11 SL-Approved Books You Need To Read This Month
stockpile a few of them for this month’s commute/city break/ever-growing pile by the bedside table.
From non-fiction celebrations of female friendships to an 80th anniversary of a literary classic, here
are 11 of the very best books to add to your collection…
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times-bestselling author of The Interestings and The Uncoupling. Her latest, The Female Persuasion, is a novel that focuses on Greer Kadetsky, a shy college freshman in a steady relationship with her boyfriend Cory. That is until she meets Faith Frank, a charismatic 63-year-old who’s a famous fighter of women’s rights. Gradually, Greer finds herself led down an ambitious new path that takes her away from the one she assumed was set in stone.
Sharp: The Women Who Made An Art Of Having An Opinion by Michelle Dean
Dorothy Parker, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion and Nora Ephron are just some of the women whose lives intertwined as they cut through 20th-century cultural and intellectual life in the US, arguing as fervently with each other as they did with the men who so often belittled their work as journalists, novelists, critics and poets. In Sharp, celebrated literary critic Michelle Dean draws a powerful portrait of ten women writers who managed to make their voices heard amid a culture of sexism.
Bookworm, A Memoir of Childhood Reading by Lucy Mangan
When journalist and Stylist columnist Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one. In Bookworm, Lucy revisits her childhood reading with passion. She relives some of Britain’s best-loved books (think the Narnia chronicles, The Secret Garden and The Railway Children), exploring the lives of the authors who created them along the way.
Don’t Let Go by Michel Bussi
“Some holidays are paradise. And others are murder…” So reads the book jacket of French thriller writer Michel Bussi’s latest crime novel, now available in paperback. This is a safe bet for anyone who devoured his previous bestseller After The Crash. Set on the island of Reunion, Martial and Liane Bellion are holidaying with their six-year- old daughter when Liane goes missing. Despite being on the beach at the time, a hotel housekeeper says she saw Martial in the corridor just before Liane’s blood is discovered all over their room. Will he prove his innocence?
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
This gothic classic has had a reboot for its 80th anniversary. Now with an introduction by Sarah Perry (author of 2017 hit The Essex Serpent), this tale of love beyond the grave has never been out of print. Made more famous still by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, Rebecca’s plot follows an unnamed narrator, who has married into a family that’s still reeling from the death of the master’s former wife Rebecca, who died in mysterious circumstances.
The F Word by Lily Pebbles
This debut book from blogger and vlogger Lily Pebbles focuses on the necessity of female friendships, in all their glorious and emotional forms. From tackling the prevalence of substituting real-life friendships for social media followers, to curating your friendships at work, Pebbles explores the fact that whatever stage you’re at in life – be it moving house, getting married, getting a degree or having a child – it’ll be the women in your world who’ll be there supporting you.
You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld
You Think It, I’ll Say It is a collection of ten short stories from Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Orange prize-nominated Prep and American Wife. The fact that one of them, Do-Over, has already been shortlisted for the 2018 Sunday Times EFG Short Story award sets expectations high. Among the series of character studies, Sittenfeld’s protagonists span an academic who sleeps with her taxi driver through to Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail. It’s a striking read.
The Recovering by Leslie Jamison
This book’s full title – The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath – sets the scene for this in-depth and blisteringly honest depiction of addiction. Part memoir, part biography, Leslie Jamison draws on her own life and the lives of addicts of extraordinary talent – Jean Rhys and Amy Winehouse among them – to take us inside the experience of addiction, exposing the contours, edges and wholes of an intoxicated life.
Black Coal Mornings by Brett Anderson
Brett Anderson came from a world impossibly distant from rock star success, and in Coal Black Mornings he traces the journey that took him from a 70s childhood in Haywards Heath as “a snotty, sniffy, slightly maudlin sort of boy raised on Salad Cream and milky tea and cheap meat” to becoming founder and lead singer of 80s alternative band Suede.
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
Lisa Halliday’s debut novel has raised eyebrows. It’s been publically acknowledged that the author had an affair with Phillip Roth in the 1980s, when she was in her 20s and Roth his 60s. So this novel, which initially centres on young publishing assistant, Alice, who embarks on a love affair with American literary icon Ezra Blazer, appears to have been drawn on personal experience. That’s until you get to part two, where readers encounter Amar, who has been detained in Heathrow airport on route to Iraq. This weaving two-parter really does live up to its title.
Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo
We’re very much thrilled that there’s now a sequel to the international bestseller Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, which was shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year 2017. Inspiring girls around the world to dream bigger, aim higher and fight harder, volume two is a new collection of 100 bedtime stories that celebrate extraordinary women from Nefertiti, Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé to Rosalind Franklin, Audrey Hepburn and J.K. Rowling.
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