Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Make Me Smile

Pratchett will always make me smile, but Hogfather is a real delight from beginning to end.

Death takes on Santa’s – ahem! I mean The Hogfather’s – role droping down chimneys chortling HO! HO! HO! And Susan – Death’s grand-daughter (sort of) as a governess who would beat Mary Poppins any day of the week.

Beyond the comedy and anarchy and joyful silliness of it all comes real humanity and love:

“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

Death and grief lie at the heart of this novel, so do not venture into it thinking it is comic, but there are some wonderful, tender and warm moments.

In particular, there is a beautifully tender – and very erotic – moment between Agnes and the unnamed William Shakespeare in the apple store of Agnes’ family farm, including a rather odd description of her breasts

It was his hands that undid the bows at her neckline, that pulled down her shift, that brought out her breasts into the light – and how startled and how white they had looked, in the air like that, in daytime, in front of another; their pink-brown eyes stared back in shock.

And Agnes herself is a wild, wonderful, fey creation!

Like much of Shakespeare, the book generates as many smiles as tears.

This science fiction novel was lovely!

No space battles here – well, there are a few – and no intergalactic invasions or mega weapons that you might expect from a space opera.

The novel charts a long journey on board The Wayfarer and the crew get to know each other, bond with each other, learn to love each other, look out for each other and become a disparate, functioning family.

It is lovely.

Crime novels do not often contain many smiles, but Kate Atkinson’s do – in a way which complements and heightens the drama. She is the queen of the coincidence and irony!

If we look at just one moment: Gloria’s confrontation with the dominatrix call girl with whom her husband had been having a liaison when he suffered the heart attack that put him into a coma in hospital.

“So, what do they pay you for…exactly?”

“Slapped around. Tied up. Beaten. Given orders, made to do things.”

“What kind of things?”

“You know.”

“No, I can’t even begin to imagine.”

“Lick my boots, crawl on floor, eat like dog.”

“Nothing useful, then, like hoovering?”

I remain a little reticent about the Dresden Files in general, but Dead Beat introduces us to one character who is so exuberantly over-the-top extraordinary that you cannot help but smile.

Sue, the zombie tyrannosaurus rex:

Sue, despite her weight, moved with power and grace. As I’d called forth energy- charged ectoplasm to clothe the ancient bones, they had become covered in sheets of muscle and a hide of heavy, surprisingly supple quasi-flesh. She was dark grey, and there was a ripple pattern of black along her head, back, and flanks, almost like that of a jaguar.

This was totally outside my usual reading style, but it was such a heart warming and sweet tale, I found myself rooting hugely for our two protagonists and smiling at their emails to each other.

“Should I tell you that when we’re apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I’ve just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?”

And the moment when the feared public backlash is revealed to be a public wave of unconditional support is so sweet.

I love Natasha Pulley – and she has a great Twitter presence too – and her novels, especially The Watchmaker of Filigree Street.

The reason I chose this novel, the sequel to The Watchmaker, is that Pulley pulls in references to the glowing pollen from Peru of her other novel The Bedlam Stacks – creating the tantalising possibility of her two fictional worlds coming together.

Also, Mori – our clairvoyant samurai – sacrifices so much for his love for Thaniel, so selflessly, so generously… it is a delight.

Reading a number of Booker Prize winners and longlisted novels over the years, you start to wonder where the novels are that let good things happen to nice people.

This is one that does that.

And all the numerous characters that Evaristo creates, for all their flaws and weaknesses, are rich and human and deep… and whilst awful things happen, they are survive and thrive.

And these wonderful characters are wrapped up in playful lyrical prose from the opening dedication:

For the sisters & the sistas & the sistahs & the sistren & the women & the womxn & the wimmin & the womyn & our brethren & our bredrin & our brothers & our bruvs & our men & our mandem & the LGBTQI+ members of the human family

One word: M-Bot

The snarky philosophising, mushroom-loving AI embedded in the mysterious ship that Spensa discovers, and her relationship with it, are just so much fun to read!

“You have large twin destructor emitters on each wing, along with a light-lance turret underneath. That’s as much firepower as our larger ships. You’re a warship.”
“Clearly not,” M-Bot said. “I’m here to categorize fungi. Didn’t you listen to my last orders? I am not supposed to get into fights.”
“Then why do you have guns?”
“For shooting large and dangerous beasts who might be threatening my fungus specimens,” M-Bot said. “Obviously.”

Whilst Queenie contains its fair share of pathos and tears, it also abounds in humour from its opening image – that being of Queenie texting her ex-boyfriend whilst in the middle of a gynaecological exam.

Queenie In the stirrups now.

Queenie Wish you were here . . .

I LOCKED MY phone and carried on looking at the ceiling before unlocking it and sending a follow-up “xx.” That would prove to Tom that I wasn’t as emotionally detached as he accuses me of being.

The book throws Queenie down a terrible self-destructive path and its intimate details alternate between the funny and the deeply worrying – but it is also beautifully heart warming as she survives and lives and regains herself.

They say that the Thorn of Camorr can beat anyone in a fight. They say he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. They say he’s part man, part myth, and mostly street-corner rumor. And they are wrong on every count.

Only averagely tall, slender, and god-awful with a sword, Locke Lamora is the fabled Thorn, and the greatest weapons at his disposal are his wit and cunning. He steals from the rich – they’re the only ones worth stealing from – but the poor can go steal for themselves. What Locke cons, wheedles and tricks into his possession is strictly for him and his band of fellow con-artists and thieves: the Gentleman Bastards.