Some Lovely Book Things
Book Club Fail?
Right so… May book club did not go anywhere. How do we know this? Well, it is now checks calendar app just about October 1st and I never posted again after sharing about my book choice. Why is that? Good think you asked non-existent curious reader of mine. The book was quite frankly disappointing trash poo poo and I wish I had never chosen it. Gosh you know I feel bad saying that. It wasn’t ALL bad just generally not good for the most part. There were some quotes I highlighted…before I added it to my ‘Did Not Finish’ shelf on Goodreads and donated it to my local Little Free Library box.
Sorry for that messy crap recommend. I should have read reviews beforehand. I figured I enjoyed the author’s essays so naturally wouldn’t I enjoy her book? No that is not the case. I don’t want to get into the particular of why it was not good-just imagine big mean girl energy but also jealous secretly wants to be the popular girls so ends up bitching about them energy also.
My family started their own book club. Goddamit, they are better at this than I am. There are rules and crap. And everyone is VERY communicative….which is great don’t get me wrong I love it I am here for it. But why don’t I have my shit together and why am I one of the few members of the club who didn’t actually read the assigned book but is pretending I did?
Alas and alack beloveds, when one loves to read as I do but also has had their brain flipped into a half-cooked, smushy pancake of forgetfulness due to having a child, reading often takes the backseat. Yet, I have managed to read many books this year. Sadly most of them were mediocre and ooof I hate that. I am bringing back my little book nook page for the last few months of the year in the hopes it will give me a push to get myself away from numbing out to Netflix at the end of the day (although I will always argue that there is validity to finding rest in these kinds of activities) and into some of my long list of TO BE READ books.
I have decided to pick What You Are Looking For Is In The Library by Michiko Aoyama, a short enough and calming book to read for October. This book should be accessible in your local library or as an E-Book or audio book online A little cosy, fall book to comfort us as we burrow down into the oncoming wintering of our selves and our world. If you care to join me that would be delightful. I’ll pop back in with a little suggestion of our next read towards the middle to end of October and share some thoughts on the book. This book is for people who have read and liked Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa or The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.
I want to stress that it is ok to not finish books and when you are living a time crunched life there is nothing wrong with tossing stuff aside and looking elsewhere for satisfaction. I spent years forcing myself to finish drivel out of a sense of nobility and due process…now I am a parent who is ruled by the iron chubby fist of a tiny almost toddler and I have to be choosy about how I spend my precious free time. If this book or any thing I recommend is not for you that’s ok. Go, seek meaning elsewhere fellow traveller of the cosmos of life. I’m sure we will meet on the path to personal enlightenment and peace somewhere down the line in one context or another. .
May Book Club Pick
It is finally here after all these years (oh lawd have mercy) of promising a virtual book club I am starting one now.
Boom. Right this moment. Here we go.
Right so, I have no clue how to conduct this. It would certainly be easier within an in-person context or maybe a podcast (“FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO NED”-I hear you all yell). Perhaps one day we may even be able to host a zoom book club meeting. How darling…how…reminiscent of a time recently past. Wait, have we suddenly been teleported back to March 2020? The beginning of the pandemic virtual socialising life? I hear echoes of that dark time that strange world clanging in my ears….tiger king boooohhh whipped coffee ahhhh baking loaf after loaf of banana bread eeee zoom family quiz time nooooo insert ghost noises here
SO I may be a couple of years late to a trend that isn’t really a thing anymore but I figured I would like to start a book club. I have limitations on my time and I have nobody in my direct circle, as of yet, that is willing to actually show up in person to something like this. So why not take it to the virtual world and see if anyone is interested. If there is something in this life you need or want and it doesn’t exist then you make that thing. No sense in me complaining about the lack of amenities to satisfy my hobbies if I am not going to get up and try to design and engineer it for myself.
Anyway enough of this chin wagging self-help nonsense. Here is my choice for this month’s book club.
Peep those stunning breast milk collectors hanging out with the mommy book. Is that serendipitous or am I a clever influencer? We will never know……
I understand this may be a very niche book choice for a book club pick. I am currently the only person in the club so I get to choose the book. Thems the rules. Listen I am so happy to have other people pick the next reads we do and will gladly take suggestions either in the comment box, email or direct message on Instagram. Perhaps if I can figure out the technology we can do a poll.
I chose this book because I follow the author on her Substack-In Pursuit of Clean Countertops. Having recently washed myself clean of the toxic net of mommy influencer culture that really challenged my own experiences of new motherhood, I am fascinated by the topic.
I am interested to see if this book is what I hope it is- an acerbic and witty analysis of the problematic nature of peddling our children for profit through proliferating restricted ideologies of ‘successful parenting’ based on a puritanical and western model. Then again perhaps it won’t do that and it may just add fodder to the cannon. Whatever you do, do not do what I did and go read reviews on the book on Goodreads. I had to stop myself because it began to colour my interpretation before even beginning. Let’s just dive in and see what happens, I bought the book but feel free to rent at a local library or go the e-book route or audio book if that’s your fancy.
See you in two weeks!
2023 Top Ten Reads-Coming at You the end of February 2024
She’s a little late but hey, I got there eventually so that’s got to count for something right? Did I manage to complete my Goodreads challenge of 2023 and read 32 books? No. I gave birth to a tiny human in July and that kind of derailed my plans a little. I did, however, manage to read 24 so about two a month is not bad. I thought it would be fun to give a brief overview of my top ten books I read last year. The order the books are listed does not indicate preference.
N.B. Quite a few of the books I read have pretty challenging emotional and traumatic content so I am attaching trigger warnings so you can make an informed choice if you want to read them.
1.) I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
Rating: 3.5/5
Yeah I know this book was like a booktok (that is the Tickety Tockety Boo corner of the internet fellow old folks) fan favourite at the end of 2022/start of 2023. I fell for the hype and read it while traveling in the Midwest for family time. I told my mama all about it and recommended she read it. I don’t typically care for memoirs, but this was fascinating. This one is for those who are riveted by celebrity culture, the psychology and parameters of it in our lives, and who want a peak into the toxic child star world. It’s very emotional and if you grew up with childhood trauma of any kind this will rattle around in you BUT for me it was still worth the read because I felt so much empathy for McCurdy. Content of abuse-physical and emotional- grooming and addictive behaviours.
2.) The Great Alone by Kristen Hannah
Rating: 5 out of 5 bloody stars
This was a TOP contender for my best read of the year, narrowly it got beaten out but man I was gone in this dark, brilliant, shocking tale of survival and loss in the wild keening of the Alaskan territories. It follows the Albright family who move to settle in remote Alaska in the 70’s after the father comes home from the Vietnam war brutally altered, like so many. I LOVE survivalist stories, I am really finding myself drawn to historical fiction that embodies the spirit of the place and people it is set. In wine culture a terroir refers to this concept, the embodiment of place within the wine. This book does this but in a book. This is a LONG read to warn you all. Content warning of war trauma, abuse, addiction, extreme political ideologies, all the things basically it broaches it all.
3.) How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Rating: 4/5 stars. I don’t remember why I dropped a star, I think because it was quite sad.
Ok sis was a brain doozy but brilliant and engaging and thought provoking none the less. Ah how to describe this book in a brief way that will catch your attention…it’s a story written across history, time, space and consciousness. It’s as if 2001 a space odyssey crashed into and mated with The Tree of Life, a little of The Matrix, with a touch of The Notebook. It’s expansive, it’s microscopic, it’s beautiful and heart splitting. It deals with global fallouts similar to the covid pandemic and also questions of mortality and philosophy. So you know, if that’s your speed and you like Sci-Fi I HIGHLY recommend.
4.) Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Rating: 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️-duh
A book about video game design? Yes please. This book TOOK me places I was not expecting. Very emotional so it was and oh so satisfying to read a book that honours what is beautiful and really so very creatively profound about much of video games. I used to be a hater of games and I fully turned that position around over the last decade and I just loved that this one was deeply researched and held such an intelligent positional conversation on the impactful way games and escapist modalities give us spaces of expression, freedom and community. This book follows two young game designers as they weave their lives together through tragedy and the complicated path of becoming. I don’t want to give too much away but there is a trigger warning of violence and loss.
5.) This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone
Rating: 4/5 stars
A very interesting book conceptually, not many books written by multiple people co-authoring are successful. This book is a tango, a waltz, a delicately balanced scale of duality; two authors, two characters, two sides of a war across the space/time continuum. It’s short and each chapter is written from the perspective of one of two characters who are writing letters back and forth telling a story. It definitely took a minute to catch on to the writing style, with each author writing chapters back and forth to one another it felt like a breathtaking conversation and perhaps a tad confusing from the outset but then again isn’t that the usual for time travel stories.
6.) Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Rating: 4/5 stars
I just read that this is being adapted as a film starring Cillian Murphy so that makes me really happy. I really enjoy reading stories by Irish authors set in Ireland as I feel connected to home and it’s so fun to relate to the cultural context of the book. Sort of like how I feel when I watch Derry Girls. This novella tells the story of the Magdalene Laundries present in a small Irish town in the 80’s. One of the cruelest acts of the Catholic Church in its blighted past in Ireland, these Laundries were maintained by an oppressive hand of religion which controlled culture and the behaviours and identity of the Irish people. It’s a short but captivating novel about a complicit society, heroism, and vulnerability.
7.) The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
Rating: 3.75/5 stars
I really enjoyed this book and I don’t really remember how I found it to add to my list. I think I saw a short clip of the film adaptation with Brie Larson who I know picks good films based on books about interesting female experiences so that’s where that came from. This book reminded me of another favourite of mine-Educated by Tara Westover. I would say Educated is slightly better in the writing style but both are equally as engaging in the storytelling. There is a lot of crossover, both are deeply introspective reflections of what it is like to grow up in challenging adverse childhoods and how it shapes relationships, the self and the future. What is so profound about this book is how Walls is able to hold space in her mind for opposing thoughts on her childhood and her parents. She also imparts that on us as readers, there is such a grace for nuance here. Her parents are both/and. Both abusive and desperately loving, both ‘lower class’ and ‘highly educated’, both shameful and free of shame. I could go on, but this is very much a true and ascerbic self-analysis of the complexity of families and trauma. Many trigger warnings here, abuse, neglect, addiction, extreme poverty.
Sidenote the top review on Goodreads by Meredith Holley is worth a read. She did a really good job of capturing what is essentially excellent about Walls’ telling of her life.
8.) Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
This was a lovely story and while I didn’t love it quite as much as I thought I would it is certainly worth a read especially for it’s creative twist on the narrator. Told from two perspectives, one that of an aquarium dwelling giant Pacific octopus named Marcellus and the other from a lonely, hardworking custodian named Tova who seeks solace from her personal tragedy in the company of the aquarium inhabitants. There is a mystery here to solve and a sweet friendship that blossoms between these two long-suffering creatures. It’s a sweet and sad tale that has some humour peppered throughout and what I really like is that it treats the ocean creatures as the intelligent, living beings that they are. Small warning of thoughts of death and suicide here.
9.) Thin Places by Kerri ní Dochartaigh
Rating: 3.75/5 stars
This book is both a memoir and a deep reflection on the natural world and the philosophy of being within that. There is a lot of discussion of trauma here, a lived experience of both personal and political violence and extremism, so in that sense it was very weighty but for the most part tastefully and sensitively done. I do think ní Dochartaigh did a wonderful job in honouring the cultural legacy of life under the Troubles in Northern Ireland and occupying the liminal space of Irish heritage from being raised under opposing religious traditions. Some of the writing was weaker than I would have wanted, I do love her poetic and nature writing but this is definitely not just a book on the wild and there is a slightly unrelenting wave of suffering that doesn’t quite feel as alleviated as I think the chapters on nature were trying to do. I am excited for her second book which I will be starting shortly. Trigger warning of war, domestic violence, addiction, depression.
10.) Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Rating: A+++++ ONE BAJILLION SAND DOLLARS OF GOODNESS
BEST BOOK OF 2023! Sorry for shouting, god I just love Barbara Kingsolver she is absolutely one of the greats for me. Really dense read, as all hers are they take a minute to really get into. This one is a modern retelling of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. A hefty challenge by any means; naturally I was apprehensive reading this, retellings or remakes often miss the mark. This did not miss anything, Kingsolver knocks it out of the park. Centered around the story of young Demon Copperhead, a boy born to a teenage mom in a trailer in the Appalachian south, this book embodies the spirit of Americana. Over the course of young Copperhead’s life, he speaks of essential socio-political issues such as the Opioid crisis, the terrible War on Drugs campaign, the deconstruction of rural self-governance through centralising wealth in urban areas and incentivising a mass population exodus leading to the annexation of rural southern communities. It’s just a legacy of a book and I highly recommend. In terms of trigger warnings it runs the whole gamut and basically touches every form of harm under the sun. It’s a book about poverty, foster care, drugs and self-discovery.
The surprise positive review of 2022 I didn't think I would be writing...
I am going to post a review of the Humboldt book I P R O M I S E I just took a short break from it because my mind needed to read (for some reason) a slew of subpar books before making my way back to it’s richly detailed storytelling. With that being said, I finished this slew of books towards the end of November 2022 with one I was mildly curious about and much to my surprise it was a better read than I had expected. Honestly hopes were low. Memoirs are not my favourite genre particularly when they are one of two things:
1.) A memoir that’s secretly a self-help book written by someone regurgitating-without much depth-a bunch of ideas they have appropriated from older thinkers while pretending they don’t live in extreme privilege. The very worst ones are centered on trying to tell us dear readers how ‘easily’ we can make our lives better by just willing it or getting up off our lazy asses eye roll.
2.) Written by a celebrity. Sorry famous people, just cause you have a platform does not mean you are an expert in everything and are owed a microphone or soap box. It DEFINITELY does not mean we care about your ‘rags to riches’ story, that you can actually write or that you earned that book deal.
So all those things being very true of me, nobody was more shocked than I that I actually enjoyed reading Matthew Perry’s memoir, ‘Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.’ This book was published November 1st 2022 and honestly when I added it to my kindle I had heard nothing of it, wasn’t aware of the hype that came after and didn’t have any real desire to read it beyond the fact that it was about a person who starred in one of my favourite (don’t hate me I know it isn’t cool) sitcom shows from growing up. It mainly caught my attention because it’s about addiction issues, which I am personally connected to and love reading on for perspective and healing. I saw it on my Goodreads suggestions over a lonely thanksgiving week and thought, “Ok, well I have been reading a bunch of shite fiction lately maybe I’ll give this a go and hopefully it won’t be too disappointing like the Poehler incident.”***
Perry has received some significant acclaim since the release of his book which details his life all the way from his parents’ backgrounds and his displaced, wayward childhood to the height of his celebrity success when he was a cultural darling whilst simultaneously battling extreme drug and alcohol addiction. For the most part, stories that center around a person’s deep pain and suffering can be risky territory and there is always the chance it can become a form of trauma porn. Perry holds nothing back and to be frank the book is at times gratuitous and shocking from the get-go. The violence and wretchedness of his disease is told with his usual acerbic wit and brutal, sarcastic tongue that allows this extremely personal history to be told without egoism, or an attempt to make himself sound like a hero. He lets all of it loose, every thing he has done, taken, lost and abused; it is all there with no shame he lays it bare. I found myself deeply moved. This is a man who has suffered so much and caused so much suffering and as I came away from reading it I just wanted to sit with him and hold him. It is not usual to read a story where someone is detailing their pain without them playing a victim card or blaming others. Perry is honest to a fault going into explicit detail over and over again about the devastation of his choices on his life and what it is like inside the mind of an addict. Something a lot of society knows nothing about and can struggle to feel compassion for. As his story unfurls he reveals, with extreme emotion, the factors in his life that he believes are the reasons he is still alive. Namely his beloved family and close friends. His parents surface significantly in his story over and over. His father was an actor with his own past of disordered drinking and his mother a retired beauty pageant winner who struggled to raise him alone in Canada, eventually sending him off to LA with his father. He is an honest if flawed son. They have stood by him through it all and regularly in the book he professes his deep love for them and his friends who he credits as the most compassionate and supportive people someone like him did not deserve. The book returns consistently to the theme of friendship saving his life as Perry shares harrowing stories of how his parents never stopped showing up no matter how many times he has relapsed and how manipulative and stupid he has been sometimes hurting them beyond what one would think a parent could forgive. There is a lot of deeply emotional and spiritual themes here. Unconditional love and grace, a family brought together through trauma as opposed to being torn apart, and a burgeoning sense of a spiritual awakening set off by a divine encounter that only a mind addled by drugs has the lowered mental walls to receive. It’s all very dramatic and keeps you held in the story whilst reminding you that this is a real person who is still alive, barely, and who will likely never be truly healed but who is trying.
Some of the criticism being thrown Perry’s way comes from the fact that he is writing this reflection on his battle with addiction while only recently sober and at that not successfully for very long. Many people feel this undermines the lessons he is trying to impart and thus, they distrust both the wisdom he spouts regarding spirituality and sobriety, as well as his likelihood to-well-remain sober. I think that’s sad and I hate that cynicism is such a powerful force in humanity and so easily accepted. Here is a man clinging to hope and wanting to tell his story while he still can, why should we write him off as a failure when he is trying again, trying to change far more than many of us are ever willing to in our own behaviours, ideologies and mistakes. I truly hope he makes it. Other negative responses have called him ‘misogynistic’, and ‘anti-feminist’ for his statements and recollections of women. Are his thoughts and perspectives on women pleasant? No, they are indicative of an unhealthy psyche and cultural understanding of women that doesn’t fit with our current wave of feminism. He has a warped, outdated view of women and tends to give them the Madonna treatment, coveting them as a sexual object while desiring for them to rescue him and mother him. However, I do not think this is a fair literary criticism and I think to slander the account of the perspective of the author undermines the point of a personal memoir. This is his story, these are his thoughts and he is giving them to us without pretense and without making excuses. Are we supposed to like them? No, we probably wouldn’t like most people’s innermost thoughts if we knew them. So I am not going to base my judgement of this book as a good read off of whether the author’s innermost thoughts personally offend me. Instead I acknowledge that I did not come to this book expecting to want to model my life after this celebrity or put him on any kind of pedestal and I am grateful for his candidness even if it’s a little much sometimes.
With that being said there were some things I could say I might take a little issue with in the book. There was a lot of name-dropping. Like a lot. Perry has had a lot of friends and dalliances in high places. I don’t care for name-dropping, it irks me both in the famous and in real life. If you tell me you know the chef and I should really extend you some privilege that goes against the rules of the restaurant then I will absolutely never respect you. Sorry social climber, you are a parasite. Perry has also made a lot of money and he does not hold back from addressing his exorbitant levels of wealth and decades of accumulation of homes and cars. This didn’t bother me as much as I had thought it would on reflection. Most celebrities lie or pretend with a shy modesty about how rich we all know they really are. There is a weird, money purity culture with the uber rich and famous where they like us to all think “oh hey they are just like us” because for some reason it sells their image better and we are more likely to buy a lot of the crap they are peddling. Perry does not do this in fact he brags, A LOT, and it’s refreshing. It’s shocking how much money he has made and how he spent it but at least the guy has the decency to not feign a modest, normal life. Is it douchy? Yes, but does it add value to his story because it lends his words an authenticity and revelatory nature that shows just how much he wants to come clean and does he also consistently, readily admit he is a big douche? Also yes.
In the end of it all I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads which is pretty high. I would say personally it was a 3.5 star read for the most part- some of the technical writing issues grated on me. After sitting with it, when I finished binge reading it, I felt the surprise of my enjoyment and the emotional dimension of this poor man’s story pushed it up to a 4 for me. Watching interviews with Perry now after this release you can see the toll his addictions have had on his body, his physical and mental changes that he will carry as scars for as long as he lives and it just breaks your heart. There are many people who, having no context for life with an addict or addiction, will not understand how one can feel compassion and empathy for someone who chose to do the things they did to themselves. I think Perry does a good job revealing to his audience that is not always a choice and sometimes there are forces that abuse and haunt on a level some of us are blessed to not know and that for the people who are touched by addiction well those souls need us to start trying to understand. Addiction is a violence on the human soul that splits the self into a darkness iced over with brutality and fear and the inability to escape even if it makes total and complete sense to just stop. And yet…
As I wrote this review I was listening to Late Night Tales by Bonobo on vinyl. Highly recommend for deep, emotional thinking and otherworldly, writing theme music.
***I STILL have not made peace with how crappy Amy Poehler’s 2014 memoir ‘Yes Please’ was. So much so it actually led me to dislike her where before I enjoyed her comedy and personality. Sad face.
September sojourn into the wilderness.
(I am desperately trying to find a way to phrase this section so it doesn't read as a ‘book of the month’ club cause that already exists lol).
The first book I am choosing this month is The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf. I just started this book and I am interested to see where it takes me. I picked it up on a whim at one of my favourite bookstores in America. It’s a little place called Bart’s Books in Ojai, California and being there surrounded by warm, sunbaked books is just utterly delightful. Bart’s Books is an outdoor bookstore that we always make sure to take a drive to and pick up some fun reads every time we visit family in California. I highly recommend supporting this independent store.
A brief introduction to this pick for the month. It is a biography so the format may not be for everyone but it reads like an adventure tale. It follows the history of Alexander Humboldt one of the greatest historical naturalists and ecological scientists to have ever lived. He was born in Germany in the late 1700’s and he has (sadly) largely been forgotten**. I just started this book and my mind is blown at the depth and breadth of the reach of his ideas and work. If you think Thoreau was significant, John Muir or even Charles Darwin then you are a fan of the people who were heavily influenced by Humboldt and whose work was shaped by his ideologies and writing. Isn’t that incredible? It’s shaping up to be a heavy read so I’m excited to get into it. Once I finish it I will post a review and some reflections or maybe questions we shall see.
**I do think that his presence may have potentially been erased from US history because of anti-German sentiment post World War II. Then again maybe history isn’t written by the victors. smirk
Welcome to the Reading Nook
Sometimes I look back at my brash and wild childhood and I am warmed by the lucky stars that reside there. Both my parents are lovers of words, thought and spirited debate and have embedded a lifelong habit of reading and storytelling into the culture of our large family. All of us love to gather together in coffee shops, pubs, at home and over social media and endlessly try to outmatch each other in our story keeping and conversational prowess.
We are talkers.
Anyone who knows me can attest to this. Due to aforementioned largeness, numerically speaking, of my family we were however, not well inclined towards monetary excellence. With that being said, we spent A LOT of time at the (free) local library as kids; renting out books and books on tape, using the free resources to write projects on Amelia Earhart and Big Cats before at-home internet was a thing. I loved our by-the-sea library with the grumpy, owlish librarians and the billions of worlds to play around in. I loved that certification of maturity denoted by the library card, how when you went from being allowed to rent three books to five at the age of thirteen well, that was adulthood. Imagination was a well fed beast in that cosy little building with the crunchy pages full of friends and magic and intrepid adventures for even the shyest of us.
Once upon a time I remarked to a friend that I cannot recall ever not reading. At every moment of my life there has been a book within reach.
“And most of all, books. They were, in and of themselves, reasons to stay alive. Every book written is the product of a human mind in a particular state. Add all the books together and you get the end sum of humanity. Every time I read a great book I felt I was reading a kind of map, a treasure map, and the treasure I was being directed to was in actual fact myself.”
In every story I read I find a piece of myself, I wrestle with my values, I cement my dreams, I question the nature of humankind. This is what I love about it and that’s what I hope to share. Reading is not an exclusive hobby for those who are intellectually superior. No matter what you read or what I read or in what form we engage with story, it is all valid experience.
This particular section of my whatever you want to call it-blog, website, vanity piece, bullshit ex-hipster cry for attention-is here because I live for books and I recently read a book that moved me so profoundly it shook my apathy and kicked my ass into a ‘ MUST make and create and just fricken do even if it is shite’ kind of realm. So, if you want to engage that’s amazing, I am making this a virtual, follow along at your own pace kind of book club. I will be picking one book each month (hopefully I can actually stick to this commitment) and sharing some questions on it as I read and then a nice little review at the end of how I felt about the book. Maybe some other bits and bobs, we’ll see, I’m sort of feeling loosey goosey about this whole thing so don’t expect consistency at least for the first while!
Also dear readers, the books will vary across many different genres, I do not discriminate between book types. Except horror. Catch me getting in a helicopter before I let my vivid and visceral imagination walk into a horror story (if you know you know).
I am so looking forward to sharing some good reads with you lovelies and hopefully receiving some good recommendations too.