Hi everyone, it feels like a really cozy
Sunday... because it is a really cosy
Sunday, so I thought I would sit down and
film an extra video for you this week
where I talk to you about the books I've
bought recently
and the books that I have been sent for
review. I will list them in the
description box down below
if you missed any of the titles and
would like to go and find out more.
If you're watching the day it's going
up, I am attempting
a ridiculous but hopefully fun reading
challenge in September
and today, on Sunday, you can vote on how
that reading challenge is going to
go because there
are several ways it could go and you can
vote on that over on my instagram
stories,
so if you haven't already done that and
you would like to, once you finish
watching this video, head over to my
instagram which I'll link in the
description box
down below and I'll be making a video
about that in the coming
few days. So let me talk to you about
these books, the first book that I bought
is Ottessa Moshfegh's new book, she's the
author of Eileen and My Year of Rest and
Relaxation.
In this our protagonist is out walking
her dog in the woods and she comes
across a woman who I think has been
murdered,
there is a note I believe on her body or
at least something that shows that
this woman is called Magda and our
protagonist becomes very obsessed with
Magda and what may or may not have
happened to her.
She has recently moved to the area, our
protagonist, and
is already quite nervous and suspicious
of the surrounding area and obviously
this does not help
and this is one of my most anticipated
releases so I'm hoping it's going to be
brilliant.
Another of my most anticipated releases
is this one here which is coming out in
about a week
this is D by Michel Faber, he has
written lots of books before but this is
his first
middle grade book. As you know I adore
the Book of Strange New Things and The
Crimson Petal and the White and Under
the Skin,
this is about a young girl called Dhikilo
and
she comes from a country that I don't
think exists, or at least people
don't believe that it exists, and then
one day the letter D
goes missing from the alphabet and she
has to go
searching for it. This is an homage to
Dickens,
now we know I don't always love Dickens
but I do love Michel's writing so I'm
really hoping that
i will love this too. Michel and i are
hoping to record a video together
some point soon, so if you have any
questions for him you can leave them
in the comments section of this video or
I'll probably put a call out on
instagram near other time, so that you
can
ask us questions because it's been five
years since we filmed a video together
which is a very long
time. A review copy, this collection of
poetry here by Rachel Long is called My
Darling
from the Lions, this is published by
Picador and is currently
shortlisted for the Forward Prize for
Poetry. I'm making my way through that
shortlist, it's a prize
I always follow so I'm keen to pick up
that one up
soon. I bought this collection of stories
which is called
Love in Coluor by Bolu Babalola, this is a
collection of myths from around the
world
retold and I believe, going by the
title, that these are myths
that are centered on love and
relationships
it says "a high-born Nigerian goddess
feels beaten down
and unappreciated by her gregarious
lover and longs to be truly seen,
a young business woman attempts to make
a great leap in her company
and an even greater one in her love life,
a powerful Ghanaian spokeswoman is
forced to decide whether to uphold her
family's politics
or to be true to her heart." I of course
bought Ali Smith's new novel this is
Summer
it is the final book in her seasonal
quartet. Five years ago
Ali announced that she was going to
write four books in very quick
succession
about current political times but also
obviously with layered storytelling as
well.
I don't think anyone could have
predicted what was going to happen
over the five years that she chose to
chronicle
the world, we have had Brexit in the
uk, we have had the Trump administration,
we've had more obviously going on with
climate change, we have now had
coronavirus, so
it has been a fascinating series of
books to follow and they have brought immense
comfort to me and to many other people.
When Autumn came out I did an in-depth
analysis of that book,
the same with Winter, when Spring came
out I reviewed it over on TOAST so you
can read
my thoughts in that article and I'll be
reviewing this book on TOAST next month
too,
so I'll be reading this very soon and I
will talk to you about
it. Earlier this month I filmed a 24-hour
reading vlog and
in that I read my first book by Hiromi
Kawakami, as part of reading women in
translation month,
and I mentioned in that video that I
would like to read more of her work
so I have bought the 10 loves
of Mr Nishino, this is by Hiromi Kawakami,
it's translated
from the Japanese by Alison Martin
Powell. This is about 10 women who have
at one point in their lives
been infatuated with this Mr Nashino, so
we're looking at how
their lives intertwine through this
person. I also bought A Record of a Night
too
Brief, is this translated by the same
person? No. this is translated
by Lucy North and I think this is three
different stories,
it says that "a woman travels on an
unending night with a porcelain
girlfriend,
monsters of the mist and a monkey who
show no mercy; a sister mourns her
brother visible only to her
while her family welcome his would-be
wife into their home; an incident in a
park
leads a shop girl to discover the snakes
in intimate lives
everywhere she turns." And in researching
her backlist I came across
this anthology which is published by
Comma press it's a collection of
stories centered around Tokyo by
prominent Japanese writers,
one of which is Hiromi Kawakami, we've
also got a story in here by Banana
Yoshimoto
and nine other writers, I think the blurb
sounds brilliant it says "a
shapeshifter arrives in Tokyo who wants
to cause havoc,
a young woman is walked home one night
by a reclusive graduate student
and then finds herself lured into an
empty apartment full of eerie objects
of Egyptian antiquity, a man suspects his
young wife's obsession with picnicking
every weekend in the city's parks
hides a darker motive." I also bought this
short story collection which is called
Attrib and other stories by Eley Williams,
I loved her story in Outsiders the
anthology that I also read in the 24
reading vlog. I have a story in anthology
myself. I fell in love with various other
writers within that anthology
and have since bought their books. It
says that this is about the trixiness of
language "just as it confronts its limits,
the stories are littered with the
physical ephemera of language,
dictionaries, dog-eared pages, bookmarks,
old coffee stains on
older books." Speaking of writers in that
anthology,
this is a new literary journal published
in Scotland that Heather Parry edits and
she very kindly sent me a review copy,
it's called Extra Teeth: words with bite,
and in here we have got stories and
essays
by Kirsty Logan, Janice Galloway and
lots of other people. I'm expecting
creepy, I'm expecting
gory, and I am very, very excited about
it. I don't feel that this book
needs much explanation because it's
mostly just in the title this is The
Penguin Book of the Prose Poem from
Bouldaire to Anne Carson
it is edited and compiled by
Jeremy Noel-Tod
so this is a book all about the prose
poem and how it has evolved over the
last 150 years.
I made a video quite a while ago now, so
it may be a little out of date,
about prose poetry why I love it and
recommendations for collections you may
want to check out.
I'll link that in the description box
down below. One of my writing workshops
is also
focused on prose poetry, which I'll also
link in the description box down below.
So this is just an anthology... "just" an
anthology,
it is an anthology of prose poetry and
I'm sure I'm going to discover some
new writers in here which is always
exciting.
Speaking of prose poetry I was sent a
review copy of the Last Orgasm by Nin
Andrews
who wrote one of my favorite prose
poetry collections of all time
called Why God is a Woman, so this is her
latest
I will be reading this very soon
and I will report back
with my thoughts. I bought this book here
which I am
desperately biased about because it is
by my best pal
Jean Menzies, who many of you also know
because she also has a Booktube channel,
she's delightful, I love her, this is her
introduction to greek mythology
and I need this because i have
never really got to grips with the
basics of Greek mythology, there are
several myths that I know
but I kind of have researched them
here and there when I need to understand
how they relate to fairy tales. I have
never
specifically researched the mythology
in its own right, I have mostly to be
honest relied on Jean to answer
questions about Greek mythology for me
so I'm so grateful that she now put all
of that into a book so that I can
consume it
and have it locked within my brain, so
thank you, Jean. This is also beautifully
perfectly illustrated by
Katie Ponder let me find you page... you know
what I'm not going to find one page
because it's all so beautiful,
I'll do a cutaway here so you can see
several pages and just how glorious
it is. I've just realized that these two
books kind of
go together, look at this,
how delightful, this is a non-fiction
book about mushrooms
look at this cover, it's so cool, this is
called Entangled Life
how Fungi make... do you say fun-guy or fun-gee
Ii don't know, I feel like I
say both
at different times, okay, anyway, Entangled
Life: how
fungi make our worlds, change our minds
and shape our futures.
This is all about how fungi communicate
with each other,
how they blossom, how they help create
the wood wide web, and all of the magical,
fabulous
things that they do, and I'm sure that
it's also going to be related to
folklore
which is the primary reason why I bought
it, i just think it sounds really
interesting.
And this one also has mushrooms on the
cover but this is a fiction
this is Flowers of Mold by Ha-Seong Nan
is translated from
the korean by Janet Hong, it says "on the
surface
Ha-Seong Nan's stories seem pleasant
enough, yet there's something disturbing
just below the surface,
ready to permanently disrupt the
character's lives: a woman meets her
next-door neighbor and loans her a
spatula
then starts suffering horrific gaps in
her memory, a man feeling jilted by an
unrequited love
becomes obsessed with sorting through
his neighbor's garbage in the belief
that will teach him how
to better relate to people, a landlord
decides to raise the rent and his
tenants hatch a plan to kill him:
Excellent, wonderful, love this, so yeah
I bought this
for women in translation month but it's
arrived just now so
I will probably get to it after this
month but you know
who knows we still have a few days. I was
sent this review copy which I believe to
be
steeped in Welsh folklore so this is On
a Dark Night with Enough Wind by Lilla
Pennant
and it says "how do people survive in the
lonely cottages on the welsh
hilltops? Lilla Pennant sets out to
uncover and retell the true stories of
the people of a village
and a strange hill slope community in
the Clwydian hills,
life was tough but for some it was also
a wild adventure"
very intrigued and finally I bought this
non-fiction book here which is the
Radium Girls by Kate Moore,
I've been hearing so many amazing things
about this, so this is about women who
worked
in radium factories during world war one
it says "as the first world war spread
across the world,
young American women flocked to work in
factories painting clocks, watches and
military dials with a special luminous
substance
made from radium. It was a fun job,
lucrative and glamorous,
the girls shone brightly in the dark
covered head to toe with dust from the
paint,
however, as the years passed the women
began to suffer from mysterious and
crippling illnesses,
it turned out that the very thing that
made them feel alive —their work—
was slowly killing them: the radium was
poisonous.
Their employers denied all
responsibility but these courageous
women in the face of unimaginable
suffering
refused to accept their fate quietly and
instead became determined to fight for
justice.
Drawing on previously unpublished
diaries, letters and interviews,
the Radium Girls is an intimate
narrative of an unforgettable true story,
it is the powerful tale of a group of
ordinary women from the roaring 20s
who themselves learned how to roar."
So those are all of the books that I
have bought recently all been sent for
review. As I mentioned at the beginning
of this video, if you haven't yet voted
on my September reading ridiculousness
then please do head over to my instagram.
If you have any questions for Michel
about his latest book
or any of his previous books actually
you can leave them here or you can email
them to me
and we will answer them in the video
that we film, and, yeah, let me know if
you're interested in reading any of
these because I would love to know. I
hope you're all having a good Sunday and
i'll speak to you very soon
lots of love
bye!
