Bookstoker Young Readers
The Gifted, The Talented and Me
Guaranteed snorts of laughter and recognition
Catching Teller Crow
Ghosts, murder and the darkest days of Australian history
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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Review by Johanne
A Stranger at My Table
A thorough exploration of a complex family history
It feels timely for Norwegian historian and biographer Ivo de Figueiredo’s postcolonial family chronicle to be published in English on the eve of Brexit. A Stranger at My Table by Ivo de Figueiredo is the author’s autobiographical account of a family history that spans two centuries and four continents, and the result is an ambitious amalgam; an exploration of a family ‘caught in the half-life of empires’, as well as a personal memoir detailing de Figueiredo’s turbulent relationship with his father Xavier.
Review by Julie
Three Women
Not a ‘feminist classic’ in my book
Devouring Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, this summer’s most talked about book, has left a bad taste in my mouth. For eight years Taddeo followed the relationships of three American women – Maggie, Lina and Sloane – with the goal of uncovering ‘vital truths about women and desire’. Taddeo’s initial plan was to study a larger group of women but finding volunteers (the level of intimate details in this book would make the bravest of women shy away) proved tricky. That’s a shame as these three stories, captivating as they are (Taddeo is a superb storyteller), surely represent only a small sub-section of female sexual experience. So that begs the question: what is the point of this book?
Review by Jane
Sweet Sorrow
Touching and funny portrait of first love by the author of One Day
Disaffected teenager Charlie Lewis is finessed into joining a summer holiday drama camp by a girl he meets by chance. She is beautiful, clever and well-read; he can’t act, has zero ambition and is only there because he fancies her. Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls is a pitch-perfect, delicately choreographed love story that will make you laugh and cry and wish you were young again – and then be glad you’re not.
Bookstoker Young Readers
Pay Attention Carter Jones
What the butler saw
The Good Thieves
Spirited Manhattan heist tale from an author at the top of her game
Freedom
Compelling prize winner highlights Britain’s role in the slave trade
Review by Jane
An American Marriage
Soul-stirring Women's Prize for Fiction Winner
Celestial and Roy are two young black newlyweds, he an executive with a promising career ahead; she an up-and-coming folk artist. When something terrible happens they are torn apart for five years – their lives unravel and they question everything they thought they knew. I read An American Marriage by Tayari Jones as an e-book without having read the blurb (surprising for me but there you are) and I think this is the best and only way to read it. If you know what is going to happen – and almost every review will tell you – then the spoiler makes the whole book a bit pointless.
News by Julie
Where to start on the Booker Prize long-list 2019?
The Booker Prize long-list 2019 of 13 books was published yesterday and the question is, as always, where to start, if at all…We’ve reviewed a few of them and thought we’d share our views. The big unknown – although entirely unsurprising – entry is The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s much-anticipated sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, out in September. The Booker judges, bound by strict non-disclosure agreements, can’t say a word about what happens in the book, so we’ll have to take their word for it.
Review by Julie
Leaving the Atocha Station
An impostor in Madrid
Ben Lerner’s pot smoking, pill popping protagonist Adam is an endearing, hilarious and vulnerable anti-hero whom I immediately warmed to. On a poetry fellowship to Spain from Kansas, Adam comes weighed down with self-doubt. His knowledge of Spanish is negligible, his skills as a poet questionable. Adam self-medicates to the point that much of his life has become an out-of-body experience. Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner had me in stitches, but just like Adam’s experience of life, this book has layers and layers of meaning, some hilarious, some profound, many of them both.
Bookstoker Young Readers
The Poet X
Carnegie Prize winner celebrates the blistering poetry of adolescence
Cloud Boy
A bittersweet tale in honour of best friends everywhere
Goodbye Perfect
Brilliant YA Book Prize winner throws spotlight on teen taboos
News by Kirstin
YA Books for the Summer
If you’re lucky enough to have a voracious teen reader in your life, then you’ll already know what I’m about to declare. Young Adult literature rocks these days. No more sad bookshop shelves offering three Sweet Valley High novels and a dusty Judy Blume. Walk into any large bookshop and you’ll find thousands of YA titles stretching into the striplit yonder (and they’re not all vampire books!) In fact, the diversity and quality of contemporary YA writing makes reviewing new titles a real treat.
Here are a handful of Bookstoker’s favourite picks of YA books for the summer.
