Liz with almost all her Paul Magrs books

Me with almost all my Paul Magrs books

Well, given that Paul Magrs is a writer of the spooky and gothic, it seemed a good idea to announce my new reading challenge for 2020 on Halloween (even if I am still too feeble to read “To the Devil a Diva”.

To those who don’t know Paul, he’s a fiction and non-fiction writer who made the brave and bold decision to write magic realism novels set on a council estate in the North-East of England – the Phoenix Court series, which I read from Lewisham Library when I moved to London in the 1990s. Then he branched out into stories of the Bride of Frankenstein living and running a B&B in Whitby and solving mysteries, and continued his work in the Doctor Who world. He’s written books for children, teens and adults, and has written how-to books on writing and cat stories. I love his characters and the diversity in the books, and he even mentioned my hobby of BookCrossing in “Exchange”, which led to me finding his work email address when he worked in academia and dropping him a line, forging a friendship which has been a lovely thing in my life for years now.

You can find a list of Paul’s novels on his Wikipedia page and he has a lovely website, too.

What am I going to read?

I haven’t planned the whole year yet but here goes with the beginning …

I’m reading “Aisles” first because it features Iris Murdoch as a character and I’m just finishing off my Iris Murdoch readalong at the moment.

Then I’ll read the Phoenix Court novels – including the one that wasn’t originally published.

After that – and I haven’t got them yet – I’ll be tackling the Mars trilogy, set in a human colony with a female protagonist.

And then, I will still have four spaces left (one per month) – what will I include?

How can you get involved?

During my Iris Murdoch readalong, people have commented here on the blog when I’ve posted my review of the book of the month, and we’ve had a good discussion. I’d love that to happen this time, too.

I’ll be reading one book a month. I’ll share a post at the end of the month with what’s coming up and will have a page on this website with the schedule. Do join in with reading along or come back to posts and comment afterwards, I really don’t mind!

I’ll also be doing some giveaways …

… I found an as-new copy of “Exchange” the other day so that will be up for grabs.

If you’d like to read a book I’m NOT including, and you blog about it in some way, or do a Goodreads review, submit your link to me via my Contact Form and I’ll link up to it on the project page.

I also hope to have some exclusive interviews with Paul himself to post up. Exciting times!

Who’s in?

Anyone fancy reading some or all of the novels along with me? I do hope so! See you in January!