Who & what do you read? Questions I get asked as a book blogger (Pt I) Michael J Richardson

For those of you who don't know me, I've been reading and writing since I was a teenager (properly reading that is, not force fed books I had no interest in at school, which excludes Stig of the Dump of course, which was my first serial reading experience), so that's a good thirty years under my belt, but what floats my boat, gets me going back for more?

Well, why don't we start with the classics. But wait, what is a classic? A book written over a hundred years ago? Over fifty? Harry Potter will be defined as a classic in the future if not already, so do I include them? Maybe it's Austin, Bronte or Dickens (of which I've liked but not loved - except A Christmas Carol, that will always be a 5 star book in my opinion), or Du Maurier, whose My Cousin Rachel is one of my all-time favourites. Looking further afield we have Jules Verne, not bad, Platonov, weird and Kafka - seriously, I think something got lost in translation like: plot and anything that actually makes sense - and I've never really enjoyed American classics either with Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, The Catcher in the Rye and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest all being a bit lacklustre - although I did like, The Great Gatsby and I am Legend is a masterpiece.

How about horror then? But again, what is horror? I recently read Roxane Gay's superb, An Untamed State, one of the most horrific books I've read recently but you'll only find it in the fiction section, as with Khaled Hosseini, who writes about the horrors of war torn Afghanistan in a way that pulls at your heart. I've also read The Girl with all the Gifts and its prequel (zombie apocalypse for those who don't know), but they're no more horrific than Stephen King epics' like The Stand and It, which are simply undefinable in genre. Then there are horror classics like Dracula (superb) Frankenstein (okay) and The Exorcist (seriously creepy) to consider, all having such great characters and depth that to simply call them 'Horror' would do them a great injustice.

I have always loved apocalyptic stories, too, from the short and punchy like, The War of the Worlds, I am Legend and The Day or the Triffids, to huge tomes like The Passage series and of course, the best of the best, The Stand - all fourteen hundred plus pages of it, and how the whole experience of reading books like these leaves you feeling lonely and apprehensive but with a fierce determination that if it were ever to happen to you, you'd be the good guy/girl, be on the right side and survive.

So where does that leave us? Well, this subject is far too long for one post so I'll blog part II in a few days' time and talk it through a bit more with you then. See you soon.

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books and if I haven't read them, why not message me with your recommendations.