Bookstoker Young Readers
Where the World Turns Wild
Cleverly executed eco-thriller
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
Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 long-list – where to start?
Of these 16 books we suggest starting with Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman is in Trouble, Weather by Jenny Offill and Girl by Edna O’Brian. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell is not out until the 31st March but that would be next on my list. If you feel brave (it’s 900 pages long), Hilary Mantel’s last book in the Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, has had amazing reviews. What will you pick from this list?
Going through a painful break up? Then try one of these
The Days of Abandonment
A 'sudden absence of sense'
Fleishman is in Trouble
One to make you howl with laughter
An American Marriage
Soul-stirring Women's Prize for Fiction Winner
A Little Life
A profoundly moving novel about friendship in the twenty-first century
Territory of Light
A quietly powerful story of separation
Review by Julie
Weather
What it's like to live right now
Librarian Lizzie Benson lives a pretty ordinary life in New York City with her husband Ben and son Eli. What’s happening around her, however, is anything but. Climate change, Trump, threats to democracy, artificial intelligence, drug addiction – there’s plenty to worry about. How to absorb it all while going on living is the question. Weather by Jenny Offill puts words to what it’s like to live right now and thanks to her playful, fragmented writing style, this book is not nearly as depressing as it sounds.
Review by Julie
Odes
One to make you love yourself
I’ve come across a little treasure of a poetry collection that I wanted to share with you. Odes by Sharon Olds, an American T.S. Eliot Prize winning poet is one worth reading. With poems such as ‘Blow Job Ode’, ‘Ode to the Tampon’ and, ‘Ode to the Penis’, don’t tell me you’re not curious. There are also the more melancholic ‘Ode of the Withered Cleavage’ and ‘Ode to Stretch Marks’. Olds celebrate women’s bodies in all their gore and glory, in youth and old age. If this little collection doesn’t put a smile on your face and make you love (and forgive) your body just a little bit more, nothing will.
Odes by Sharon Olds is published by Jonathan Cape, 128 pages.
Review by Julie
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
A small book about the big things in life
Five people plunge to their deaths when an old Inca bridge across a gorge in Peru snaps. Who were these people? And why these five? That’s what Brother Juniper, a Catholic priest, sets out to investigate in the glorious little novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. ‘Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan’ Brother Juniper reasons. So which one is it?
Three books for mountain lovers
A Whole Life
A gentle lesson in living
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
A Nobel Prize Winner that stays with you
Snow, Dog, Foot
Darkly comic little gem
Bookstoker Young Readers
The Goldsmith and the Master Thief
Charming vintage adventure from the acclaimed author of The Letter for the King
I Go Quiet
Embracing the sound of silence
Asha and the Spirit Bird
Luminous Costa Prize winning Indian adventure
Review by Julie
Snow, Dog, Foot
Darkly comic little gem
Adelmo Farandola lives by himself as far up a rocky Alpine valley as possible. He hasn’t showered or changed clothes for as long as he can remember and he’ll do anything to avoid people. When a stray dog starts following him, Adelmo reluctantly takes it in and a strange relationship develops as they struggle to survive the brutal winter. Anyone with a soft spot for books set in wild mountains will love Snow, Dog, Foot by Claudio Morandini. A bestseller in Italy, this quirky, darkly comic book about a grumpy loner losing his mind is a surreal little gem.
News by Julie
The Magus by John Fowles to hit the small screen
The Magus by John Fowles has an almost mythical place in my literary memory. I read the 670 page long novel in my mid-twenties over two intense days, skipping meals and hardly sleeping. Such was the power of this mysterious, hypnotising book about a young English teacher on a remote Greek island who comes under the spell of a wealthy recluse. I’ve since been hesitant about re-reading it, fearing that my older, more cynical self will find faults with it and spoil the magic. Now there is fantastic news for all The Magus fans, of which there seems to be many. None other than Sam Mendes will direct a TV-series based on the book. I, for one, can’t wait! If you haven’t read it yet, hurry up!
