The Spoons That Are My Ears!

My own list of Three Favourite Reads of 2023 can be found on Shepherd. Anyone who scrutinises my choices will see the authors Henry Green, Walter Moers and Guido Morselli. All of them have been a revelation to my reading mind. I am especially impressed with Green and have embarked on a reading of the nine novels he wrote in his lifetime (I am currently near the end of the seventh). Conveniently, I discovered that Vintage publish these nine novels in three omnibus volumes.

It has been a long time since I read an author who appealed to me as strongly as Henry Green does. His style is unique or almost so, the structures of his novels are unusual, his grasp of characterisation sublime and his ear for dialogue perfect. But there is something decidedly odd about his work. It is more menacing in tone than any rational analysis would lead one to conclude it should be. He is like a more brutal (but that's not quite the right word) version of Firbank.

Another thing I guess I ought to mention is the recent release of an ebook collection of one hundred of my short stories. This collection is called (simply enough) 100 Short Stories and it includes some previously unpublished stories as well as work that has already appeared in magazines, journals, anthologies and some of my other books. The earliest story in this collection was written in 2004 and the most recent was written just a couple of months ago.