News by Julie
Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction!
Congratulations to Anthony Doerr and his novel All The Light We Cannot See which has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, America’s most prestigious literary prize.
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.
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Review by Julie
God Help the Child
Veneer from venerable Morrison
It’s rare these days that I wish a book were longer, but that’s what I did with Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s latest book God Help the Child (to be published on 23 April). For the wrong reasons, unfortunately. Morrison’s writing is beautiful, as always, but this novel about child abuse felt like a thin veneer of a story. One in which I constantly wanted to scratch the surface for more information.
Review by Julie
To Kill a Mockingbird
Still good after all these years
There’s something wonderfully innocent and warm about this 1950s classic, despite its dead serious subject matter of racism. Life is simple; the goodies are good, the baddies are bad. Fundamentally, the book is about tolerance, for the lonely, weirdo neighbour, for the sick, angry, old lady down the road and, of course, for blacks, otherwise ostracised by 1930s Alabamian white society. I read this book 20 years ago and found it a joy to re-read, although my older more cynical self did think it a bit sentimental at times.
Review by Julie
Dept. of Speculation
Snapshots of a marriage
Jenny Offill’s little gem of a book Dept. of Speculation was on The New York Times’ list of 10 best books of 2014, and with good reason. It’s an unusual novel, written in snapshots, in much the same fragmented way our memory works. It’s the sum of those memories that create the narrative of our past or, in this case, the story of a relationship. In Dept. of Speculation, Offill tells an age-old tale in a refreshingly new way and creates something truly different.
News by Julie
My Easter reading…what will be yours?
Here’s my little pile of books which I hope to get through over Easter.
Review by Julie
The Buried Giant
An ogre too far?
It’s been a decade since Kazuo Ishiguro’s sinister, sci-fi-esque Never Let Me Go, a novel I really liked. In The Buried Giant Ishiguro yet again embarks on a genre bending project. This time it’s fantasy. We’re in 6th century post-Roman Britain and a mist has descended on the landscape and peoples’ minds, obscuring memories of recent wars. Axl and Beatrice, an elderly couple go on a journey to find their son and stumbles over dragons, ogres, knights and monks as well as recollections of a violent past. Despite the beautiful, atmospheric writing and profound message, I found The Buried Giant hard work. Will this only be the case for fantasy-sceptics like me?
News by Julie
Stunning Book Covers – Academy of British Cover Design Awards 2015
The competitive threat posed by e-books has triggered a creative explosion in cover design and bookshops are now full of striking, colourful, sometimes even tactile, book covers.
Review by Julie
Neverhome
An explosion of a novel
In Laird Hunt’s gripping novel Neverhome we meet Constance, aka Ash Thompson, who joins the American civil war disguised as a man. ‘I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic’, Ash says matter-of-factly referring to her mild mannered husband Bartholomew. And no, it’s not my spelling mistake in this opening sentence, it’s Ash’s. Ash is a simple farmwoman who dreams of finding the first lilac in spring. She’s also happens to be a take-no-prisoners sharp shooter. Ash joins the war out of a sense of duty, at least that’s what she tells us. Soon we see the contours of a troubled past in this very human portrayal of a tormented woman in a man’s world.
News by Julie
Karl Ove Knausgaard’s fourth volume of the My Struggle series out in English
A while ago, I wrote about A Death in the Family, the first of Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six volume autobiographical novels. Since then, Knausgaard’s books have sold in bucket loads both in the U.K. and abroad.
Review by Julie
The Story of a New Name
Lenu and Lila grow up - the addiction continues...
The second of Ferrante’s four addictive books about close friends Lenu and Lila in 1950s Naples continues where she left off in My Brilliant Friend, with Lila’s disastrous marriage to Stefano Carracci at the tender age of sixteen.
SPOILER ALERT – if you think you might like to read these books, make sure you start with the review of the first, My Brilliant Friend, elsewhere on this blog.
