Posting some long overdue reviews then will go and see what you've all been reading, having just caught up on the Conclave love on the previous thread (with which I concur, it was a great book - I don't always love Harris but I am always impressed by the ease with which he seems to conjure up diverse stories).
31 Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
I read and enjoyed Four Thousand Weeks by Burkeman which looks at how most ways of thinking about self improvement, productivity and time management are built on the premise that we are immortal. As we most clearly are not immortal and are in fact here for just 4000 weeks, if we enjoy an average lifespan, how can we navigate that and make better use of the time available? The insight – which this book builds upon, as it’s essentially Four Thousand Weeks repurposed in a set of helpful daily tips – is to accept our mortality, accept imperfection and live more in the moment, recognising we will never get everything on our to do list done, that we will always make mistakes and that we will do better if we accept our limits and focus on what is possible. This is less about being more efficient and more about recognising that we need to do less, accept we’ll fail and accept that meaning comes from the imperfection of today, not the promise of some future perfection. I loved this – I vaguely attempted to do a chapter a day but accepted early on that it didn’t matter if that didn’t happen, so dipped in and out over a period of several months, thinking about what I’d read, making notes and generally reflecting on it. He’d counsel against using it to embark upon a fresh start or a life transformation but I can feel it beginning to work on me in subtle and helpful ways.
30 A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry
Cherry had an itinerant upbringing, as her artist mother and musician stepfather took her and her brother between New York, London and rural Sweden. It was inevitable that she’d end up a musician herself, and a groundbreaking one – I remember vividly her appearance on Top of the Pops while hugely pregnant, which at the time was a groundbreaking image. As music memoirs go, this was pretty good, not least because her clear sense of who she is, and where she comes from, comes through so clearly.
29 Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris
I know so little about the Bosnian war and the Siege of Sarajevo despite it unfolding in Europe while I was a teenager. I find sometimes that a well written novel – which this was – does a better job of educating me about a period in history than all the well considered non fiction in the world. This tells the story of a Bosnian Serbian artist who finds herself in the besieged city while her family are safely in England. I had no idea just how multicultural and tolerant Sarajevo was, though I had a good sense of the dire conditions in which people lived during the blockade. This was beautiful and meditative and had Bosnian myth and legend woven through it. I’d highly recommend it as both a novel and an insight into the reality and terror of living in increasingly bleak conditions.
28 A Body Made of Glass by Caroline Crampton
This was a fascinating account of the history and sociology of hypochondria. Crampton had cancer as a teenager and as a result has a very understandable set of health concerns that she would describe as hypochondria. Her story is lightly woven through this book which sets out to look at what it is, why it happens and how it’s been understood through history but it’s not much of a memoir but rather an absorbing account of other people’s experiences. Fascinating and very well done.
27 Normal Women by Ainslie Hogarth
This was odd. I don’t really know what I was expecting but it was a curious little novel about new motherhood, marriage, gentrification and sexuality that pinged about in various directions without ever really settling on one. The fact I can’t remember a great deal about it is proof that I should write reviews when I finish a book not several weeks later.
26 Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
I have a hunch this may be a young adult book – I knew very little about it going in and as I was listening to it on Audible, had very little in the way of visual queues or blurb. Fern is pregnant, and as she’s only 15 and living in 1970, this is not good news for her family who send her to a home for pregnant girls in Florida. It’s a blisteringly hot summer and tensions in the home run high as the girls chafe against the rules. When a mobile library turns up, the librarian offers Fern a book that may – or may not – set her and her friends free. What ensues is a graphic, messy, long and slightly chaotic and circular narrative that probably could have been shorter but was nonetheless a good Southern Gothic read which was exactly what I wanted.
25 I, Julian by Claire Gilbert
I know there are several Julian of Norwich fans on here, and if you went to the (very good) exhibition at the British Library recently about medieval women writers you’ll have come across Julian, who chose to become an anchorite (someone who voluntary walls themselves up in the walls of a church or cathedral for the remainder of their life to devote themselves to God) after her husband and child died during the Black Death. This is a retelling of her story and was a surprisingly moving account of religious experience and mysticism. Would recommend