News by Julie
NPR’s Best Ever Teen Fiction
America’s excellent National Public Radio conducted a Best Ever Teen Fiction poll a few years ago and this list still stands in my opinion. Some fantastic books here for every teen age, taste and gender.
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
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News by Julie
Hay to you
The organisers of the world famous Hay festival have been hard at work to make a virtual version this year. Starting Friday 22nd May a mind blowingly brilliant program of speakers on a wide range of topics will be available online. Free live events with over a hundred speakers on politics, the environment, science, history, cosmology, linguistics, ethics, pandemics (of course) and lots and lots of fiction. I don’t even know where to start! If you’ve never been able to make it to the festival, this is your chance.
Hay Festival Digital has an equally brilliant special program for schools which starts today. Tell your school about it or use it for your own home schooling (or simply as a babysittter).
Review by Julie
The Big Sleep
The original whiskey drinking sleuth
The cynical, whiskey drinking, mac-wearing sleuth Philip Marlow is one of crime literature’s most enduring characters. Written in 1936, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler has stood the test of time despite a dash of homophobia and sexism which, today, seem so outlandish it just makes you laugh. The story involves the wealthy General Sternwood, his spoilt, unruly daughters Carmen and Vivian, and blackmail. Chandler was in a league of his own when it came to astute observations of people and places and it’s this that sets The Big Sleep apart from so many others in the genre.
Review by Johanne
Echoes of the City
An intricate ode to ordinary people
Norway’s capital is perhaps not the most spectacular city in Europe, but it has seldom been more charming than in Echoes of the City by Lars Saabye Christensen, the first instalment in an ambitious trilogy tracing the lives of ordinary people in post-war Oslo. One of Norway’s most respected novelists, Saabye Christensen has managed the feat of attaining both critical acclaim and high sales.
News by Julie
Becoming to the screen
Did you love Michelle Obama’s memoir Becoming as much as I did? The Netflix documentary based on her book and life starts today, 6th of May, on Netflix. I’ll be watching! Here’s our review of her book.
Review by Julie
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
An American house of horror
I’m finding that bitesized, escapist fiction suits my concentration levels these days and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, perfectly fits the bill. The story of two mysterious sisters living with their ailing uncle in a grand, ivy-covered Vermont house is unsettling from the word go. We Have Always Lived in the Castle was Jackson’s – the American queen of ghost and horror stories – last and, many think, best novel.
Bookstoker Young Readers
Great Expectations
Dickens, doodles and drama
When You Reach Me
Welcome re-release of ingenious prize-winning time travel mystery
Rules For Being a Girl
A stirring feminist awakening
News by Julie
Normal People on screen
Remember Sally Rooney’s dazzling, multi-prize-winning novel Normal People? The BBC and Hulu just released a TV-series based on the book and rave reviews are flooding in. You can find our review here. Watch the series or read the book or even both. Just don’t miss this gem of a love story! Here’s the trailer.
https://youtu.be/LoIBGYXlxW0
Review by Julie
I Feel Bad About My Neck
A bit of light distraction
As I’ve just found out, I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron can always be pulled out of the bookshelf and re-read. It’s the American screenwriter’s (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle) laugh-out-loud collection of essays about divorces, moustaches, the power of hair-dye, losing your eye-sight, why it’s pointless to bring a book to the hairdresser, and, yes, neck skin. Comic genius Ephron (the only woman in the White House JF Kennedy never made a pass on) knew a thing or two about turning tragedy into comedy and in her mid-sixties wrote a blisteringly honest book about ageing. She didn’t believe in upbeat books about old age. ‘Why do people write books that say it’s better to be older than to be younger? It’s not better.’ It might not sound like it but believe me when I say you’ll feel better after laughing your way through this book.
I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron is published by Doubleday, 228 pages.
News by Julie
And you thought home isolation was bad…
Getting a perspective sometimes make things feel better. These great books should do the job.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. The ultimate ‘hard times’ book, written during the Great Depression. Classic Steinbeck with unforgettable characters.
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. Remember this one? A heart-wrenching but also very funny memoir by the Irish-American author who grew up in extreme poverty in Limerick, Ireland.
Blood River – A journey into Africa’s Broken Heart by Tim Butcher. A gripping non-fiction story of a journalist’s journey through Congo, one of the most dangerous countries on earth.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Set in Korea during the Japanese occupation, this family epic vividly describes the one-bowl-of-rice-a-day-existence.
The Five – the Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold. Being a poor, divorced or single woman in Victorian times is the last thing you’d ever want to be after reading this superbly researched Baille-Gifford prize winning non-fiction book.
…and, of course, ANYTHING Charles Dickens.
