After not managing to complete my August TBR, it's about time I get back in my groove and can actually finish one of these things... Here is the link to understand my prompts if you need to refer to them!
Spin 1
Prompt: Boyfriend pick
As much as I wanted to humiliate him on my instagram stories (as he answered my FaceTime call in the gym and was very very sweaty), the audio didn't work when I screen recorded. But he picked Beloved by Toni Morrison, which he gifted to me for my birthday in July!
Overview: Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She is still held captive by memories of home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Prediction: 4 stars
Spin 2
Prompt: Gifted
Very kindly gifted to me on my birthday by my dad, I have heard only good things about The War on Women by Sue Lloyd-Roberts. It is perhaps the highest rated book on my Goodreads TBR, so I am expecting big things...
Overview: Sue Lloyd-Roberts was the first female video-journalist. With a 30-year-long career in human-rights journalism, she has travelled the globe and witnessed the worst atrocities inflicted on women. Observing first-hand the war on the female race, she's experienced and interacted with the brave ones who fight back.
Prediction: 5 stars
Spin 3
Prompt: Classic
Oh no. Another classic. It is officially clear now that classics do not mesh well with me. I am yet to find out that I have enjoyed. But from many many recommendations, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was the next one I wanted to try. I love horror, so if one classic is going to work, I expect it'll be this one!
Overview: Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear.
Prediction: 4 stars
Spin 4
Prompt: Non-fiction
I first heard about In the Land of Men by Adrienne Miller in an article called 'Books to Look out for in February' in The New Yorker. I tend to trust these monthly lists and being a publishing hopeful myself, I was desperate to get my hands on this book. I recently found it in my favourite independent bookshop in London.
Overview: Adrienne Miller got her lucky break when she was hired as an editorial assistant at GQ magazine in the mid-nineties. Even if its sensibilities were manifestly mid-century—the martinis, powerful male egos, and unquestioned authority of kings—GQ still seemed the red-hot centre of the literary world. It was there that Miller began learning how to survive in a man’s world.
Prediction: 5 stars
Spin 5
Prompt: Author of Colour
I also found That Reminds Me by Derek Owusu in an independent bookshop and thought it would be the perfect choice. It's short - so am hoping it will allow me to get all the way through my TBR this month! And anything from #Merky is something I'm interested in...
Overview: K is sent into care before a year marks his birth. He grows up in fields and woods, and he is happy, he thinks. When K is eleven, the city reclaims him. He returns to an unknown mother and a part-time father, trading the fields for flats and a community that is alien to him. Slowly, he finds friends. Eventually, he finds love. He learns how to navigate the city. But as he grows, he begins to realise that he needs more than the city can provide. He is a man made of pieces. Pieces that are slowly breaking apart.
Prediction: 4 stars
Spin 6
Prompt: Oldest owned
I remember watching this movie as a teenager and being obsessed with it. In a classic fashion of teenage ignorance, I neglected to think about why I should read the book. I have owned City of God by Paulo Lins for years, and it's about time I read it.
Overview: City of God is one of Rio's most notorious slums. Yet it is also a place where samba rocks till dawn, where the women are the most beautiful on earth, and where one young man wants to escape his background and become a photographer. City of God tells the story of life in the favellas: gangs, drugs, guns and brutality.
Prediction: 4.5 stars
Spin 7
Prompt: Instagram pick
Ok I cheated. Instagram picked when Twitter was supposed to. But I cannot run 2 social media accounts at once - I'm too inefficient. So you had the choice and you went for On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong.
Overview: This book is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicentre is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.
Prediction: 4.5 stars
I have (as usual) very high expectations for this months reading. I am expecting at least two new favourites this month - and I need to get back into the swing of things after falling flat on my reading goals last month!
