What's On Your Nightstand ? - September 2017

Hosted by Jennifer over at 5 Minutes For Books  the What's On Your Nightstand? posting is a monthly (last Tuesday @ month) blog event in which readers share their thoughts on books they’ve read, didn’t finish, are reading during that timeframe..
I thought it a great idea and decided that I wanted to participate and divulge which books I’ve loved, liked, didn’t or couldn’t give a hoot about.

Over the next few weeks leading up to the Christmas period there will be a lot of exciting books coming into the bookstore and I thought it would be a great way to share with readers these treasures being lifted out of the boxes. The store will become increasingly busy with deliveries and with customer volume increasing exponentially, we booksellers will be able to give Mo Farrah a run for his money.  It’s an incredibly exciting and manic phase,  totally exhausting and one in which I find writing fuller reviews much more difficult. It will be a fun way for me to stay engaged and blogging during such a busy time in the book-selling industry.

I can’t wait to share with you some of the fantastic new books during these postings, even if I haven’t managed to read them all!

What I read

My Absolute Darling, Gabriel Tallent
The most talked about... hyped…book this year. Rather a divisive book and one which in my opinion was overly hyped and could have benefited from a little streamlining (by about 20%).
The style of writing is stunningly beautiful,  juxtaposed with such startling brutality both physically and verbally.  Turtle, a young girl living in the harshest of environments, environmentally and domestically wants desperately to escape.

My proof copy at 417 pages, felt over long and repetitive. With respect to the repetitiveness of physical and verbal violence meted out to her, I personally became desensitised to Turtle’s plight.  With a condensed version I may well have given a 4.5 star rating instead of, what is still a respectable 3.5.
Not a book I’d recommend to everyone as it does contain an enormous amount of bad language, descriptions of brutal physical and mental abuse and disturbing scenes of incest.
Chosen because: I loved the cover image, and because I’d heard so much hype around it. I love gritty, raw, southern fiction and with Stephen King’s endorsement blurb on the cover…I just couldn’t resist.

What I didn’t finish

Autumn, Ali Smith
Meh…really meh…I mean wtf...I don’t even know where to go on this one. I’m confused about the whole storyline, or rather the amount I managed to force myself to read. Bad timing possibly...probably, but then again it’s been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize this year and it’s certainly odd enough for it. I think I’ll just gracefully accept that it wasn’t my thing on this occasion.
Chosen because: I wanted to read Autumn as part of my Man Booker reading list this year.
Read and loved Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, and others that didn’t make the short-list.

Widow Basquiat. A Love Story, Jennifer Clement
Very ‘en vogue’ right now with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work on exhibition at The Barbican Art Gallery in London from now until January 2018.

Published originally back in 2000 and again this year Widow Basquiat is written in an abstract, prosy style. Narrated by Basquiat’s long-term girlfriend Suzanne Mallouk it reads like a strange fictionalised memoir as she recounts her side of the abusive relationship with the doomed, tormented, undeniably talented Jean-Michel Basquiat.  Suzanne tells us about Basquiat’s rise from ‘street graffiti artist’ to famous ‘celebrity artist’ hobnobbing with iconic stars and celebs such as the influential Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Debbie Harry, etc., etc., etc., to his fatal obsession with drugs that sadly put a premature end to his life as a result of a heroine overdose in 1988.

By 30% I was finding it all rather tedious hearing about privileged, long suffering, self indulgent destructive souls being tormented, or being the tormentor that I decided to take a break. It was at this point I realised that back in 2014 I’d read another book by the same author, ‘Prayers for the Stolen’, about the terrifying dangers for girls living in an Mexican village at the mercy of marauding drug-dealers. I decided to give it a re-read. I didn’t recall it being so heartbreaking nor compelling the first time round.

So then back to Widow Basquiat, Maybe because I wasn’t enthusiastic about the prospect of reading anymore about the same self obsessed, hugely unlikable personalities of Basquiat’s circle of friends and acquaintances I decided that at 40% I really wasn’t invested or cared enough to finish it.
Chosen because: I love reading anything set in New York and particularly about the pop, punk, hip-hop, art, and drug scene during the 1980’s period.

What I’m reading now

I Am I Am I Am, Maggie O’Farrell
I am sooo in awe of this author and this memoir in particular…it’s beautifully written giving seventeen accounts of Maggie O’Farrell’s brushes with death.  I absolutely felt an affinity with this courageous, smart, strong woman, and wholeheartedly felt for her especially in some personally similar circumstances. On the back of this one, and I’m trying to make it last and savour it by reading one chapter a night, I’ll definitely read more from Maggie O’Farrell.

Simply stunning…Just read it!

Chosen because: I couldn’t resist picking it up from the delivery tote. Such a stunningly captivating cover that I impulsively turned to the first page to read it and was hooked. Bought a copy right there and then ready to start it during my lunch break.

If The Creek Don’t Rise, Leah Weiss
Only at about 15% right now but it’s a great start to an authentic atmospheric southern gothic tale set in a North Carolina Mountain town.
Chosen because: I love anything gritty, rural, and atmospherically southern gothic looking…cover did it first, then the title.

What I intend to read for next time
I Will Send Rain, Rae Meadows
The Book Of Joan, Lidia Yuknavitch

I’m stopping there as I always change my mind…too many sweets in the jar so to speak…especially at this time of year.