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1. I remember nothing: and other reflections - Nora Ephron

First up is another cracker from Nora Ephron, no surprise here. This was actually the last book she wrote before she died aged 69 from complications with leukemia, so it has quite a poignant feeling in parts, knowing that.

Nora writes brilliantly - as always - about the trials and tribulations of life and getting older, and everything she has and hasn't yet forgotten. She reflects on the past, the present and the future, the things she finds impossible about modern life and her untenable wisdom about the world.

She writes admirably with humour about going through divorce, her journalism career, her relationship with e-mail (a bad one), summing up what everyone at her stage in life is thinking but have not acknowledged and dotted with insights and observations about life that could only have come from Nora Ephron herself. A must read.

2. Luster - Raven Leilani

This book tells the story of Edie - a young woman stumbling through her twenties in an apartment share in Bushwick, New York, working an admin job with dreams of making art full-time, and making a series of poor decisions when it comes to the men she dates/sleeps with. In work, she meets Eric - a man with a family in New Jersey and an apparent open marriage - with certain rules.

The story takes some strange twists and turns as Edie attempts to navigate the rules of her relationship with Eric along with the racial policitcs involved, finding herself invited to Eric's home by his wife and meeting his adopted daughter Akila, who has never seen a black person in her neighbourhood before meeting Edie.

The book is good - an easy read - definitely a bit unrealistic at times (see: friendship-ish with Eric's wife??), but written well and enjoyable all the same.

3. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding

I honestly couldn't count how many times I have watched this movie and admittedly, had never tried the book. I came across it in a charity shop a couple of weeks ago and had to grab it to add to my holiday reading pile!

I generally prefer the book to the movie, however these two were pretty much identical, even down to the wording in the book versus the movie script. There were some funny bits included in the book that didn't make it into the movie, and it's also nice to read in book format because it's written like an actual diary, which can't come across as well in the movie format. 

Of course a great book, great story, great movie. An easy, enjoyable, funny read.

4. How do we know we're doing it right - Pandora Sykes

I have always loved Pandora Sykes since listening religiously to her podcast with Dolly Alderton (The High Low), and her writing does not disappoint. I love her style of writing and how she expresses her point of view on important issues - many of them women's issues/issues directly affecting women.

This was more educational than my usual beach reads would be, but it was no harm to get my brain stimulated after 10 days up to that point of easy breezy reads while sipping rosé. This book really makes you think and consider the day to day trials and tribulations of modern life, and what "doing it right" really means. Incorporating psychological and philosophical theory to explain her views on a range of topics from wellness, to cancel culture, and the endless anxieties that can consume our lives.

5. Before the coffee gets cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi

If you could, would you go back in time, if you knew it couldn't change the present?

Down a small alley in Tokyo sits a café - quiet and cool even on the hottest of days - there for over 100 years. Apart from serving wonderfully brewed coffee, this café offers its customers the chance to travel back in time, provided they follow the rules that go along with this.

This book tells the story of four different visitors to the café, each having heard the legend and wanting their own chance to go back in time. One to confront a boyfriend who left them, one to receive a letter from her husband whose memory is waning, one to see their sister one last time, and one to meet the daughter they will never have a chance to know.

Each story is poignant and touching in its own way, with the devastating reality that despite going back in time, whatever happens when you do cannot change the present. Other rules to this time travel include sitting in one particular seat (one that tends to be occupied by a curious character), they cannot leave the café while they are time-travelling, they can only meet a person who has visited the café, and they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold. 

I loved this book, such a gorgeous, moving, emotional story and its written beautifully, Definitely recommend.

6. Detransition, Baby - Torrey Peters

This book was a wild ride, eye-opening and moving in equal measures. The author fearlessly discusses topics considered "taboo" in many places - gender, sex and relationships in an original and educational way.

In this story we meet three women - Reese, Amy and Katrina - transgender and cisgender - whose lives unexpectedly overlap when an unexpected pregnancy causes all three to question their deepest desires and what they want from their lives.

Reese and Amy had a loving relationship, living in New York City, seemingly having it all, living lives as trans women in a way previous generations only dreamt of, and hoping to welcome a child at some point int he future. But all was not as it seemed for Amy - she struggled with the consequences of identifying as a trans woman, and after a traumatic incident, decided to detransition and become Ames, causing the relationship with Reese to fall apart.

Ames hoped detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but it wasn't so simple. When his boss and lover announces she is pregnant with his baby, a wild story unfolds that he decides to ask Reese to be a part of, knowing she always wanted to be a mother. 

Great book, worth the read, opened my eyes in the best way to areas of the trans experience I would never have known about.

Et voilá! Those were the books I read on the beach while I was away. Quite a mix in there from story to story, but overall enjoyed every book. Let me know what you're reading at the moment or your best beach reads of all time.

Hope everyone is hanging in there. Thank you for reading as always,

S ✗

Greetings, slightly late post this month (apologies, work and life have been CHAOS), but here we are. These are the books I managed to read in June and July. Some I loved, some I liked, some I didn't get. The usual really. 

1. Where I Was From - Joan Didion

I love Joan Didion's writing - her book The Year of Magical Thinking (review here) was so amazing - so I was excited to read this book (advertised as a memoir) but I just could not finish it. I got about half way through and gave up. 

It is essentially a book about the history of the Californian water system, not a memoir. If anyone has read it through and it gets better let me know, but I couldn't continue... SORRY

2. The Wife - Meg Wolitzer

I am a big fan of Meg Wolitzer, I have always liked anything I've read by her and this was no different.

This story is about Joan Castleman (the wife) and her husband Joseph, one of America's accomplished novelists. When Joan decides she wants to leave Joseph after 40 years of sacrificing her literary dreams for his, they are on a flight to Helsinki to attend an awards ceremony where is he about to receive a prestigious international award for his accomplishments as a novelist.

The book then flashes back 50 years to where their relationship began, and follows each step of the marriage that has brought them to this point, secrets and all, and the challenging position of being an ambitious woman in a man's world.

This is an easy read, enjoyable - a great summer holiday read.

3. The Kind Worth Killing - Peter Swanson

At the complete other end of the spectrum - although oddly enough along the same topic of a marriage destined for failure - we have this book, which is definitely a thriller, which I loved.

Good Reads describe this as "a devious tale of psychological suspense involving sex, deception and an accidental encounter that leads to murder," which pretty much sums it up!

This book tells the story of Ted Severson, who meets the mysterious Lily on a flight from London to Boston, seemingly by chance, and they hit it off, revealing intimate details about their lives to one another. Ted tells Lily about his marital problems, saying that he could kill his wife for what she has done. This sets Lily's plan in motion, who has a dark history of murder and mystery that nobody knows about.

So good, a page turner with twists right up to the end. Very Girl on the Train-esque.

4. Fleishman is in Trouble - Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Now this was the book I just did not get, or like. I had heard so much hype about it - and maybe I missed the point - but I didn't think it was great at all.

It tells the story of Toby Fleishman, who is recently separated from his wife (strange theme going on here in these last 3 books), and suddenly, at forty-one, surround by women who want him like never before. This is all going well for him, until his wife suddenly vanishes, dropping the children at his door and seemingly disappearing into thin air.

What sounded like it was going to be a thriller essentially just turned out to be pages upon pages of the protagonist speaking about all the women he's sleeping with from the apps and the photos they send him, while he makes a poor attempt at looking after his children in between, and also trying to figure out where his wife - the mother of his children - has gone, with seemingly very little urgency. Very strange, didn't get it.

Let me know if you read this and I totally missed something, I may have!

5. The Light Between Oceans - M.L. Stedman

I absolutely adored this book and am now dying to watch the movie, if anyone has watched it can you let me know which you preferred, the book or the movie? I don't want to watch it if it's going to ruin the story for me..

This book tells the heartbreaking tale of husband and wife Tom and Isabel Sherbourne, set in Australia in 1926 - Tom is the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, and Isabel marries and joins him to live out there. During their time there they struggle terribly to have a baby, enduring two miscarriages and one stillbirth, which completely destroys them and causes unimaginable grief. So, when one morning a boat washes up on the shore with a newborn baby inside - alive and well - along with the dead body of her father, it is almost as though the baby was sent to them to heal their pain.

Against his better judgement, Tom gives in to Isabel's pleas and they claim the baby as their own, naming her Lucy. When Lucy turns two and they return to the mainland, however, things begin to unravel.

It is an emotional read anyway, and I recently lost my grandfather (a lighthouse keeper for 40 years), who has the same name as one of the main characters in the book, so I found it particularly emotional! (Fair warning).

Et voila. Didn't get as much read as I would have liked but as I mentioned, the last two months have been slightly HECTIC to say the least, so I didn't have the time. BUT, I am going on holidays this Friday for two weeks, and have no less than 10 books packed, so hold on to your hats for that whopper post when I'm back. 

Stay safe, lots of love & thank you for reading!

S ✗

The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett

This story is set from 1950s-1990s and is about the Vignes sisters who are twins. They grow up together in a small, southern black community and decide to run away from the town they live in at 16 years old. As the story progresses, we learn how a slight different in their skin tone means they get treated completely differently as adults, in their families, daily lives, the communities they live in, the jobs they have, and their racial identities.

Years later, one sister comes back home to the town in the Deep South that she escaped at 16, bringing her black daughter with her, while the other sister passes for/pretends she is white and essentially lives as a white person in a predominantly white community in California, with a white husband who knows nothing about her actual racial identity. Despite how many factors separate the twins, their lives still manage to intertwine and intersect in ways they never expected, through their daughters.

I absolutely loved this book. One of my best friend's Grainne sent me a care package with 4 books in it a couple of weeks ago (all in this post) and this is the one I dove into first. It is an amazing story, so emotional and as well as looking at the long-standing issue of racism, it explores how your past can have a lasting influence as it shapes your decisions, wants, needs and expectations as you grow, and the reasons why people may choose to live a life that is the complete opposite to where they came from.

An amazing book, so well written & everyone should read.

The Female Persuasion - Meg Wolitzer

I'm a big fan of Meg Wolitzer since reading her book "The Interestings" (one of my 20 favourite books of 2020), so when I came across this one in Oxfam Books I had to grab it, I had heard so much about it on podcasts and on social media that I knew I needed to have it.

This story starts off with Greer Kadetsky - a shy college student in the US - when she meets her idol, someone she has admired forever - Faith Frank - an avid feminist and a central pillar of women's rights and the women's movement, known worldwide. Greer attends a speech of Faith's and by chance meets her afterwards, ultimately turning her world as she knows it on its head and opening a door to the life - and career with Faith - that she thinks she wants, different from the future she always imagined herself having.

This is a great book, and touches on so many important topics and issues (aside from the obvious feminist ones) and the effect someone you idolise can have on you and your life, and not always in the positive way you expected. I love Meg Wolitzer's writing and her way of telling a story.

Priestdaddy - Patricia Lockwood

Another from the Grainne care package of books, this memoir was fantastic (I do love a good memoir). The childhood of Patricia Lockwood was unusual in many respects. She lived in an impoverished, nuclear waste-ridden area of the American Midwest. Her father - hence the title - was a type of priest, and the way she describes her family home and her father would have you in stitches at times. He carries a gun, is always playing the guitar in just his underwear at any spot in the house (even when guests are around) and underwent a religious experience which led him to finding a loophole and thus getting approved for the Catholic Priesthood, despite having a wife and children.

The memoir focuses on both her childhood and adulthood, as she writes about a time when the expense of a medical procedure her husband needed forced her (at 30) and her husband to move back in with her parents, plunging her back into the crazy world that was her childhood and learning to live with that as an adult, who has experienced the world and knows that what she experienced growing up was not exactly "normal."

Educated - Tara Westover

Strangely enough, by complete chance, I read this memoir directly after reading Priestdaddy and there were a lot of similarities in both fathers to begin with, but I quickly saw that Tara Westover's experience was a lot less light-hearted and very different indeed.

This memoir tells the story of Tara's childhood, as her and her family grew up preparing for the End of The World. Her father does not believe in the government (or rather believes that they are evil), western medicine/hospitals or school. She has no birth certificate, no medical records and no school records. Her mother appears to go along with her father's ways to keep the peace.

Parts of the book are quite distressing, Tara, her siblings and her mother get into a number of nasty accidents while working for her dad and on family road trips, and as their father does not believe in going to hospitals, they all suffer a great deal from their injuries - I found these parts quite difficult to read. 

I did enjoy the book - Tara is a fantastic writer and her story is one of survival and perseverance in the face of a paranoid, controlling father and a dangerous upbringing.

Tenth of December - George Saunders

The third book from Grainne was this gorgeous collection of short stories from George Saunders. I always forget how much I love reading collections of short stories as they are - duh - short, but I love that you get the whole story within a few pages, so if you fall asleep after reading a chapter, you're not trying to read back over pages to figure out what was happening, because you just start a whole new story.

I hadn't read any of George Saunders' work before but I enjoyed this so much, I will definitely be picking up some more of his books ASAP. His stories vary widely in theme and topic, which I loved, from class, sex, love, loss, struggle, heartache, despair, morality and war, and he writes brilliantly about every single one. Some stories are incredibly sad, some hilarious, others insightful, others heartwarming, some harrowing and all immensely entertaining. 

I would recommend this book to everyone and anyone, as there is such a range in his stories that you're bound to like them.

A Manual For Cleaning Women - Lucia Berlin

The fourth and final book from Grainne (and the sixth and final one I managed to read over April and May), is another gorgeous book of short stories by Lucia Berlin (I know, when I saw the title I was apprehensive but don't be). The book compiles all of Lucia's best work with humour, wit, emotion and compassion, I loved every single one of these stories.

Again, a super easy book to read - you can pick it up and read a story in 5 pages and put it down to go to sleep while still feeling like you've read the whole story and you're not marooned in the middle of a chapter. She writes beautifully and, as with George Saunders, I intend to pick up a lot more of her work to add to my reading pile.

Et voila! Have you read anything fantastic recently that you think I should try? Do let me know!

I also did my very first "proper" reel showing these books on my Instagram (@siofiee_93) - I would love it if you could show it some love (despite the wobbly filming at points, I had had coffee).

Thank you for reading as always,

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