Everyone's a Fan of Something 2: The Crow Road

We're busy promoting the BBC's Big Read at work at the moment. As the build up to revealing the UK's favourite novel hottens up were doing a mini version in Bracknell to find our borrowers' favourite novel. as part of this the staff have all been writing about their favourite novels. Its all rather interesting really. Just like with music, you can tell a lot about a person from the books they read. books are very important to me. I always have a novel on the go and while I may not read all the "proper" literature I read while I was at University, I do at least now read for fun, rather than because I have to. For me, my favourite novels are very wrapped up in the times I read them. My all time favourite is Iain Banks's "The Crow Road". I'm not sure that any novel has quite made the impact on me it did in the summer of 1994. I was discovering lots of new authors at the time. My friends on my course had been recommending books to read all the time and i came home for the summer intent on broadening my reading horizons. Popping to the library (the one where I work now in fact) "The Crow Road" was the first one I read. Enticed by its cool black and white cover i was soon immersed in the world of Prentice McHoan and the mystery of his Uncle's disappearance. It gave me back the excitement of reading that I hadn't had for a few years outside of reading Doctor Who novels (which were a staple part of my reading diet since I was able to read alone. I was attracted to Prentice a great deal. He was I imagined beautiful despite his obvious flaws and the way he was drawn into his family's mysteries drew me in with him. He was flawed and I could see what he couldn't and who he should have been going out with, which was half of the fun! By the time we got to the end with his staring out to sea and shouting "Ha!" I was well and truly drawn into his world in a way few books have managed to do to me before and since. It seemed perfect to me. It probably isn't, but no other novel seems to close to touching me the way it did. There have been other magnificent novels I've subsequently read, novels that have moved me and made me cry or laugh and some that have been truly dire. I love the way that reading can take you away from your humdrum life for a little while and show things on a grand scale, maybe bigger than you'll ever actually experience. the best make you think about your life in some way and if you get lost in their worlds then the author has done his job properly. I feel my life would be lessened if i didn't read. My whole life view has been shaped by the books I've read and I hope they've made me a better person. But above all its usually fun! So I wrote my little review of "The Crow Road" for our display. It'll never register on the grand scale of things. I'm sure Mr Banks, good as he is, will never be listed up there with Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, but he means a great deal to me. If only for my little journey through Prentice's life in that long hot summer. I'm still waiting for own "Ha!" moment though. Maybe one day though...