contemporary fiction

Summer Books To Read: #20BooksOfSummer

11th June 2018 by Gemma Leave a Comment

20 Summer Books to Read

We’ll ignore the fact that I have been an absent blogger (I’m kind of back, and that’s all that matters, right?) and head straight to this fantastic idea by Cathy at 746books.com.

In essence, from the 4th of June ’til the 3rd of September, I will be reading 20 books of my own choosing. That’s 13 weeks, 21 days, and 20 books.

Like Cathy, I may swap one book on the list for another, because life is too short to spend one’s time reading book/s one doesn’t feel like reading at a particular moment.

I’ve mostly chosen books I already have on my shelves, including my e-shelf. The only exception would be the books for the book club I attend monthly which we don’t get to decide on until the month before.

So without further digressing, here’s my #20BooksOfSummer —

In The Country, Mia Alves
America Is Not The Heart, Elaine Castillo
Reaper At The Gates, Sabaa Tahir
The Summer Book, Tove Jansson
The Bees, Laline Paull
Godsgrave, Jay Kristoff
~~Legendary, Stephanie Garber~~
Emma, Jane Austen
The Improbability Of Love, Hannah Rothschild
One Of Us Is Lying, Karen McManus
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
A Room With A View, E. M. Forster
The Surface Breaks, Louise O’Neill
How To Stop Time, Matt Haig
Exit West, Mohsin Hamid
Conversations With Friends, Sally Rooney
A Crown Of Wishes, Roshi Chokshi
The Light We Lost, Jill Santopolo (July Book Club read)
August Book Club read
September Book Club read

I am undeniably in a YA mood as evidenced by more than a quarter of the books listed. And if you consider the books by Paull, Austen, and Forster as YA, then that’s almost half of the list! We’ll see where the mood takes me at the end of the season, eh?

And yes, I have already started — a week has gone by already, after all!

How about you? Do you have your own #20BooksofSummer?

Serial Summaries – Book Edition III: Jan/Feb Mini Reviews + Comment Challenge

26th February 2017 by Gemma 4 Comments

The last time I did this was back in August — how much do I fail on this? *laughs* At least this is my blog, so I am free to do what I please with it, and this time, instead of listing out the books I’ve read and bought for the month, it’ll have mini reviews of some books I’ve read but don’t have much to say about to warrant one whole post. I mean, surely, you do not want to click on a post that contains a whopping five sentences (or even less) about a book!

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From the Publisher’s Desk: This Must Be The Place

17th May 2016 by Gemma 2 Comments

This Must Be The Place is the seventh novel by Irish author Maggie O’Farrell. Her novels are renown for their delicate exploration of relationships, whether it be familial or romantic, and her elegant prose adds more to the charm, making her novels well-loved by readers.

Unfortunately, I have been living under a rock — I have never read a Maggie O’Farrell novel before this one. The big initial sell of This Must Be The Place for me was that it involved travelling, and I was only too happy to delve into a book that contains my other favourite activity. The fascinating premise supplemented my interest: it purports to be a book that “crosses continents and time zones [..]” and “at its heart, [..] an extraordinary portrait of a marriage, the forces that hold it together, and the pressures that drive it apart.”

The primary characters are Daniel Sullivan, an American linguistics living in a remote corner of Donegal, Ireland, and his wife, Claudette Wells, a famous ex-actress who had disappeared from the public eye at the height of her popularity, and is since determined to live a hermitic life with her children. The novel details their present lives, their lives in their youth before they met, how their marriage came to be, and the challenge of keeping it together compounded by past history and personal demons.

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Book Club Read: The Versions of Us

28th April 2016 by Gemma 2 Comments

The Versions of Us is the first novel by art journalist and theatre critic Laura Barnett. Pegged as ‘Sliding Doors meets One Day’, it tells the story of Jim Taylor and Eva Katz who meet by chance in 1958 while they are students in Cambridge. A bicycle accident brings them together, and from there three different stories unfold, three disparate worlds where they got married in one, initially started off as strangers in another, and fallen in love but circumstances kept them apart in the third. These three narrations are different but have similarities, and there are instances where the plot converge on life occasions, such as birthdays or relatives passing away.

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From the Publisher’s Desk: Shtum

6th April 2016 by Gemma Leave a Comment

Jem Lester is a former journalist and secondary school English and Media Studies teacher. Shtum is his first novel, and is a result of his experience of being a parent to a severely autistic son, also named Jonah¹. It is marketed as “perfect for fans of David Nicholls, and anyone who loved The Shock of the Fall, The Rosie Project, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time². A friend who has read it sang praises about it, and even said it made her cry.

Everything in that previous paragraph actually made me feel disinclined to read this book. The only David Nicholls novel I’ve read is Us, and I wasn’t a big fan. I quite enjoyed The Rosie Project, but it was not heartbreaking, nor did I feel like shedding tears at any part of that book. I have not read The Shock of the Fall or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time so I have a half-informed impression. Most of all, I know autism can be heartrending, and it is not a topic that I think of lightly. But read it I must, and with a reluctant heart, I soldiered on.

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