Today I am delighted to have author Katy Moran on Bookcase Showcase ...
My husband and his assistant (our three-year-old son) finished making these bookshelves just in time for you to drop in. Up till a few days ago, most of our books were languishing on windowsills and in piles, so this bookcase showcase has been a very good excuse for a bibliographical tidy-up. I keep my books in no particular order but I know pretty much where each one is. They’re a mixture of research and inspiration. The Quiet Room by Lori Schiller was one of my chief resources writing Dangerous to Know – the author’s account of her encounter with mental illness profoundly shocked me, and I hope her recovery continues to this day. I was addicted to Ellis Peters’ Cadfael mysteries as a teenager: they definitely inspired me to write historical fiction. I bought this humdinger of a compilation when my oldest son was a newborn, and read the whole thing on a sofa with him curled up on my chest – a lovely experience! And of course there are several books by Rosemary Sutcliff and Georgette Heyer: two absolute masters of the historical genre. I read Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff when I was about ten: this beautiful and exciting tale woke my imagination and made me start writing. Bloodline is my homage to it. La Morte D’Arthur by Thomas Malory was a later encounter – Middle English looks difficult at first glance but gets much easier when read aloud, and this version of the great Arthurian myth has the most moving ending of any book I’ve read: “Here lies Arthur, once and future king.” It gave me an idea for a title when I was a desk editor working on Philip Reeve’s tremendous Here Lies Arthur. I got an undeserved credit for that in the acknowledgements. These gorgeous Everyman’s Library titles on the bottom shelf were given to me when I worked there – my very first job in publishing, before I became an editor or an author. Many of the books on this shelf are ones I have helped to edit, reviewed or used as research. There are some stories I could tell about those I edited, but I won’t!
Finally, the books here are those I read most often. My husband also made this space-age bookshelf. The Giant Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord and Janet Burroway is my favourite, but I could probably quote at length from each and every one.
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