A quick trip over to the bookstore yesterday found me updating my ‘must-buy-book’ list. Let’s see:

1. We Need To Talk About Kevin caught my eye, nevermind the fact that it was on a bottom shelf at a tucked away corner of the bookstore. You’d expect the winner of the 2005 Orange Broadband prize for fiction to be prominently displayed – but no – the Da Vinci code and Jeffrey Archer’s newest novels occupied the top rows. Bestsellers vs Award Winners right in your face – and this was a small bookstore, mind you.

I like the premise of Kevin: shortly before his 16th birthday, Kevin Katchadourian kills seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher. The main narrative of the novel is then contained within a series of letters by his mother, Eva, to his estranged father, telling him the story of Kevin’s upbringing. Is she at fault for her son’s actions? Or is the evil he shows inherent in Kevin’s very being? The novel asks some very disturbing questions and I can’t wait to read it.

2. Lord Of The Flies is my favourite book – something I’ve read twice over – but my copy went missing about a year ago. I’m on the lookout for a better, nicer looking edition (let’s say my old one had encountered a few insect problems) and this cover caught my eye:

It looks kind of innocent, especially for a novel with such dark, overarching themes. But I still love it – and if it tricks my family members into reading it, then why ever not?

3. The Book Of Air And Shadows. I know it sounds very much like the Da Vinci code (A distinguished Shakespearean scholar found tortured to death … A lost manuscript and its secrets buried for centuries … An encrypted map that leads to incalculable wealth …) – but we all need a regular dose of roller coaster fiction, don’t we? Something you can enjoy and … that’s about it. No need to rethink your set of values, no need to consider a theme or point of view that the author presented and which you’ve never thought of before. Just pure, orgasmic reading.

This is going to be bliss. I’ll be expecting to buy these books within the next two months, if I can find copies at the (mostly small) bookstores I frequent. And when that happens I’ll probably disappear from the web, immersed in a world quite unlike our own.