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Top 35 Books in 35 Years!

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It’s time for the final blog post of Lilliput’s Top 35 books in 35 Years! What are your favourite Lilliput books? As we wave goodbye to 2019, let’s celebrate our staff favourite Lilliput fiction books!

 

1. Portobello Notebook by Adrian Kenny

We love the cosy feel of this little gem of a book! This collection of stories is set in Portobello, on the edge of Dublin city centre, just inside the canal. The stories reflect on characters on the edge of life, personalities that do not quite fit in: Michael, the country boy who drowns himself; Harry, the old Jewish dealer living alone; Liam, the crude but jovial emigrant returning to Ireland for a visit. Curl up with this book for a refreshing read. Did we mention that for our #Lilliput35 celebrations this title is 20% off? 

 

2. This Tumult by Caroline Preston

An intense and inspiring read, this book will take you for a tumultuous ride! This Tumult is based on the author’s own family history, taking in the battlefields of Syria and Java, a farm in Australia, night sorties over Germany and France, Lincolnshire airfields and the horrors of a Japanese prison camp. It is a remarkable story of hardship, heroism, and extraordinary coincidence. 

 

3. With My Lazy Eye by Julia Kelly

There are only a few copies of this magnificent book left in the whole world! This remarkable first novel releases the voice of Lucy Bastonme (or Bunty) as she makes her journey through adolescence in 1980s Ireland. At its core With My Lazy Eye is an exploration of fatherly love in which the patriarch of a Dublin bourgeois Catholic household becomes ever more elusive and distant and his daughter ever more muddled, myopic and needy. This is a quirky, poignant coming-of-age story like no other.

 

4. The History of Magpies by Desmond Hogan

This book features twelve scintillating fresh tales by one of Ireland’s leading writers, who has extended and redefined the tradition of the Irish short story with inimitable verbal force. Embedded in Hogan’s uniquely glancing poetic style, they form capsule character studies and micro-histories of society’s underbelly, variously located in the streets and back alleys of Edinburgh, London, Zagreb, Cork, Dublin and beyond! Lilliput thinks this book is a collection of miniature masterpieces! 

5. Sins by Mary Telford and Louise Verity

Sins is one of Lilliput’s most unique publications. In this lavish, stunningly illustrated modern interpretation, the victims take revenge on their tormentors. The weak become strong and the powerful weak. The stories are humorous, violent and erotic; a celebration of the joy of sinning and of taking revenge. Each story, each sin, is different in setting, character, and mood. As recognized by BBC Radio: “Beautiful…and gripping… I started one and just had to keep reading” –Jumoke Fashola, BBC Radio London. 

 

This post concludes our Top 35 Books in 35 years listing! Here’s to many more years of great reads!