I think they all sound really good,
I'm so excited about
my TBR this month - as I am most months to
be fair!
Hi and welcome to my channel. My name is
Sarah and I love to talk about books.
And it's that time again! I can't believe
it's time for
my September TBR.
I feel like I only just did my August
one. But
yeah, here we are again. 2020 is
powering through - thank god for that! So
what does September hold
for me? Well I will be starting my new
job, so I'm kind of equal part excited
and terrified about that. Also I'm gonna have a wee trip
through to Edinburgh because my cousin
is at the moment 32 weeks pregnant, so
I've said that she can have
my boys' cot and change table and
things like that. So we're going to go
and take her
through all of that stuff. What else
about September?
I don't think we've got much else on, and
I'm hoping it's going to be quite a
quiet month to help me
bed into this new job, and of course read
some lovely books! So we start off with
my must reads, these are the books that
I'm reading for my
reading challenges. And we will start
with The Murmur of Bees by
Sophia Segovia. Sophia is a Mexican
author, and I think this was her first
book in translation.
And it's set during the Mexican
revolution and the influenza pandemic -
very topical - of 1918.
A family adopts a baby who is found
abandoned,
quite disfigured and covered in bees.
And as he grows up the village is
quite suspicious of him - they think that
he's been touched by the devil.
And he sees visions of
the future, and he kind of dedicates his
life to protecting his family
by using his protective swarm of bees.
So this sounds fascinating to me. And I
don't know if I've read a book set in
Mexico
before so that'll be interesting, and
also
it's got some magical realism in it
as well which
I do really like. And next up will be
Ali Smith's The Whole Story and Other
Stories. This is a collection
of short stories. And so while the
whole
of booktube is reading her
new release Summer, I'm in the back list
as usual with this!
I think these are all quite strange
little stories. It grabbed me
with the description of one about a man
who creates a
seven foot boat using second-hand copies
of The Great Gatsby,
so that's kind of set the tone. I
think there's a lot of strange little
stories in this, so I'm really interested
to get to it. I've read a couple
of Ali Smiths before, I really enjoyed Hotel World
so we'll see how I feel about this.
And then sticking with Scottish authors,
next up will be All Made Up by Janice
Galloway.
I read her novel The Trick Is To Keep
Breathing
last year, I really loved it. This
was a book about mental health and I
just thought
you know, it had a really good tone to it.
This is -
I didn't realise - the second of her
memoirs, so
this charts her teenage years.
So I'm hoping it's okay to read them out
of order, because I haven't
read the first one. I do have it on my
shelves but this fulfills a reading
challenge prompt so I'm hoping I'm not
gonna
ruin anything for myself by going into
the second one first.
And then I am going to read a graphic
novel, which is something that I've only...
I think I've only ever read one other
graphic novel.
It's certainly not my usual genre. I'm
going to read
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane
Satrapi, if i can get my hands on it! The...
I planned to get this out of the library,
and the libraries are kind of slowly
opening here in Scotland
but the Glasgow library that I'm
a member of doesn't seem to be
letting anyone reserve
any books at the moment. And I know that
my local
library is doing a kind of click and
collect service - you can get up to five
books,
but you can't request specific titles.
You just kind of give them
the genres and things that you're
interested in. Which actually sounds
pretty amazing, it's kind of like a blind
date with a book, but I don't have
room on my TBR to do that. Which is a bit
of a shame.
But it also means that I can't get the copy
of
Persepolis either, so I've looked - I can
probably buy a copy online for about
seven
quid so it's not a disaster. I'll read it
one way or
another. Because it sounds really
interesting - this is a graphic memoir
of Marjane's childhood growing up in
Tehran during the Islamic Revolution in
the 70s.
And that's something that I'm really
interested in, I've heard quite a few
books set in that time and
I'm, I just find it really, really
interesting what happened
to Iran, Tehran and Afghanistan, all
those sorts of countries during that
time. And she grew up
in Tehran but she was educated in Vienna,
and
for that was apart from her very big,
loving family.And then I understand that
she self-exiled from Tehran as well. So
it's going to be a really interesting
read.
And then next up is going to be Water
For Elephants by Sara Gruen.
Yeah, I know - movie tie in cover, but
at least it has Reese Witherspoon on it.
So I've never seen the film of this,
but this is the story of Jacob who
is an orphan, and he jumps on a train to
find
that it's a kind of struggling circus.
This is the time of the Great Depression
in America.
And as he is nearly qualified as a vet
he gets put to work looking after the
animals.
I think this is a love story between him
and married Marlena, who is one of the
circus performers.
Obviously infidelity is a bit of a raw
subject for me so I'm not
sure how I'm gonna feel about that, but
he does also train
a wayward elephant so at least there
will be that for distraction.
And then the September Shelterbox
book club pick
is Unicorn: A Memoir of a Muslim Drag
Queen by Amrou al-Kadhi,
and I am so excited that this one was
picked Not only does it show that
the Shelterbox book club is a lovely
progressive book club,
but because I heard Amrou do an interview -
I think it must have been on the Guilty
Feminist
, probably towards the end of last year -
talking about their experiences
and this book and I really, really
wanted to pick it up
ever since, so I cannot wait until that
arrives.
Amrou grew up as a
very religiously observant young boy
who really loved their mother, and then
grew up to be
a drag queen estranged from their
family. And this is just such a
unique story compared to anything that
I've ever read before. So I'm really
interested to see
how those two sides of their
personality
and experience came together to create
who
Amrou is today. And I thought Amrou was
really interesting in that interview,
particularly talking about performing
their drag
to their Muslim family, so I just think
this is going to be a really, really
fascinating read, I cannot wait to get to
it.
And then if I have time - and I'm you know,
I'm not putting any pressure on myself
because I've not been performing too
well in getting through my NetGalleys
recently -
but there are a few that I would like
to pick up on if I get the time.
So we've got In The Time of Foxes by
Jo Lennan.
I've already spoken about this one in my, 
I think it must have been in my July TBR
so I'll link that video in case you're interested. That's
another short story collection.
And also Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan
which I mentioned in my mid-year
freakout tag.
I've enjoyed Andrew O'Hagan's work in
the past so I really want to get to that
as well.
And if I have time I also have a couple
of other NetGalleys that are going to be
published in September so I'd like to
get to those, the first of which is The
Midnight Library by Matt Haig.
I've never read any of Matt Haig's
stuff before but I know that he has
really been quite positive and vocal
about mental health.
And this is his novel, and it's set in
the midnight library - funnily enough -
where there are an infinite number of
books.
One that tells the story of your life
and then ones that tell the story of the
life you could have had, had
any any of the decisions you've made
along the years been
different. And it's the story of Nora who
comes to this library
and has to really consider
whether she would change the life that
she's lived
for one of these alternative versions.
That just sounds so cool, I'm hoping
that's going to be
a good one. Also there's Ordinary Hazards
by Anna Bruno which is about Emma, who
has returned to her hometown
after quite a fraught divorce.
It seems to be set in one night in a
local bar,
and as Emma gets progressively more
drunk, more realisations and flashbacks
about her life come to her and her night
spins completely out of control. And that...
obviously I'm really interested in
reading about divorce and things
anyway, but I just think that sounds
really intriguing, that concept. I'm
wondering what it is that brought her to
that point
and how it's going to play out. So
those are the books that I'm hoping to
read in September -
definitely the reading challenge ones
and the Shelterbox
book club pick as well, but we'll see
how I get on
with those others. Because I think they
all sound really good, I'm so excited
about
my TBR this month - as I am most months, to
be fair!
So check back in October to see how I
got on with those.
Next week I will be wrapping up August,
so you can see how I got on with the
books I read
in that month. And until then *kiss*
bye!
Septem...[notification sounds]
[notification sounds]
Shut the fuck up
