Freewheeling Andy

Oh. I forgot the main bit, didn't I? I choose books on all kinds of basises (bases?). Primarily on recommendations, and on whether I know the author. Sometimes, Daunts' style, topographically - if I know a book is about a region, or by an author from a region, that I'm fascinated by at that period, I may tend towards it, and then read the first page, look at the blurb, and decide. Sometimes I decide on genre, but I mainly read "proper" novels, along with some history and travel stuff, so the genre isn't a very good way of defining things. But the recommendations of friends I trust (and particularly my mum) seem to be the best way. Except when I go for things almost at random. See them in a shop, or mentioned in the paper, and think "That sounds good". That happened with Haruki Murukami, Ismael Kadare, and most recently David Mitchell.

My favourite of the Richard and Judy ones so far (although, to be fair, it's the only Richard and Judy one I've read - I do have the Time Traveller's Wife sitting in my pile-of-books-waiting-to-be-read) is David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, which I think is extremely wonderful and lovely, and that everyone should read it.

I read one or two things in the late 80s when I was getting through loads of SF stuff and did enjoy them. My memory of the stuff is pretty shot, though. Did he write The Postman, or was that someone else?

Philip Pullman was my English teacher for a year.

Possibly a new name to some here, but Ismael Kadare won the International Booker Prize a month or so ago. The international Booker is for the body of work, rather than the individual's books. Anyway, I'm utterly delighted that he won because I've been enjoying his books for a few years now because he deserves a wider audience (even if it does gazump my "I'm into a very obscure great Albanian novelist" chat-up line - what do you mean, you're not surprised I'm single?). They are all about Albania, and usually about the mad tribal stuff that still goes on in the highlands. In particular a number of books focus the blood feud, and its codified, formalised, legalistic description in the "Kanun". Because of the codified blood feud there's some very, very cold killing in the books, which makes them at times incredibly black. The blackest of the lot, and my favourite, is Broken April. About a boy who is obliged to kill under the blood feud, but who then knows that in the middle of April his life will be fair game. A marvellous, marvellous dark book. My other favourite is much more comedy (although very wry comedy) and is The File On H, about some Irish-American scholars wandering the Albanian highlands desperately trying to find the origins of the Homeric epic, whilst loads of petty politicians and drunk inn-keepers suspect them of spying and are desperately trying to shop them to higher powers. Anyway, it's all marvellous. And a thoroughly deserved award for a desperately underrated writer (you can tell he's underrated because nobody in Waterstones was expecting him to win, and therefore there were none of those stupid over-sized displays with his books on).