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Hope everyone has had a good first week of October!

I’m currently 200 pages or so into The Grapes of Wrath and am truly loving this reading experience so far. I wasn’t expecting it to be so readable! I remember having the same fears before I read East of Eden, but I have now been reminded that I am in Steinbeck’s safe hands. I have a feeling this might become a favourite once I’m finished.

If you’ve read it I’d love to hear what you think! ☺️ by @_ginareads

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5 days ago

Orange Penguin classics for the start of October 🎃

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to feel very autumnal despite the trees being yet to change colour where I live. It must be the darker evenings and the slight nip in the air. I’m not usually one for pumpkin spiced lattes, but I did make my first pot of soup which has made me feel very cozy!

Out of these orange classics, I have ashamedly only read Great Expectations, but Sense and Sensibility and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall have been calling out me. The plan is to add one or two from this stack to my tbr over the next coming months as I already have plans to finish The Grapes of Wrath and Dracula!

I would love any suggestions of which I should read first out of this stack! What will you be reading this autumn? 😊 by @_ginareads

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7 days ago

My September reads! 🍂

September was quite a memorable month of reading for me. Mother Mary Comes To Me and The Wall were particular highlights. Catcher in the Rye and Elena Knows were not instant loves but actually they both kind of grew on me in the end.

I hope everyone had a great month of reading! What has been your favourite book of the month? 😊 by @_ginareads

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12 days ago

Elena Knows is my first Claudia Piñeiro book and my first time reading Argentinian fiction! 🇦🇷

I can’t say that I enjoyed reading this book exactly, but that by no means that it isn’t excellent writing. In fact, I think Piñeiro achieves what she set out to do, which is to confront its readers with some important and taboo subject matters that are often not spoken about enough.

It is provoking and brutal in its narration, especially when telling the tedious journey Elena makes as she struggles to keep in control of her Parkinson’s. As the reader, we are forced to take these steps alongside her, and it was this which I found to be very uncomfortable experience, so much so I considered not finishing the book.

However, I was intrigued by the mysterious plot and continued reading and I am so glad that I did because the final third of the book is definitely the strongest and is worth the slow-burn pace, in my opinion. I found the ending so unexpected and powerful in its message that it completely changed what I thought of the book as a whole. Despite the somewhat difficult reading experience, I do think it is worth sticking out to the end!

It has also made me want to read more of Claudia Piñeiro’s other books which I have seen a lot of round here! Do let me know which of hers I should read next!

Have you read Elena Knows? What did you think of it? ☺️ by @_ginareads

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13 days ago

So I finished Catcher in the Rye last week!

I very much went in blind. I’ve heard lots about this book and its influence in pop culture, but here in the UK we didn’t study it at school. And I’m kind of glad that we didn’t, as I’m not sure I would have appreciated it as much as I did reading it now.

During the first half, I didn’t feel particularly engaged with where the story was going and felt a bit disconnected from Holden as a character. But the flow of Salinger’s writing and witty narration kept me interested and as the book went on I started to have a change of heart. There is a sadness and loneliness to the way Holden sees the world which feels very relatable, both to being a teenager, but also to being a human trying to face the harshness and cruelties of the world. The story really picked up for me in the second half of the book and I found myself being extremely touched by the close relationship between Holden and his sister. The icing on the cake was definitely the ending, which I felt was very well done. 🎠

In the end, I enjoyed The Catcher in the Rye much more than I thought I would when I first started reading it. It kind of grew on me throughout. I do think with another read I will appreciate it even more, knowing what I know now.

What do you guys think of Catcher in the Rye? 😊

(Post features a photo of New York taken of Vivian Maier, if anyone’s interested!) by @_ginareads

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18 days ago

Last / Next book - classics edition ✨

I thought it might be fun to look at the last book I’ve read and the next I want to read by these classic authors! I still have a lot of classics to read on my tbr and I’m looking forwards to getting to know these authors work a bit better. There’s something to be said about delving a bit deeper into an authors catalogue of work.

What was the last classic you read? What is the next book you’d like to read from the same author? ☺️ by @_ginareads

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21 days ago

Last year I read I Who Have Never Known Men and thought that that was one of the most devastating novels that I had read. Then I read The Wall by Marlen Haushofer.

The Wall documents the life of a woman who is separated from the rest of the world by an invisible wall. Forced to fend for herself in the sparse and brutal mountains, she learns to survive and finds both comfort and anxieties in her animals and daily routine.

I flew through this book as it’s only short, but boy does Haushofer pack a lot into relatively small amount of pages. Though the writing can be quite monotonous at times, describing in great detail the woman’s routine from chopping wood to planting potatoes, there is a beauty to the monotony that immersed me in the experience from the start. Ultimately, what kept me reading was Haushofer’s beautifully flowing words and the feeling that I needed to see what happened to this woman and her animals. By the end of the book, I found myself quite attached to her and her unlikely family of animals, even though you never learn her actual name. And like the protagonist, I also felt anxious at forming these attachments, as there was always the feeling something bad would happen.

I have read a lot of dystopian type books, but I felt a great emotional connection to this one. The fact that the protagonist is female is probably why. This book isn’t just a survival story, it documents what happens when a woman lives alone and is able to find solitude. It looks at what happens when a woman is stripped from her roles as a mother and a wife. What does a woman do when she doesn’t need to take on these roles anymore? In setting up this scenario, Haushofer plays with the idea of a woman being non of these things.

There is a quote from the afterword, which says, ‘the only way a woman can experience solitude, without judgement and recrimination scuffing up her peace, is if the rest of the world has come to a complete standstill and there is no one round to see her. That’s how it must have seemed to Marlen Haushofer, who, in writing the Wall, devised the most extraordinary scenario in order to imagine herself into a place where she could live alone and be free.’ by @_ginareads

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a month ago

It seems I have been stocking up on books ready to hibernate this autumn, like a little squirrel. Here is a mixture of books picked up over the summer, from bookshop wanderings to charity shop bargain hunting.

I also bought and restored an old typewriter, which was all grimy and jammed up. I am now in love! I guess I need to learn to write now!

What books have you collected over the sunny season to hibernate with this autumn? 😊 by @_ginareads

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a month ago

September is here and soon with it my favourite season! 🍂 My first book for this month is Arundhati Roy’s memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me.

I picked this up a few days ago having heard nothing about it. I really love The God of Small Things and Roy’s way with words, so this was a no brainer! Already I am finding a certain familiarity with being back in Roy’s world again, despite it being about her own life.

What is everyone currently reading? What will be your first September read? 😊 by @_ginareads

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a month ago

As a lover of historical fiction, Brotherless Night by V.V Ganeshanathan has been on my radar for a while, so I was really glad when I found it was available!

Brotherless Night is set during the start of what was to become many decades of civil war in Sri Lanka and revolves around Sashi, a sixteen year old aspiring doctor and her Tamil family who live in Jaffna.

What I found most captivating about this story was the way V.V Ganeshanathan portrays Sashi and her relationship with her four brothers. I really enjoyed how she set up their world in their small village in Sri Lanka and the imagery describing their home life, traditions and food they like to eat, which came to feel like home for me too. This familiar feeling, however, only makes it all the more heartbreaking when things intensify and Sashi’s normal life as a student doctor deteriorates before your eyes. As well as her focus on the physical devastation at the time, V.V Ganeshanathan does a great job of highlighting the internal conflict of her characters, especially Sashi, as she finds herself torn between being loyal to those she loves and what she herself believes is right.

This is the first fiction I have read based in Sri Lanka and I feel like I learnt a lot about a culture that I didn’t know a lot about before and about the tragedies of this period. I found it to be a very captivating read, especially the first half of the book. Towards the end I did feel like the pacing felt a little rushed compared to the slower start of the book, but overall this didn’t stop me from being moved by Sashi’s journey.

Has anyone read Brotherless Night recently? I feel like I haven’t seen too much about it here and need someone else to talk to about it! by @_ginareads

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2 months ago

As we get closer to September and the new school season, I’ve become nostalgic about my time studying. It feels strange to think that for the first time in a while, I will not be perusing a reading list for the coming year! So I thought I would choose ten of my favourite books that I’ve enjoyed studying the most over the past few years on my English Literature degree.

My ten favourite books:
⭐️ Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
⭐️ The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
⭐️ The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
⭐️ Dubliners - James Joyce
⭐️ Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
⭐️ Antigone - Sophocles
⭐️ Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
⭐️ Good Morning, Midnight - Jean Rhys
⭐️ The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
⭐️ Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri

Looking at these books now, I realise that I’ve been lucky to have been able to read such a diverse range of authors and genres from all over the world and through history, with all but two of these books being authors that I’ve been introduced to through the course. Some of them I knew nothing about and went in blind, but these were often the ones I enjoyed most, such as Le Guin’s, The Dispossessed.

Out of this selection, I would have to go with Jane Eyre being my absolute favourite and one that I will probably re-read over and over. I had heard a lot about it beforehand and it definitely lived up to the hype for me! Dubliners was also a real highlight for me and I remember being really absorbed in Joyce’s short stories and the imagery he creates.

Has anyone read these books? Do you see a favourite read amongst my favourites? 😊 by @_ginareads

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2 months ago

Finally got round to reading The Bee Sting which has been on my shelves for far too long 🐝

After taking a little break from reading since I finished uni, this was the first book that I dusted off from my bookshelf and I’m so glad I did as I absolutely loved it. It was thrilling, tense, funny and heartbreaking all rolled into one big family saga. From the first page, there is a quiet feeling of dread that runs throughout the whole book and you never quite settle into it. It had me on the edge of my seat until its end. And what an ending it is! 🐿️

Has anyone else read The Bees Sting lately? What did you think? 😊

#books #thebeesting #paulmurray #literaryfiction #penguinbooks by @_ginareads

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2 months ago