Krazykiwi @ Kiwitopia

http://krazykiwi.booklikes.com/post/717271/30-day-challenge-playlist

Day 3: Book you Like/Dislike that's well known (Pop)

Oh that's easy. Outlander. Didn't like it the first time I picked it up, didn't like it the second time when people tried to persuade me "Oh just give it another shot". Don't like the MC, I think she's annoying as all get out. I really can't find a single redeeming feature about this book. And yet it's huge, and well loved by many. Let them have it, I say.

Day 4: Book that is your "Best Kept Secret" (Indie)

I'm glad this doesn't have to actually be an indie book, because this one isn't. But I have a deep and abiding love for Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. It's a fairytale, an urban fantasy, magical realism and literary novel all wrapped up. Before we had a name for such things, it's so SO beautifully written. It is my chicken soup, warm pyjamas book, I can open it up almost anywhere and feel totally at home. A battered paperback of this followed me through I don't know how many moves and 5 countries, before it finally disintegrated, so I used it's pages to decoupage a coffee table :)

It's one of those books that has a plot, but it doesn't seem to matter much. Because my love for this one is all about the writing. I wish wish wish I could write like this, I really do. 

Also, I have to put in a plug for John Crowley's Little, Big - because they are both big sprawling epic fairy tales about New York, albeit two very different New Yorks, but I can't seem to think of them separately, thinking about one always leads me to the other. And people who like Little, Big, tend to like Winter's Tale, and to be fair, a lot of people can't stand either of them and just don't get it at all, sort of like me with Outlander.

But that's OK, because I love them both big enough for all of you.