2021 has gotten away from me so far in terms of blogging (as I’m sure you can tell) but I’m hoping that after an upcoming flurry of catch-up reviews, I should be back. Granted, I’ve made the job a lot easier for myself by not committing to full reviews of every single book I read for uni, because some of them I honestly don’t have much to say about. I’ll be doing a uni reads wrap up for each block of reading, full reviews for the ones I want to fully review, and normal service with a full review for all of my recreational reads.

Books

January

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley ★★★★★

Frankenstein is a sharp mediation on human nature, on what it means to be human, on the relationship between the natural world and humanity and the danger of the obsessive nature of the pursuit of knowledge and I absolutely loved it. The creation’s story absolutely floored me and Shelley’s perceptiveness and eloquence, and the intricacy of the narrative’s structure is just incredible.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield ★★★☆☆

When Margaret Lea is called upon by reclusive bestselling author, Vida Winter, to write her biography, she unravels a family history that has been buried for a lifetime. Drawing on Gothic and Victorian literature, there are lots of elements to enjoy here but they don’t quite pull together. The narrative is enjoyable, and truly didn’t need to prop itself up on many, many specific parallels to Jane Eyre to achieve the Gothic clandestine family drama vibe Setterfield was striving for.

The Sandman by E.T.A Hoffmann ★★★★☆

This short story deals with the chilling impact of a childhood nightmare on one man’s life, affecting his friendships, romantic relationship and general reputation. The motifs of eyes and the recurring register of sight offers a strong commentary on awareness, perspective and reality, as well as acting as a wider examination of the Romantic mindset and its limitations on logic.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte ★★★★★

I could easily call Wuthering Heights my favourite book of all time, so I was dreading having to reread it for my course in case I suddenly realised I hated it and that it’s awful. Thankfully, I was just reminded of why I love it and I could just feel Emily Bronte’s spirit searing through the pages. This is the story of a horrible group of people and the generation after them, and I can’t get enough of the chaos, the unconventionality, the raw passion and emotion.

Boot Sale: Inside the Strange and Secret World of Football’s Transfer Window by Nige Tassell ★★★☆☆

Last year I read a football non-fiction book during the January transfer window, and I really enjoyed that experience so I did it again. Boot Sale has great scope and examines many of the smaller intersections of business and football, such as betting or Twitter. I also enjoyed its focus on some of the smaller clubs and lesser known players in English football – (even if the audiobook narrator did pronounce my team’s ground perplexingly).

February

The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle ★★★☆☆

The first Sherlock Holmes story I’ve ever read, and I really enjoyed it. The mystery moves quickly, the dialogue is sharp, the descriptions of London are dark and grimy and detailed. I didn’t love that the last chapter took on a whole new narrator to essentially dump his entire backstory on the reader, I just hate processing information that way no matter where it comes in a book, but it worked and was a satisfying story overall.

The Beach of Falesá by Robert Louis Stevenson ★★★☆☆

This short story set on a fictional island in Polynesia follows trader John Wiltshire. After a dubious marriage to a native woman, Uma, he finds himself shunned and ignored by the natives and fears himself to be under a taboo. As he looks for answers, his relationship with Uma develops whilst his suspicions against fellow trader, Case, grow. Stevenson challenges both the authority of white Brits, the British Empire and the supposed savagery of native people in a satisfyingly ironic way.

Platform Seven by Louise Doughty ★★★☆☆

Any book that seems very me and that I then have particularly high hopes for always seems to disappoint, and whilst not the worst offender in that sense, Platform Seven definitely falls into that category for me. I came to this novel thrilled by the fact that the main character is a ghost trapped in a train station and finds herself entwined within a mystery surrounding other deaths at the station as she tries to remember her own life and death. As it often turns out with books that sound right up my street, this marketing barely correlates with the actual narrative of the book and while the depiction of an abusive relationship is an important topic to shed light on, I just don’t think Doughty executed it all that sharply.

TV and Film

Sex Education ★★★★☆

This is a show I’d been intending to watch for years and that everyone told me to watch. Once I’d watched the first episode, I knew I’d have to try to pace myself and it still only took me a week to watch two seasons. This is about 16 year old Otis’ experiences at high school as he climbs the social ladder by offering sex and dating advice off the back of what he has picked up from his mother who is a sex therapist. Aesthetically, this is very American high school but those vibes work so well with the green English scenery to create an idealised, picturesque vision of adolescence which is offset by the sheer awkwardness of the experiences depicted. Otis is at the centre, but it is the people around Otis who shine a light on the diversity of the teenage experience.

The Queen’s Gambit ★★★★★

I loved this so so much. Like, so much I’m not sure whether to read the book or not because I just don’t think it can live up to the execution of the show. Anya-Taylor Joy is perfect in this miniseries following Elizabeth Harmon as she is orphaned as a child and learns chess, climbing the ranks of international competitions as she battles substance abuse. I can’t do it justice with my words, and I recommend just watching it because I was hooked from the first episode.

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So there’s me partially caught up: I think of my reads so far, I’ll be writing full reviews on five of them with the rest mini-reviewed in a uni post. Since the announcement of the Women’s Prize longlist yesterday, I’m really feeling the pull back into books and reading and especially the reading community, and I can’t wait to catch up on all your posts! ❤