irrelevant info 3

My Bookshelf

see also irrelevant info 1 / 2 / 4

As it's the end of National Novel Writing Month (NanNoWriMo) I thought I'd share some irrelevant info about my office and bookshelves

To see my office, click here

These are the books that have followed me to China. 

There are plenty of clues as to the subject of my latest novel (13k so far) - and I'm happy to send a signed copy of it to the first person to guess correctly. 

Obviously the Dan Brown novel is not mine, but my wife's.  And she's embarrassed by it too.  But she suggested I read it to see how he manages to convey tons of uninteresting information in an unrealistic way but interesting way. 

And I said yes, of course.  She is my wife. 

Unlike the Dan Brown, I take full responsibility for the Complete Conan the Barbarian collector's edition, (black tome with gold - top left) being a long time fan of Robert E Howard's. 

Carver is one of the few books I take everywhere with me now.  Joining Stephen Owen's Anthology of Chinese Literature. 

My favourite discovery of the year has been Granta, the best selection of reading I've enjoyed for years: highly recommended. 

The copies of the sagas above have been with me since 1984, when I was thirteen. 

When I had hair I was platinum blond (clearly Norse ancestors); from a Yorkshire family (on three sides of my grandparents);  in York itself (the capital of Vikings) during the time when they were still digging up Coppergate (you could buy a thousand year old oyster shell for 10p - I did and have lost it) - then the sagas seemed a natural fascination for me. 

But the door from Coppergate to the secret garden of ancient Iceland was actually provided by Tolkien - whose books turned me from a dyslexic under-achiever in the remedial reading class  into an avid reader. 

And from then I wanted nothing else but to create stories and write.