Hello friends
Spring is gently poking itself through the clouds, the ground, reaching out behind corners and pouring itself slowly across the sea. It’s coming, letting us know its arrival is imminent and quite frankly, not soon enough. It took it’s sweet time, winter, and seeing the sun out for a little longer, feeling the warmth hit my skin even just for a moment, makes things feel possible again.
The books read and the books coming show the change in the seasons - reflective, thoughtful, solitude inducing this month; explorative, energising and pleasure seeking the next.
Here’s the lists of those read and those to come…
Best three reads from this month…
You Just Need to Lose Weight ~ Aubrey Gordon
Aubrey co-hosts the utterly magnificent podcast, Maintenance Phase, exploring and debunking the health and wellbeing industry and culture. Aubrey is a fat queer journalist and writer and has a curiosity and a need to understand ‘why’ more deeply than any other.
You Just Need to Lose Weight tells us of the common myths said by people about fatness and fat people. With research, insight, lived experience and stories of others, Aubrey debunks nearly everything we think we may know about bodies and weight. It’s a call to action with reflection questions, places to read further and people to explore to make us strong and active allies. Exceptional.
Transitional ~ Munroe Bergdorf
Munroe is an activist and journalist, an exquisite speaker and thoughtful writer. I listened to her speak with Elizabeth Day ahead of this book being released and it was extraordinary. This book is a powerful call to arms, showing us how through living authentically, we can bring communities together and be united by the thing that we all do throughout our lives… transition.
A brave account of her own live and experiences that act as a catalyst to encourage and drive change means that this feels intimate like a memoir and practical like a ‘how-to’ guide or toolkit.
Pure Colour ~ Sheila Heti
I first encountered Sheila when I read ‘Motherhood’, a book questioning whether or not to have children in the most honest, open and brutal way I had ever read before. She has almost a haiku writing style, a prose that is hard to mimic or find elsewhere.
Pure Colour is a slim 200 pages and yet it packs in the beginning and end of the world and how Mira navigates grief through loss of her father. It’s dreamy, moving between the subconscious and reality. It’s beautiful and exquisite in exploring loss and halfway through I was already thinking about reading it again. Sheila writes for the New York Times and this will give you a taster of what to expect in her novels.
Top three reads to be read this month…
Why Women Grow ~ Alice Vincent
Alice or noughticulture as you may know her from Instagram, is known for growing in urban spaces - from her ‘treehouse’ to indoors planting - she is a leader in making growing accessible to all.
Why Women Grow is an exploration of what draws women to growing and the ground when there is so much else to do. From chefs, to artists and writers; Alice explores the myriad of experiences women face and how the earth can help them move through the world and lives. Her podcast of the same name gives us a flavour of what to expect in the book and from what I’ve heard already, I think it’s going to be quite special.
Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid
I am so late to the party on this book but classically have been swept up in the excitement of the new series with Riley Keough launching today no less. I tend to always lean out from books that become the talk of the town (rightly or wrongly) and prefer to wait to make my own decisions. I listened to Taylor talk with Fearne Cotton on Happy Place and I adored her and her approach to writing about societal expectations of women and female characters through this lens.
Daisy Jones & The Six are the biggest band in the world, until they’re not. At the height of their popularity, they split up. The story takes us back to the beginnings of each member of the group, how the group formed and ultimately, what led to their demise. Think Fleetwood Mac and Almost Famous vibes and, ugh, the wardrobe and tunes. YES.
Cursed Bread - Sophie Mackintosh
I had the delight of chatting to Sophie back in 2021 about The Water Cure and Blue Ticket and have been waiting on tenterhooks ever since for her next creation. Cursed Bread takes its inspiration a mass poisoning that occurred in the French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951 and is classically dystopian and eerily ambigious… the things we have grown to expect with writing from Sophie. It has a new element this time, one of sensuality and desire that is different to the others and I am beyond excited to dive into it fully and absorb the sparse, glorious prose in it’s entirety.
Did you read any of the books to be read last month? A reminder of what the books of the month were:
In Defence of Witches: Why women are still on trial ~ Mona Chollet
Women’s Work: From Feminine Arts to Feminist Art ~ Ferren Gipson
really good, actually ~ Monica Heisey
Would love to know what you thought if you dived into any!
I read Katherine May of ‘Wintering’ in the New York Times talk about how to be alive again and it’s honestly, such a tonic. I hope you adore it too.
It’s going to be good year for books and I can’t wait to share it with you.
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You’re a delight, here’s to a warmer and brighter month ahead.
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