Writers Reading - Jon Mayhew

Writers reading is a new regular feature on Un:Bound running anything from once a month to once a week. It allows us to have a poke around in authors bookshelves to see what they relax with when they are not busy writing things we can fill our own shelves with. It's proving a popular feature which proves what we already suspected, we all like to check out other people's bookshelves.

Jon Mayhew is writing three linked but separate novels, starting with the completely gorgeous Mortlock which we recently posted the trailer of and a review for. Mortlock is spooky and quite dark , but Jon is lovely and has let us in to nose around his bookshelves. Don't forget you can click the pics for a better look.

I decided to take six photographs and add brief comments. The clutter, the random placing of books, the titles and authors speak for themselves.

Writers who inspired me. Pullman, Kate Thompson and Eoin Colfer. You can just see the red spine of a copy of Uncle by JP Martin. Fantastic books illustrated by Quentin Blake and quite hard to come by in the UK now.
Bit of Neil Gaiman thing going on there…

A couple of Angie Sage.

Haven’t read Pain Merchants yet but can’t wait!
This is my little fetish shelf of signed books. I love getting books signed by real authors too! You’ll notice Caroline Smailes there, prolific blogger and good friend who has helped me (and continues to help me) with my writing career.A couple of Chris Priestley’s, ace books and a real gent. Season of Secrets is my kind of book, a bit like Skellig, modern day life woven around myth and tradition. Flawed dogs was a free arc and I don’t know where Under an English heaven came from! Does that happen to you?

I confess to buying ‘how to’ books. They are my equivalent of the exercise bike sitting covered in dust or half worn clothes in the corner of the room. I have read Stephen King and How to Write a Blockbuster (God Bless Cornerstones!). London the Biography I stole from my sister and she’s never getting it back, great for research.Up at the top, out of the sunlight, sit my preciousesssssss! Old, old Arthur Rackham books saved from philistines who would chop them up to frame the plates. Beautiful!

Oh, what’s that? Nestling on another shelf with yet more copies of His Dark Materials? Why tis a copy of Mortlock which you can cheerfully order from Amazon or buy in April from all good bookshops, the more independent, the better!