I usually only post books here that I have absolutely loved, because I always think who cares about what I actually think about a book. I just ought to say – is it good? Or not? If I had any relevant or intelligent thoughts about books I would surely not have bombed my English literature degree quite… so… badly…
But the problem is that I haven’t read any book that I really loved for ages and ages. So I thought I would just write down all the books I have tried and failed with or finished and liked 85% or some 99% in the hope that in return you will post some recent books you have read in the comments section to inspire us all.
Sorry I have forgotten almost all the author’s names.
Where the Crawdads Sing
A man is found dead in a muddy puddle somewhere in the deep South and the semi-feral marsh-dwelling beauty Kya has the key to what happened. This has been very popular in America and is racing up the charts here. It was okay but terrifyingly humourless and in parts veering into slight Danielle Steele territory. It’s also a bit and-then-and-then-and-then in the middle – and the twist is dismal.
Ask Again, Yes
This is a very well-written but slightly bumbling, meandering book about two intertwined families in America from the mid-70s until sort of now. It’s like a really delicious bowl of soup: at first you’re like “Oh this is so great,” then you’re like “is this still soup?” and then “oh my god, how much more soup is there going to be? Is there going to be a crouton at some point or what? I need some toast or sthng”; if you actually want to finish the soup you have to dig deep. But, like I said – the soup remains delicious.
The Silent Patient
I avoided this book for a long time because my friend finds the author to be a bit of a personal nemesis so I dodged it in solidarity. But then I’m afraid I was in a bit of a reading rut and so had a peek inside out of curiosity. It’s a very readable and creepy book about a psychiatrist with a patient who has not said a word about a murder for the last 10 years or however TF long and he has to get her to talk in order to solve the crime. It’s very accomplished in what it sets out to do, which is to keep you turning the pages, but the end I found slightly annoying in its clever-clever-twisty-cleverness. It also didn’t quite fulfil the role I want a book to fulfil in my life which is something good to read that I can return to – I found myself staying up until 2am ripping through this, trying to finish it, which was fucking annoying actually.
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
I was intrigued by this because it was no.1 on the bestseller lists, but I just couldn’t plough on through it, I don’t know why – it was perfectly okay. I might have another go at it.
My Friend Anna
This is the true story of the Russian con-artist Anna Sorokin by her friend, who was duped out of many thousands of dollars. This started life as a Vanity Fair magazine article and it’s possible that it should have stayed as that. Still, it’s a reasonably gripping read as the net closes around Anna and the hunted turns into the hunter.
My Sister, The Serial Killer
I absolutely loved the first 2/3 of this – I loved the is she/isn’t she? actually a serial killer element – or do we have an unreliable narrator? – the metaphor of serial killing for all sorts of things that go on within sibling relationships. The last third fell to bits – for me – but I have got no regrets in reading it and I look forward to what the author does next.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
Lori Gottlieb is an irritatingly accomplished American psychotherapist; she is a former big-hitter in television (she worked on Friends and on ER) and then retrained as a doctor and then as a psychotherapist and!! she is a very successful journalist and writes these brilliant pop-psychology books that sell a million copies. So I was delighted to see that this book, about her own practice as well as the therapy she received for a small break-down in her forties, is mostly 90% good but is also a bit patchy. It’s small and mean of me, I know, to be pleased about this. But it’s the truth! Definitely worth reading though as it’s mostly really good and very funny.
Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
I mean, is Ronan Farrow actually real? Or is he one of those digitally-designed Instagram bot things? His perfect skin, his supernatural intelligence, it’s all a bit suss isn’t it.
He, too, makes me feel small and mean and stupid and unaccomplished when you know that he’s this prodigiously clever Fulbright scholar (or something similar) – turned-rapist-catcher. But Catch and Kill is self-effacing, clever and gripping as he tries to nail Harvey Weinstein’s ass to the wall. I’ve never (obviously) been on such a big story as this, but I have been on stories that people have dismissed me away from – (as Ronan is many times on the Harvey thing) – only for someone more tenacious to break the story properly. I know how disheartening it is when someone in seniority says “there’s no story here, go away” and how pretty much impossible it is to come back and say “no but sorry there is”. Farrow is very interesting about his own family and the well-documented historical what-happened weirdness with Woody Allen and Dylan Farrow.
Expectation by Anna Hope
This is a good, solid book – it follows three women, all friends, through a flat-share in their twenties and beyond. At the start I thought this book had been written by someone young but it turns out the author is actually mid-forties and it sort of makes sense as when you get to 35+ and beyond you do start getting slightly obsessed with what’s-become-of-so-and-so and this book is very much that.
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
My husband was surprised that I liked this book and so was I – it’s a very stylish Western by the very stylish Patrick deWitt who also wrote French Exit, which is one of the best books ever. The Sisters Brothers follows two brothers with the surname Sisters, who are hit men in the wild west. It stops just short of the actual horrifying violence that peppers Western novels like Lonesome Dove, which opens – opens! – with the visual of a pig eating a snake. I’m just not into that kind of stuff and thankfully deWitt finds it possible to tell and authentic story without feeling the need to curl up in a foetal position and ring your therapist. (Not as good as French Exit, can I make that clear.)
Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth
Sorry ignore everything I said in my intro, I loved this book. One Hundred Per Cent. It is about two girls on a semi-permanent bender pretty much across the UK and it’s fabulous.
Diary of a Drag Queen by Crystal Rasmussen
This is the extremely graphic and explicit year in the life of Tom “Crystal” Rasmussen, drag queen and wannabe journalist. Written 4 years ago, it is a challenging and sometimes confusing book – Crystal sometimes writes so spikily and defensively that you think “Oh, do fuck off” – at other times it’s very moving and effective at describing the genuine fear and actual physical danger you are in if you appear in public in half-drag. But there are also long undergraduate essay-style semi-lectures on what it means to be non-binary, the importance of not mis-gendering someone.
And then there are the minute-by-minute very detailed descriptions of Grindr hookups, which are genuinely informative and occasionally very faintly stomach-churning. There is poo and vomit and semen everywhere. But I did appreciate not only the honest description of felching, but why you might want to do it. It doesn’t sound very hygienic, but neither is letting my cats sit on the kitchen surfaces.
I was with Crystal entirely in the angry section about “pink washing” – i.e. we are fine with the queer community if it’s all about rainbows and glitter and excellent interior design, we’re less okay with open conversations about gay-bashing, HIV and bumholes. I recalled immediately my fury at exactly the same social approach to motherhood – I spent years fucked off at society’s total blank-face when it came to the reality of early motherhood; we are only allowed to be blissed-out and fluffy, we’re not allowed to be exhausted and fed up and pissed off with the whole fackin thing. Of course that’s all changed what with the Scummy Mummies and the Hurrah for Gin lady – I wonder if things are changing for Crystal’s community too?
I was happy that I scored highly on the “are you a LGBTQIA+ ally?” test and a light went on in my head at the phrase that “gay men are allergic to intimacy” – which might explain why gay men never want to be my friend, as I am all about intimacy.
Anyway that’s what I read recently. How about you? Are you reading a good book?
Yep. I’m with you on the Crawdads.
Best read of the year – On Chapel Sands by Laura Cummings. Cummings is an art historian/critic and the story is woven around a photo she found of her mother, aged 3 on a beach with her father dressed in his Sunday best. It’s around 1929. The girl is kidnapped and disappears for five days. She reappears and is reunited with her family and grows up knowing nothing about what happened to her.
Cummings uses her art historian skills to piece together the story of what happened, using other family photographs taken over the ensuing years and by talking to members of her family and the local community, many of whom are reluctant to give up their secrets.
She uncovers what seems at first to be an incredible story, until you realise that it probably is a lot more common than you realise. Families keeping secrets, communities shutting out realities that don’t suit and what people need to do to get on with their lives.
Read it. I promise you, you won’t regret it.
Also highly commended – A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles and The Hearts Invisible Furies by John Boyne
You have TOTALLY sold me on On Chapel Sands! Definitely need to read this. Thanks!
Emma
@thebookpervert
Yep me too. But first I have to finish the final two in the Last Kingdom series, Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon saga. Oh god I love it so much.
Totally agree I love this series so much. The characters are really well written, just wish Uhtred was real!!!!
I just finished Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper, who is an ex-Westboro Baptist Church member (the God Hates Fags lot). It is gripping and a moving account of the experience of being in and escaping from a religious cult. About to read Motherwell, which I’m excited about. Also enjoying A Manifesto For a Queer Life of Colour.
I’m doing a memoir writing course (I’m at that age) and just read Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal, which I 2/3rds loved, (especially the first part when she was being left on the doorstep all night by her adoptive mother – what’s wrong with me?) but was left puzzled by the end. Also Audible-ing Middlemarch – had forgotten how FUNNY it is.
Currently besotted with Anne Glenconner’s Lady in Waiting. Mesmeric voyeurism into such a privileged but tragic life. Xx
I think I’m incredibly late to the party with this one but I loved Olive Kitteridge having also been mildly disappointed by many of the must-reads of the last couple of years. It’s a collection of stories about different characters living in a small town on the US east coast which all circle around the eponymous Olive who is a wonderfully bad-tempered teacher. I got slightly confused by the large cast of characters’ names but I think that’s because I rush through books without bothering to learn people’s names properly (same with meetings and drinks parties). Also, sorry to co-commenter here but I found Lady in Waiting really quite terrible (and I read all sorts of utter trash quite happily) so it’s not for everyone.
I have just read Notes to Self by Emilie Pine. It is a autobiographical collection of essays. Very well written and makes for thoughtful, although at times heartbreaking reading.
I’m reading the Snowman downstairs and another one in bed … but I don’t have a lot of time to read books as I have a full time job reading/watching shite on my phone .. aka how to do make up over 50s, what to buy from H&M, and Iris, how to rescue a dog from an ice covered lake FFS! Watching near misses Oh and French plaits….. always handy to know
I have that job too. So demanding.
I’ve really enjoyed ‘My name is Why” by Lemn Sissay. “The interestings’ Meg Wolitzer and ‘The female persuasion’ Meg Wolitzer. What did you think of the corrections? – I sort of liked …but found it too far fetched in the end…
The last book I read that I really loved was Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson, which is an honest and funny memoir (or rather series of essays?) about raising small children. It is ostensibly lighthearted and made me laugh a lot, but there are definite notes of the uncanny; hints of the loneliness and darkness that exist beneath the surface of family life, and having read her fiction I could see the seams of where one became the other. I also just read the Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O’Brien and found them really absorbing, two Irish girls trying to escape their village to the big city by way of the convent – though diminishing returns by the end of book three I really liked the the bleak humour and frankness of the first one especially, and the depiction of a best friend who treats you like crap is painfully real. I am currently reading Jim Henson’s biography by Brian Jay Jones and as well as an insight into the man, it is also a really great slice of television and film history, and a tribute to creativity and clarity of purpose. I’m enjoying all the background industry stuff and anecdotes like how he crammed himself into a bell jar to film a frog singing Rainbow Connection in a swamp, how he got David Bowie and Terry Jones involved in Labyrinth, how he workshopped jokes and skits with the muppet team, figuring out what worked and what didn’t and developing the characters that everyone now knows inside out, and have already got emotional more times because of Kermit than I’m really comfortable admitting.
I’m glad you liked The Sisters Brothers I keep meaning to get hold of his other one; it has a weird name that I forget. I hate violence in books generally but I seem to be able to make an exception for Westerns and love Lonesome Dove. You might like True Grit if you’ve never read it as that is stylish and not too scalpy as I remember and has a great witty narrative voice. I also liked Days Without End by Sebastian Barry, the characters and the love story were interesting and different but that was quite violent. I wasn’t all that keen on Expectation, it was very readable though. It felt to me like it had the style of a novel written for a YA audience, but about adult issues. So possibly similar vibe as you thinking it was written by someone younger. Just a bit blah and a pig eating a snake would’ve livened it up no end for me.
An oldie (20 years ago) but a goodie ‘After You’ve Gone’ by Maggie O’Farrell – deeply moving.
Yes, I loved that book
Best book I read last year HANDS DOWN is The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker – simply breathtaking. Coincidentally, I just finished The Hunting Party! It was good fun – no more.
Instagram: @thebookpervert for proper reviews!
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
I wish I had even half the poise of Katy Kontent, orphaned daughter of Russian immigrants making her way in glamorous late 30’s Manhattan. Like Edith Wharton updated. Brilliant.
Station 11 by Emily St John Mandel – it’s a few years old but I read it on holiday recently and couldn’t believe it hasn’t been more hyped. One of the best books I have ever read and disturbingly topical at the moment – it starts with a flu epidemic breaking out in North America. Also the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy – I’m a bit late to the party but they were a brilliant read and such fun!
Great post and comments. I’ve just finished the Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes. Now, I must admit to having been a bit sniffy about JM in the past, but a friend sent this to me because I’m having a slightly gruesome time at the moment and it was Just the Ticket. Horseback librarians in Kentucky in the Depression. I could not tear myself away. Even if you don’t have the need for a comfort read as an excuse, I still recommend it.
I am really enjoying The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo. Sixteen years in the life of four sisters and their parents, set in Chicago. It is witty, heartbreaking, cleverly structured and very absorbing.
I loved the Elena Ferrante series of Italian novels starting with My Brilliant Friend. Totally absorbing and intelligent writing. Also brilliant is Karl Ove Knausgaard and his six volume series about his life and alcoholic father.
Hotel Du Lac is a wonderful, absorbing read, thoroughly engrossing with such well considered characters. I have just finished 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez which was good but not as enjoyable as Love in a Time if Cholera, another of his books.
Alain de Botton has written some amazing, very inspiring books to do with the human condition, such as The Course of Love, but not fiction, per se, as has Jordan Peterson with 12 Rules for Life, a book everyone should read
Just googled felching. Jesus Christ.
I love these kind of lists.
The Nickle Boys. So tragic in an understated kind of way.
Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
That looks good.. I’ve just ordered
Agree. It took a while to get into, but I loved it. Elton John’s Me is fun. From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan is a quick but moving read. Middle England by Jonathon Coe is a wry observation on Brexit Britain and is funnier than it sounds. Everywhere: One Woman, One Rucksack, One Lifetime of Travel by Rosita Boland is by an Irish journalist who has spent the last 30 years travelling on her own around the world (not non stop!). It’s a surprisingly moving book.
I am madly saving book suggestions based on this post and the comments. Now I am in my sober stint, I am reading again and it’s a delight – even more so because it’s through the library and that always makes me feel wholesome. Current one is ‘Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body’ by Roxane Gay. It’s a memoir built around food and fat and trauma. She writes effortlessly, I’m really enjoying it.
Start a GoodReads list! Do it! xx
I raced through Such A Fun Age. The ending doesn’t match the strength of the first chapter but the characters are really well written and are funny and self aware enough for you to care how things turn out.
I totally agree with all comments about On Chapel Sands – a gift of a book. I can also recommend Rose Tremain’s childhood memoir, Rosie.
I’ve read all her books. All excellent in different ways
Have you read The Rules Do Not Apply by Aerial Levy. It is a memoir that won’t make you feel small or mean – she literally could not be more honest about what a HOT MESS her life is!!! She writes for the New Yorker and recently ghost wrote Demi Moore’s book so the prose isn’t annoying either. Love sharing books!!!!!!!!!! Thanks Esther.
I now have a list an arm long of books for 2020, so satisfying to be set up for the year, thank you. Wish I wasn’t working today (ahem) so I could get stuck in. I loved Lonesome Dove so The Sisters Brothers is top of the list. Agree re Crawdads, it’s a steaming turd and the last time I turn to Reese Witherspoon for book recommendations.
My recommendation is for a book I haven’t actually read yet but can’t wait to as I think it will be quite unique (though it’s 600 pages long). The Cartiers by Francesca Cartier Brickell. “The captivating story of the family behind the Cartier empire and the three brothers who turned their grandfather’s humble Parisian jewelry store into a global luxury icon—as told by a great-granddaughter with exclusive access to long-lost family archives”. I’m following the author on instagram at @creatingcartier where she posts some fantastic anecdotes about incredible jewelry, early travel, business encounters with Indian princes etc.
I just started “I Am God” which I’m enjoying. Also randomly reading Candide which is fab.
Ooooh, I love book recommendations. OMG YES, The Silence of the Girls, I actually took self to bed for almost all of Christmas Day to read it (I had a bit of a headache too, my children and husband and in-laws were v understanding), was just fabulous, I couldn’t put it down. (Who knew the siege of Troy would be so gripping?) I’ve just reread The Girls by Lori Lansens because it is AMAZING (beautifully written fictional account of the life of conjoined twins – how could it not be amazing?) (not to be confused with The Girls by Lisa Jewell which was meh) and am now rereading Station Eleven, although I might have to put it to one side until this virus business has cleared up and we’re no longer getting messages from school saying DON’T COME TO SCHOOL IF YOU’VE BEEN TO CHINA (and today – DISPLAY YOUR TEMPERATURE ON A STICKER ON YOUR CHEST, swear to God.).
Book-related recommendation: the Libby app – which links through to whatever library you’re a member of, and whizzes books / audios to your device in SECONDS, FOR FREE. It’s brilliant (unless you hate reading off devices) and because it’s free, if you don’t like the book you just whizz it back and say NEXT. It’s book wizardry really.
Have just downloaded app, thanks for recommendation.