If you could have written it.

I thought I’d start things off with an unreal hypothetical – If you could have written one book, what would it be? It’s a rare but wonderful experience to read a book and find oneself pleasantly jealous of the writer. Either they are doing something that you can’t or would never think of, or they are doing something that you’re doing but they are doing it better.

So let’s play “what if?” And to make a little more interesting let’s take the obvious big guns off the table. No Steinbeck, no Ellison, no Tolkien, etc. Pick someone not yet canonized.

I’ll start. My pick is Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. Kay’s writing is often excellent, but it’s his scene-craft in this novel that impresses me most. I picked this book up on a whim over twenty years ago and there are scenes that have stayed with me all this time. Just beautiful scenes so vividly rendered that I remember them as clearly as any film. I have a particular affection for high fantasy – an affection that often goes unrequited, but in this case Tigana bought me dinner and stayed to make me breakfast in the morning.

So, what’s your book?