If anything I say makes you want to buy the book yourself, do think about getting it from your local public library (use it or lose it, and besides, authors get a PLR payment for every loan) - or from an independent bookshop - or online from the alliance of independent booksellers' site The Hive.
Some of what follows are books about writing; there are many more in my list of Books for Writers here (and please do add into the comments any which you've found useful.)
MR DARWIN'S GARDENER by Kristina Carlsson, translated by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah
Carlsson is one of Finland's most distinguished writers, and this novella is almost as much a poem, or even a play, as a novel: in her introduction the publisher of Peirene Press, Meike Ziervogel, mentions Under Milk Wood, and the comparison is apt. The translators are a team of Jeremiahs: Finnish mother Fleur whose daughter is translator and writer Emily. Together they have found a parallel poetic and evocative voice for the English version of Carlsson's Downe. The villagers all know old Mr Darwin as a distant, benign presence, but newly-widowed Thomas Davies actual works in his garden, which is also his laboratory. In church, in the pub, in the shops and parlours and lanes, the villagers' voices and lives weave in and out of one another, sometimes solo, sometimes in chorus, as the seasons turn for all living things in this little corner of England which, thanks to one of its inhabitants, changed forever how humans experience the world. Peirene Press.
LIVING, THINKING, LOOKING by Siri Hustvedt
Hustvedt is a modern mistress of the personal essay, which is a form that seems to be much more widely read and established in the US than, these days, it is in the UK. Every page of this collection is full of brilliant, and brilliantly thoughtful, ideas, insights and evocations of living, writing, reading, the mind, the brain, the visual arts, the human condition and a hundred other things. They're written for a variety of audiences, from art reviews for general readers to some quite closely argued longer pieces aabout particular interests. But to call the latter "specialist" wouldn't convey just how readable they are. And it would be worth it just for this, from her essay "Three Emotional Stories": "Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened." Sceptre
HOW TO LIVE: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, by Sarah Bakewell
Montaigne invented the personal, philosophical essay while the French wars of religion raged around him, and what's astonishing is how modern he seems, rather in the same way that his near-contemporary Shakespeare seems modern. Every blogger, every creative-life-writer, every columnist, is a child of Montaigne. You can read this lovely book for its thoughtful wanderings through Montaigne's life, mind and world, and the afterlife of the essays from Blaise Pascal to Virginia Woolf. Or you can read it as a tour-de-force of modern life-writing, so cleverly structured and beautifully written that it's both a pleasure and an education in such writing. Either way, enjoy! Vintage
LOST LUGGAGE by Jordi Punti, translated by Julie Wark
I love the power of names to encapsulate how human beings connect, and here are four half-brothers, all sons of a long-distance truck driver from Barcelona. Gabriel was born when the Civil War had spread out to become World War Two and left Franco's Spain behind, but Christof, Christophe, Christopher, and Cristòfol (who was Christobal until Franco died) only discovered one other when the father they share disappears. Punti's prose in Wark's translation is supple and vivid, with cool humour but also warmth and understanding: here is a world connected across many borders of time and space by what it is to be human. As the Christophers - sometimes with difficulty - hand their and their father's stories to and fro between one another, they weave a rich tapestry of our European life past and present. Short Books
VANISHED KINGDOMS: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies
Norman Davies specialises in challenging our assumptions and mental maps of history. In this substantial successor to his wonderful doorstops Europe and The Isles, Davies tackles those states which have vanished as legal-political entities but never, quite, as cultures. It's also a lesson to historical fictioneers, I'd argue: it's difficult for a historian to bring life to the history of the vast and powerful Kingdom of the Franks that was centred on Tolosa/Toulouse, or Alt Clud, the British (i.e. Welsh) Kingdom of Strathclyde, when there are vast gaps in the record and almost no evidence for the personalities involved, and Davies doesn't altogether succeed. As soon as we get to the much better-documented story of Burgundy, the record gives us enough for the historical imagination to work with, and without breaking any of the rules of history writing, he can write with his characteristic panache. Penguin
Whether you're a close-your-eyes-and-write merchant, or someone who likes to work out every beat for the whole thing before you even think about your opening line, whether it's a PhD or a time-travelling memoir that you're writing totally out of sequence, Scrivener can, with a bit of homework and a teaspoon of patience, make it all infinitely easier. It's is the first computer programme to have been built by writers, for writers, to work the way writers work - i.e. differently from every other writer. And this book even has a few jokes. Dummies
THE SEVEN BASIC PLOTS by Christopher Booker
You don't have to buy in to every word of this compendious, beautifully written examination of how stories work. Nor might you sign up to his rather un-examined acceptance of concepts of gender. But this is a fascinating anatomy/taxonomy of the structures of storytelling. It's not as simple as seven plots, of course, and some of the most interesting bits are where he explores how different stories shape and change the very basics he starts from. Also makes an interesting Jungian pair/opponent for Bruno Bettlheim's Freud-based The Uses of Enchantment. Continuum
GRIMM: THE COMPLETE FAIRY TALES translated by Jack Zipes
The only edition with every single one of the stories, in lovely clear, faithful translations by the great expert on folk and fairy tales, Jack Zipes, who has also unearthed some extra stories never published before. Un-expurgated, un-pretty, un-missable... I'm trying to read one tale a night. Vintage
Great fun and also very useful. Clear explanations of everything from thou/thee/thy/thine, to titles, (im)proper behaviour in different classes and genders, the lessons to be learnt from programmes like The 1900 House, and of course those underpants. CreateSpace
PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper
Cooper doesn't get too bogged down in psychoanalysis but there's no denying they don't make 'em like Paddy any more. Perhaps what's most interesting to other writers is where Cooper unpicks how and why Leigh Fermor shaped his remarkable life into the rather different stories he told in his memoirs. Novelists won't turn a hair, but the fact-fascists are no doubt horrified. John Murray
THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD ACCORDING TO FACEBOOK by Wylie Overstreet
It's good for us to be reminded that even the oldest stories in (literally) the universe can still make a reader (this reader) hoot with laughter, if they're re-shaped into a new form. HarperCollins
Short stories by the Booker-shortlisted author of Swimming Home. Pitch-perfect writing and a shrewd but tolerant and even affectionate eye for the loves and hurts we inflict on ourselves and each other. Beautifully produced by the newish & Other Stories
Meticulously imagined novel of Trix Kipling and her brother Rudyard growing up between England and India, which won the Virginia Prize. Mary Hamer is a Kipling expert, but applies her knowledge with a feather-light touch in lovely writing, which tells a fascinating story. Aurora Metro
THE FRIDAY GOSPELS by Jenn Ashworth (uncorrected proof)
If Jenn Ashworth's first two novels were bitter-black comedies, this one is warmer and still comic. Wonderful, understated writing which perfectly catches the textures of lives which are both utterly, ordinarily tragic, and decidedly weird. Sceptre
THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS by M L Stedman (uncorrected proof)
The eternal story of what happens when you do something profoundly right, for someone you love ... except that it's profoundly wrong. Beautifully evocative of Western Australia in the aftermath of the First World War. Simon & Schuster
MISTRESS OF THE SEA by Jenny Barden
The splendid tale of Ellyn, who stows away with Sir Francis Drake to save her father's life and follow the man she's not yet willing to admit she loves. Thick with the voices, as well as the smells, sights, sounds and naval politics of a Tudor universe. Ebury Publishing
A deliciously slant-wise evocation of a wonderfully convincing Victorian world, which starts at Wilton's Music Hall and moves outwards to all sorts of strange places. Moving and evocative. Orion
A fast-moving, dystopian YA story, very different from Caroline Green's RoNA-winning debut Dark Ride, but no less compelling. Picadilly Press
GIDEON THE CUTPURSE by Linda Buckley-Archer
First in the terrific time-slip Gideon triology (Time Quake trilogy in the US) for older children, with The Tar Man and Time Quake to follow. Terrifically exciting, emotionally intelligent and beautifully written. Simon & Schuster
HOT KITCHEN SNOW by Susannah Rickards
Susannah Rickards' debut short story collection was joint winner of the Scott Prize. Wry, compassionate, moving and often very funny. Salt
