Matthew Munson: Exploring authors and genres

Routine at Casa de Munson is back with a passion. Bryan is back to school, I’m working, and taking Bryan to his dance classes is a familiar sign once more. I’m writing this week’s column from the dance studios in Ramsgate – I recommend Masque Theatre School if your kids are interested in dancing – and I get a lot of pleasure knowing my lad is doing something he cares about.

I prefer quieter pursuits – writing, reading a book, watching the world go by – that allow me to express my inner introvert. But it’s good to be pushed out of my comfort zone, and talking to people is nice – well, for the most part – to have some human contact. I work from home, so talking to people while I wait for Bryan can be lovely.

I wanted to talk about favourite authors this week. I always encourage Bryan to read different genres, to find things he likes. When I did my A–Levels, I remember studying Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy and finding the text itself dull. That’s no comment on our teacher, who was both lovely and engaging, but the text just didn’t engage me. Hamlet, though – I thoroughly enjoyed it, and the Kenneth Branagh adaptation was fantastic (although, at four hours, it did require a meal break and a couple of loo stops).

I’m open to a lot of different styles of fiction. Neil Gaiman wrote The Graveyard Book, and it was converted into a graphic novel which I thoroughly loved. That introduced me into the world of graphic novels and, while I might not read very many of them, I found out that they could be cleverly written and engaging.

I’m generally a fan of science-fiction and fantasy novels – the story I’m writing at the moment is fantasy – but I’m also drawn to some mystery and murder books. If you’ve never read anything by Lisa Jewell, Jeffrey Deaver, or Karin Slaughter, then I urge you to tap into their back catalogues. Like many others, I was drawn into The Girl on the Train, Before I Go to Sleep, and Behind Her Eyes (if you want books with twists right at the end, then those are definitely for you).

But more than anything, I always go back to Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, and the like. As a teenager, I inhaled any Star Trek books I could get my hands on – I was a huge Trekkie, and probably still am (Bryan and I have made our way through almost every series of Trek we could find, minus a few episodes that were a little weak or badly reviewed) – and still have too much of an encyclopaedic memory when it comes to the starships Enterprise and Voyager, as well as the space station Deep Space Nine.

But Terry Pratchett is my own personal favourite. He died of complications due to Alzheimer’s Disease in 2015, and I remember being devastated by his death. I had never met him, and he didn’t know of me at all, but I still felt like I knew him, at least through his writing. Perhaps selfishly, I found myself thinking that he would never create anything again in his long-running Discworld series, in which the Discworld planet rotated on the backs of four elephants, who themselves were perched on the back of a giant tortoise. Yes, okay, it’s fantastical, but the stories Pratchett told on the Discworld were powerful and beautiful.

There were the stories around the City Guard, who were passionate about justice and fairness, and the witches, who fought against human evil and stupidity wherever they found it. Which, sadly, was round every corner. I found a wonderful quote about Pratchett’s work just the other day. I wish I knew who wrote it, but all I know is that it wasn’t me. “The important thing Terry Pratchett taught me was the concept of militant decency. The idea that you can look at the world and its flaws and its injustices and its cruelties and get deeply, intensely angry, and that you can turn that into energy for doing the right things and making the world a better place.”

I think that’s a brilliant idea. His books are imbued with deep levels of thought, intelligence, and emotion, and I’m thrilled I discovered them. Originally, I’d been shopping for a friend’s birthday, and found a copy of one of Pratchett’s early books – but I flicked open the first page, read the first paragraph, and ended up reading the entire thing. I can’t remember what I bought for my friend instead, but I kept the Pratchett book. Sorry, James, but needs must.