I absolutely love the Great British Bake Off so, when I saw this book challenge I though ‘yeah, sign me up for that one.’

ON YOUR MARKS – A Book You Can’t Wait To Read

I can’t wait to read The Last Mandarin, a fast-paced, all-too-real thriller co-written by #1 New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny and award-winning journalist Mellissa Fung, global politics become personal for two unlikely heroines.

The Last Mandarin is an electrifying study of absolute power and voracious greed, political terror and personal conviction. But it is also, as to be expected from the minds of Louise Penny, beloved author of the Gamache novels, and Mellissa Fung, an acclaimed international journalist, an intimate examination of choice, of sacrifice, of memory and myths, both cultural and personal. It is the story of a mother and daughter, as well as a compelling international thriller about the precarious balance of power across the world, and within a family. And what happens when both break down.

SIGNATURE BAKE – A Book From Your Favourite Genre

This series, Her Majesty Investigates, just goes from strength to strength and this title, coming out in May, is one that’s been on my radar for a while. I mean, just look at that cover?

SHOWSTOPPER – A Book With A Beautiful Cover

Though I love SFF and read a lot of crime fiction, I also love a good historical novel now and then, and recently discovered The Boleyn Curse which also just happens to have a great cover.

The court of young King Henry VIII seethes with secrets and scandals, but every ambition has its price. Elizabeth Boleyn, loyal wife to Thomas Boleyn and devoted mother to Anne, Mary and George, believes she can navigate the shifting tides of court life. But when she catches the eye of the lascivious king, Elizabeth is drawn into a perilous game and the cost of her defiance will echo through the generations.

SOGGY BOTTOM – A Book That Made You Cry

There are not many book that make me cry but there was a certain scene in Foundryside that, when a certain character died, got me really choked up. And yes, I may have shed a tear or two.

HOLLYWOOD HANDSHAKE – Your Perfect Book

I read The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett last year and it was, for me at least, the perfect fantasy read (if ever there was one). Excellently written from cover to cover, a unique setting and clever world building, I was hooked from page one.

LEAVING THIS WEEK – A Book You Didn’t Finish

Ugh, I have read one too many books that ended up being a DNF for one reason or another. Sadly, this was one of them.

STAR BAKER – A Five Star Read

My 5-Star read? Has to be the superb second book in the Shadow of the Leviathan series, A Drop Of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett.

AND THE WINNER IS – A Book By A Favourite Author

As anyone who reads knows, it’s really hard to choose just one book as a winner/favourite out of all the books we read week to week. So asking me to choose just one is thrown me into a quandary. I want to say one of the above mentioned books but is that cheating?

Ha! I’m going to choose THE TAINTED CUP (mentioned above) — book one in the Shadow of the Leviathan series by Robert Jackson Bennett — as it’s the book I read that got me back into reading fantasy again after a very long hiatus.

And you Dear Reader, what would make it onto your Great British Bake Off list?

Or, to be exact, a life of crime reading, all of which began several years ago. Up until then, I would say I read a mixed bag and cross section of genre. And, up until then, I was probably reading close to 80% speculative fiction. I say speculative because at one point I moved from almost exclusively reading SF through most of my teen years, to reading some fantasy, a little paranormal, and some supernatural. I never really took to horror, in the same way I strongly dislike ‘horror‘ movies. It always boils down to violence, and I’m just not interest.

Which makes it all the more odd that I eventually wandered into reading crime fiction. But then again, crime fiction is an umbrella term I think we all use to cover quite a cross section of tropes that fit neatly, and some not so neatly, under that umbrella.

We’re all familiar with the whodunnit, courtroom drama, murder-mystery, suspense, cozy mysteries, police procedurals, detective stories, and, of late, forensics and psychological thrillers, which, yes, I also include under the umbrella. The latter are usually quite different to the modern thriller which, these days, tends to be about someone from an alphabet organisation (CIA/NSA/MI6/FBI), running around the planet trying to stop international criminals, terrorists, or organised crime and the like.

I don’t remember exactly which book started it all, that kind of recall escapes me these days. I just know that I picked up several more titles all considered ‘crime fiction,’ one of those was a Louise Penny novel from her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache stories: Bury Your Dead. It just happened to be on the shelf and caught my eye, and I saw it was set here, in Québec City. How could I not read it?

From there on in, I was hooked. Hooked on Louise Penny, the fictional village of Three Pines, and more, crime fiction at large.

If you haven’t read any Louise Penny, may I humbly suggest you do, but don’t start as I did, with what I think is book six. Start with book one, Still Life, and work your way through. The character development in this series is excellent, and unlike any other series I’ve ever read.

And you? What recommendations do you have for me, and what are your favourite genres.

𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧

There is one thing you can be sure of, modern science fiction gives us plenty of choice to choose from when it comes to sub-genres. Of course, it all depends on who you speak to about what may, or may not, make it onto the list but, for arguments sake, here are a few of what makes it onto my list:

• Alien Invasion
• A. I. (Artificial Intelligence | Nano Tech | Virtual)
• Colonisation (also: Terraforming)
• Dystopian
• First Contact
• Galactic Empire
• Generational Ships
• Military SF
• Near Future
• Parallel Universes
• Post Apocalypse
• Robots & Androids (see also AI above)
• Space Exploration
• Space Opera
• Time Travel
• Utopian

Of these, I think I dislike time travel the most, while on the flip side, one of my favourites is military SF. But what is it about one that I dislike, and what is it about the other, that I like? Well, I thought you would never ask.

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