February was a vintage month for books. The best run I’ve had in a long, long time. Any of these are thoroughly worth picking up.
6. Title: The Handmaid’s Tale
Recommended by: @photogirl_uk as the first book of the London Book Club, bought as a second-hand copy from Amazon
Read: 7 – 13 Feb
Set in a dystopian, totalitarian,
theocratic future, where women are subjugated, reduced to nothing more than
their fertility. Beautifully, beautifully crafted; engaging; and chilling.
Brilliant. Highly deserving of its literary prize nominations / awards.
Score: 10/10
7. Title: The Last Girlfriend on Earth
Author: Simon Rich
Recommended by: @meganjgibson after I said I loved his New
Yorker pieces, and bought from Amazon
Read: 13 – 15 Feb
Just superb, quite frankly. A collection of short sketches
on the theme of love. If you don’t kill yourself laughing at Unprotected, the life and times of a
condom, you don’t have a sense of humour. Glorious.
Score: 10/10
8. Title: The Mist in the Mirror
Author: Susan Hill
Recommended by: Given to me by @owlsandflowers as a birthday
present
Read: 16 – 23 Feb
Being an enormous wuss, this ghost story something I’d ever
have picked up for myself, but the person I got it from has an excellent track
record with book recommendations, so who was I to argue? It’s by Susan Hill, so
the writing is predictably brilliant and eerie and evocative and sends you
straight back to Gothic England. The length of time it took me to read this
belies the fact it’s quite a skinny little thing, and whilst it isn’t quite as
spine-chillingly terrifying as her better-know Woman in Black, it’s still plenty scary that I refused to read it
before I went to sleep.
Score: 8/10
9. Title: I Feel Bad About My Neck
Author: Nora Ephron
Recommended by: everyone when it was announced Ephron had
died. A Christmas present from Ma Blonde.
Read: 23 - 27 Feb
“Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.”
“If only one third of your clothes are mistakes, you’re
ahead of the game.”
“Everything is copy.”
I can’t begin to tell you how utterly brilliant this book
is. I think I might just start to live my life by it, word for gloriously chosen
word. Buy it, read it for yourself. Love it.
Score: 10/10
5 comments:
Oh you are good with your reading! Isn't that Nora Ephron book wonderful? For some reason I ended up reading large chunks of it out loud to myself in the bath, in the voice of a New York Jewish grandma.
I enjoyed the Fleet Street Fox book, but other than that I'm still gently trolling through The 100 Year Old Man Who... which is quite good fun.
It's BRILLIANT. And it works out loud wonderfully, which so many books don't in the same way. FSF is next on the list, funnily enough. I tried 100 Year Old Man, but just didn't get on with it and gave up halfway through.
Yeah, if I hadn't kept putting it down and then picking it up on the Tube I would have given up too. I really like the increasingly bonkers backstory from his past though, it's so well-thought out. I'm far too lazy to find out about how exactly nuclear fission works, let alone how to blow up an Iranian prison! Not a favourite by any means, but as a pleasant way of passing the time it's doing the job.
Not certain how else to send this but in case you didn't see this, thought you might be interested in reading this, given the identity of its author.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/magazine/47-hour-train-ride.html?hp
jman
Kat: Maybe that was the problem - I just didn't read it in the right way. Ho hum. Onto better things!
Jman: Oooh, thank you very much - I'd not seen that. Saved to the Pocket for later reading.
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