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
Kate Atkinson won the Costa Novel Award 2015 earlier this week for the novel A God in Ruins. Not bad considering she’s won the prize twice before: in 2013 for Life After Life and in 1995 for Behind the Scenes at the Museum. A God in Ruins follows Teddy, one of the characters from Life After Life, and his struggle to live a ‘normal’ life after his career as an RAF pilot during the Second World War.
Over Christmas I’ve been enjoying this very unusual and utterly absorbing (thinly veiled, true) story about a Hungarian writer (the narrator and Magda Szabó herself) and her housekeeper Emerence. It’s a novel about a precarious relationship, mutual respect (and some disrespect), balance of power and the secrets of a remarkable life, all under the magnifying glass.
82 international book critics have spoken: Middlemarch by George Eliot is the best British novel of all time according to a survey by BBC Culture. It’s nearly impossible to pick one book as the best ever, but if pushed, I’d probably go for Middlemarch too.
This true story has all the hallmarks of a fictional adventure. The backdrop is a fascinating time, not taught in classrooms, when the British were producing opium for sale to the Chinese in order to fund their own addiction: tea. When the opium-tea exchange becomes ever more difficult, the British need to find another option for stability: enter botanist turned spy, Robert Fortune, to steal the plant out of China. Although written for adults, the simple language and linear story-telling makes it suitable for younger readers (13+).
This incredible story of aristocratic beauty Lady Jane Digby and her escapades through the higher echelons of British, French, Austrian, German and Greek societies in the 1800s, is one of the more extraordinary biographies I’ve read. Born into wealth and privilege, the charismatic Jane Digby basically slept her way through Europe, starting with an English politician moving on to a German baron, an Austrian Prince, a Greek King and an Albainan General and many more, leaving behind her a trail of ex-husbands and children. Digby ends up in Syria as the wife of a bedouin sheik twenty years her junior. It’s an astounding story which would make a perfect film!
As usual, I’ve packed a large pile to bring when I go away for Christmas. Can’t wait to tuck in and enjoy all these books…
The best books of 2015 lists are being published in the newspapers these days and I have collected the best of the ‘best lists’. I don’t necessarily agree with all their choices, but there are lots of interesting books here.
Let us help you with your Christmas shopping. At the click of a button your shopping list could evaporate! We have handpicked the best of fiction, non-fiction and children’s books. There are books on architecture, history, neuroscience and wood chopping. We have selected funny books, sad books and romantic books. All of them are books we have loved or are dying to read.
Merry Christmas!
Michèle and Julie
An absolutely perfect little story about Austrian ‘mountain goat’ Andreas Egger, a salt-of-the-earth type of character whose quiet, lonely alpine village life turns out surprisingly satisfactory. His contentedness is of the old-fashioned kind, derived from a closeness to nature, work and acceptance of one’s destiny. A lesson in living and a heart-warming (but far from syrupy!) read which fans of John Williams’ Stoner will love.
