Welcome to the first of my new monthly book round-up! An English graduate through and through, there’s little I love more than reading and writing about books, so I thought I’d start sharing my reading pile and what drew me to each title in the first place. At the moment I’m really digging into the art of storytelling as I slooooowly work on my first novel, so I’m trying to understand what makes a really page-turning story. Some literary dude once said that writers should read every book twice - first to enjoy it, then to dissect it - but who the hell has time for that? Most of us must settle for one reading apiece, so here are all the books I read over the last month and what I thought of them.
BOOK OF THE MONTH
Dominoes by Phoebe McIntosh
(Vintage, 2024)
I spotted this one in The Bookseller magazine and devoured it in just a few days. Despite its heavy content (racism, slavery, micro-agressions), it is incredibly funny and uplifting, probably because the author is also a comedian so can find light even in the darkest subject matter. The plot follows an engaged couple in London who happen to share a surname, a seemingly innocent coincidence until the main character begins to look into their shared history and finds a grim connection that forces her to re-examine everything - her identity as a mixed-race woman, a descendant of slavery and the Windrush generation. It is, at its heart, a love story, set against the 2020 backdrop and everything that involved. But it is also a very empathetic, well crafted story about the experience of everyday racism - one that might soften the heart of even the rattiest Daily Mailer.
Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell
(Bloomsbury, 2023)
One of the staff in my local Waterstones recommended this one to me, which makes sense as it was their 2023 Book of the Year. I really liked it - the variety of characters, the fantasy world set within our own, the story of hope in the face of despair. But I think perhaps because it was so hyped up, it wasn’t quite as groundbreaking as I hoped it might be - and I wish publishers wouldn’t compare books to Tolkien or Pullman on the front cover because 99% of the time, it ends in disappointment. Nonetheless, this was a great book and I’d love to read more of Rundell’s work.
The October Country by Ray Bradbury
(Ballantine, 1955)
This had been on my reading pile since September, when I went overboard with books for spooky season and never got round to reading them all. It’s a sharp, macabre little collection of short stories, each one deliciously unusual and weird. I was particularly drawn to the running themes of paranoia, suspicion and the defiance of death, each story like a creepy cocktail to sip before bed.
One of the Girls by Lucy Clarke
(HarperCollins, 2022)
I’m a bit obsessed with BorrowBox, an app that allows you to listen to all your local library service’s audiobooks for free, and if I’m working on an illustration I particularly love listening to anything with a murder. Give me a body, I’ll lend you my ear. Recently I’ve been stepping out of my Agatha Christie comfort zone and listening to contemporary modern thrillers/murder mysteries, including this destination thriller about a hen weekend on a Greek island. Not gonna lie, I partly chose this because I needed to mentally escape the drudgery of February, but it was addictive and twisty and I loved every minute of it. I have since found the author’s next Nordic-inspired book The Hike in the chazza shop, which I will savour like a warm slice of smørrebrød.
Holes by Louis Sachar
(Bloomsbury, 1998)
I took the kids to storytime at the library the other day and as we were leaving, I spotted Holes in the older kids’ section. It’s been years since I read it and I couldn’t remember much beyond the peaches and the lipstick case, but I took it home and devoured it within 24 hours. I always liked how the plot was so satisfyingly woven together, almost to the point of disbelief, and the threads around race and poverty are more poignant to me now than as a younger reader oblivious to the world outside my childhood bubble.
Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them by John Yorke
(Penguin, 2014)
I bought a load of books about writing books recently (productive, non?) and this was top of my list, recommended to me by my friend and fellow writer Lucy. The other night after the kids had gone to sleep, I poured myself a hot bath and a cold glass of cider and settled down to start reading it, only to immediately get back out and grab my notebook because I needed to jot down every other sentence. It’s been just what I needed to start pushing along with my own story, helping to slightly control the chaos of a creative idea by shaping it into characters, acts, inciting incidents, etc. I love it. I AM EXCITED.