Craft/Curiousity Reads

So thanks to COVID and working at home, I’m actually already into the 9th book this year whereas last year I just reached my goal of 10 books. And because I’m stepping up my efforts to improve my writing craft and trying to leverage reading more for that end goal as opposed to pure leisure, I have now decided to add 2 spots for craft/curiousity reads. 

In fact, I have already built up a list of candidates and in brackets is the reason why I’m intrigued or what craft element I’m trying to study: 

• The book thief (narrator is Death)
• The Lovely Bones (mystery from the POV of the victim)
• The Girl on the Train (unreliable narrator)
• Gone girl (big reversal in the middle) 
• The Virgin Suicides (written from first person plural)
• The God of Small Things/The Gathering by Anne Enright  (past-present narrative)
• The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison/Shipping News (omniscient) 
• All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld (Reverse Chronology)
• Catcher in the Rye/Room (voice-driven/child’s voice) 
• Americana (uneven past-present narrative) 
• The Fifth season by N. K. Jemisin (1st, 2nd and 3rd POVs)

Initially I was rather intrigued by the Book Thief but then I read the blurb and I worry about it being too much literary fiction. And I figured I wanted to give literary fiction a little bit of a rest after Cloud Atlas. Then I looked up the Lovely Bones because the premise is of course intriguing but well…. For some reason I was really worried about hype for particular books. Like I always looked a bit askance at books that suddenly got immensely popular and asked “Now, is this book going to fit my particular reading taste?”. I’ve somehow always thought of myself as having reading taste that doesn’t quite conform to everyone else’s even though my favourite novels (LOTR and Raymond E. Feist’s Riftwar and Serpentwar) were immensely popular in their own rights. Anyway, so I looked it up in my library and it only had a physical copy but I was more in the mood for an electronic copy so currently I’m reading Wych Elm by Tana French. I’ve heard good things about her and I’m about half way through the story right now. 

I think I will read either the Lovely Bones or the Girl on the Train and then Shipping News perhaps for my Craft/Curiousity reading spots this year.