i love the way you read
I very rarely buy new books. I will normally either borrow from the library, or buy second hand from the charity shops.
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it’s rachel’s round up time!
It’s that time of the year again, when everyone is writing about their favourites of the year. As part time book blogger, I only feel it’s right that I round up my favourite books of the year.
I have chosen five of my favourite books that I have read this year (not all of them were published this year). There have been numerous amazing books that I have read since January, so I could go on and on for ages. But we don’t have all day so, here goes…
5. I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
This is such a sad story and it shows just how traumatic it can be to be a child star. We watch these kids on Disney and Nickelodeon and I always think that they must have fantastic lives. They get out of school, and get to mess about on TV sets instead. But this book tells us there is a darker side and it’s well worth a read…. and that title!
4. The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
A proper family drama that has the seal of approval from the queen that is Reese Witherspoon. This one touched all sorts of nerves as it dealt with infidelity and I always get super angry over those story lines. Brilliantly written and so real that it feels you a part of that family. I would recommend for people who love Celeste Ng.
3. How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie
I loved this because I can’t get enough of the psychopaths. I’m an INFP so I feel everything, and I think this means that I’m always really intrigued by people who don’t seem to have that empathy. This main character is on a mission to kill everyone and I thought she was brilliant.
2. Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottlieb
I got this one in the £1 sale on audible and I am so glad I spotted it. This book is from the point of view of a therapist and I found that really interesting. When I was having therapy, I always wondered what mine was thinking and this answered some of those questions. It was very funny and helpful too.
1. Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
And numero uno had to be the Goddess herself – TJR. She can do no wrong in my humble opinion and this book was another shining example of her genius. I do love a book about an athlete because I have always been crazy about sport. This one is about a tennis star who is staging a comeback, and OMG, it made me want to dig out my tennis rackets and get out on the court – and no, I can’t play tennis, but I feel like I’m Serena Williams when I’m out there.
I had a goal of 52 books this year, and I comfortably hit that. There were so many highlights along the way and I can’t wait to see what great stories are coming out next year. I’d love to hear what other people have read and if you are aware of anything good coming out in the early part of next year.
Much Love
Rachel xx
what are you reading right now?
A little bit of book reviewing this evening. I’ve been lucky enough to read some cracking books of late so I thought it was time to share a few.
My first was Jeanette McCurdey’s memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died. This was such a sad and shocking read. I’m always super interested in the lives of child stars, and I feel really sad for the ones that go off the rails. I even find the psychology behind child stardom fascinating. And so this was a real eye opener as we saw what can really happen when children are pushed into the spotlight.
Keeping with the memoir, I then read Richard E Grant’s book A Pocketful of Happiness, all about the grief he has experienced since the death of his wife last year. He doesn’t hold back in this book and because it is narrated by him, you can actually hear his voice cracking as he talks about the moment he lost the love of his life.
Next up was Carrie Soto is Back which I devoured. I have a real love of stories about athletes and this one about a tennis star didn’t fail to impress.
I’m now on to a book called The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict. It is about an actress who somehow becomes tangled up with the Nazis before fleeing and then becoming a Hollywood star – and it’s a true story.
I’d love to hear if anyone is reading anything good that I should give a try. Have a fabulous weekend.
Much Love
Rachel xx
there’s no difference between life and death
The rattle of the final gasp
Mirrors screams from baby’s lungs,
From birth to death we cry
And love and sleep
But when the deathbed calls
And ghostly shrouds of hospital gowns
Cloak our bodies like the blankets
Wrapped around us on our birthday.
Tears are spilled on both days,
The day we come and then
The day we drift back into nothingness.
I have just finished listening to the audiobook by Richard E Grant. He has written it about the death of his wife and it has really touched me in so many ways. I think that I have been affected by it so much because I have not experienced the death of a close family member, so it all feels so scary- and possible.
Richard and his wife were about the same age as my parents, and I’m a similar age to their daughter, so that also made it hit home just a little more. I haven’t spoken to my mu in several years, and yet I haven’t really thought about how I would feel if the worst should happen to her. Reading this book has given me a bit of perspective in that respect.
The book is so touching because you can hear how much Richard adored his wife, and it’s heartbreaking to listen to that pain. And yet, the end feels so much like birth. There are all the practical things to deal with, like paperwork, there are deep emotions and there is pain.
And I like to think that we go back to the same place we came from before birth.
A bit of a ramble, I know, but hearing someone talk about death always sparks so many thoughts and questions in my own mind. It becomes like a little conversation with myself, babbling on about things that nobody else would understand.
Much Love
Rachel xx
book review: the virgin suicides by jeffrey eugenides
So, we all know that The Virgin Suicides is not a new book so I am late to the party, but I just had to write a review because it’s definitely being added to my favourites shelf.
The book was written in 1993 so it’s cracking on for thirty years old and it was therefore written before mental health became a ‘thing’. Of course, there were obviously people who had depression, but it wasn’t looked upon in quite the same way that it is now.
When I was growing up, my maternal grandmother had schizophrenia and I remember being left in the car while my parents went to visit her in the psychiatric hospital. And back then they were really awful places to be.
My dad has since told me that the visits felt like a waste of time as she was in an almost vegetative state, pumped full of drugs to bring her down from the massive manic episode that she had been through.
The thought of it scared me shitless, and I think everyone was afraid of those places, before the old asylums were shut down. Now it seems almost trendy to have some sort of mental health issue, and I think that the fear of ending up in one of those hospitals would stop a lot of people speaking out about relatively minor illnesses (and may I add that I don’t think that is a good thing – being able to talk about ANYTHING is a good thing).
So, getting back to the book, this was probably quite trailblazing for its time as it looks at mental health and the way that teenagers, in particular, can suffer.
The writing is exquisite and I found myself rereading so many paragraphs just to make the most of those moments. I have watched the movie a long time ago said I had some hazy memories of that and I think that actually fed into my reading of it and made it even more poetic. I definitely feel like I need to go back and rewatch it now.
If you go on Amazon or Goodreads you will see so many awful reviews and I just can’t get my head around how these people didn’t find it as amazing as I did. The only thing I can think is that I do have extremely dark taste and I don’t think some of my favourites sit too well with others because they are a little TOO dark.
For other similar dark books that aren’t rated too highly, I would turn to My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell or How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie.
You will be disgusted and you are welcome.
Much Love
Rachel xx
book review: the reader on the 6.27
I’m the kind of reader that needs a quirky main character to get on board with. I need someone who says inappropriate things and doesn’t understand why they have offended; I need a character who loves to just read the final chapter of a book; I need a hero who only eats yellow food.
The more unusual the quirks of a character, the more likely I am to fall in love with him or her. One of my all time favourites is Eleanor Oliphant and any book that likens itself to that masterpiece is going to draw me in.
The Reader on the 6.27 was compared to Amelie and that film warmed my heart until it was almost on fire. So I was very excited to dive in and see what Jean-Paul Didierlaurent could offer up.
The main character, Guylain, works in a recycling plant that basically just pulps books that have not sold so that there is space on the shelves for new books. But Guylain takes any pages that have escaped the pulping machine and reads the short extracts to the people on the train he takes to work each day.
There are a host of other characters that are so outlandish, I felt that they were almost Dickensian. I couldn’t help but smile at the little love story that ran throughout, with a toilet attendant, no less. And Guylain’s friend with no legs kind of reminded me of Leiutenant Dan in Forrest Gump.
I gave this book a big fat five stars because I just fell in love with every character we were introduced to. The book fell somewhere between a romance and a fable/ fairytale. It was beautifully written and left me contemplating what the message behind it was – and there were so many lessons to be learned.
At the centre of it all was love and friendship and what that means to us as humans. It shows that it’s messy and complicated but can also be boiled down to something really simple and delicious.
Much Love
Rachel xx
book review: managing expectations by minnie driver
I find memoirs to be one of my favourite kinds of books. But normally the celebrity memoir doesn’t have quite the same charm as they can sometimes become a bit showy and self-congratulatory. However, this wasn’t the case with this one.
I think that it was the essay format that really helped this one along. Having separate little stories to devour meant that it didn’t feel like we were just aiming for the point where our main character gets famous and we should all clap and cheer because they have made it when us mere mortals are never going to achieve even a smidgen of their success.
In Managing Expectations, Minnie does take a close look at her faults and I loved the essays earlier on in the book that charted some of the key moments in her childhood.
The book was written during lockdown and Minnie’s mother died during the writing of it. This meant that the book had a very sad ending because the final essay is about the death. Reading it was painful and I can imagine anyone who has lost someone will find it even tougher. Her mother sounded as though she had such a way with words and I hope that when I am on my deathbed, I can pass on wisdom like that.
If you get the audiobook, there is an extra interview at the end which is well worth a listen. Minnie chats with her friend who is a novellist herself, and they talk about the art of memoir writing and about being an avid reader.
I loved that they pointed out that being human is never one thing or the other. She describes an audition when she was a child, and her response to her friend who was upset about not getting the part was, ‘there is no best, there is just one that gets picked.’ I liked that because I’m guilty of thinking in black and white; if I don’t get picked, to me, it means that I’m rubbish.
I also loved when they spoke about readers being polite people. I had never made that correlation, but now that I’ve heard somebody say it I can’t unsee it.
So, from one reader to another, have a lovely evening and I wish you the happiest of weeks.
Much Love
Rachel xx
books about books
To be lost in worlds
Within another world,
And several hours to bathe
In something different
From this washed out world.
Bit of a book review today. I recently read a five star book and it just reminded me just how much I love books, which is always a nice thing to remember.
The book was Dear Reader by Cathy Rentzenbrink and it was a memoir about her life through the medium of books. The chapters alternated between one about her life and then a corresponding list of books that Cathy suggests we could read.
Memoirs are so hit and miss for me. Some I adore (Wild by Cheryl Strayed) and some I just can’t even get to the end of. I did read somewhere that a famous memoirist said that to be good at that genre you have to be prepared for the reader to hate you. You have to be willing to show your ugly side.
Now, Cathy didn’t make me hate her at any point, but she did talk about her lack of confidence and that must ring true with lots of introverted book worms the world over.
There was also a lot about grief as her brother tragically died when they were teenagers and I think that as human beings we all want to see how other people cope with that emotion. We all have to lose people and there is no easy way to get through that pain.
By the end of the book, I just wanted to read some more. And, as an English teacher it was nice to read about someone who was equally as passionate about getting people to read, especially those who have not yet been introduced to reading as something fun.
Much Love
Rachel xx
book review: the stranding by kate sawyer
I haven’t done a book review in a while, but I read a bit of a cracker last week and I thought I owed it to the world to let them know how fabulous it was.
The book in question was The Stranding by Kate Sawyer; a book about the end of the world as we know it. The story is about Ruth, who is a primary school teacher in London. She is really not happy with her life, with a boyfriend who treats her like crap and a colleague who appears to just be using her for sex.
Ruth decides the that only way to fix her problems is to run away, so she books a ticket to New Zealand with the plan of doing a bit of soul searching as she travels.
Bubbling underneath this story are the news stories that the end of the world is coming because the nuclear superpowers are about to press their big red buttons. But like a lot of us, Ruth wants to bury her head in the sand and avoid the stories.
There is a dual timeline, flitting between her life in London before she goes to New Zealand, and then alternating chapters follow her in New Zealand after the bomb has gone off.
I don’t know what made me love this book so much, but something just resonated with me. Perhaps it was Ruth’s need to run away and that reflects the way I often feel in times of panic and stress? Perhaps it was because of the stories of war and nuclear terror that are dominating our own news channels at the moment? Who knows – but something struck a chord.
The writing was beautiful and the story made me fall in love with the characters rather than being swept away with the action. It reminded me very much of the movie, Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World which is one of my all time favourites. These stories aren’t about the bomb or the asteroid – they are about the friendships that are formed.
If you’re looking for a good read, then I definitely recommend and it got a big fat five stars from me.
Much Love
Rachel xx
poetry perfection: diary of a somebody by brian bilston
For somebody who writes poetry every day, I’m not much of a poetry reader. I think it’s because a lot of the books I see are too clever for me; or too deep. I don’t know if I’m just a bit too dim to understand what these poets are going on about.
But this….
This book was bloody brilliant. It was like a male Bridget Jones with a poetic twist. I laughed out loud; like proper snorted. I very nearly shed a tear at the end and I know for fact that I will be thinking about it for many days and weeks to come.
It’s nice to know that you don’t have to be deep and dark to be a poet. You can be a little bit silly and just have a genuine love of words and you can still make a success out of it.
If you are ‘sort of into poetry’ and you want something that will just warm your heart, I highly recommend this book for Christmas. I have looked on Goodreads and Brian has a few books out so I will definitely be reading those.
If you can’t get hold of his books then you can always follow him on Twitter (that was how I first came across him).
I’m on the hunt for some good Christmas books now, so any suggestions will be very gratefully received.
Much Love
Rachel xx