Book Reading List for August

Salt air, and the rust on your door, I never needed anything more ..... than a booklist to let August slip by.

Hope you’ll discover a book you’ve always meant to read, or encounter a beloved favorite you’d like to pick up again.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Everisto

The Booker prize winning novel is about multi-generational, multi perspective story of modern-day women sharing modern day experiences, which are interconnected. It’s about twelve women sharing myriad of experiences about femininity and what it is to exist as a woman. 

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There There by Tommy Orange

The multi award winning novel tells the story of indigenous people in the USA. Different perspective and characters come together at the end at one major event, the Powwow (a celebration of American Indian culture in which people from diverse indigenous nations gather for the purpose of dancing, singing, and honouring the traditions of their ancestors). It’s about history and identity of indigenous people as well as simultaneously about establishing a community and feeling marginalised in a land taken from them. 

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Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The BookTok phenomenon which created a Greek mythology renaissance and led to subsequent retellings of Greek mythology in the literary world. It is celebrated both critically and commercially. 

The novel is a retelling of the Trojan war from Patroclus's perspective. It follows Patroclus' relationship (romantic) with Achilles, from their initial meeting to their exploits during the war. 

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The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

Set in 1930s, the novel, narrated by death itself, is about a girl in Nazi Germany whose family has been sent to concentration camp and is taken in by foster family. Its about human resilience, tragedy, hope and human condition, the ways we survive on our own and together. 

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Outline by Rachel Cusk

The novel is told through ten conversations, about a novelist in Athens for the summer. It paved the way for a new kind of literature which is personal, vulnerable and explorative of one individual character. It paved the way for writers who write about every day human lives and deep interpersonal dialogues, such as Sally Rooney.

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Normal People by Sally Rooney

The novel which won almost every award and hearts of millions, and later was adapted into the critically acclaimed drama series of the same name. It’s about love and connection of everyday people living their lives every day. Set in Ireland, the novel follows the complex friendship and relationship between two teenagers, Connell and Marianne as they move through their lives.

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This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

The book follows two beings on opposite side of the time, written from two alternating perspectives. They write love letters and leave them for each other to find across time. It is what a science fiction can and should be, which gets even better as you reread and keep on rereading it. 

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In Memoriam by Alice Winn

Set during 1st world war, the novel is a war queer love story. It is about two guys at boarding school, who at advent of the war start reading the school newspaper’s 'In Memoriam' column and start recognising the names of the students they went to school with, boys who they studied with who are fighting in the frontline and losing their lives. One of the two boys has German heritage and people start disapproving and judging him, which leads him to enlist in the army by lying about his age and suddenly he finds himself on the front-lines. His friend who has a latent crush on him goes out to join him on the front-lines. It follows them as they negotiate their relationship in the new setting, climate and atmosphere. 

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Happy Reading

XOXO