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
We’ve all got it by now, the email from school asking you to make sure your children ‘keep up the reading over the summer’. But which books to buy? Despair not! Here are some of our best children’s books selected by our in-house expert, children’s bookseller Kirstin.
Here’s our selection of books for the summer. Some light beach reads, some a bit more challenging, all excellent books. Click on the book titles for our full review. Happy summer from all of us at Bookstoker!
At the top of our list of recommended summer reading is Morten Strøksnes’ non-fiction book Shark Drunk: The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean. Here Strøksnes talks about his book, whale hunting and the shark of his dreams.
In 2012, London-based writer Ann Morgan set out to read a book from every country in the world in a year. Pretty ambitious when you know there are 196 of them. She asked people to send her recommendations and the list she compiled is an extraordinary overview of literature from around the world.
I might be sad, but I find myself getting really excited by The Academy of British Cover Design (ABCD) short-list of book covers for their annual prize. The beauty and ingenuity of these covers is astounding and book covers seems to get better and better every year. Have a look!
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.
The Power by Naomi Alderman was just announced the winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017. The Power is a clever imagining of a world in which women (literally) have the power. Alderman blends science fiction with dystopian global politics, Think The Hunger Games meets late Jeanette Winterson with a dash of Malorie Blackman, this is a book your teenage daughter will love. If you like YA feminist fantasy you’ll enjoy it; but The Handmaid’s Tale it ain’t.
Full review The Power by Naomi Alderman
I knew it! Although I occasionally use my Kindle, I’ve always had a soft spot for the real thing. The Guardian perfectly sums up why.
Here are some things that you can’t do with a Kindle. You can’t turn down a corner, tuck a flap in a chapter, crack a spine (brutal, but sometimes pleasurable) or flick the pages to see how far you have come and how far you have to go. You can’t remember something potent and find it again with reference to where it appeared on a right- or left-hand page. You often can’t remember much at all. You can’t tell whether the end is really the end, or whether the end equals 93% followed by 7% of index and/or questions for book clubs. You can’t pass it on to a friend or post it through your neighbour’s door.
How eBooks lost their shine ‘Kindles now look clunky and unhip’
Beautifully written, shockingly sad and profoundly thought-provoking, Mend the Living made a huge impression on me when I read it last year. This novel on organ donation is a well-deserved winner of the Wellcome Book Prize 2017. Highly recommended!
Great choice for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2017! Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad was one of my favourite new books last year. An American slave story written with imagination and originality. Read the full review here.
