This Week in Books | 17/01/18

This week I'm joining in with Lipsy @ Lipsyy Lost & Found to talk about the books I've been reading recently!

NOW: I loved the new adaptation of IT last year and decided to try the book, which is also in keeping with one of my reading goals to not be intimidated by the longer books on my shelves, and at 1,166 pages this is one of the longest books I've ever attempted to read. I'm not the biggest fan of Stephen King but I'm enjoying this one so far and enjoying taking my time and making my way through a book. Yes, parts of it are problematic and, no, I don't think I'm going to consider it a masterpiece when I finish it but I'll be very pleased with myself when I finally get through it.

THEN: I finished listening to A Natural History of Dragons in my car and really enjoyed the experience of listening to it. I'd like to listen to the other books in the series but I'll have to wait until I can afford the audio CDs to play in my car - they're so expensive!

NEXT: It's become something of a tradition for me to read a Binti story at the beginning of the year. I believe The Night Masquerade is the final book in this little trilogy and I'm looking forward to finishing the series and seeing how Binti's story ends - I'll probably pick this one up and whizz through it while I'm continuing to make my way through IT.

What have you been reading recently?

Top Ten Tuesday | Santa Claus is Coming to Town (With Books)

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Top Ten Books I Hope Santa Brings'! To be honest I'm not really sure what I want for Christmas this year, although there'll always be books I'd like to get my hands on, so this week I've mentioned some of the books I've included on a wishlist for my bookish secret santa as well as a couple of books I hinted at my parents that I wouldn't mind owning. Whatever I get this year, though, I know I'm going to love it!

And as this is the last TTT before Christmas - MERRY CHRISTMAS! I hope you all have a wonderful day, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, and, if you do, I hope Father Christmas brings you everything you wish for.

Prudence by Gail Carriger: I own all of the Parasol Protectorate books, with only Heartless and Timeless left to go, so it'd be nice to have the first book in the follow-up series to hand.

New World Fairy Tales by Cassandra Parkin: I love short story collections based on fairy tales, so I definitely wouldn't complain if I found this book under my tree.

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor: All I've read of Okorafor's so far are her Binti books, but Akata Witch has intrigued me for a long while. It's the first book in a duology (I think?) and recently had a makeover with this stunning cover.

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu: I haven't read any Asian-inspired high fantasy and that's something I'd like to change, especially as I've heard great things about Ken Liu's work.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban by J. K. Rowling, illustrated by Jim Kay: I've been collecting these illustrated editions, they're beautiful, and I think this one in particular will be gorgeous - I can't wait to see Jim Kay's versions of Lupin and Sirius!

Pages for You by Sylvia Brownrigg: I've heard lots of very good things about this one, so I certainly wouldn't be disappointed to get a copy this year.

Elizabeth of York: The First Tudor Queen by Alison Weir: I've always been fascinated by Elizabeth of York but I feel like she gets forgotten quite a lot. Whenever I come across a history documentary featuring Alison Weir I'm always interested in what she has to say, so this book is the perfect pairing of two lovely things.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: This year is the year I discovered I like Jane Austen and Mansfield Park is the novel I know the least about, so I'm very interested in checking it out.

Unicorns: The Myths, Legends, & Lore by Skye Alexander: This book's about unicorns. What else needs to be said?

The Stuart Princesses by Alison Plowden: I read Plowden's Women All On Fire: The Women of the English Civil War recently and enjoyed it, and it's made me want to learn more about the women of the Stuart era. I know very little about the Stuart royal family so I think this will be the perfect book to widen my knowledge.

Which books made your list this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | Give Me Some Space, Man

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Top Ten Books I Want My Future Children to Read (Or nieces and nephews, Godchildren, etc.)' - I actually kind of did this topic back in May and I don't really want to repeat myself, but I also didn't want to miss another week of TTT!

I have a nephew and four nieces - yes, four! Christmas shopping is a nightmare! - and my oldest niece is a bookworm, too, which is lovely, but there are some things I still definitely need to teach her. I live in South Wales while my older sister lives in North England so I don't see my oldest niece or her brother and sister that often, and when I saw her a few months ago I just so happened to be wearing a Star Wars t-shirt. She told me I shouldn't be wearing it because, and I quote, 'Star Wars is for boys'.

I'm sure you can imagine my horror.

So today I'm going to talk about the sci-fi books I'd like my niece to read when she's a little older to help her learn that Star Wars, and science fiction, is for everyone. She doesn't have to like science fiction, but I don't want her thinking it's a genre she's not allowed to participate in.

(Just as a sidenote, I don't tend to read as much sci-fi as I'd like to so the sci-fi experts amongst you probably have even better recommendations than I do - please feel free to leave them down below!)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: When eighteen year old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley penned this haunting tale she set up the foundations for the genre we now know as science fiction. What better way to realise it's a genre that was never meant for boys alone?

Feed by Mira Grant: One of my favourite books of all time, this book broke my heart into teeny tiny pieces and made me sob. I love this one because it's a zombie story that isn't really about zombies in the way traditional zombie stories are, and when my niece is older I hope she'll enjoy its commentary on politics and the media as much as I did.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: Another one of my favourite books of all time and one I can't praise highly enough. Its discussions of gender, sexuality, race relations, family units and what it means to be human will stay with me for the rest of my life and I think anyone who reads this novel can learn something from it while also enjoying a beautiful story.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood: I still haven't read this one myself (I know, I know, the shame!) but I swear I'm going to get to it soon and I think a book like this one would be the ideal story to get my niece thinking about feminism when she's a bit older.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor: Another sci-fi story that discusses race relations and the validity of cultures both familiar and alien (hurr hurr) to us. As my niece will sadly be growing up in post-Brexit Britain, I hope she reads lots and lots of stories about why it's important not to dismiss another culture simply because it's different to her own.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: As much as I got sick of the genre, YA dystopian fiction is such a good starting point into science fiction, at least one strand of science fiction, especially for people like myself and my niece who aren't huge sci-fi people. Katniss Everdeen is one of the fiercest heroines around; my niece will be able to learn a lot from her, I think.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver: On the other end of the scale is a quieter dystopian tale, but an equally powerful one. One of the things I loved most about this book is that the heroine, Lena, is more traditionally feminine than a lot of the YA dystopian heroines out there, and unfortunately I think a lot of heroines were distanced from traditionally feminine things because how can a girl possibly be feminine and kick-ass? Thankfully there are different ways to be 'kick-ass' and Lena and Katniss are both prime examples of that.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer: I think this could be a particularly good starting point for my niece when she's old enough to start reading YA. I love this series, and the fact that all of the books in the series are retellings of fairy tales means that they're accessible for readers who might be familiar with the fairy tales but find sci-fi a little intimidating. It worked for me! (Also can I take the moment to have a mini rant and say that it really annoys me when I see this series being described as a dystopian series - not every YA sci-fi book is dystopian!)

Blood Red Road by Moira Young: More post-apocalyptic than dystopian, this book is just so much fun and yet another book with a very interesting heroine; Saba's even fiercer than Katniss, I think, and I hope it would show my niece just how fun and versatile this genre is.

Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson and Various Artists: Because let's face it, if my niece thinks Star Wars is for boys she probably thinks that about Marvel, too. Who better than Ms. Marvel herself to show her otherwise?

Which books made your list this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Top Ten Books I Wish Had (More/Less) X In Them', so this week I'm talking about the books I wish had more pages in them!

Woman Who Brings the Rain by Eluned Gramich: This teeny little memoir was my first read of this year, and was also shortlisted for the English-language Wales Book of the Year in the non-fiction category. I've been really into learning more about Asia in this year and I loved the way this little memoir, about the author's time in Japan, was written, so I'd've really liked a much longer book. Perhaps she'll produce one in future!

Unicorn Tracks by Julia Ember: This has LGBT+ protagonists and unicorns, so what's not to love? I really enjoyed Ember's debut, I just wanted even more of it.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor: Similarly, the only thing I wanted from Binti was even more of it because the universe Okorafor has created is fascinating.

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue: Something's revealed at the end of The Wonder that I felt was brushed under the carpet very quickly considering the seriousness of it. I would have liked a few more pages so that what's revealed could have been dealt with more than it was.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison: Okay so this book, one of my favourites of all time (possibly my ultimate favourite of all time), is perfect as far as I'm concerned, I just didn't want it to end. More please?

St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell: Pretty much every single story in this collection ended in medias res and I found it really frustrating. I think I might have liked the book a little more than I did if I felt as though every story actually had an ending.

Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale by Catherine Orenstein: I really enjoyed this, and I recommend it if you're interested in the history of fairy tales, but I'd love an updated version talking about some of the more recent versions and adaptations of Little Red Riding Hood.

The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig: I loved Heilig's debut, the idea is just delicious, and the only problem I had with it was that ending felt a little rushed compared with the pace of the rest of the book. I'd've been happy for a slower ending, but it didn't really take anything away from my enjoyment of the book.

Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant: I don't think this novella really needs to be longer, it's an ideal size for what it is, but I loved the concept so much that I'd've happily read a full-length novel - especially as I don't read enough horror.

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: This is one of those classic Gothic Victorian stories, told in hindsight in a 'tell-don't-show' way that so many 19th century stories were, but the idea is so interesting that I wish it was longer and a bit more, well, more.

What did you talk about this week?

Review | Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Binti

by Nnedi Okorafor

My Rating:

Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.

If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself - but first she has to make it there, alive.

I've been meaning to read something of Nnedi Okorafor's for a while now. She's very popular in the realms of SFF and so much of her work seems to deal with themes that I love to read in my fiction, while also dealing with fantastical characters and places influenced by Africa as opposed to all the American and European-based fantasy and science fiction out there. Binti won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in last year's Hugo Awards so I was eager to check it out, especially as I don't read many novellas and I was hoping this story would give me the same kind of vibe I got from Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet which I love very much.

Like The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Binti is a piece of science fiction that explores how we react to and treat cultures different to our own, and how mutual respect can lead people from war to peace, but I found it to be a much darker story than Chambers'. This isn't a bad thing and is truly no surprise considering the situation Binti finds herself in after she flees her homeland to attend university, something her people never do, on a ship that is doomed when it finds itself caught in the crossfire of a war that has been raging on for years.

I love Okorafor's imagination, particularly Binti's culture and how it's viewed by outsiders versus people like Binti who understand the importance of her people's customs and traditions. To be honest I wanted to know even more about Binti's life before she left for university; I wanted to meet her family, to see what life was like at home for her and how she fit into her society and what everyone she knew at home thought of her and how she'd ended up applying to university in the first place. In fact I'd've liked Binti to be longer in general, because I enjoyed what I read but there was so much that I felt could have been explored more that the novella left me a little dissatisfied; I felt as though I didn't really get to know Binti's friends very well at all or what her relationship with them was like, which made it difficult to feel emotionally connected to the story during its darker moments.

In general I felt as though everything was wrapped up a little too quickly for my liking - I was particularly frustrated with a section near the end of the novella where Binti accepts something about her being physically changed without her permission more easily than I was expecting her to - so I'm looking forward to the sequel, Home, which is being released at the end of this month and I'm hoping will explore a lot of the things I was hoping would be explored in this novella.

All in all I didn't fall head over heels in love with Binti as I was hoping to, but I still really enjoyed it and I think Okorafor is completely worthy of all the praise she's been receiving for it. I think this was a great introduction to Okorafor's work and I'm definitely planning to read more of her work in future - I've got my eye on Akata Witch.

If you want to read science fiction that explores cultural differences and is less Americanised than so much science fiction out there, I recommend picking this up and giving Okorafor a chance. She's a much-needed voice in the realms of SFF and I can't wait to see what she does next because Binti is full of potential.

This Week in Books | 04/01/2017

This week I'm joining in with Lipsy @ Lipsyy Lost & Found to talk about the books I've been reading recently!

Now: I'm in the middle of Deborah Moggach's Tulip Fever in anticipation of the forthcoming film adaptation starring Alicia Vikander and Holliday Grainger. Unfortunately I'm not loving the book - I'll be reviewing it once I finish it so you can find out all my thoughts and feelings on it then - but I'd like to finish it before I see the film, which still looks great!

Then: My final read of 2016 saw me finally read some Nnedi Okorafor when I picked up her award-winning novella, Binti. I'll be reviewing this title soon and I'm looking forward to the sequel, Home, which is being released at the end of this month.

Next: I've been lucky enough to receive an eARC of Mark Lawrence's Red Sister from NetGalley, so I'm planning to pick it up soon - I've been in the mood for some new high fantasy lately and I'm always going to be drawn towards stories of killer nuns.

What are you reading?

Books to Encourage Acceptance and Equality

America has decided, and in doing so the country has taken one step forward and two steps back, electing a man who is a sexist, racist, ableist, transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic, power-hungry, nasty little man who, despite being a very wealthy businessman, can't afford a more natural looking toupee.

First Brexit and now this. 2016 is looking more and more like the beginning of a dystopian novel. I feel very disheartened today, and I'm frightened for the kind of world we now live in, where it's more acceptable to sexually assault women than it is to use the wrong email address, but I refuse to stop fighting, in the little ways I can, each and every day. If someone says something inappropriate I will forever call them out on it, however annoyed it makes them, and I will always shout out for what I believe to be right. I refuse to let hatred win.

And to all of my American friends, and all American people, who have woken up today feeling unsafe in the country they call home, I can only say I'm here for you - as are the rest of Britain's 48%.

So I'm not going to be gloomy today, instead I'm going to turn to what I always turn to when I'm feeling low: books. Today I'm going to share ten books with you, five I've read and five that are on my TBR, that encourage equality, acceptance and love above all things, because heaven knows we need it today of all days.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: A classic, yes, but a book we can still learn from. I only read this for the first time last year and I fell in love with it, I can understand why so many teachers get their students to read this in school. If more people were like Atticus Finch, the world would be a better place!

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley: Talley's heart-wrenching debut takes place in 1959, when black children were first admitted to previously all-white schools in the US, and focuses on the relationship that develops between two girls, one black and one white. It'll make you think, and given the current racial issues in the US I think it's an important book to read.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: One of my favourite books of all time and one of the most hopeful books I've ever read. Chambers uses her sci-fi setting to explore race, gender, sexuality, war, peace, family units and what it means to be human. It's exquisite and you need to read it if you haven't already.

Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson and Various Artists: A wonderful graphic novel series starring an American-Muslim girl written by an American-Muslim woman. Read it!

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: This is such a quick read that I think it should be required reading in schools worldwide. It's a wonderful introduction to feminism, particularly for anyone out there you know who keeps confusing feminism for misandry.

The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King: I'm planning to pick this up next, once I finish Lucy Jones's Foxes Unearthed, and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm sure parts of it are going to be heartbreaking but I think it's an important book to read because I know so very little about the history of North America's indigenous people, and I'm very eager to learn.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor: A novella I'm hoping to read very soon. It's giving me The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet vibes; I've heard wonderful things about Okorafor's stories and I'm really looking forward to the kind of cultures she's imagined in her sci-fi universe.

The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shukla: I had the pleasure of seeing Nikesh Shukla speak at the London Book Fair this year and this edited volume of essays written by immigrants has never been more necessary than it is right now. I've seen fantastic reviews and I'm hoping to get my hands on a copy soon.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson: A novel that takes place in a small English village where a retired British Major strikes up a friendship with a Pakistani shopkeeper over their shared love of literature. When their friendship turns into something more, it's up to him to stand up to the racism and xenophobia in their village. I've heard lovely things about this one.

Kaleidoscope edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios: An anthology of diverse YA sci-fi and fantasy stories, featuring characters who are transgender, disabled, LGBT+ and poc.

Stay positive but be sad if you need to be sad. Ultimately, just remember that love trumps hate.