I've had people ask me a few times recently whether I think they should read the two preceding books in Tsitsi Dangarembga's trilogy, and after finishing this final novel my answer is a resounding yes. I had quite a strong emotional reaction to this book, but I have seen a few reviews recently from people who read it as a standalone that felt rather meh about it all. Whilst it can literally be read as a standalone (whatever needs explaining is explained), I think my appreciation of this novel is definitely down to my having followed Tambu's journey from childhood, but also the development of Dangarembga's writing over the three, and the weight of all that she explores over the course of the trilogy.

This month I set aside the 2020 Booker longlist for a time and instead focussed on some more seasonal reading. There is a mix of books here but they all have something sufficiently ~spooky season~ about them. That is, apart from my audiobook reads; I've been focussing more on nonfiction for my audiobooks and enjoying them a lot more - finally!

Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward

This book went places I could never have guessed, and for that reason I don't want to say too much about it or its plot so as to preserve the wonderful surprise of a book that defies all expectations. I read it in one heady afternoon and found it to be a fun, experimental and sometimes moving ride.

Recently I've been in a bit of a reading slump. For some reason I just can't find the concentration for reading and therefore this month's reviews may be more haphazard than usual as I search through my brain fog for pertinent things to say. Nonetheless there were some great books in August, though they might bear a reread when my focus is a little more sharp.

Finally! A book I listened to that I really enjoyed. The last audiobook I really genuinely liked listening to was Stardust back in January, and there have been a lot of duds both before and after, or books that I thought would have worked much better had I read them instead. So I'm very pleased to announce that I liked this one, though I am also looking forward to rereading it physically in the future. Also this book was recommended to me by the lovely between.bookends so thank you Varsha!

With everything going on in the world at the minute, I struggled to get as much reading done as I wanted to this month, but what I did read was mostly of a very high quality, so swings and roundabouts, eh? I also wanted to champion Black writers more than usual this month in the wake of the global Black Lives Matter protests.

I’m finding it hard this month to sort my books into highs and lows. Almost everything I read was valuable and enjoyable, though I didn’t absolutely love anything. For that reason this month we’ve got the good and the bad instead. Indeed, after what I wrote in this blog post, I’ve finally decided to stop giving ratings to books on Goodreads (more chat about that in my June books post), so from now on I’m just going to let the books decide how to group themselves instead of having any rigid formulation.

It may just be my imagination but I feel like a lot more of my books are hitting the mark this year than last. There are fewer lows and more highs, and it feels like I'm getting much better at not just putting down books I won't like, but only picking up those that I will. Long may it continue!

It's safe to say that March was a bit of an unusual time. Even though I read some of these books before everything really started to change drastically, the endless torrent of news has served to decimate my memory of them. And those books I read afterwards are foggy from a limited concentration span. If your reading is suffering even though you appear to have more time on your hands, don't beat yourself up. Most reading requires that bit more concentration than your average TV show, and sometimes I just want to lose myself in an easy sitcom.

By all accounts this month was an excellent reading month; even those novels that I've categorised as 'lows' I found to be more interesting and worthy than I sometimes do. I hope that this is a sign that I'm getting better at putting down or avoiding books that don't work for me.

It’s January 2020 and I have finally caught up with all my book blog posts from last year which means I can stop doing half-baked reviews weeks after the fact and hopefully deliver you something a little more thoughtful. January is usually a good reading month for me quantity-wise because I’m still in the mood to read after the Christmas break with none of the social plans and less of the work.

I group these two months together merely because I took a picture of both month’s worth of books (on account of my YouTube video being late). So that’s how lazy I am. I read some great books towards the end of 2019 and I’m very excited to share them with you.

This was not such a successful month of reading but there was one saving grace in the bunch, and thank goodness because it was the longest.

I’m still catching up with my reviews so please forgive me if they are a little more brief than normal. There were some great books this month that made their way into my top books of the year, which you can read about here.

August was a very successful month; I read a lot (thank you, summer hols), and what I did read was either interesting or enjoyable or both (with minor exceptions).

Right so this post is about six months late… but I read some pretty good books in July. Forgive me if the reviews are a little on the short side; I read lots of them by the pool and didn’t take as many notes as I usually would.

I couldn’t let January slip by without paying homage to some of my favourite books of 2019. I started writing my list in October and by the end of the year I had landed on an even twenty books, which I thought was a sign I shouldn’t try and cut any of them from the list. Okay fine, it’s twenty-two - I added two more since I started writing this post. I read around a hundred books last year which is more than I’ve ever read in previous years, (though I would say I must have read at least that equivalent in criticism during my uni years), and I think that is partially down to the challenge I set myself of clearing the piles of books that sat on my unread shelves.

Absolutely ages ago, I asked on Instagram for questions regarding reading and books. This may seem an unusual topic to dedicate a whole Q&A to on here, but I actually get tons of questions about my reading habits, so I wanted to collate everything into one post for those of you who might be interested. As many of you asked similar questions, I won't be naming anyone in this post, for which I hope you can forgive me.

It's that time again when I do a round up of the books I read in a particular month, this one being June. As usual I'm running late with the reviews but we've got there in the end. Because I was finishing up various books from May at the beginning of the month once again we did *not* hit my targets, but here goes.

It’s been a wee while but I’m back again with a round-up of the books I read in May, and you can watch the accompanying video here. This month I didn’t get round to reading as much as I wanted, mostly because I got stuck in a rut with two of the longer titles listed below that I really wasn’t enjoying; I need to get better at giving up on the books I don’t like. Anyway, there were at least a couple of hits which I can’t say for every month, so it's not all bad.