I am about to start a new job, which means I'll probably end up buying a nice pile of books again. But, until then, I wanted to make a small (very small) collection of the books that I'm currently lusting over.
Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella
I've been meaning to buy this book for years, I enjoy Kinsella's 'women's fiction', I enjoy YA novels, I should -logically- enjoy Finding Audrey then. Also, the cover art is so simple and effective - I especially love the hardcovers green stripes!
Finding Audrey is Sophie Kinsella's first novel for teens, sure to appeal to her legions of adult and young adult fans all over the world. Audrey can't leave the house. she can't even take off her dark glasses inside the house. Then her brother's friend Linus stumbles into her life. With his friendly, orange-slice smile and his funny notes, he starts to entice Audrey out again - well, Starbucks is a start. And with Linus at her side, Audrey feels like she can do the things she'd thought were too scary. Suddenly, finding her way back to the real world seems achievable. Be prepared to laugh, dream and hope with Audrey as she learns that even when you feel like you have lost yourself, love can still find you . . .
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
I first heard about this book from Jess' book haul (here) a couple of months ago, and since I keep seeing it in book shops. Although I wasn't interested the first time I heard about The Underground Railroad, I'm now thinking about getting a copy.
A Place Called Perfect by Helena DuggenIf you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from the start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. At each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world. As Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America, from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once the story of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history.
Every so often a children's book appears and I get a little bit jealous that I'm 'too old' to read it. But this book looks gorgeous, the illustrations and the message behind it seems wonderful!
They've got their eyes on you…Violet hates living in Perfect. She doesn’t want to have to be neat and tidy and perfectly well-behaved all the time, where’s the fun in that?Then Violet starts to question other things… Like why does everyone have to wear special glasses to stop them going blind? What are the strange noises in the night and why is Mum acting so weird?Then Dad disappears and Violet is determined to uncover the truth with the help of the mysterious Boy. But returning normality to Perfect is a battle they never imagined...
Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur
At this point, I feel like everyone and their mum has read Kaur's first poetry book milk and honey - which I loved! So when she announced, a few weeks ago, that she was going to be publishing another collection of poems I was overjoyed.
this is the recipe of life/said my mother/as she held me in her arms as i wept/ think of those flowers you plant/in the garden each year/ they will teach you/that people too/must wilt/fall/root/rise/in order to bloom/
I didn't read this while I was in education, so it's only since being made into a TV series that I've heard about it. I'm planning on reading the book before I watch the series though, which is very difficult with it being spoken about so much.
A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to.Offred lives in The Republic of Gilead, to some a utopian vision of the future, a place of safety, a place where everyone has a purpose, a function. But The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed.If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.
What have you got on your reading wishlist? Anything I'm missing? Or that you recommend?
- K.B
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