I like to track the books I’m reading throughout the year, as it helps me to remember them better and I tend to find trends in the books I’m picking up which helps me to find great reads. We’re over halfway through the year and these are some of the books I’ve loved recently.
1. Open Water – Caleb Azumah Nelson
In just 150 or so pages, Nelson takes us on a journey that winds through the highs and lows of the relationship between two young, Black artists in London. She’s a dancer, he’s a photographer. Told through second-person narration, we follow the couple as they grow from strangers, to friends, to lovers before drifting apart. I could relate to a lot of the characters struggles but Nelson also captures the specificity of what it’s like to be in love in London in the summer in a way that made me feel deeply connected to the story. Masculinity, race and existing in a Black body are all explored and carefully wound into the story. One I’ll read again for sure.
2. Free Food for Millionaires – Min-Jin Lee
If, like me, you haven’t got to Lee’s debut yet, know it’s every bit as special as her renowned book Pachinko. Casey Han, our narrator, is a second gen Korean-American immigrant living in New York with her family and struggling to contend with both their expectations and the ones society places on young women. Go to a good university, get a great job, buy a nice house, get married, have children… It’s a blueprint that rarely fits reality and Casey tries to thrive in the corporate world but instead ends up stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage but her undoing is her making and that’s what keeps you hooked.
3. Daisy Jones & The Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid
Narrated in the style of a music documentary, Daisy Jones & the Six is about the whirlwind of rise of a 1970s rock group and their split at the height of fame. Daisy is young, free and possesses a killer voice, everything a star is made of but she’s complex and flawed like all of Jenkins Reid’s characters. As the band hits the road, Billy, the lead singer, and Daisy are both tested by temptation and what unfolds is a story so rich and atmospheric that it’s hard to believe it’s about a fictional band.
4. The Beekeeper of Aleppo – Christy Lefteri
This story of love, loss, resilience and hope against all odds is one I will come back to. Nuri, a former beekeeper, and his wife Afra have fled Syria to the UK. The story follows their journey, the one so many people make, from war-torn Syria where they lost everything, through Turkey and refugee camps in Greece, before arriving in the hostile and unfamiliar UK. It’s a story that explores the horrific reality of the refugee crisis and demands that the reader does not look away.
5. Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
I’m late to the game with this one but after seeing that a film was coming featuring Daisy Edgar-Jones (who I loved in the adaptation of Normal People) I had to read it. This is one of those books that makes the setting as much of a character as the narrator. Set in the marsh town of Barkley Cove, North Carolina, it follows Kya who has been accused of murder. Kya has always known what it means to be alone, having been abandoned by her family and left to fend for herself in the marshes, she is outcast from society and I was gripped by the unravelling narrative. I was so glad the film did justice to the vivid setting.
