Hi everyone, I'm here today to do my
April book haul. As always all the books
I mention will be linked in the
description box down below. The first
book is one I requested for a view from
Pan Macmillan because I thought it
sounded really interesting, it's a
nonfiction book called Bad Blood:
Secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley
Startup by John Carreyrou. John is
someone who works for The Wallstreet
Journal and he did a whole series of
articles exposing this company. It's a
company called Tharanos which was
founded by Elizabeth Holmes who
essentially lied about the company that
she had set up. She said that she had
created something that would mean that
blood tests could be done cheaply and
very quickly and she committed fraud. She
got money out of so many different
people, she created over a million
different fake blood test results which
put a lot of people's health in danger.
Have you seen the Netflix documentary
about Fyre festival? Obviously a completely
different type of fraud but it's that
same exploitation — someone who's a
compulsive liar trying to get money out
of as many people as possible, promising
things they absolutely cannot deliver
and I find their psychology behind that,
as well as the actual events, just
enthralling, so I'm really looking
forward to reading this one. Next I
bought this short story collection which
is called picnic in the storm by a
Yukiko Motoya and it's translated from
the Japanese by Asa Yoneda.
So the blurb that this says "a housewife
takes up bodybuilding and sees radical
changes to her physique which a
workaholic husband fails to notice. A boy
waits at a bus stop mocking businessmen
struggling to keep their umbrellas open
in a typhoon until an old man shows him
that they hold the secret to flying..." and
lots of other things. So this has
magical realism elements to it and I had
seen a reviewer say that this was as if
Murakami's daughter had started writing
short stories and actually given voice
to women, which I think sounds brilliant
so I'm really looking forward to diving
into this. Next I requested this book for
review from Jonathan Cape at Vintage
this is a debut novel by Ocean Vuong
called On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.
Ocean is the author of Night Sky With Exit Wounds which was one of my favourite
books of 2017, a beautiful poetry
collection about what it means to be a
queer American Vietnamese person and
this as I said is his debut novel it
sounds like it draws on a lot of
autobiographical thing. If you've read
his poetry collection you'll be able to
see that by the blurb alone which says
"on earth we're briefly gorgeous is a
letter from a son to a mother who cannot
read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog,
is in his late 20s the letter unearths
the family's history which began before
he was born, the epicenter of which is
rooted in Vietnam and serves as a
doorway into parts of his life his
mother has never known." I have it on good
authority from many people that this is
just as gorgeous as his poetry which
excites me.
I was then given this by my friend
Sophie Hardach. She is an author. I have
done a podcast with her which I'll link
down below, she does a lot of journalism
and I recorded a podcast with her when
she had just been documenting the
journey of Syrian refugees; she had been
traveling with them through Europe. She
is an absolutely extraordinary writer
and this is her third novel. This novel
is mainly set in Berlin it says Tobi and
Ella's childhood in East Berlin is
shrouded in mystery. Now adults living in
London their past is full of unanswered
questions. Both remember their families
daring and terrifying attempts to escape
but what happened next? Where did their
parents disappear to and why? Sophie
herself is German. I'm really
looking to this.
Next is a review copy I was sent from
salt called Snegurochka by Judith Heneghan
and this is set in Kiev in 1992
it has been blurbed by Claire Fuller who
said that she really enjoyed it and I
like her writing so I'm hoping I'm
really going to enjoy this - it's about
Rachel who is a troubled young English
mother who joins a journalist husband on —
oh hello sun —
who joins her husband on his first
foreign posting in the city. Terrified of
the apartment's balcony she develops an
obsessive ritual to keep their baby safe
and then she unearths something weird
that's going on in the building that
she lives in. A nonfiction book that I
bought is this one here by Kate Clanchy
called 'Some Kids I Taught and What they
Taught Me'
Kate is the editor of 'England: poems
school.' She runs poetry workshops at
Oxford Spires Academy and she works
particularly with refugees and helps
them express themselves through poetry.
The work that she does is marvellous if
you haven't read 'England: poems from
school', I'll link that down below and
I'll also link an article talking about
the kind of things that she does as well
this is a book that she's written about
what she has learned from teaching
poetry to so many different children and
I think it's probably gonna make me cry.
I was sent this review copy from Tracy
Chevalier. This is her new novel; it's not
out until September. It's called A Single
Thread. It is set in Winchester and it is
about embroidery and a woman who has
escaped to start another life. I love all
of Tracy's books. I think actually she
was the first adult writer that I read
as a teenager. I was on a holiday in
Cornwall with my family and the cottage
that we were renting... the people who
owned it... had all of her books on a shelf
and I read as all of her books that had been
published at that point and I'm really
looking forward to this one —
one: because I enjoy her writing but two:
I really like it when she writes about
embroidery and I think my favorite of
hers... I'm struggling to remember the title...
it is The Last Unicorn? (Nope, it's The Lady and the Unicorn) — that one is
also about embroidery so I'm really
pleased that she is going back to that
and I know that textiles and embroidery
are things that Tracy is really
passionate about and has done so much
reading into. Quilting as well which has
also been in other elements of her work.
I have also bought some more poetry
collections and I'm going to whizz
through those as I've mentioned before
it's difficult to talk about poetry when
you haven't read it yet, so I will talk
about them properly when I review
them but just to let you know what I
have bought and picked up. I bought
Unhistorial by Bri Cavallaro. Bri is
a friend of mine. We both went to
Edinburgh University, well actually
she was only there for a year she was on
exchange because she's American, she's
from the States and I love that we used
to go for brunch and talk about our
favorite writers and now we're both
writing books either side of the ocean.
She is so successful now, she's written a
series of YA books the first of which
is called A Study in Charlotte and is a
modern-day Sherlock Holmes
inspired trilogy. She is a New York
Times bestseller, she's fantastic,
but I mostly adore her poetry and this
is her new collection.
She always has themes of girlhood and
fairy tales, so right up my street — that's
why we're friends to begin with; we love
the same things. Then I bought this
collection here called Library of Small
Catastrophes by Allison C Rollins and
the reason that I bought it is that I
believe that a lot of these poems are
inspired by libraries or in particular
the Library of Babel and it's about
storytelling
it says "counting teeth and time marking
punctuation and punishment and
remembering disappeared histories..." I
looked at a few sample poems and they
sounded really up my street, I am really
excited by these. I bought these four
pamphlets which is a series that's just
been released by Tilted Axis Press.
I've mentioned them before they were set
up by Deborah Smith who is the
translator of Han Kang's work and all of
the things that they publish are
translated works and she wanted to
release a series of poetry pamphlets
that looked at feminisms in different
countries, so this is why it's called
Translating Feminisms. So we have poetry here.
This is poems translated from the Nepali,
we have four Tamil poets we have poems
translated from the Vietnamese and then
this one is nine Korean poets
so this is really exciting and I
recommend checking out their press which
I'll link down below.
I was very kindly sent two books for
review from Faber this is Ilya
Kaminsky's Deaf Republic which I've
heard amazing things about and I think
if you enjoyed Raymond Antrobus's
collection The Perseverance then this
would be right up your street, this again
is looking at deafness and I know that
Raymond himself loves it. I also
requested Julia Copus's new collection
which is called Girlhood I have
previously enjoyed her other work and I
couldn't resist buying this new
collection by Brenda Shaughnessy, whose
work I've also previously enjoyed this
is called The Octopus Museum and can we
just have a moment for the cover which i
think is absolutely stunning? This looks
at a world where we have completely
destroyed our ocean
and how our oceans might come back and
destroy us. I'm hoping because it's got
that linked narrative throughout it might
be a little bit like Nin Andrews's work
who I've talked about a lot. Her work is
always so illuminating, so beautiful so
again I will repeat back with my
thoughts
once I have read it. So those are all the
books that I have requested for review
or have bought recently. As I said
they're all linked in the description
box. Have you read any of these? Would you
like to read any of these? Let me know in
a comment down below and I will speak to
you all very soon. Lots of bookish love. Bye! x
