What are you reading?
I thought, rather than dress up as my favourite book character (Darrell Rivers from Malory Towers, natch), I’d celebrate World Book Day today by sharing with you some of the best fiction I’ve read in recent weeks.
My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young
Touted as “the new Birdsong” this is a love story set against the backdrop of World War II – you know, man meets unsuitable girl, man falls in love with girl, man goes off to war, blah-blah. While I don’t feel that comparing it to the marvellous Birdsong does it any favours, it was still a compelling read with engaging characters, and it kept me hooked while I floated around the pool in the Seychelles.
Pear-Shaped by Stella Newman
I have to admit I chose this primarily for its delicious duck-egg blue cover. For chick-lit, it’s not bad. It’s about the deteriorating relationship between Sophie, a 30-something pudding-developer, and her Maserati-driving 45-year-old boyfriend, who has a thing for lingerie models. Well observed and amusing, but – well, it is what it is: An easy read.
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
This is a fictional story based on Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage, set while Hemingway’s still a struggling writer in the 1920s. He and his wife move to Paris, where they hang out with characters such as Scott Fitzgerald and other luminaries of the time, drinking absinthe and soaking up the Parisian atmosphere, but things become complicated. Because I’m drawn to struggling writers, expat life and the jazz age, I loved it.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I don’t usually read Young Adult fiction but this has been recommended by so many friends that I picked it up last night at book club and started on it at once. I’m only a couple of chapters in and already it’s captured my imagination in a way that rarely happens. I know I’ll have read not only this, but the entire trilogy, by the time book club rolls around again next month.
Set in the near-future, it’s a science fiction tale about a game show for children with only one rule: Kill or be killed. Goosebumps already.
