My Book Recmmendations
Hey there lovelies! I always seem to spend a lot of my time reading in the summer months so I thought I would tell you about some of my favourite books I have read recently.
Small
Great Things by Jodie Picoult
Internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult
has never avoided dealing with uncomfortable subjects in her work, but her new
novel Small Great Things is said to push boundaries like never
before, examining race relations in contemporary America. This book really opened my eyes to racism and I find it really interesting how detailed the court scenes were.
African
American Ruth Jefferson is an exemplary labour and delivery nurse, so when a new
born baby’s white supremacist parents demand their child be removed from her
care, and her supervisor at the New Haven hospital where she’s worked for 20
years complies without a fight, attaching a damning post-it note to the baby’s
file – “No African American personnel to care for this patient” – she’s
justifiably outraged. Alone in the nursery when the baby goes into cardiac
arrest, Ruth is torn between risking her job by ignoring a direct order from
her supervisor or risking her conscience by not upholding the oath she took
when she became a nurse. The worst happens – the baby dies – and Ruth finds
herself on trial for murder.
This Modern
Love by Will Derbyshire
This book came out a few years ago and think it is a book everyone should read. It is so insightful and portrays what real, modern relationships are like. In this collection of love letters, Will Darbyshire
provides a safe environment for people to share their thoughts on modern
relationships. Some people sent in letters, pictures, poetry... This
Modern Love collects these letters together to form a compendium of
21st century love, structured into the beginning, middle and end of a
relationship.
Here are some of my favourite letters;
Here are some of my favourite letters;
“Dear You,
You’re so beautiful. Your smile, your eyes, your lips, your hands, everything. Did you know that you play in my mind like one of my favourite song lyrics, you sting my heart like after eating a bowl of hot soup. You know me, but I don’t think you see me, I see you for one, I see you like no other, I see you so often your image never leaves the remains of my brain. I wish you see me, I wish you remembered me. I wish that you could see me the way I see you. I see you for you and that is the you that I love, but please can you see me too.
Sincerely, Brianna (Manitoba, Canada)”
You’re so beautiful. Your smile, your eyes, your lips, your hands, everything. Did you know that you play in my mind like one of my favourite song lyrics, you sting my heart like after eating a bowl of hot soup. You know me, but I don’t think you see me, I see you for one, I see you like no other, I see you so often your image never leaves the remains of my brain. I wish you see me, I wish you remembered me. I wish that you could see me the way I see you. I see you for you and that is the you that I love, but please can you see me too.
Sincerely, Brianna (Manitoba, Canada)”
“Dear Joseph,
Thank you.
Thank you for making me see the stars when I only saw the darkness.
Agnes (Sweden)”
Thank you.
Thank you for making me see the stars when I only saw the darkness.
Agnes (Sweden)”
“Dear Boy
You once told me that in the space of two years every cell in your body regenerates.
There will come a day when I can reclaim my own skin, when my flesh will have never been touched by you.
Never yours, Girl (New Zealand)”
Noah and Jude were inseparable twins in eighth grade, but three years later they're barely civil to each other. A tragedy has torn them apart. Both are budding artists, encouraged by their mother, who wants them both to go to the prestigious California School of the Arts. Only Jude is accepted, but she has trouble expressing herself artistically -- a problem she attributes to supernatural forces. Noah meets Brian, the new boy next door, and the attraction is intense and instant, but self-conscious Noah isn't sure if the feeling is truly reciprocated. Struggling with her art, Jude seeks guidance from a famed sculptor, whose James Dean-ish protégé, Oscar, can't keep his eyes or camera off her. But there are complications and family secrets that keep the twins from pursuing love or their friendship with each other. Through it all the ghost of a dead grandmother constantly visits Jude with advice. The twins' stories interweave as the drama unfolds and they go back and forth from age 13 to 16.
You once told me that in the space of two years every cell in your body regenerates.
There will come a day when I can reclaim my own skin, when my flesh will have never been touched by you.
Never yours, Girl (New Zealand)”
I'll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson
I'll Give You The Sun is a compelling novel of twin siblings' fractured lives. There's heartbreak, wisdom, and joy -- and the writing often sings. Jude and Noah's passages of reflection are written in a stream-of-consciousness style that lets readers feel as if they know and understand them. Noah and Jude were inseparable twins in eighth grade, but three years later they're barely civil to each other. A tragedy has torn them apart. Both are budding artists, encouraged by their mother, who wants them both to go to the prestigious California School of the Arts. Only Jude is accepted, but she has trouble expressing herself artistically -- a problem she attributes to supernatural forces. Noah meets Brian, the new boy next door, and the attraction is intense and instant, but self-conscious Noah isn't sure if the feeling is truly reciprocated. Struggling with her art, Jude seeks guidance from a famed sculptor, whose James Dean-ish protégé, Oscar, can't keep his eyes or camera off her. But there are complications and family secrets that keep the twins from pursuing love or their friendship with each other. Through it all the ghost of a dead grandmother constantly visits Jude with advice. The twins' stories interweave as the drama unfolds and they go back and forth from age 13 to 16.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .
The only way to survive is to open your heart.
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks' duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and during a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.The psychological maneuvers that accompany attraction have seldom been more shrewdly captured than in André Aciman's frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion. Call Me by Your Name is clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and completely unforgettable.
L x
