So I thought I’d try to introduce a monthly round up of my reading onto the blog. Aiming to get it posted on the first Wednesday of each month, reviewing my reading and blogging the previous month.
Reading Round-Up
With the unexpected return to lockdown I had high hopes of reading more… but with an enhanced and rather intensive form of working from home, I am pretty pleased with 6 books.
Although, it has to be said, that a number of those were begun in December 2020 and only completed this month.
Favourite Adult book completed
This is a tough one this month: Shuggie Bain was powerful but bleak – and a review is needed; Her Body and Other Parties was wonderful in places and a little flat elsewhere. I think I would choose White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi. It is chilling, unnerving and a hard read.
Favourite Young Adult Book Completed
For this, I select Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson as an intriguing and well crafted YA detective novel where the very sweet protagonist Pip looks destined to go down a dark path.
Most exciting Book Acquisition
The Death of Frances Bacon by Max Porter.
Most talked about book acquistion
Girl A by Abigail Dean.
Oddest thing learned from books this month
That there can be a fetishisation of the risk of contracting HIV in unprotected sex with an HIV positive partner. This comes from Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters and nearly put me off continuing reading it.
Blogging Round-Up
Most popular book review:
Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz
This is the sequel to Magpie Murders and returns us to Susan Ryeland, erstwhile editor and currently co-owner of a hotel in Cyrus, and the literary detective Atticus Pund.
Like its predecessor – in fact a little more successfully than its predecessor – the novel opens up a contemporary murder mystery before segueing into a parallel literary reinterpretation of the same characters.
Currently Reading As We Start February
- Luster, Raven Leilani
- The Mitford Trial, Jessica Fellowes
- The Historians, Eavan Boland
The Book Lovers' Sanctuary 