YouTube

Books mentioned and mini-reviews:

Dolor’s Legs by Frances Hardinge

I actually didn’t read this in July, I read it in May, but I have repeatedly forgotten to mention it in these wrap-ups! It’s a short story from the world of the Myriad, the islands that Deeplight is set in. I absolutely loved Deeplight so it was really nice to go on this little mini adventure back in that world that focuses on another of the god-creatures.

Buy Deeplight: Amazon | Hive (affiliate links)

Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron edited by  Jonathan Strahan

This is an anthology of stories about witches and I absolutely loved it. There were several authors in this book whose work I’ve never read before, including Garth Nix, whose story I loved so much I’ve been making up my own fanfic in my head for other things that could happen in its world! There were also several stories I enjoyed by authors I’ve read before, like Ellen Kushner, Charles de Lint and Tanith Lee. I am going to be keeping this one on my shelf so I can dip back into it and reread those favourite stories again.

Buy: Amazon | Hive (affiliate links)

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones

I read this for my work book club. It explores the lives of two girls who have the same father but different mothers. Their father is a bigamist, married to both women, but only one of them knows about it. It starts from the point of view of the “secret” daughter, and then switches to the “official” daughter when they meet, exploring the effects that this has on the two girls. Dana, the secret daughter, has known since she was small that her father won’t acknowledge her in public and won’t tell his other family about her. She only gets to see him once a week, and isn’t allowed to do anything that might mean she comes in contact with Chaurisse, her sister. Inevitably, as she gets older she resents this more and more. Meanwhile, Chaurisse has to deal with confusion and betrayal when Dana finally comes into her life. Set in the 1980s, it also deals with issues around race in the US. I thought it was really interesting and couldn’t put it down.

Buy: Amazon | Hive (affiliate links)

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

I adored this and want to read all this author’s other books now! Set in at time it was published, the 1920s, it follows two bored, lonely, middle-class married women, both dissatisfied with their husbands, who see an advert in the paper for a castle in Italian Riviera, available to rent in April. They are both so taken by the idea and desperate for a break from their lives (though they won’t admit it to themselves), that they decide to respond to the advert and rent it for the month. To save money, they find two other women to come along with them. One of them is an unmarried aristocrat who’s been pampered and adored her whole life and she is absolutely sick of it and desperate to be left alone. The other one is a grumpy widow, obsessed with the poets she met when she was young. She also doesn’t want to have anything to do with the others, in fact she wants to be left alone so much she tries to reserve parts of the castle for her exclusive use. It’s far from being action-packed, but I found it funny, delightful and charming – like a holiday in a book!

Download for free from Project Gutenberg

Buy: Hive (affiliate link)

Who Framed Klaris Cliff? by Nikki Sheehan (review copy)

Set in a world where imaginary friends are real, this YA novel tells the story of Joseph, who didn’t have an imaginary friend when he was a child but has started to be able to sense his neighbour’s imaginary friend, Klaris. This “migration” is considered a warning sign of an imaginary friend going bad, and as some bad things have happened in his neighbours’ house their father decides that they should undergo a procedure to have the imaginary friend part of their brain removed. This will mean they lose all their imagination and the main character is horrified by this because he relies on his imagination to remember his mother, who he hasn’t seen in years, and so he sets out on a quest to prove that the imaginary friend is not guilty of the crime. I really enjoyed this – it’s got a great, claustrophobic, close atmosphere, and you root for Joseph to work out what’s going on, something that makes the twist even more devastating.

Buy: Amazon | Hive (affiliate links)

Craft of Use by Kate Fletcher

I have long had an interest in memoirs and other stories about people’s relationship to clothes – how they wear them, choose them, customize them etc. I’ve never really had the correct terminology to describe that succinctly and then Craft of Use came along – it turns out all those things I love are “craft of use”, the activities that happen after a garment is sold to a person, after what we conventionally think of as the fashion industry, manufacture and sales, is out of the picture. It was absolutely fascinating and I want to read more books about this subject.

Buy: Amazon | Hive (affiliate links)

Books mentioned and mini-reviews:

The Love Square by Laura Jane Williams

This is the follow-up to Our Stop, which I really loved. It is full of all the lovely character details that I found so enjoyable in Our Stop – Laura’s characterisation is both varied and believable, which makes it a real treat to get to know her characters and the people around them. Despite the title, it’s more about Penny, the protagonist, deciding whether she wants a serious relationship at this point in her life than about her choosing between three men. She is a very flawed, yet sympathetic person with a lot going on in her life. She wants to have a child and she also wants to keep running her business. But her uncle wants her to take over his business and she can’t carry her own child, she needs a surrogate because of having had breast cancer. She froze embryos, so any partner she has in the future won’t be biologically related to her children and that adds an additional complication to any relationship she might pursue. I thought it was really interesting and it absolutely lovely to see that explored in a book, even though I’m somebody who normally is like ‘Ugh motherhood in the plot? Get it away from me!’ I’m looking forward to seeing what Laura writes next.

Buy: Amazon | Hive (affiliate links)

This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik

I have been trying to finish This Green and Pleasant Land for months, due to no fault of the novel. It was the last audio book I started before the pandemic. I get through audio books really quickly in non-pandemic conditions as I listen to them while getting ready for work, doing chores, etc. But now my daily routine is a lot shorter, I’m just not getting through audiobooks at the rate I was used to. Despite this, once I reached halfway through, I found it completely compelling and stopped everything else I was doing to listen! This Green and Pleasant Land is about a Muslim family in a small English village who aren’t particularly religious – Bilal enjoys a pint in the local pub, and his wife, Mariam, spends at least as much time watching self-improvement videos on YouTube as she does in prayer. But Bilal’s mother’s dying wish was for him to found a mosque in his village, and he decides to carry out that wish, no matter what anyone, even Mariam, thinks. Naturally, this quest leads to a lot of drama in the village as they split into two camps, one against the mosque and one for it, with friendships and marriages at risk of being destroyed – or created!

Bilal’s best friend in the village is the local vicar, and I loved that it brought up some really interesting questions about faith and how it’s not necessarily a constant thing for believers. It was great to see this idea explored while focusing on two quite traditional religions – most stories I’ve read about people developing their relationship religion focus on people who have more new-age kind of spiritualties.

It’s also a really charming book – even the characters who objectively are not great people are treated with respect, kindness and generosity. I really like reading books that are satirical but have this generosity of spirit towards their characters, showing people as they are, not shying away from it, but at the same time not being cruel and not mocking them. That’s why I really love Stella Gibbons’ writing and that’s what I really loved here. I really hope that Ayisha Malik writes more books like this.

Buy: Amazon | Hive (affiliate links)

Worn Stories by Emily Spivack

This is basically a book of stories about items of clothing that are special to people. Each piece features a photograph of an item of clothing and then a story about it, like a mini-memoir. I really enjoyed it, though I was expecting the writing to be a more substantial part of the book, there’s a lot of white space. Also, it would have been nice to see a more diverse range of contributors, many of them were trendy people who live in New York or LA, if not celebrities then people who hang out with celebrities and are at a similar level within their own fields. I am more interested in stories about ordinary people and their clothes than in stories about celebrities and wealthy people.

Buy: Amazon | Hive (affiliate links)

Giant Days by John Allison, Max Sarin and Whitney Cogar
Volumes 11-14

I’ve finished Giant Days! If you haven’t heard of this comic before, it’s a comedy-drama about three women who are at university together. The art is delightful, the story is silly and serious and realistic and surreal by turns, and I’d highly recommend it.

Buy: Amazon | Hive (affiliate links for the first volume)

Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky
Volumes 2-4

Sex Criminals is a very strange series about people with weird sex superpowers, evil sex police, an evil bank, capitalism (also evil, naturally), relationships, emotional hang-ups, and therapy! I’m really enjoying it, but boy is it weird.

Buy: Amazon | Hive (affiliate links for the first volume)

The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary

This is another romance, this time about Tiffy, who, low on cash and fleeing the end of a previous relationship, sees an ad for an unusual flatshare setup. It’s a one-bedroom flat and her flatmate works nights and is away at weekends. With some trepidation, she moves in. She and her flatmate, Leon, share the same bed but they’re never there at the same time. It’s a slow-burner – it takes quite a long time in the novel for them to meet, though when they do they’re instantly attracted to each other. Meanwhile Tiffy is slowly realising how abusive her ex was and Leon is dealing with the fact that his brother’s in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, trying to negotiate the legal system whilst also trying to find the long-lost love of one of his patients in the care home where he works as a nurse. I can see exactly why it got all the hype that it did, it’s just so much fun! I related to Tiffy hard because she is into super quirky clothes, and she works at a craft publisher! In an alternate universe where I had loads of money and didn’t need to worry about crap publishing wages, I would have loved to work at a craft publisher!

Buy: Amazon | Hive (affiliate links)