Right, you lovely lot, this is going to be my last post for a while as I want to focus on other writing and take a step back from blogging. I’m going to attempt to take a step back from social media too, in the hope that it will make me more productive. (And also because I find Twitter depressing; the amount of hatred and vile abuse that gets spewed, makes me despair of humanity. I see this from the tweets that famous people I follow, share, I am happy in my own obscurity with my 32 followers! Facebook seems relatively cuddly by comparison, but still has serious time-sapping implications.)
So, I thought I’d make my last post about books, as they are my passion, and give some Summer reading recommendations. I’ll include some oldies and some new books.
If you read nothing else this Summer, for a consciousness-raising, cracking good story, please read:
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Born out of the Black Lives Matter movement, Angie Thomas was inspired to write this book because of the very different conversations she was having at her (predominantly white) University, about the number of black youths who had been shot and killed by the police, to the conversations she was having in the neighbourhood she’d grown up in.
Sixteen year old, STARR CARTER, is travelling home from a party with her best friend, KHALIL, when they are stopped by the police. Starr is the only witness when the unarmed Khalil is killed by the policeman. As well as grieving for her friend she then has to muster the courage to speak out, at the same time as treading the fine line between constraint, at the exclusive public school she attends and being true to her community.
You might already know this but the title of the book comes from Tupac Shakur’s tattoo - THUG LIFE which stood for ‘The hate u give little infants f*cks everybody’.
Early in the book, Starr recounts the two talks her parents gave her when she was on the verge of puberty; one was the standard sex education talk, the other was a cautionary speech about how to behave around the police (in as non-confrontational way as possible).
The Hate U Give is an enormously heart-wrenching book, it will leave you open to crying in public places, but it rattles along at a great pace. It’s an important book and it’s very much based on real life.
The statistics don’t lie:
Black males aged 15-34 were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by law enforcement officers last year, according to data collected for The Counted, an effort by the Guardian to record every such death. They were also killed at four times the rate of young white men.
This is the article, if you’d like more information:
Angie Thomas also has a fine sense of humour, this is one of her tweets:
Oh, did I mention that The Hate you give is a YA book?
The Hate u give is a highly emotive, without being depressing, read. However, if you are looking for something a little more escapist, the perfect beach read, then you could do a lot worse than look to Marian Keyes. She has often been dismissed as ‘Chic-Lit’ and there’s nothing wrong with Chic Lit but Marian Keyes’ books are as hilarious as they are insightful. There is often something in them that you don’t really get in other books of that genre. My particular favourites are Rachel’s Holiday, Angels and The Mystery of Mercy Close. Marian (I can’t bring myself to refer to her as ‘Keyes’, like a P.E teacher) writes about relationships, bereavement and depression but there is always a sense of redemption about her books, and always a positive ending. She has a new book out now - The Break https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-break/marian-keyes/9780718179724
If you are looking for something thrilling:
And you are one of the very few people who hasn’t read the book or seen the film, I can highly recommend. The Girl on the Train. It’s a completely compelling page turner with an unreliable narrator and some dark twists and turns. I was late for a school Fete because I had to finish reading it and I love it when a book does that (inconvenient though it may be!).
If you want something life-affirming:
I’ve just read A Man called Ove by Fredrik Backman. Grumpy old man is befriended by young family and various assortment of interesting characters. As his story unfolds you get to see that there is so much more to OVE than misanthropic martinet. It will make you laugh and cry in equal measure.
Taking on the baton from Sue Townsend is Nina Stibbe, who, with her most recent installment Paradis Lodge, has shown how adept she is at capturing the voice, the preoccupations and woes of a teenager.
So, with that I will leave you. Might post again in six months.
Many thanks for reading! Have a great Summer.
