Showing posts with label holiday reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holiday reading. Show all posts
A Little Summer Reading List
Last summer I
did a post about books I’d already read that I thought would be fun to read on
the beach (you can read that here if you missed it then).
Well, it’s
summer again now, kind of – although it’s been ridiculously windy and glum
today but we’re just calling it a blip, the blue skies will return; I have
faith – and I’ve booked two trips this week, one with my BFF and one with My
Best Guy and it got me thinking as most things do, about books.
I’m not going
to throw a load of books off my shelf at you this time, because books are heavy
and they hurt, but instead we’ll chat about the new and forthcoming books this
summer that I think would make nice holiday reads (although this has got me
thinking about all the books I own and haven’t read and perhaps THAT could be a post also but I
digress…)
Summer lends
itself to a certain kind of read for me – I like a thriller in the summer more
than at any other time I think – give me some sunshine and a good psychological
mystery. I also feel like summer lends itself perfectly to romance or a good
coming of age story. And if it has a road trip theme then I am SO THERE. A
light easy read I can fly through and get lost in whilst I sip a gin and tonic.
That’s what I want from my summer reads; we’ll save the deeper stuff for when
the nights are drawing in, thank you.
So, if you want
to spend your hard-earned cash on shiny new releases this summer and are
looking for some pointers then these are the ones I have my eyes on.
Disclaimer: I haven’t
read a single one of these so if they don’t float your boat then I AM VERY
SORRY.
Post Holiday Catch-Up
It really doesn’t take long for a holiday to feel like a
lifetime ago, does it? Do you find that? That it takes less than a couple of
hours back at work before that lovely break feels like nothing but a distant memory.
It was such a nice
time though, just me, and my parents and The Sibling, and this lush holiday
cottage on the Anglesey coast. It started off
rainy and windy, which wasn’t the best, obvs, but we cooked yummy food in the
Aga and Mum and I curled up under patchwork quilts and read books.
And then,
like a holiday miracle, the sun appeared so there were lots of coastal paths
and skimming stones and lying on a blanket on the beach. There was seafood and
ice cream and peregrine falcons and puffins; there was gin and wine and yahtzee
and dominoes; there were art galleries and castles and bara brith and
Welshcakes and it was just a lovely chilled out kind of a week. It was weird at times, because we booked it
ages ago so obviously The Ex-Boyfriend was supposed to be there, but you know,
that particular wound is almost 4 months old now and for the most part I’ve
become pretty adept at ignoring it. I’m all about The Future now, whatever it
may look like.
I’m back in the office now for three days and then I’m off
again, catching a train in the general direction of Brighton.
Hurrah. Before then though, I want to
talk about my holiday reading, because it was pretty freaking excellent.
I took my Kindle, because why would I not? Holiday
reading is pretty much the reason I got a Kindle in the first place. I read so much more when I’m on holiday, and books as much as I
adore them, they weigh a lot. A LOT. My Kindle
weighs nothing and it means I don’t need to even decide what books to take away
if I don’t want to. I did, this time, I
had a full holiday reading list, but all of those
books were in just the one place and it made life so much easier. Also, I love
it, I am an unashamed lover of my old school Kindle keyboard. It’s on its last
legs I think with weird black lines appearing at random. When it finally gives
up the ghost imma be reals sad.
Anyway, I started my holiday reading off with Matthew Quick’s
The Good Luck of Right Now which is
just, it’s really lovely. Matthew Quick is a really lovely writer I think. I
remember thinking exactly the same after I finished reading Silver Linings, that there’s something about his writing
that’s just really lovely. He has this way of taking these fragile characters,
these people that are just a little bit different and planting them firmly in
your heart. It was a lovely read, lovely
and quirky and all I hoped it would be. This story of this man in his late 30’s
who’s never had a girlfriend – never had a friend even –
never known anything other than his Mum and is left floundering after she
passes away is absolutely gorgeous in its simplicity. Its all t
And then I read Uprooted. Which.
Holy excellent book, batman.
This book this book this BOOK. I could not put it down. When
I had to every part of my being was itching to be reunited with it again to the
point that Mum and I curled up on the sofa one night to watch Death in Paradise and I couldn’t concentrate because all I could
think about was the Dragon.
It's so good.
It's a thousand times better than I was expecting.
It's so good.
There’s so much I want to say, so much I could say about
ideas and themes and parallels but SPOILERS. I went into this pretty much
unspoiled, with back cover knowledge only and I don't want to take that away so
I'll avoid all that but read it and come back to me and then we'll talk.
I can say that
was captivated from the first page by this, a real Grimm-esque fairytale; not
the kind that promises happily ever after but that kind that makes you afraid
to stay up past your bedtime. It gave me goosebumps, it made my heart race
(from in my mouth because that's where my heart was for the most part: IN MY
MOUTH) and it had me holding my breath because there was no guarantee here that
anything was going to turn out well. & I loved that because that's kind of
where I'm at right now you know? I mean, clearly my world is one without
malevolent woods and wizards taking girls from their homes and old forgotten
spell books but it is one without
any guarantees.
This is a story about people, about magic, about how good
doesn't always triumph over evil and even if it does it's rarely a battle
easily won. Which you know, relevant. The story is fast paced and detailed and
fascinating and the characters are freaking awesome: whether you like them (Nieshka)
or not (Solya) you like reading them.
And there's a love story and it's fabulous but it's also
secondary, which again I loved; I loved that this book had a love story but wasn't a love story, that Nieshka is so
much more than that kind of heroine.
TL;DR: EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THIS BOOK.
After Uprooted I read
Lisa Heathfield’s Seed, which, well I’m still not
entirely sure what to say about it really. It made me feel all the things. But
not good things. Not because the book wasn’t good, in fact the fact that it
made me feel so many things is a mark in its favour, its just, it made me super
uneasy.
It’s about a 15 year old girl who’s grown up in a nature
loving quilt, dominated over by this (awful) guy they call Papa S. Pearl loves
her community, because she was born into it, she’s never known anything else
and it doesn’t enter her head to ask questions. & then a new family
arrives, from the Outside, with a boy Pearl’s
age called Ellis. Ellis, obviously, knows that things aren’t right at Seed, and
even though Pearl tries to stay away from him, she can’t help but be drawn to
him, and when she realises she can’t actually answer any of his questions, it
all becomes super complicated.
It just, it made me angry. The
whole isolated community that Pearl lives in,
that she trusts in so completely and that’s all built on lies, it made me
angry. Papa S gave me the creeps and the whole thing with Pearl
wanting to be chosen as his next ‘companion’ made my skin crawl. It’s not an
easy book this one, and it doesn’t shy away from its heavy themes – cultism is
hard to read about and what is essentially child abse even harder: some of the
scenes, particularly between manipulative Papa S and blindly accepting Pearl
were fairly enough to make my chest tight and my blood boil but at the same
time they kind of worked. This book would not have been anywhere near as
engaging if it didn’t pull the punches like it did. It was well written, the
pacing was good, the characterisation excellent, and the building of tension
tight enough to build this feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach because seriously,
I could not see how this was ever going to end any kind of well.
I read the last word feeling as angry and as frustrated as I
had in the beginning. Make of that what you will (I gave it 4 stars, if you
wondered.)
There are rumours about Heathfield writing a sequel although
it all seems a little ‘will she, won’t she’ at the moment. I hope there is. I
hope there is because I’ve really come to care about Pearl. I want to know where she’s going to go
from that heart-stopping breathtaking ending.
Then, I headed down the road of The Thriller with Clare
Mackintosh’s I Let You Go. I liked it. I liked
it most of all because I got halfway through and was all smug and ‘I know
exactly where this is going’ AND THEN WAS THE WRONGEST PERSON TO EVER BE WRONG.
& I love it when that happens. I love that unpredictability, the way it
feels when I know where something is going to be totally blindsided. A 5 year
old boy is killed in a hit and run, right before his mother’s eyes. This is
part Jenna’s story because how do you come to terms with witnessing something
like that, and part police procedural (and I love me a police procedural) about
the hunt to catch the driver who was callous enough to kill a 5 year old boy
and drive away. And that’s all I’m going to tell you, other than it’s totally
worth a read this one. If only for the pulling away of that rug.
Right now I’m about ¾ of the way through Prisoner of Night and Fog which started off slowly but seems
to be picking up now. S’good.
Holiday Reading Plans
Holy smokes
it’s been quiet round these parts has it not?! What’s that about. I blame
myself, because it’s my blog and who else is there to even blame? (I also blame
The Boy a little bit because it’s hard to blog about books when you’re finding
it rather hard to read them. I WANT
MY READING MOJO
BACK.)
I’m actually
reading Kirsty Logan’s stunning novel The
Gracekeepers at the moment, which, well. I love it. I love it in that kind
of way where I’m trying to drag it out and not finish it because then it will
be over and I will be sad. It’s so many different kinds of amazing, you don’t even
know. Keep your eyes peeled actually for a proper review of that, which I shall
endeavour to post next week from my lovely cottage by the sea, providing that
the coastal WiFi isn’t too sketchy.
Yep, I’m
going on holiday. Me, my bro and our parents are taking ourselves off to
Anglesey (North Wales) for a week in what
seems like it might be a recreation of all our childhood holidays. It was Dad’s
70th in May, and Mum will be 60 in July and what better way for them
to celebrate than with their offspring. I’m just, I’m so ready for a week away
from work and away from my life and a week of wine and coastal footpaths and a
cottage with an Aga. AN AGA. God, just take me there already. Drew (the
brother) and I are travelling down together which will be awesome. I’ve put him
in charge of the road trip playlist because left up to me we’d just listen to
Taylor Swift the whole drive and I feel like perhaps he wouldn’t be cool with
that. Or maybe he would. He surprises me quite often with his musical tastes my
baby brother. I say ‘baby’, he’s actually 27 and 6ft a million and awesome. These are our faces.
So, a week
away from work means ALL THE READING. I hope, I hope that’s what it means, and I already have my holiday reading
list planned which I'ma totally tell you aaaalll about because I'm nice like that.
First up, The Good Luck of Right Now which is by Matthew Quick of Silver Linings Playbook fame. S'about about
a man trying to find his place after losing his Mum and it sounds beautiful. I
loved Silver Linings and I’ve been
really wanting to read more of Quick’s work so I’m looking forward to this
Uprooted is by Naomi Novik, it was released
last week and it sounds wonderful; it’s all about a world where a village
borders a wood full of evil powers, and as such the people rely on The Dragon to keep
the wood under control. Every ten years a woman from the village is sent to serve
The Dragon, as payment for his help. The next choosing is approaching and our
heroine Agnieszka is terrified that The Dragon will take her bestest friend….its
had awesome reviews and I am super super excited about it.
Seed is a YA book all about life within a
cult and I read that it’s reminiscent of Handmaid’s
which, well I’m trying not to think about that too much because otherwise my
expectations will be unfairly high, but it’s about Pearl who has grown up
within a nature-worshipping community, and how her life changes with the
arrival of outsiders.
I Let You Go is on the list because every holiday
needs a thriller, right? And this one has had folks saying all the good things
The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North was released on May 19th
and it’s the story of an enigmatic film director as told by the people that
loved her the most. I think it sounds super excellent
Prisoner of Night and Fog has been on my TBR for a while and I
have a review copy if the sequel which I think gives me the perfect excuse to
bump this one up to the top of the pile. It’s set in Nazi Germany, which yes, I
know, call me predictable but it’s from a different side: Gretchen is swept up
in the excitement of 1930’s Munich, she’s embraced the life that her father
died to give her – he was a senior Nazi officer and he died to save the life of
Hitler, which, awesome. Not. BUT THEN Gretchen
gets an anonymous letter and it causes her to question everything and why has it taken me so long to read this
book?? Yep, looking forward to that one.
The Book of Speculation is due for release towards the end
of June if you want to pre-order. You probably do want to pre-order because it sounds
so freaking good. It’s about carnivals and mysterious books and travelling
circuses; about dead parents and doomed love stories and a family history that
seems to follow a tragic pattern – death by drowning and always on 24th
July and it just sounds so good. So
much better than I am making it sound here I know.
Quality of Silence is the new book from Rosamund Lupton
and I am practically giddy with excitement
about it. PRACTICALLY GIDDY. I loved Sister
so damn hard (I liked Afterwards a
little less) and this one sounds like it could be amazing. It’s about Yasmin
and her deaf daughter and their travels across Alaska looking for Ruby’s father, driving
deeper into a frozen silent world where as the blurb tells you, the night will
last for another 54 days and someone is watching them in the dark. Yep. GIDDY
WITH EXCITEMENT.
Fingers
crossed I manage to read ALL OF THEM, because that’s what I want to do, I want
to sit on the decking with a glass of wine and some crisps and look out to sea
and read. Two more sleeps.
