Of the 74 books I have finished this year, here are the ones I recommend for Christmas gifts or summer holiday reading
It's that time of the year when much-needed summer holidays seem tantalisingly close and yet so far away.
My tired mind has started to wander during Zoom meetings dreaming about my ideal job as a book reviewer. I have fantasies of boxes of books (only ones I really want to read mind you, no war histories or anything like that) landing on my doorstep, me savouring them and writing pithy reviews.
I bet it’s a busy time for book reviewers. Bookshops are heaving with new releases primed as stocking fillers and many of us are starting to contemplate our summer reading lists.
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Luckily for you, I am here to help (while also fulfilling my occupational fantasy). Of the 74 books I have finished so far this year (see, I am qualified to be a book reviewer), here are the best. Strap in friends, it’s an eclectic stack.
I have just finished A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City by Edward Chisholm (Pegasus Books, 2022). Edward, with dreams of being a writer, travels to Paris with his girlfriend, who quickly abandons him. Left with no money, no place to stay and no job, he romantically aspires to be a waiter. The stories of his years of working in an upmarket Parisian restaurant will have you thinking twice about eating out. So much for dream jobs.
Staying in the dark pits of humanity but moving online, I read Hanna Bervoets' We Had to Remove This Post (Harper, 2022) in one sitting. It tells the story of Kayleigh, who is hired to moderate posts for an unnamed social media platform. We follow her as she unconsciously internalises and normalises what she is seeing, leaving us with the question – how much are we affected by what we see online?
After those two, you might need a calming walk along a beach, combing for treasures in the high tide mark. When Tracey Williams scours her Cornish coastline, she finds Lego dragons from a container that fell off a cargo ship 25 years ago. She documents her finds and what we can learn about sea currents from these floating plastic bricks in the fascinating read Adrift: The Curious Tale of the Lego Lost at Sea (Unicorn Publishing, 2022).
But the beach might not be such a calming place after all. In The Sea is Not Made of Water: Life Between the Tides (William Collins, 2022), Adam Nicholson describes a violent war between sea anemones, as well as the more prosaic account of two green crabs’ week-long love-in.
Closer to home, my hipness rating skyrocketed while reading How to Loiter in a Turf War (Penguin NZ, 2022) by Coco Solid. Her account of the day in the life of three teenage girls gave me insights into what it is to be cool.
And cool is what I aim to be this summer after reading Flash Count Diaries (Sarah Crichton Books, 2019), the story of Darcey Steinke’s perimenopause, interspersed with interesting historical and scientific facts. Luckily, we don’t live in the 17th Century when women who had hot flushes in front of others could be accused of being witches.
If it’s a little self-improvement you are after, Mark Boyle’s The Way Home: Tales of Life Without Technology (One World Publications, 2019) had me considering how reliant I am on tech. He wrote the book with pen and paper and posted chapters to his publisher but didn’t quite convince me to give up email.
There are so many more great reads but alas I have run out of space. No witty ending to this column, just a genuine wish that you find what you are looking for between the pages this summer.
