Welcome to Bookstoker!
We’re here to help you find that book that you can’t put down, the book you’ll push on all your friends, the book that’ll change your life.
We read literary fiction, non-fiction, classics and children’s books, all genres and styles embraced in our aim to share the love. You’ll also find fabulous Bookstagrams and literary news.
A world of bookish delights!
Kirstin and Julie
I have made a list (in no particular order) of seven books that come to mind every time I think of classics. Most of these I read a while ago and some of them I have read several times, but all of them are brilliant. There is a wide variety, from stories about love and betrayal to dark outposts and surreal transformations, from very long to very short. Take your pick and enjoy!
There’s only one thing that can rescue me from end-of-summer blues: the promise of some great new books for autumn. And this year’s list of has some real gems. Just have a look.
Don’t you just love this side of summer? At this point it seems endless, hence the towering pile of books on my desk that I intend to read during the holiday. Maybe this will be the year I have time to read them all?!
What are the best books for summer 2018? We’re thrilled to present our summer reading list. A list full of great reads for every mood. Funny and sad, light and heavy, it’s all here. Happy summer from all of us at Bookstoker!
Finding beautiful books to give as presents used to be tricky. Not any longer. The arrival of e-books seemed to have propelled publishers into spending more thought and money on striking book covers. So walking into a well-stocked bookstore these days is no longer only a treat for your mind but a feast for your eyes as well. The bookshops are brimming with temptations: colourful, intelligent, artistic even tactile book covers. Combine that with some clever content and you’re in gift heaven. If there ever was a place you could kill off that Christmas shopping list with one stab, it’s in a bookshop.
I have to confess. Shakespeare scares the hell out of me. Plain and simple. I sit through Shakespeare plays with my British-educated friends watching them nod and smile, while I struggle to understand even half of what’s being said. But hasn’t she studied English Literature, you might be thinking? Indeed, I have, but only in my later degrees at which point I could choose other kinds of courses. Which I happily did. The only piece of Shakespeare I’ve ever read (parts of) was King Lear as an undergraduate student in America.
Time to fix that.
Israeli author David Grossman and his translator Jessica Cohen has won this year’s Man Booker International Prize for his intriguingly named book A Horse Walks Into a Bar. It’s the story of a stand-up comedian and his on-stage break-down, but is, according to reviews, ‘neither remotely funny nor an easy read’. Rather it’s a parable for dysfunctional people and societies. Not sure if it goes into the beach read category, but I will buy it for my holiday anyway.
Now here’s an author we think you should know about. English/Canadian David Szalay’s name keeps coming up these days, and for good reasons. Forty-two year old Szalay has four novels to his name, the last of which, All That Man Is, won him a place on this year’s Man Booker Prize short-list. He won the Betty Trask Award in 2008 for his curiously named novel London and the South-East and in 2013 he made it onto Granta magazine’s list of Best of Young British novelists. But most importantly, Szalay writes really, really well.
