Jewish families are extremely moving, especially one chapter focusing on two boys whose parents have been already sent to Death camps, and there were many times reading this when I had a lump in my throat! I have not seen the film, and suspect it will have been hollywoodised and many of the more poignant moments dropped in favour of the romantic sub-plot, but this is truly one of my favourite books of all time! I have read a few other books by Faulks that in no way compared to this, so have reason to believe this is the best thing he has written, but have Birdsong still waiting on my TBR pile and will reserve judgement on whether he is a one-book wonder until I have digested that. Suffice to say, this is another of those books that you REALLY should read and gives you a REAL insight into what went on in Occupied France rather than the 'Allo 'Allo version. Not that I am dissing 'Allo 'Allo you understand, I enjoyed that show as much as anyone, but this gives a much more gritty and realistic depiction of what went on and reveals the true story behind the daft, slapstick comedy!

Okay, I lied....

Maybe I won't be Blogging every day, lol! One day into my holiday and already I have missed a day's post! Still yesterday wasn't like a proper day of my holiday because it was a bank holiday and more like a bonus day! We had intended to go out, the three of us ~ me, Mrs.Sparky and Emilie, but it was such a miserable day that we didn't bother in the end! Instead we all had a day of doing very little. Me and Ems played with her Duplo and took a little trip to the shop to get stuff for tea but that was it! It was sooo nice and relaxing!

Last night, watched Ferris Bueller's day off again! What a classic eighties' movie. The late John Hughes was a brilliant director and every thing he touched in the eighties seemed to turn to gold. And, of course, I take Ferris' message to heart- Life moves fast; sometimes you need to stop and look around once in a while or you might miss something!! How true!!!!