2018 releases I want to read - Part 3

Yep, I’m still going with this. I don’t even know what to tell you. I am so excited about all things bookish this year. SO EXCITED. Here, have another list of 2018 publications that have got my little bookish radar tingling…

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.

New Things to Read in 2016

Hello pals!

I had wondered about posting today all about snow covered mountains and vin chaud and cold fingers on hipbones and kisses because that’s what my life looks like right now and frankly, it’s marvellous but I decided that really probably nobody will be anywhere near as interested in my snowy adventures as they are in the books I’m waiting for this year. So, let’s talk about that instead. Grab yourself a cuppa because this is a list. 

2016 books are a coming, some, because it’s already February are even here. There’s probably hundreds (thousands?) but obviously (obviously) I’m not going to list them all, that would be ridic; imma just talk at you a little about the things that are on my radar right now, like, (and I think I talked about it’s general existence last year) Steve Toltz’s Quicksand which is due for paperback release in April. I love a paperback. I love a hardback from a purely aesthetic point of view because pretty, but paperbacks are just so much more manageable aren’t they? When you read in bed, which I do all of the time, holding a hardback is far too much like a workout.

So. What’ve we got?

Chris Cleve (who wrote The Other Hand which I loved) has a new book out in April called Everyone Brave is Forgotten and it sounds awesome. It’s set during the Second World War and is about, I think, how the every day can change us as much as the unexpected can, about how war is perhaps just a backdrop for the ordinary. It sounds excellent. I think you all should read it. Actually I think you all should read all of the books in this post because that’s kind of the point…

Anyhow.

The sequel to A Court of Thorns and Roses is out later in the spring I think, mebbes May. It’s called A Court of Mist and Fury and I am ridiculously excited about it. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. And, all the characters are stupidly attractive in my head so you know, there’s that. 

Speaking of sequels, anyone remember how much I liked The Fire Sermon last year? Well book two (The Map of Bones) is also published at the start of May (again, I think!) and again, ridic excited. I cannot wait to see where that story goes next. The Fire Sermon is the dystopia where everyone is born a twin and each twin is either an Alpha (is physically ‘perfect’) or an Omega (is not) and all the Omegas are branded and cast out and the world is riled by Alphas BUT in a cruel(?) twist of fate, when one twin dies so does the other. It centres around Cass who is an Omega with a dream of Alphas and Omegas being equal and a twin in a position of power. S’really worth a read if you haven’t already and I cannot wait to see what happens in book 2. So excited.

Ruta Sepetys – her of Between Shades of Gray aka the book that broke my fragile little heart - also has a new book out. It’s called Salt to the Sea, and it’s out on Feb 4^th which is TOMORROW PEEPS. It’s a WWII true story and I have so many feelings – I’ll review this next week so won’t say much now but be warned, it will make you feel. Ruta does that so well.

Helen Simonson who wrote the lovely Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand has a new book out next month. I know. Marvellous. It’s called The Summer Before the War and again, sounds lovely. I don’t know a person who wasn’t enchanted by the Major so I have high hopes for this. It’s set in East Sussex in 1914 and it’s about Hugh who has come to visit his Aunt and Beatrice the new female (gasp!) Latin teacher and the last perfect summer before the unimaginable happens.

The Lubetkin Legacy by Marina Lewycka is out in May. I expect it to make me laugh out loud. I still giggle when I think about We Are All Made of Glue.

Shtum by Ben Lester about the family of a ten year old boy with sever autism is getting a lot of hype right now. I’m hearing all the good things. That one’s out in April.

Anthony Quinn’s Freya is out in the spring. It promises the unpredictable course of a woman’s life and loves against a backdrop of Soho pornographers, theatrical peacocks, willowy models, priapic painters, homophobic blackmailers, political careerists.

STOP THE PRESSES: Claire King, who wrote the GORGEOUS The Night Rainbow has a new book out now. It’s called Everything Love Is and I AM EXCITED. So excited. GO FORTH AND READ.

The first in Michael Grant’s new series Front Lines was published last week I think. Should be good although I’m still only part way through the Gone books, not because I don’t like them – I do – but because so many books; so little time. You know how it goes. Anyway, this will likely be A Good Read. Apparently s’perfect for fans of The Book Thief and Code Name Verity and it reimagines WWII with girls fighting on the front lines…

There’s a new David Leviathan collab out in the summer (with Nina LaCour who I don’t know) which I want because David Leviathan. S’called You Know Me Well.

In June Kit de Waal’s My Name is Leon is published and again, this is one that I’ve been seeing a fair amount of hype about. It’s set in the 80’s and it sounds like it might be that special kind of heartbreaking. Have a blurb: A brother chosen. A brother left behind. And a family where you'd least expect to find one. Leon is nine, and has a perfect baby brother called Jake. They have gone to live with Maureen, who has fuzzy red hair like a halo, and a belly like Father Christmas. But the adults are speaking in low voices, and wearing Pretend faces. They are threatening to give Jake to strangers. Since Jake is white and Leon is not. As Leon struggles to cope with his anger, certain things can still make him smile - like Curly Wurlys, riding his bike fast downhill, burying his hands deep in the soil, hanging out with Tufty (who reminds him of his dad), and stealing enough coins so that one day he can rescue Jake and his mum. Evoking a Britain of the early eighties, My Name is Leon is a heart-breaking story of love, identity and learning to overcome unbearable loss. Of the fierce bond between siblings. And how - just when we least expect it - we manage to find our way home.

Yann Martel’s new book The High Mountains of Portugal was released this week and it sounds incredible, a road trip across 2 continents and 4 centuries and the uncovering of a secret found in an old journal. There’s been a fair amount of buzz about this book, obviously and I’m totally caught up in it. I loved The Life of Pi and this feels like it could measure up to that. Fingers crossed hey!

There’s a short story collection out in March by Helen Oyeyemi which I’ve heard described as insprired by fairy tales with all the stories being centred around the idea of a key: to the heart, to a house, to a secret. Obviously I am all over that. I’m really excited about it actually and I have a copy on pre-order. Woop woop.

I’m also excited about another short story collection – The Pier Falls by Mark Haddon, mostly because I love his novels and I love his poetry and I expect I’ll love this too. Roll on May! 

 M.R Carey who wrote the amazingly amazing The Girl With All the Gifts has a new book out in April called Fellside and I actually can not wait. Actually.  It's set in a max security prison on the Yorkshire moors and it sounds terrifying and that's totally not usually my thing at all but I loved  The Girl With All the Gifts so much that how can I not read this?

Fairyland's Catherynne M Valente has a novel out in March - Radiance - which I want to read for Fairyland reasons and also because it sounds incredible, with lawless saloons on Mars and disappearing diving colonies on Venus and Hollywood being on the moon. It sounds SO GOOD. 

Deborah Levy (who wrote the excellent Swimming Home) has a new novel out in March – Hot Milk. It’s about a mother and daughter seeking salvation in a Spanish village and it sounds excellent. I thought Swimming Home was stunning so I really can’t wait for this.

May sees a new book from Aravind Adiga – Selection Day, I enjoyed his other two so I’ll be giving this one a read for sure for sure

There’s a new Anne Tyler in June. So much for A Spool of Blue Thread being your last Anne! It’s a reworking of The Taming of the Shrew and I bet it’s glorious. Why would I not want to read an Anne Tyler version of The Taming of the Shrew?

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue who wrote Room is out I think in September, so it’s a while off but I reckon it’ll be worth the wait. It’s set in the 1850’s and is about a girl who has stopped eating.

Bookworm by Lucy Mangan is basically a love letter to books and childhood reading and it sounds like it could be right up my street. Got to wait to October though which is AGES.

As well as getting my hands on that one in October I’ll also be all over Gary Oldman’s vampire novel. Because it’s Gary Oldman’s vampire novel. It’s called Blood Riders and it’s a vampire novel. By Gary Oldman. I don’t know what else to say to you about this. Dracula has written a vampire novel. Gary Oldman who I love has written a vampire novel. Not just any vampire novel though, these are vampire cowboys and it’s set in the Gold Rush and yep, I want it. (I should probably point out that it’s co-authored actually; Gary wrote it with his manager Douglas Urbanksi. Apparently they’ve been planning it for ages; I love that.)

 

 

& a vampire novel by Gary Oldman (still not over it) seems like a good place to stop because long list is long but still, there’s some exciting stuff coming, is there not? You should talk to me about what’s tickled your fancy – and what you’re excited about that I’ve neglected.

Exciting May Releases

Hello May.

I’m planning on being pals with May this year, mostly because March and April were both so shockingly bad that I’m feeling pretty desperate for something that’s just, well, better.

With regards to books to read, then, it’s off to a pretty good start. There’s some super fun books due for release this month that I cannot wait to get my prettily painted nails on. [I say ‘prettily painted’ but actually I painted them on Tuesday night, had to redo two of them because of smudging and already had a chip by the time I woke up on Wednesday. This my friends, is why I will always advocate the wonder that is the gel polish.]

Anyway. Books. New shiny new pretty books. The list is long this month and I’m not going to talk about them all because that would be crazy so I’ve just chosen 5. HERE THEY ARE:

I was going to start with Kirtsy Logan’s The Gracekeepers which I have been immensely excited about  and will be reading in a book and a half (yep, I have a list, that’s the level of organisation I work to these days. I’m quite impressed by my own self) because I thought it was released in May. It would appear I was wrong. I was lucky enough to receive a proof copy, which might just be one of the prettiest books I’ve ever seen – seriously, some of these proofs are just stunning – but also must, at some point, have pre-ordered it in my sleep and as such was super confused when it popped through my letterbox in all its hard-backed glory proclaiming ‘look at me, I am beautiful and not at all released in May. Stupid.’ I’m going to talk about it anyway because let me tell you a thing: The Gracekeepers sounds like all kinds of perfect. It’s about a world divided between people who live on the water and those who live on the land; it’s about floating circuses and a bear girl, and another girl who has exiled herself to live alone on an island and take care of the dead and it sounds magical and mythical and so freaking wonderful. I am stupidly excited about it. Stupidly.

If you don’t know that Kate Atkinson’s new novel A God in Ruins is out this month, well, you must’ve been living under a rock because this book has had all the hype. All of it. Deservedly so no doubt: I love Kate Atkinson. She’s one of my auto-buy authors, which I’m going to talk about another time, and as such I am practically giddy at the prospect of this book. If you read Life After Life which was Atkinson’s last offering and was marvellous, then you’re in for a treat with this one because it’s the story of Teddy. Teddy was a side character in Life After Life, one you couldn’t not love and now here he is, with his own shiny book and his own shiny story. It was released yesterday. Love. 

I loved Steve Toltz’s A Fraction of the Whole (and talk about it here) so I’ve been really looking forward to Quicksand which is out on May 21^st. It’s the story (and I steal this straight from the blurb) of Aldo and Liam – lifelong friends, criminal and police officer, muse and writer. So, it’s about a struggling writer – also a policeman, who decides to write a book about his best friend (a criminal entrepreneur with very bad luck and an ex-wife he’s still in love with). I’m expecting great things, I’m expecting it to be gritty and honest and funny and thought-provoking and I want it in my life. I am so excited about it, and God, I hope I’m not disappointed.

A Court of Thorns and Roses was released (I think) on Tuesday. Again, I’ve heard all the good things about it – Sarah J Maas is talked about a lot on American book blogs I follow. I think her Throne of Glass series is kind of A Big Deal; I read that she wrote it when she was just 16 which is really excellent. I’ve not seen her name around much over here until now, but perhaps I’ve just not been looking in the right places.  A Court of Thorns and Roses is the first in a YA trilogy, and is A BEAUTY AND THE BEAST RETELLING OH GOD LET ME AT IT with a magical kingdom and hunters and faeries and love and It’s described as ferocious and delicious and magical and all of those things are things I like in my books. I also love Beauty and the Beast so you know, this ticks all the boxes for me.

 

Hold Me Like a Breath makes me want to clap my hands in delight; It’s another one of those fairytale retellings I love so much. This time, it’s the Princess and the Pea, with rare blood diseases and organ trafficking and rival crime families all set against a New York backdrop. How awesome does that sound? I feel like it’s going to be either sublime or ridiculous. I can’t wait to find out which. It’s published on the 19^th and the cover, according to the internets at least, looks super pretty. Lookit.