Let’s put this out there.  I just love books. I have since the moment my Mum first pushed one into my hands.  If someone’s reading a book on a bus, or in a coffee shop, I need to know what they are reading.   If I’m at a friend’s house, the first thing I do is look at their bookshelves, and see if they have anything there I haven’t read yet.  I can’t help it.

Show me a bookshop and I’ll show you a happy woman.  There is nothing I love more than spending time browsing, picking them up, putting them down, occasionally sniffing  them (oh come on, we’ve all done it!)!

Anyway, the reason for this post is two things.  After posting this picture of books I had got from the fabulous Rennie Grove Hospice Charity Bookshop in Princes Risborough, someone asked me how can you possibly find time to read them all?

Honestly?  I probably won’t ever read all the books I have on my shelves, and this is even though a couple of weeks ago I had a massive cull and sent over 100 of them to my local charity shop.

Here’s the thing.

When you love reading as much as I do, and I don’t know if this makes sense, it’s the comfort of knowing that you have that book on your shelf.  As I sit here, I can see book after book that I have bought, and I can tell you when and where I got them too.  That’s the thing for me, each book I have holds a memory, and there are some I am reluctantly able to give up – like those ones when I NEEDED to buy a book and I thought it looked interesting, but there are also some I will never ever part with – my collection of Jilly Cooper novels (hardback and paperback thank you), or the first hardback book my Mum gave me (Adventures of the Wishing Chair Again).

The other thing?  I also have a current wishlist of books that haven’t been published yet, that I am already desperate to read.  It seems crazy that I have so many books I haven’t read yet,  and they are sitting looking at me accusingly as I type this, but that’s the joy of being part of this brilliant bookish community.  Just when you think you couldn’t possibly want any more books,  even more come along…

Anyway, for your perusal, and in no particular order, here to hopefully to give you some ideas for your Summer/Autumn/Winter Reading Lists, are the books I am really excited to read this year..

 

Claire Lombardo – The Most Fun We Ever Had

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (25 June 2019)

 

What The Blurb Says:

At a family wedding, the four Sorenson sisters polka-dot the green lawn in their summer pastels, with varying shades of hair and varying degrees of unease. Their long-infatuated parents watch on with a combination of love and concern.

Sixteen years later, the already messy lives of the sisters are thrown into turmoil by the unexpected reappearance of a teenage boy given up for adoption years earlier – and the rich and varied tapestry of the Sorensons’ past is revealed.

Weaving between past and present, The Most Fun We Ever Had portrays the delights and difficulties of family life and the endlessly complex mixture of affection and abhorrence we feel for those closest to us. A dazzlingly accomplished debut and an utterly immersive portrait of one family’s becoming, it marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.

Why Do I Want To Read It?

I absolutely love novels about families, and more importantly about families that have secrets and things to hide. Throw in a shifting timeline and I’m in!

I am looking for a novel to lose myself in this Summer, and this looks just perfect.  I think it’s going to be everywhere this Summer, and I am really excited to read it!

 

Alix Nathan – The Warlow Experiment

Serpent’s Tail (4 July 2019)

 

 

What The Blurb Says:

Herbert Powyss lives on a small estate in the Welsh Marches, with enough time and income to pursue a gentleman’s fashionable cultivation of exotic plants and trees. But he longs to make his mark in the field of science – something consequential enough to present to the Royal Society in London.

He hits on a radical experiment in isolation: for seven years a subject will inhabit three rooms in the cellar of the manor house, fitted out with books, paintings and even a chamber organ. Meals will arrive thrice daily via a dumbwaiter. The solitude will be totally unrelieved by any social contact; the subject will keep a diary of his daily thoughts and actions. The pay? Fifty pounds per annum, for life.

Only one man is desperate enough to apply for the job: John Warlow, a semi-literate labourer with a wife and six children to provide for. The experiment, a classic Enlightenment exercise gone more than a little mad, will have unforeseen consequences for all included.

In this seductive tale of self-delusion and obsession, Alix Nathan has created an utterly transporting historical novel which is both elegant and unforgettably sinister.

Why Do I Want To Read It?

I am currently reading lots of (and loving) historical fiction.

The Warlow Experiment certainly ticks all the boxes, and I think the premise and whole concept of imprisonment and isolation will make for a very interesting read and lots of debate too!

 

Lisa Taddeo – Three Women

Bloomsbury Circus (9 July 2019)

What The Blurb Says:

All Lina wanted was to be desired. How did she end up in a marriage with two children and a husband who wouldn’t touch her?

All Maggie wanted was to be understood. How did she end up in a relationship with her teacher and then in court, a hated pariah in her small town?

All Sloane wanted was to be admired. How did she end up a sexual object of men, including her husband, who liked to watch her have sex with other men and women?

Three Women is a record of unmet needs, unspoken thoughts, disappointments, hopes and unrelenting obsessions.

Why Do I Want To Read It?

This is the first of my non-fiction titles on my Must Read List.  I think it sounds like an interesting and timely examination of women’s sex lives and the reality of relationships behind closed doors.

 

Rachel DeLoache Williams – My Friend Anna

Quercus Books (23 July 2019)

What The Blurb Says:

This is the true story of Anna Delvey, the fake heiress whose dizzying deceit and elaborate con-artistry deceived the Soho hipster scene before her ruse was finally and dramatically exposed.

After meeting through mutual friends, the ‘Russian heiress’ Anna Delvey and Rachel DeLoache Williams soon became inseparable. Theirs was an intoxicating world of endless excess: high dining, personal trainer sessions, a luxury holiday … and Anna footed almost every bill.

But after Anna’s debit card was declined in a Moroccan medina whilst on holiday in a five-star luxury resort, Rachel began to suspect that her increasingly mysterious friend was not all she seemed.

This is the incredible story of how Anna Sorokin conned the high-rollers of the NYC social scene and convinced her close friend of an entirely concocted fantasy, the product of falsified bank documents, bad cheques and carefully edited online photos.

Written by Rachel DeLoache Williams, the Vanity Fair photography editor who believed Anna’s lies before helping the police to track her down (fittingly, deciphering Anna’s location using Instagram), this is Catch Me If You Can with Instagram filters. Between Anna, Fyre Festival’s Billy McFarland (Anna even tried to scam Billy) and Elizabeth Holmes, whose start-up app duped the high and mighty of Silicon Valley, this is the year of the scammer.

Why Do I Want To Read It?

I first heard about Anna Delvey ‘s story on the BBC Website, and instantly went and looked her account up on Instagram (it’s @theannadelvey if you are interested).  I have watched the Netflix Fyre Festival Documentary, and listened to The Dropout Podcast, and have to say that this book sounds amazing! I am fascinated by the psychology behind the people who do things like this, and My Friend Anna is going to be a brilliant addition to the genre.

 

Laura Purcell – Bone China

Raven Books (19 September 2019)

 

What The Blurb Says:

Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft’s family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken. But Dr Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the same disease in the cliffs beneath his new Cornish home. While he devotes himself to his controversial medical trials, Louise finds herself increasingly discomfited by the strange tales her new maid tells of the fairies that hunt the land, searching for those they can steal away to their realm.

Forty years later, Hester Why arrives at Morvoren House to take up a position as nurse to the now partially paralysed and almost entirely mute Miss Pinecroft. Hester has fled to Cornwall to try and escape her past, but surrounded by superstitious staff enacting bizarre rituals, she soon discovers that her new home may be just as dangerous as her last.

Why Do I Want To Read It?

If you know me at all, then you will know I am a HUGE Laura Purcell fan.  I have read, loved and raved about both The Silent Companions and The Corset.

When I heard that Laura had a new novel coming out, and then I read the synopsis, I knew the only place this was going on was my Must Read List.  Laura’s novels are always so brilliantly written, and she can strike fear into my heart with just one well placed line or a single moving wooden object!

Yep, I’m going to need to read this one…!

 

JoJo Moyes – The Giver of Stars

Michael Joseph (3rd October 2019)

 

What The Blurb Says:

1. It’s by Jojo Moyes.
2. It’s about books.
3. IT’S WOMEN DELIVERING BOOKS ON HORSEBACK FOR GOODNESS SAKE!
4. See 1, 2 and 3!

Kate Elizabeth Russell – My Dark Vanessa

4th Estate Books (23 January 2020)

 

What The Blurb Says:

2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager–and who professed to worship only her–may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.

Why Do I Want To Read It?

I saw Kate reading from her novel on 4th Estate’s Instagram stories, and knew that it was going straight on my wish list! As you may or may not know, there is a HUGE book buzz about this novel already, and I think its going to raise lots of interesting questions about sexuality and women.

Absolutely going on my Reading Wish List..

 

Jane Healey – The Animals At Lockwood Manor

Mantle (Pan Macmillan) 

 

What The Blurb Says:

In August 1939, a lonely thirty-year-old Hetty Cartwright arrives at Lockwood Manor as the director of the evacuated Natural History Museum.

She is unprepared for the scale of protecting her charges from party guests, wild animals, the elements, the tyrannical Major Lockwood and Luftwaffe bombs. Most of all though, she is unprepared for the beautiful and haunted Lucy Lockwood.

For Lucy, who has spent much of her life cloistered at Lockwood suffering from bad nerves, the arrival of the museum brings with it new freedoms. But it also resurfaces memories of her late mother, and nightmares in which Lucy roams Lockwood hunting for something she has lost.

When the animals start to move of their own accord, and exhibits go missing, they begin to wonder what exactly it is that they might need protection from.

As the disasters mount up, it is not only Hetty’s future employment that is in danger, but her sanity too. There’s something, or someone, in the house. Someone stalking her through its darkened corridors…

With its atmospheric setting, beautifully rendered romance and vivid characters, The Animals At Lockwood Manor is perfect for fans of Sarah Waters, Jessie Burton and Alice Hoffman.

Why Do I Want To Read It?

I came across this novel purely by chance (Thank You Bookish Twitter!), and have to say that I absolutely loved the cover.

When I read the synopsis too, it seemed to have that perfect balance of haunted house setting and absorbing characters which make for a perfect read in my eyes!

I think it is going to be one of those novels that everyone will be talking about, and I want to be one of those people!

 

So there you go – the books I really want to read at the moment.  I can tell you now that there will be more that I don’t even know about at this point, but they will pop up on my timeline and there will be another ten I will have to add…

Which books are you looking forward to and why?

Love
Clare xx