Lifestyle

What I’ve Been Reading Lately

Posted on July 12, 2019

We are over halfway through the year now, and I’m slightly behind my Goodreads challenge of reading 100 books in 2019. I’m up to 51 but hoping to catch up soon.

You can always keep up with my reading habits on Goodreads directly.

Wise Children by Angela Carter
I always enjoy being inside the universes that Angela Carter creates; I was especially drawn to this because it’s all about the world of theatre, but I just didn’t really warm to many characters.
3 stars

Monster: Poems by Robin Morgan
This out of print book of feminist poetry had been on my to-read list for years and I was overjoyed when I managed to find a copy second-hand. It was brilliant and “Arraignment” was the best piece in there.
4 stars

Sister, Outsider by Audre Lorde
This is actually a collection of essays, speeches and interviews by Audre Lorde. It was the first Lorde that I had read and it won’t be the last.
4 stars

Normal People by Sally Rooney
Everyone has been talking about this book lately and I absolutely gobbled it up. I actually saw a lot of myself in one of the characters but I definitely won’t say which.
4 stars

Sweetening the Pill by Holly Grigg-Spall
This is a non-fiction book about the effects and the history of the birth-control pill. I definitely recommend it for anyone who has an interest in what they are putting in their body.
4 stars

Ani diFranco Verses by Ani DiFranco
There were some lovely poems, and some rather dull ones. I think I prefer Ani DiFranco’s songs to her poetry.
3 stars

The Radleys by Matt Haig
A vampire novel set in Bishopthorpe, York? Of course I was going to read it! Unfortunately, I found the tone rather odd: it bounced around too erratically from serious to comedy. But I loved the idea of it.
3 stars

The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit
Author of “Men Explain Things to Me” brings us this collection of further essays on women’s silence. Some of them were very thought provoking.
4 stars

Sea of Strangers by Lang Leav
This was a rather dull and blase collection of poetry. I found it fairly disappointing.
2 stars

The Red Shoes by Nancy Harris
This play is based on the Han Christian Anderson tale of the same day and I absolutely loved it. It’s a modern retelling about a skilled orphan dancer and the red shoes that might dance her to her death.
4 stars

The Monsters We Deserve by Maurice Sedgwick
I’m not sure how to describe this book in the slightest. I guess I’ll leave it at, if you enjoy Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, you should give this slim novel an hour of your time.
3 stars

Yoga the Spirit and Practise of Moving Into Stillness by Erich Schiffmann
I really enjoyed the practical elements of this yoga book; especially the descriptions of various poses.
4 stars

Sabrina by Nick Drnaso
This was the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize and it centres around the disappearance of a young woman. I definitely really enjoyed it, my only slight criticism was that some of the panels were very small for my ageing eyes.
3 stars

Conversations After a Burial by Yasmina Resa
A play brought to us by the author of the acclaimed ‘God of Carnage’; this is a family drama set in France when two brothers are home for the burial of their father. It’s pedestrian, but definitely enjoyable.
3 stars

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
I gobbled up this novel set in the Mennonite community (of which the author is an ex-member of). It’s about 16 year-old Nomi and her coming of age inside a fairly traditional religious sect.
4 stars

The Humans by Stephen Karam
This might be my favourite play that I’ve read in ages. It has a very “The Weir” like atmosphere. It’s set over one evening; a Thanksgiving dinner. The topics of the evening range from 9-11 to the financial crash and the dialogue is so natural and compelling.
4 stars

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon
I read this novel as a companion piece to having just finished a collection of Sassoon’s poetry. I enjoyed his poetry a little more; his biting humour comes through better.
3 stars

The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
This is one of my favourite collections of poetry that I’ve read in recent memory. I’d recommend it to anyone and everyone.
5 stars

Oil by Ella Hickson
This play spans hundreds of years, but all the various characters and threads are tied together by the use and quest for oil
4 stars

Great Britain by Richard Bean
Bean is a famous scathing comedy writer, but this satire of the phone-hacking scandal just fell really flat for me. Plus it felt quite dated already.
2 stars

Albion by Mike Bartlett
This is a rather dull family drama that takes place in a massive country manor house that a family bought after the death of their sun. I’m just not sure I found the plot engaging, at all.
2 stars

Two Dark Reigns by Kendare Blake
This is the third instalment in the “Three Dark Crowns” series, and there’s one more to go (I believe). One of my favourite characters potentially met a sticky-end (nooooo!) and I raced through the novel.
4 stars

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
I really enjoyed this YA novel. The language is really stunning and I wished that I had drunk the moon when I was a baby now.
4 stars

The War Poems by Siegfriend Sassoon
Sassoon’s poems about his time in World War I are terrifying, brutal, beautiful and, at times, humorous.
4 stars

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
This novel is set in a modern Japanese convenience store. I just really couldn’t care about any of the characters at all. Several are quite dislikable.
2 stars

Moon Time by Lucy H Pearce
This book would be a great start for anyone who wants to understand a little bit more about their menstrual cycle.
3 stars

Snap by Belinda Bauer
This novel is about a teenage boy’s hunt for his mother’s killer. I’ll be honest; the only reason I read this was because it was in the 99p Kindle sale one week. It just wasn’t good enough.
2 stars

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver
I enjoyed this collection of Carver’s story-stories, but in my opinion, it never was as good as “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”.
3 stars

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
This was my first introduction to Raymond Carver. I loved how biting and brutal his writing is. This collection of short stories definitely had some peaks and troughs, but the titular number was outstanding.
4 stars

A Good Man is Hard to Find, and Other Stories by Flannery O’Connor
I find the imagery in O’Connor’s short-story collection to be vivid and moving, though the writing itself is really obtuse. There were definitely some paragraphs that I had to read several times to grasp at the meaning. I’m in awe of how wrong O’Connor was when she wrote this. But it’s definitely not a “fun” read.
3 stars

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
This is a quite popular “beach read” that I snapped up in a Kindle sale. I’ve heard others compare this to the “Rosie Project” but they really are not similar at all. Prepare yourself for some graphic sex.
3 stars

The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden
This was the final novel in the “Winternight” trilogy, and I found it a satisfying way to wrap the series up.
4 stars

Betrayal by Harold Pinter
This play is about four friends and an affair that happens between one couple. You see the affair in reverse’ it’s cleaver and heart-breaking.
3 stars

A Month in the Country by JL Carr
This was one of the most beautiful little novellas that I have ever read. I finished it in one sitting, but I found myself thinking about it for weeks to come. It’s all about one fairly idyllic English summer post World War I.
5 stars

Emily of New Moon by LM Montgomery
“Anne of Green Gables” tends to be the only Montgomery series that people talk about, but I really loved Emily. There are some major similarities with Anne, but I actually found Emily to be more endearing.
5 stars

The Girlfriend Experience by Alecky Blythe
This play is set in a brothel on the English sea-front and it’s certainly not for the faint-hearted. It’s a verbatim piece and some of the language is very risque. But what really bothered me is the lack of plot-arc.
2 stars