As thoughts turn to the end of our Beach Read holiday when suitcases need re-packing, we’re not ready to leave yet. My guest today is Mark Barry.
Rosie Amber Beach Reads
My bucket list is currently full of cities at the moment, and I think San Diego would be up there. I would visit Santa Anita racecourse (and travel down the coast to Del Mar) and spend the evenings on a beach front bar talking books. What better place to talk horses and books than over a tall Mojito in the glorious sunshine!
I’m not a Kindle fan, so I would take several paperback books. I DO read Kindle books (many of my favourite authors and friends are e-book only), but it’s just not the same. It doesn’t have the same impact at all. I always leave books behind whenever I travel – sometimes my own.
I would leave Hollywood Shakedown of my own library. I wrote it in 2010 and it is intended to be an airport novel for intelligent people. Quite a few people think it’s my best book. It’s pretty unsung and I tend to scratch my head about how to market it as it is unlike my other books. It is also long enough for a week’s beach holiday!
Find a copy here form Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
A Fun Read
After The Sucker Punch by Lorraine Devon Wilke
A sweeping, seventies, old school family saga that’s also long enough to engage you for a good week on the beach. In fact, it’s made for the beach and the airport. Beautifully written, light, accessible, I have yet to come across a book as good as this in Indie. In fact, you genuinely would not know this is an Indie book. It is sublime and – like many books we write – underappreciated, especially over here.
Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
A book from your favourite genre
Warlock – The Complete Series
Put a bullet to my head and I would say that I prefer comics and graphic novels to books. I would have loved to have been a comic book writer. This graphic novel, written and drawn in the mid-seventies, by Jim Starlin is the finest epic saga. It’s scope is astonishing. The next Avengers film features Thanos, the scheming villain and servant of Death that Starlin invented, and he has never been better than he is here in this seminal appearance. I read this every year without fail.
Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
A book you would only read on holiday in a sun, sea and sand location
Jackie Collins – Lucky
Every genre writer has a sneaky, guilty pleasure, and I like the work of Jackie Collins, who has the trashy, worthless, star-spangled celebrity bonk buster down pat. My favourite – and most people seem to agree with me – and best is Lucky. Surprisingly well written and incredibly easy to read, this is an ideal book to leave behind in some Tanzania beach hut. It will be read.
Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
A book you could truly escape with
Music of Chance by Paul Auster
In any Desert Island quartet, you have to go for quality somewhere down the line and this is one of my favourite books from one of the world’s finest contemporary fiction writers. It’s not his best – you have to aim at something like Book of Illusions or Brooklyn Follies for that honour – but it packs the biggest punch. One of those books that you live rather than read. Hence the escape.
Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Rosie Amber 