My Top 6 - 'The Vintner's Luck'

I was introduced to this book by a 2nd year English paper at Otago. In fact 3 of my top 6 come from that class. It was called 'Contemporary Women's Writing' and I don't think there was one book on the list that it felt like a chore to read.

This book is by a New Zealand author called Elizabeth Knox. It is set on a vineyard in Burgundy and follows the life of a young man called Sobran who, as a young man, meets an angel called Xas in one of the vineyards and they make a pact to meet on the same day every year. Each year's meeting is documented by Knox, each titled by a vinter's term. Sobran grows and changes while Xas seems to remain a constant throughout. However, even an angel has thoughts and feelings, and when Sobran is struck by tragedy, their already intense friendship is taken to another level.

The last 3rd of the book is intensely moving, frightening and somehow both repulsive and incredibly compelling, but I'd be loath to ruin it for anyone who hasn't read it. It is one of the most beautiful books I have read and was an immediate placer in my top 6. Knox's subsequent novel, Black Oxen, I struggled with, but apparently her next (and I can't remember the title) is firmly back on form.

My Top 6 Books of All Time!

My personal top 6, none of which appear on the BBC list are as follows (in no particular order):

The Vintner's Luck by Elizabeth Knox

Nights at the Circus by Anglea Carter

Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

There are loads of other books I've loved and authors that I read everything by, but these 6 were books that touched my heart, that made me want to read them again for the first time, and that made me want to write to everyone I know, imploring them to read them too.

They all seem to come under the genre of Magic Realism, which doesn't seem to be a widely recognised genre, usually being lumped in with general fiction. In Magic Realism, the story is set in the world as we know it, usually contemporary, but extraordinary things happen within that world that are (usually) accepted by the main characters.

To give specific examples, in The Vintner's Luck, the main character has yearly meetings with an angel; in Night's at the Circus there is a winged woman and a whole array of larger-than-life (but still real) characters; in Keeping Faith, God appears to a young girl, causing her to perform miracles and the like; and in The Time Traveller's Wife, a man travels randomly and involuntarily through time.

I'll talk about each of them in more detail over the next few posts, in the meantime I'm going to try and figure out why my blog is putting in an extra line every time I press enter...

Introduction to the Challenge...

I have always been an avid reader from the first time I managed to read 'Hand Hand Fingers Thumb' to my babysitter aged about 3 1/2. I read a wide range of books, especially since studying literature at university a few years ago, but in the absence of a nearby book club, I have decided to set myself my own challenge - to read all of the books on the BBC top 100 book list.

This was a list nominated by the public, championed by various celebrities and then voted on by viewers. The final list looked something like this...

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

I worked out that I have read 58 of the books already, leaving me 42 to read. However, there were 8 on my ‘read’ list that I can’t remember well enough to comment on them, so I’ve decided to read them again, which leaves me with an even 50.

Over the next couple of weeks (as I am moving house and won’t be able to get to the library) I will post about the books on the list I have already read, and some other books I would definitely put on my ‘top 100’! For now, this is the first time I’ve posted to a blog using Word Blogger, so I’ll leave this post here and see if it’s worked…