What Should I Spend My Waterstones Vouchers On?

There’s never a Christmas goes past where I don’t get at least a couple of Waterstones vouchers from somebody. It’s one of the highlights of my year, every year! Free books and lots of them!

This year has been no exception, so I’m calling on you, dear reader, to help me decide what to buy from Waterstones this year (while reserving the right to ignore all your suggestions if I don’t like them). I have only one rule: it must be fiction; not that I’ve got a problem with non-fiction but… I’ve got plenty of non-fiction I’ve still not read. I’m fresh out of new fictional material and besides, this blog is all about fiction so fiction it is!

To help, I have compiled a list of all the books on my shelf which I liked at least a little bit. I’ve not included books I hated, books I never finished, books I never started or books I no longer own, so if it’s on this list I still own it and have derived at least some small modicum of pleasure from reading it.

I also tried to sort them into order of how much I enjoyed them, starting with the one I enjoyed the most and ending with the one I enjoyed the least. That proved to be a heck of a lot more difficult. The fact is, books are hard to compare in such a black-and-white fashion, especially when they are of different genres, so I’ve probably not given a very accurate reflection of how I feel about these books but I’ve done my best. I’ve tried to avoid thinking about which ones were technically better, and have focused simply on which ones I enjoyed the most; thus, this list says more about my tastes and moods than it does about the actual quality of the writing. So don’t get cross if you’re favourite is at the bottom. I’m not sure if the order of this list makes as much sense as I’d hoped anyway.

So anyway, here goes nothing:

• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
• Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
• The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
• Madness by Roald Dahl
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson
• Ben Hur by Lew Wallace
• The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights by John Steinbeck
• The Green Mile by Stephen King
• The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (click here for my review)
• Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
• Doctor Faustus (The ‘A’ Text) by Christopher Marlowe
• The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
• Deception by Roald Dahl
• Cup of Gold by John Steinbeck
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
• Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with The Merry Men & Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Edge of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
• The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
• Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
• Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie
• Different Seasons by Stephen King
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
• The Vagrant by Peter Newman
• Curtain by Agatha Christie
• Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
• Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie
• The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie
• Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
• The Seven by Peter Newman
• The Malice by Peter Newman (click here for my review)
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
• Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
• The Final Act of Mr Shakespeare by Robert Winder
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (click here for my review)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie
• The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi (click here for my review)
• The Gospel of Loki by Joanne Harris
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
• A Touch of Frost by R.D. Wingfield
• Frost at Christmas by R.D. Wingfield
• Winter Frost by R.D. Wingfield
• Hard Frost by R.D. Wingfield
• A Killing Frost by R.D. Wingfield (noticing a pattern here? One Frost novel is pretty much like another!)
• Night Frost by R.D. Wingfield
• The Time Tourists by Sharleen Nelson (click here for my interview with the author [2])
• A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
• I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
• Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
• Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway
• The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien
• That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
• The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Emperor: The Gates of Rome by Conn Iggulden
• Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks
• The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
• The Afrika Reich by Guy Saville
• Arena by Karen Hancock
• The Great Dune Trilogy by Frank Herbert
• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
• Hard Times by Charles Dickens

And that’s a wrap! Good golly Miss Molly, that is one mixed up list. I don’t even think it comes close to capturing how I truly feel about some of these books but meh… hopefully it will give you a vague notion of my tastes at least and help you come up with good book suggestions for me. Ready, set, go!

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ATTENTION AUTHORS:

I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter.

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]