Thursday again. Where do the weeks go? I guess this one
seems shorter because I was travelling on Monday. I spent the weekend in Lewes
with my pal Emma. There was baking and eating and walking and Netflix and it
was generally just a really lovely time. It also means that this week is only a
4 day working week. Hurrah.
This week I’m throwing back Thursday in a different way,
because we’re halfway through the year, so I’m going to talk at you about my
Top 5 of 2015…so far! This year has been super actually from a bookish point of
view, because I’ve read stuff I might not normally have picked up and pretty
much all of it has been excellent.
There’s still some crazy exciting looking stuff on my TBR
for the back end of the year too so as ever it will be interesting to see how
many of these 5 books still make the cut at Christmas.
Naomi Novik’s Uprooted is a
book I discovered via Netgalley, and that I was drawn to by the cover. I
totally judge books by their covers, I’m not even ashamed to say it. Cover art
is so amazing these days, how could you not? Anyway, I read it and loved it and
have m own shiny bought-and-paid-for copy on its way to me because as marv as
these e-ARCs are, I kind of feel like when I love a book, I ought to show that
love by you know, buying it. So I did. Uprooted is
amazing. It’s about this little village on the edge of an evil forest. The
villagers are protected from the ways of the wicked woods by The Dragon who
lives in a tower and who every ten years takes a girl from the forest to live
with him as payment for his service. It’s amazing. Did I say that already? Italk about it in more detail here.
I cannot tell you enough times how much I loved The Gracekeepers. I already reviewed it, but, seriously: this book ticked all the boxes for me. It has it all. It’s just incredible
and I love it and I wanted to read it forever and I swear to you if you are not
reading this book then you are doing life wrong. It’s sort of part fairytale and
part dystopia and completely utterly glorious.
Last Night in Montreal is a book I
probably wouldn’t have read (yet) because let’s be honest, when you hear Emily
St. John Mandel you think Station Eleven.
Everybody has been all about Station Eleven for
ages and I really really want to read it but I was
sent a copy of Last Night in Montreal around
about the time of the UK
publication earlier this year and figured it was probably polite to read that
one first. I’m so glad I did, because eurgh, so good.
So very very good. It’s about this girl called Lilia who has spent her entire
life leaving her life and the people in it, behind, never looking back. When
she leaves her latest lover, he’s not quite so cool with it, and he follows a
trail of breadcrumbs to find her only to discover there’s so much more to Lilias
story than he ever thought. It’s so beautifully written and so intricate and
there are all these threads to the story that weave together perfectly and it’s
just a stunning piece of writing, and I talk more about why I love it so much in this post.
I talk all about Sarah Pinborough’s The DeathHouse here, but I’ll just tell you quickly again now that this book
blew me away. It got right under my skin and broke my heart and just made me
feel all the things and I absolutely loved it. Loved it.
And finally we come to The Girl WhoCircumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making which, well, I
don’t really know what to say. I’m planning a proper post about the Fairyland books at some point, but basically: every person
ever needs to read these books. This is the first in the series and holy smokes
it’s been a long time since I fell in blooklove like
this. Jen pointed me in their direction, I say pointed; it was more on a very
insistent demand that I read them. Which I did, because Jen has yet to rec me a
book I didn’t love, and I fell. I’m talking Alice levels of
love here, I’m talking his Dark Materials,
I’m talking Harry Potter. That’s how much I loved
it. It’s amazing.
It’s all about twelve year old September who meets The Green
Wind at her window one day and is taken on an adventure to Fairyland. Fairyland
is being ruled by the fickle and mean Marquess and only September with her
friends, A-through-L, the Wyvery (his Mum is a wyvern; his father is the
library) and a wonderful mysterious boy by the name of Saturday, can save it.
The story is clever and moving and funny and playful; the
language is all kinds of incredible, smart and pretty and whimsical; the
characters are characters you want to put in your pocket and keep there forever(
SATURDAY!!!!); and the illustrations, I WANT THEM ON MY WALL. There is so much
going on in this world and it feels like a modern day Wonderland. This book, I swear.
It’s like if Through the Looking Glass and His Dark Materials had beautiful perfect babies (and then
read book 2, read book 2 and we’ll talk about Coraline).
I can’t wait
til I have children and I can read them this book. It deserves all the
accolades. It deserves to be on every bookshelf ever. It’s so amazing it makes me want to cry tears
of happy.
