IMO IT'S THE LAST WEEKENd OF JULY!! Ty for letting me be the first this time I'm sure it was very hard to wait on my slow ass (I did mean to send this sooner & not literally the very last weekend but alas this job of remembering is in fact very hard 💔) JULY BOOKS + POTENTIAL AUGUST READS PLS!! 🤲
HIIIIII i can't believe july went by so quickly with such awful weather here in the uk! as i swore to myself i'd be outside doing things this summer i get hit with overcast miserable weather and rain! i did enjoy a weekend trip to barcelona to make the most of the beautiful 30 degree heatwave and enjoyed a lot of sangria and picked up such a fun book for that trip let's get into the
july book wrap up
(spoilers: i did not read #3 in the neapolitan quartet... maybe august)
Thiefs Journal by Jean Genet
theeeee most challenging book i've ever read i think. it was like doing a boss fight where you're 5 levels below the recommended level and you can get through it but it's hardfought. stellar, though. there's a lot that went over my head on this initial read, but i loved reading this book even when struggling through it. Genet's candidness was so refreshing i admired his voice and how unashamed he was to hold positions and opinions that were hypocritical, even. i saw this was added to your tbr recently, and i think you'll love it too!
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih
no reprieve! jumping right into another difficult book. one of my long term reading goals is to continue seeking out more non-english fiction, and coming across this book (i think it was in the list of recommended reading at the back of Let It Come Down by Paul Bowles as suggested by Penguin) was kind of serendipitous. i wish my reading had credited me more Big Words for discussing books like these but it's one of those ones where i'm itching to hear someone else's perspective on this so i'll do some googling. enjoyed it though!
My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley
my barcelona read. i took my mom for her birthday, so it was only fitting i read another book giving voice to disjointed mother-daughter relationships. i loved this. i'll never get bored of this subject matter, and i think Riley did a commendable job at presenting something well-balanced between real emotional turmoil and humour. what stuck out to me most was holding yourself back from expressing yourself wholly to your mom in the same breath that you expect her to be vulnerable and the kind of. dance you do back and forth to test who'll blink first kind of thing. second plane read that's blown me away this year
The Portrait of a Mirror by A. Natasha Joukovsky
i just finished this today so thoughts may be a touch too fresh, but this was really like reading a character study on the main four in gossip girl if we'd followed them through to their 30s (big 4 being blair, dan, SVDW and nate). that snobbish upper-middle class art and literature intellectualism with high society expectations as a measure for acceptable behaviour. i appreciate books that are well researched and go the extra mile, and this did it for me. shame i got stuck with the ugly cover version.
august reads
i've already picked out my next read! rue (of okruee fame) and i will be buddy reading The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde and if the weather gets better i will finally pick up ferrante #3. i'm 27/35 books towards my reading goal and feeling pretty good tbh <3
also on the road to Being 25, i have started organising my birthday, as you do when it's in december i've booked my hotel and flights so excited to be a girl in new york
