I have what is basically an insurmountable TBR pile at the moment and yet here I am, adding to it once more. I’ve been wanting to do posts like these for a while, where I pick books from my TBR pile to highlight in the hopes that I don’t just forget they exist, and what better place to start than the most recent additions?
I don’t often go into town but I was cited for jury service today and so while I didn’t have to spend so long in court, I figured I would go and have a wander through Waterstones, just to pass some time. There was nothing I had in mind to pick up, and yet somehow I managed to find seven more books to buy. I was honestly surprised they had that many that I hadn’t purchased yet. Here’s a little bit about each book I bought, and why.
really good, actually, by Monica Heisey
Maggie is fine. She’s doing really good, actually. Sure, she’s broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere, and her marriage only lasted 608 days, but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée™.
Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at 4 am, and “get back out there” sex-wise. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally), Maggie barrels through her first year of single life, intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor and asking herself tough questions along the way.
This book was 100% chosen on a whim. It’s one of Waterstones’ books of the month for October and so it was buy one get one half price, and there was another book that I’d spotted that was part of that deal too. I’ve seen it on bookstagram pretty much constantly since it was released, but it had never sparked any particular interest for me. Editions of this were everywhere, and the only other book like this that I’ve read was Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, which I really enjoyed. So fingers crossed I’ll like this one too!
Shadowlands, by Matthew Green
Historian Matthew Green travels across Britain to tell the forgotten history of our lost cities, ghost towns and vanished villages. Revealing the extraordinary stories of how these places met their fate – and exploring how they have left their mark on our landscape and our imagination – Shadowlands is a deeply evocative and dazzlingly original account of Britain’s past.
Who’s not interested in the mysterious settlements lost to history? I have another similar book, Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn (which is also still in my TBR pile) but this book covers a slightly different set of places. I’ve been buying a lot of non-fiction lately because I’m so keen to learn, but I don’t think I’ve cracked open a single book yet.
The Trick is to Keep Breathing, by Janice Galloway
From the corner of a darkened room Joy Stone watches herself. Memories of deaths – her married lover and her mother – re-surface and boil over. Life has become all about finding the trick to keep going. Told with shattering clarity and wry wit, this is a Scottish classic fit for our time.
I always give the Scottish fiction tables a look over whenever I go into Waterstones because I love reading Scottish authors, especially women, and more often than not I’ll find something interesting. This caught my eye due to its relatability, and the time in which it was written; there were a lot of good female authors writing interesting stories in the 80s. There isn’t much of a blurb on the back of this edition but the title was enough to draw me in.
all about love, by bell hooks
“The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet … we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, the renowned scholar, cultural critic, and feminist skewers our view of love as romance. In its place she offers a proactive new ethic for a people and a society bereft with lovelessness.
As bell hooks uses her incisive mind and razor-sharp pen to explore the question “What is love?” her answers strike at both the mind and heart. In thirteen concise chapters, hooks examines her own search for emotional connection and society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for the individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the “100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life.” All About Love is a powerful affirmation of just how profoundly she can.
I’d never heard of bell hooks until she died, but ever since then I’ve been keen to read her work. Her books have been quite difficult to find over here, but I finally came across one today. I’ve really been getting into the deep end of philosophy and feminism recently, and this is the perfect addition to my growing collection!
On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, by John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a prodigious thinker who sharply challenged the beliefs of his age. In On Liberty, one of the sacred texts of liberalism, he argues that any democracy risks becoming a “tyranny of opinion” in which minority views are suppressed if they do not conform to those of the majority. The Subjection of Women, written shortly after the death of Mill’s wife, Harriet, stresses the importance of sexual equality. Together they provide eloquent testimony to the hopes and anxieties of Victorian England, and offer a trenchant consideration of what it really means to be free.
Again, I picked this up because of the feminist angle. I’m really keen to see how far we’ve come, especially considering most of Mill’s views were thought to be radical in the Victorian era. This is two books in one, and both of them are going to be interesting, to say the least.
A Dowry of Blood, by S. T. Gibson
This is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession. . . Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets. With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.
I’ve been in a very vampiric mood lately, what with going to see Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning, and just the general season. I keep seeing this on bookstagram with a lot of praise attached to it, and so when I saw it on the shelf today I knew I had to have it.
Goblin, by Ever Dundas
A novel set between the past and present with magical realist elements. Goblin is an outcast girl growing up in London during World War 2. After witnessing a shocking event she increasingly takes refuge in a self-constructed but magical imaginary world. Having been rejected by her mother, she leads a feral life amidst the craters of London’s Blitz, and takes comfort in her family of animals, abandoned pets she’s rescued from London’s streets.
In 2011, a chance meeting and an unwanted phone call compels an elderly Goblin to return to London amidst the riots and face the ghosts of her past. Will she discover the truth buried deep in her fractured memory or retreat to the safety of near madness? In Goblin, debut novelist Dundas has constructed an utterly beguiling historical tale with an unforgettable female protagonist at its centre.
I originally saw this book in Blackwells in Edinburgh, and although it intrigued me I didn’t buy it – I didn’t buy anything on that occasion because there was construction underway in the shop and it was giving me a headache. It completely went out of my mind until I saw it again today. I actually wandered around the shop after seeing it before I went back to it. I just couldn’t get the blurb out of my mind.
Have you read any of these books, or bought anything interesting lately? Let me know in the comments!
Writing Werewolf 