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.

Quick Quick Catch Up

People of the blogosphere, dance with me: it’s pumpkin spice season. Or autumn, we could just call it autumn if you’d like. Either way, it is the season of joy and delight. The season of the Pumpkin Spice Latte (Starbucks I love you *other coffee shops are available) and leaves underfoot; of conkers and so many colours; of fingerless gloves and woolly jumpers and delightfulness. The colours of autumn though, are they not just lush!? Last October my pal and I walked through St James’s park and the colours were so stunning they took my breath away a little bit. I went a bit snap happy because I am totally girl of the instagram generation, today (for work related purposes I hasten to add) I photographed my socks. Anyhow. That’s another story.

Autumn is my favourite I think, partly because of the PSL which may well be the most delicious coffee related beverage in the history of time. There’s a pumpkin spice Bailey’s this year, did you know? DID YOU KNOW? Oh, but I am excited to get my little hands on a bottle of that. I also love autumn because it’s perfect for reading. The nights start to draw in and you find that you feel deliciously melancholy somehow and so you (and by ‘you’ I obviously mean ‘I’ and I am so sorry for projecting) feel less guilty for curling up under a blanket and shutting the world away. A blanket, a cozy spot, a cup of coffee and a good book. Is there a pleasure in the world that is equal to that? NO THERE IS NOT. It’s totes a cliché, but it’s a freaking excellent cliché and I am all over it. LET ME BE THE GIRL IN THE OVERSIXED JUMPER WITH THE AUSTEN NOVEL PLEASE.

& so because it’s autumn and it’s a time for reading and because I have been awfully lax of late (my last post was in June and I hate myself a little bit for that) here are some books I’ve read recently that I feel like should be on reading lists everywhere right now, along with some exciting looking autumnal releases.

What have I been reading, then; what do I think you should all read now that it’s September?

The Ship by Antonia Honeywell is a book I was super excited about because when it was released last year it was everywhere and I was hearing All The Good Things. All of them.  & I liked it. It starts of in dystopian London (I love me a good dystopia. Everybody knows it) where everything is bad: Oxford Street burned for week, people are homeless and desperate and squatting in the British Museum and not having an identity card doesn’t only mean you don’t exist, it means you’ll be shot. Lalla is 16, her dad is a (really creepy) visionary and thanks to him she gains passage on The Ship which is kind of like Noah’s Ark for humans – 500 humans, one ship and no talk – ever- of a destination and nobody seems to think that’s weird, except Lalla. It’s good, and interesting and a pretty unique twist on the whole dystopia thing. I liked it. It’s also a pretty cool coming of age story and you cannot get enough of those am I right? I’m right. Anyway, it’s worth a read.

Robin Wasserman’s Girls on Fire is good. It paints a terrifyingly accurate picture of how crazy and passionate and intense female friendship can be. It’s like, imagine your late teen self (some of us have to imagine that ok, for some of us it was a while ago) and then exaggerate it by some and you have Hannah and Dex and even though it’s really extreme you kind of relate to it because it can be like that, female friendship more potent and intense and under-your-skin emotional than any romance and this book gets that. It’s also super pretty, which, I am always all about the pretty words, and mindblowingly observant, there’s ordinary and also extraordinary all tangled up as one and the same and ain;t that just how life goes sometimes? And it’s set in the nineties. THE NINETIES.  Fascinating, gripping, different. It’s messed up and it’s addictive and full of fucked up characters and destructive relationships and completely unreliable narrators. All those excellent things.

I read Sarah Pinborough’s The Death House last year and adored it so I was ridic excited when I saw she’d got a new book out there: Thirteen Minutes. Totally different to The Death House but still quite, quite excellent. AND SO DAMN CLEVER. So clever. Natasha is pulled from a freezing river. She was dead for thirteen minutes. She has no idea how she got there, what happened or why but the more she tries to figure it out the more it looks like perhaps somebody tried to kill her, and perhaps that somebody is a person she loves. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer and all that, but what if you can’t tell them apart? Reading this made me question why I don’t read more psychological thrillers because I do love them so.

You should also look at Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours which I read last week and plan to come back and review properly because I have feelings. It freaked me out.

As far as new (and upcoming) releases go I feel like you should keep an eye out for these babies. I haven’t read any of them, yet (although Today Will Be Different is next on my list) but I want to, because they all sound marvellous.

Today Will Be Different – Maria Semple who wrote Where’d You Go, Bernadette (which I haven’t read but feel like I should) is about a day in the life of one woman, about tackling the little things, and about life often gets in the way of doing just that.

Holding Up the Universe from Jennifer Niven who wrote All the Bright Places because would I be me if I didn’t hit you with a YA rec? It sounds a little Eleanor & Park.

Here I Am, the new novel from Jonathan Safran Foer sounds interesting and relevant and rather excellent and I really liked Extremely Loud so you know, fingers crossed.

The Wonder is the latest from Emma Donoghue which I shall likely read even though I am mad at her because I watched Room recently and my heart broke a little bit.

Ali Smith’s Autumn because hello, it’s called Autumn.

And, GARY OLDMAN and Douglas Urbanski’s BloodRiders. GARY OLDMAN. COWBOYS. VAMPIRES. VAMPIRE COWBOYS. Do I need to say more. It will either be incredible or awful. Or incredibly awful. Frankly, I don’t even care.

So there you have it. I’m back, I think. I have Only Ever Yours to talk about, and I’ve been trying to get my thoughts about The Cursed Child in order for weeks so expect to see me talking about that at some point and I’m reading the new Chris Cleave right now (and I love it, don’t wait for my review: read it now) and my BFF’s baby is one now and is making me want to talk about picture books so that might be a thing and I feel like I might be back to having Things To Say. Hurrahs.

Exciting June Releases

Let’s keep this short and sweet for once shall we, because I am on holiday and I want to be playing card games and eating pistachio nuts. However, the fact that I am on holiday doesn’t make me any less excited about all things bookish, so, quickly, because the sea is calling to me, have a few books I’m looking forward to being released in June.

A Year of Marvellous Ways – Sarah Winman (June 18^th from Tinder Press) is from the author who gave us When God Was A Rabbit and it’s about an old lady who spends her days looking out to sea through a telescope, waiting for something she can’t quite place, and a soldier called Drake who washes up on the shore before her. It’s also about sloe gin which you may or may not know is my most favourite thing to drink.

Church of Marvels – Leslie Parry (June 4^th from Two Roads) sounds like it will be glorious. It’s set in New York in the 1890’s and moves from a Coney Island sideshow to am asylum in the Lower East Side and I have been looking forward to it since Jen made me aware of its existence a few weeks ago. Gimme all the circus books please.

A Theory of Expanded Love -  Caitlin Hicks (June 4^th from Light Messages Publishing) is about a girl growing up in a devout Catholic family in 1960’s America. It sounds like it might make me grin and it sounds like it might make me think a little too. I like that in a book.

The Book of Speculation ­– Erika Swyler (June 24^th from St. Martin’s Press) sounds so amazing. Honestly, this book ticks all my boxes. It’s about a young librarian called Simon who receives an old book anonymously in the post that somehow links to his past, to his missing sister, to why the women in his family always seem to drown on the same date. It sounds like this will be a book about books and mysteries and lost circuses and carnivals and curses and it sounds amazing. I’m so excited about it.

Upstairs at the Party – Linda Grant (June 25^th from Virago) sounds funny and moving and clever and really excellent. It’s been likened to A Visit from the Goon Squad which I really enjoyed, so yeah for that!

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend ­– Katarina Bivald (June 18^th from Vintage) sounds like fun, and like a book about books and a book about people and I think a bit of me is hoping it’s going to be like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. We’ll see. I’m looking forward to it anyway.

An Ember in the Ashes -  Sabaa Tahir (June 4^th from Harper Voyager) which I heard about on Twitter where Sarah Pinborough described it as water on the dry parts of your soul and why would I need to know more than that? I don’t need to know more than that. I shall purchase this book on that very recommendation

Aussi, The Bone Clocks is out in paperback on June 18^t so there’s that, too. I’m really looking forward to finally reading this. I held off last year because you know, hardbacks heavy etcetera. Now though, now there will be no stopping me. I might even read Cloud Atlas again too. And then watch the film. And then be all ready for David’s new book. Hurrah hurrah and thrice hurrah.

Anyhoo, bye for now blogosophere. I am away to talk my brother into a game of 'fish' <3 span="">

Exciting March Releases

I'm posting this from my phone as I am currently in a fight with both Firefox, my browser of choice, and IE which I hate and which won't load anything ever. The Internet and I are not friends right now. So, if there's dodgy formatting or whatever, I'm reals sorry. Also there's no pretty pics in this post as that is way beyond my capabilities and there might be the odd dogy autocorrect - I can spell really. Mebbes I'll come and pretty this up later. We'll see.

So, I have a lot of blogging to do over the next few days. I feel like I should apologise for any kind of blog-post-overload that may happen, so in advance, if you feel like I am spamming you with book talk this week, I really am sorry.

Right now, I want to share with you some of the books I’m excited for in March (how is it March already. Golly!) most notably of all the new Ishiguro. 

You have no idea how excited I am about The Buried Giant. Me and the rest of the world I think, if Twitter and the blogosphere are anything to go by. There’s a lot of Kazuo Ishiguro talk all over the place right now because release day is TOMORROW. I’m so excited and a little nervous and so excited. It’s Ishiguro’s first novel for lots of years and it sounds excellent: it’s set in the Middle Ages and there’s talk of dragons and ogres and a quest and I cannot wait to get my hands on it. I loved Never Let Me Go, as in, it’s one of my favourite books of all time levels of love. I pretty much shoved that book down the throats of everyone I knew when I first read it, I was kind of forceful in my ‘you have to read this’ and I know that The Buried Giant isn’t going to be like Never Let Me Go, just like it’s not going to be like The Remains of the Day, and just like it’s not going to be like When We Were Orphans, but I’m kind of spiralling anyway, because Ishiguro man, Ishiguro.

In addition to The Buried Giant, I’m also quite excited about this little lot:

The Walls Around Us by Nova Sen Ruma will be released on the 24^th – from Goodreads:

The A to Z of You and Me by James Hannah sounds lovely. And like it’s probably going to hurt a whole lot, in a way not dissimilar to the way Queenie hurt. Ivo’s in a hospice.  To keep him occupied his dedicated nurse suggests a game: Ivo has to list his body parts alphabetically and associate a memory with each one, which in turn unravels the story of Ivo’s life. It hurts already. I’ve heard good things about this one, and I’m really looking forward to giving it a go. It’s out on March 12^th.

HausFrau ­– Jill Alexander Essbaum (March 26^th) is a spectacularly pretty book. Seriously, I am in love with this cover. It sounds like something a little bit different too, which I am all about this year. My horizons, I am expanding them. HausFrau tells the story of an American expat, living in Switzerland with her husband, she’s fairly unhappy with her life there, adrift from her husband, her children, the people who try to be her friends and she finds herself engaging in a string of affairs. A modern day Madame Bovary is what I’m hearing; a strangely hypnotic, and remarkably captivating portrait of a woman on the edge. It just sounds really…interesting. I’m interested. 

Emily St John Mandel who wrote Station Eleven which I bought last month has her back catalogue released in the UK this month. The Lola Quartet, The Singer’s Gun and Last Night in Montreal. They all sound really good, and, if Station Eleven is as good as I’ve heard it is, I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting my hands on these lovelies as soon as I possibly can. They look pretty too, which always helps.

A while ago I read the first three books in The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger. They were fun books, kind of like The Vampire Diaries in Victorian times. WHAT IS NOT TO LIKE. Anyway, Gail Carriger has a new series: The Custard Protocol, the first book of which (Prudence) is released on March 19^th. It’s set in the same world as Parasol – hurrah – and it sounds like fun times: I cannot wait. & I should probably read books 4 and 5 of Parasol in preparation. They’re on my Kindle after all.

Exciting February Releases

I wanted to post this last week but alas I was on a mountain and could not. That means some of the books I am super excited about this month have already been released, but you'll forgive me, right? I mean it doesn't really matter. There's some gems in here too; February, the month of ski holidays and Valentine’s looks like A Good Book Month. Depending on your view point this is either a good or bad thing as my January book ban has been lifted and I can now buy ALL THE BOOKS. All the boooooooks. Yep, my book haul for February is gonna be a big one.

So, what do we have. What's being released this month that's made its way onto my radar?

I love Anne Tyler. I've loved her since I read A Slipping Down Life when I was fifteen (which is still my fave a whole lifetime later…) Anne Tyler's like the apple crumble of authors you know? Delicious and familiar and comforting and I really can't wait for this. I don’t have to either: it’s out tomorrow.

I have a bit of an author!crush on Neil Gaiman. I don't know if that's because of his hair or his writing. Mebbes it's both. Either way I am super excited for Trigger Warning which sounds like a short story collection of delightfulness and which I want. I love everything of Neil's that I've read so far, especially ESPECIALLY Stardust and Neverwhere and The Graveyard Book (still love Silas so hard) and I really really want to read this. Trigger Warning was released on the 3^rd. If you already have your copy then let me know what you think!

Everyone knows about Lemony Snicket, right? And I'm working my way through those books and I think they're ok. They haven't rocked my world thus far but I like them. Why'm I so excited about We Are Pirates! then?  Because you know what, if you haven't read Handler’s Adverbs then you're doing life wrong. Seriously. It's so amazing. So SO amazing and....and actually, I'ma talk about it on Thursday so just come back then, please?

As for this. God it sounds equally amazing.

[We Are Pirates! is a novel about our desperate searches for happiness and freedom, about our wild journeys beyond the boundaries of our ordinary lives.
Also, it's about a teenage girl who pulls together a ragtag crew to commit mayhem in the San Francisco Bay, while her hapless father tries to get her home] 

I did a small dance at my desk when I first read the blurb because it sounds delightful and it has pirates which always says to me Captain Jack Sparrow and I'll be buying this as soon as it's released which is on Thursday actually. Hurrah. 

Touch is really really good, it’s released on the 26^th  and I will be reviewing it here on Friday so make sure to come back then for a sneaky read, til then though, if you want a reason to get excited about it: the first word is Josephine. Clearly this is excellent.

Holy Cow - David Duchovny which I read last week and talk about here and which, look I'm not going to lie, this book is really fucking weird. But it's also funny and sentimental and well worth a look. It was released on the 3^rd. Just you know, be prepared for the weird okay?

I'm reading this now and so far I love it. It kind of feels kind of like Eleanor and Park and also kind of like The Craft (anyone else remember that film? I loved that film) and also kind of like nothing I've ever read before and it's so cool, so cool it kind of makes me want to be it. It’s about this girl called Meche, and tells her story as a teenager in the 80’s in Mexico, where she was friends with a couple of misfits and her Dad was her hero and she thought she’d found some kind of magic in music – with old vinyl records as objects with enough power to bring down high school bullies and a Grimoire written in a notebook - and her story in the present day, coming back to Mexico from Oslo to bury her now estranged Father and desperately opposed to seeing any of her old pals. The two stories are woven together, the then and the now, and the story is so interesting and well thought out and I really really like it – so far at least. Release day is Thursday so again, not long to wait.

"Toby's life was perfectly normal . . . until it was unravelled by something as simple as a blood test.

Taken from his family, Toby now lives in the Death House; an out-of-time existence far from the modern world, where he, and the others who live there, are studied by Matron and her team of nurses. They're looking for any sign of sickness. Any sign of their wards changing. Any sign that it's time to take them to the sanatorium.

No one returns from the sanatorium."

How good does that sound though? I know: really freaking good. Bleak but compulsive. Tfios for the dystopian fan. That's how it's been described and seriously, has this book been written for me? This is the book I am reading next because I cannot wait. It’s released on the 26th and  if it’s as good as I want it to be you shall likely need to drop all things to read it.

Another book released on the 26^th and THIS SOUNDS SO GOOD. Here, have the blurb:

When Zach and I were born our parents must have counted and recounted: limbs, fingers, toes. The complete set. They would have been disbelieving – nobody dodged the split between Alpha and Omega.

Nobody.

Born as twins. Raised as enemies.

One strong Alpha twin and one mutated Omega; the only thing they share is the moment of their death.

The Omegas live in segregation, cast out by their families as soon as their mutation becomes clear. Forced to live apart, they are ruthlessly oppressed by their Alpha counterparts.

The Alphas are the elite. Once their weaker twin has been cast aside, they’re free to live in privilege and safety, their Omega twin far from their thoughts.

Cass and Zach are both perfect on the outside: no missing limbs, no visible Omega mutation. But Cass has a secret: one that Zach will stop at nothing to expose.

The potential to change the world lies in both their hands. One will have to defeat the other to see their vision of the future come to pass, but if they’re not careful both will die in the struggle for power.

Yes. This is a thing that appeals to me.
 

 I've heard whispers of this book here and there and Jen talks about it on her most anticipated books of 2015 video. It feels like Snow White with a twist. I'm excited to see how it's going to pan out. It's "a fairytale more Grimm than Disney" and it was released on the 5th so have at it! I’m going to download this on payday (because sadly I do not have the space to own physical copies of all the books I want to read) and I’m really looking forward to it.

The Christmas Book Pile and Exciting January Releases

You know what I never blogged about? My Christmas book pile. The Christmas book pile has been a thing my whole life, like, actually. My parents have always always given me a book parcel for Christmas, made up of books I want to read and books they think I should read and books with pretty covers that my Mum just couldn’t leave on the shelf. It’s pretty much the best bit about Christmas Day, the familiar weight of a present that can only contain books and wondering what’s in it. I generally get a book or two from other folk too – my Granny for instance who introduced me to Muriel Spark the Christmas before last, or the time Ian’s parents bought me the new editions of Harry Potter in a pretty boxed set. There are always books on Christmas Day, and Christmas 2014 my book haul looked like this:

There’s the Bill Bryson on top, (from Sarah, for my book challenge) which I have very nearly finished and will be coming back to talk about very soon so WATCH THIS SPACE, along with three other lovelies:

The Secret History which I am super excited about because I am terribly late to that particular party. God. I actually wonder if I am the only person left in the reading world who hasn’t read this book. I’ve heard so much about it and pretty much all of it has been excellent and now I can find out for myself. Hurrah. Here’s hoping it lives up to the hype, then.

Margaret Drabble’s The Pure Gold Baby, which I know little about actually, but Margaret Drabble is one of my Granny’s faves and we have remarkably similar bookish tastes so you know, I’m sure I’ll love it. I’d been looking at it actually just before Christmas which makes me wonder if Mum was secretly book-stalking me, or whether Granny said ‘buy this for Josephine…’

Andandand the disreputable history of frankie landau-banks which I totally did a happy dance about right there in Mum’s living room on Christmas Day because I capital letter LOVED we were liars last year and I super duper wanted this and THERE IT IS. Hurrah. There you have it. It was rather a Merry bookish Christmas and they've all been added to the towering TBR pile. Whoops.

You want to know another thing?

I’m a teeny small (massive) bit concerned that my book buying habit is going to become a habit again this year. Mostly because there are SO MANY books I want to read and don’t own and also because the list of books due for release this year that are making me jump around in poorly contained excitement is well, it’s a long list that’s getting longer and longer and longer. It’s like the magic porridge pot of lists; the more books I buy the more books get published and it’s all VERY BAD because you see, I’m not supposed to be feeding this habit. In fact, what I am supposed to be living under – until further notice – is a Book Buying Ban. It’s a very real problem though, because I am surrounded by enablers and I have no self control and I just want all the books okay? I just want them.

What I’m thinking is that if I talk all about these forthcoming books here then it might stop me from…oh who am I even trying to kid?! Let’s just cut to the chase. I just really want to talk about books that I am excited about in January (three of which are already released so you don’t even need to wait) and that you just might like as well: 

The Invisible Library­- Genevieve Cogman (published January 15th 2015)

Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, which harvests fiction from different realities. And along with her enigmatic assistant Kai, she's posted to an alternative London. Their mission - to retrieve a dangerous book. But when they arrive, it's already been stolen. London's underground factions seem prepared to fight to the very death to find her book.

Adding to the jeopardy, this world is chaos-infested - the laws of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic. Irene's new assistant is also hiding secrets of his own.
Soon, she's up to her eyebrows in a heady mix of danger, clues and secret societies. Yet failure is not an option - the nature of reality itself is at stake

I want this book. I want this book so badly. I’m going to buy this book and read it and hopefully not be disappointed. Does it not sound amazing? Also I think it’s one of a series which is always fun. I love a good series. It feels like it might be a little bit Thursday Next (another series that I really ought to read more of but you know, stupid book buying ban) – it sounds kind of crazy and kind of fun and just the right kind of utterly surreal and I WANT IT.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James ­– Emma Hooper (29^th January 2015)

Etta's greatest unfulfilled wish, living in the rolling farmland of Saskatchewan, is to see the sea. And so, at the age of eighty-two she gets up very early one morning, takes a rifle, some chocolate, and her best boots, and begins walking the 2, 000 miles to water.
Meanwhile her husband Otto waits patiently at home, left only with his memories. Their neighbour Russell remembers too, but differently - and he still loves Etta as much as he did more than fifty years ago, before she married Otto.

Why would I not want to read a book about an old lady hiking 2000 miles to the sea? Why would I not? Answer: I always always would. *grabby hands* Etta’s my Granny’s age and you want to know who I can imagine wanting to take a rifle and her best boots and begin a 2000 mile hike to live out a dream? My granny, that’s who, because she’s excellent. I am so excited for this and it’s out TOMORROW. Go forth and buy it. 

The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins (15^th Jan 2015)

YOU DON'T KNOW HER. BUT SHE KNOWS YOU.
Rear Window meets Gone Girl, in this exceptional and startling psychological thriller.

That’s it, that’s the blurb. & IT MAKES ME WANT TO READ IT. I loved Gone Girl and I’m feeling a little bit thriller-y at the moment so this ticks all the right boxes. 

And last but not least, I’ve already read The Life I Left Behind (1^st Jan 2015) and I talk about it here. It’s good; read it.

There you go then, have at it and let me know if you read any of these – and if there are any books released this month that you can’t wait to get your hands on. I’ll be back in a week or so with my February wishlist (which includes Neil Gaiman, naturally.)