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I know this book is meant to be all eerie and stormy but I couldn’t resist taking a photo with these gorgeous flowers! One of the best parts of living in the UK for sure 💐 ❤️ I was really grooving with this book for the first half. Creepy yet beautiful setting, complex characters, a mystery subplot. And strong Aussie connections. What’s not to love! Unfortunately the storytelling fell apart a bit towards the end. The mystery subplot was trying to do too much, so the reveal lost a lot of its oomph 🥊 And whilst a I love a novel all about nature, its wildness, and the need to preserve it, the eco/climate change message was far too heavy handed for me. Really took me out of the narrative… Who has read this? What did you think? 💭 #Bookstagram #BookishLife #Bibliophile #booklover #aussiereaders

I have been wanting to read Reservoir B*tches for soooooooo long!!!! There’s been like a year-wait on my library’s hold I swear 😂 I really loved this book!!! It was as gritty and beautiful as I imagined. Some of the stories were really brutal, far more than I had expected 😟🥺 but de la Cerda guides us through with grace. This collection is not for the faint of heart - how horrible that this is probably the reality for many women in Mexico 😞 My chief (and only) complaint is regarding the interconnected stories about the character Regina. I feel the additional stories, although covering a few interesting perspectives, didn’t really add much. To be honest, the original Regina story was so well crafted that I felt I already knew every single character the later stories like “La China” explored. De la Cerda’s writing is exceptional - she didn’t need to have those extra stories!! One thing that surprised me was how often plastic surgery came up! Is this a thing in Mexico? Or a theme in the book? Someone please let me know!! #Bookstagram #BookishLife #kobolife #booklover #aussiereaders

What a fun read!! 😍😍 How Korean Corn Dogs Saved My Life was an entertaining, heartwarming ode to life in South Korea. Alice Amelia’s memoir is frank, and doesn’t shy away from the ugly bits about living in Korea as a foreigner, but it’s also full of wonderful, fantastical moments, the joy of experiencing a new world. I really loved how food played such a large role in the book, yet it was never tedious. Sometimes talking about food in books can be really labourious, especially as the other senses play such a large role when eating. It never passed that threshold and it meant it stayed magical. Overall, its an easy, fun, warm memoir, and I definitely recommend it to anyone wanting to escape and travel to Korea just for a little while 💫 Also let’s have a moment for the cover art. It’s absolutely gorgeous, captures the tone of the book exactly. Kudos to the artist 🙌🏻 Thank you to @viragopress for the proof copy! #Bookstagram #BookishLife #Bibliophile #booklover #aussiereaders

Now, I don’t really know what to say about Yesteryear 😂 absolutely loved the concept going into it but came out confused by the end. Not because I didn’t understand what happened… more confused by the authorial choices! Argh it’s hard to say exactly what I mean without spoilers. It felt like a lot of Natalie’s flaws were explained away on an individual basis rather than unpacked in a broader context (ie how the tradwife trend can create these issues, rather than it being down to personal psychology/mental health). Reading what I said back, this probably makes no sense so apologies 😂 Perhaps what I’m trying to say is that Natalie is no Serena Joy from the Handmaid’s Tale. A lot of Natalie’s problems are primarily routed in her own personality and mental health issues, rather than a product of the misogynistic world she was raised in, and how she perpetuates that around her. The main dissonance in the book is Natalie’s mental health rather than faith. In other words the 1855 time jump felt more like a marketing gimmick rather than anything more meaningful. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, the author did say at the book talk I went to that this wasn’t meant to be overtly political! It’s more of a record of a phenomenon rather than a critique. Obviously the author does not have to push social commentary with her work! But it does feel like a missed opportunity especially in context of the broader backlash we are seeing against women in the workplace in context of falling birth rates. I was a little uneasy how closely it replicated some real life people. I understand it’s being modelled on a select group of very famous influencers, but there was no need for it to be so close to the backstory of certain personas. That aside, this book was extremely entertaining and gripping! The author built an unreliable narrator so perfectly, it could be a case study. You’ll fly through this book. #Bookstagram #BookishLife #Bibliophile #booklover #aussiereaders

Been a slow reader the last few weeks, very unlike me! But I’m back into it now, watch this space 😜 The City and the House was my first Ginzburg novel, and I’m not sure it was the right one to start with… I was really lacking the context, any knowledge of the author and her lifestyle, and the culture of 1980s Rome. I really struggled to connect with the characters, the world they lived in, and their motivations. The letter format made it really difficult to understand them, especially as most of them truly struggled to communicate 😂 they were just listing information/events rather than digging into anything meaningful. Perhaps this is a cultural difference, but I’m not sure how they were even friends with how cursory their letters were. I’ll try some of Ginzburg’s other works, perhaps I’ll better appreciate this book then. #Bookstagram #BookishLife #Bibliophile #booklover #aussiereaders

Okay, don’t hate me guys but I really struggled with Lost Lambs. I know it is set out to be whimsical, yet… it seemed closer to childish? Young? I never really got the “gna” spelling idea either (iykyk). The usage is inconsistent, disappears halfway through the book, and then you have sentences where you have this funky spelling alongside correctly spelled but equally as complicated words. For example: “…altergnatives from Anne Frank’s Dairy, a parlor that dognated some of its proceeds to a charity fighting antisemitism.” Huh 🤔? And the plot… it had hallmarks of a James Bond film + teenagers. An evil billionaire, a break-in, heists, and conspiracies. Odd, and closer to young adult literature mayhaps? It was a shame there wasn’t further exploration of the young female characters. The father seemed to have more pages devoted to him (that said, he was interesting and complex). There all these bizarre subplots for the girls, then they seemed to be dropped in the latter half. Louise deserved more air time!! 😤😤 Tell me I’m wrong!! Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts #Bookstagram #BookishLife #Bibliophile #booklover #aussiereaders

I’ll be upfront with you all - this was not my favourite Atwood. I’m a diehard Blind Assassin lover, so maybe I’ve set the bar quite high 😂 Cat’s Eye has the classic, clear, and rich Atwoodian writing style. It’s reflective, pensive, and weaves the past and present with expertise, bringing the post-war Canada to life. But I kept waiting and waiting for the crunch moment. Why was this titular childhood friendship so formative for the protagonist? If there was an explanation, it passed me by. Kids can be mean I guess 🤷🏼‍♀️ If you love Atwood, do read Cat’s Eye. Unfortunately it didn’t quite hit for me 😶 #Bookstagram #BookishLife #Bibliophile #booklover #aussiereaders

Treated myself to a few second-hand books this week, all from @worldofbooksofficial 😍❤️ shop second-hand when you can! #Bookstagram #BookishLife #Bibliophile #booklover #aussiereaders

Been reading a lot of fiction lately, so I changed it up with this great memoir by Kristi Coulter about her experience as working as a top manager at Amazon 😮 this one was relentless 😮‍💨 Coulter captured the pace, the all-consuming nature of work at these type of ‘hungry jobs’ … very relatable after my experience at a bulge bracket bank! The primary focus of this memoir is not just the crazy intensity of these types of workplaces, but it was about the structures and assumptions in place that kept the women that worked there down, blocking them from management. Coulter is clear - it is not because of some sort of malevolent cohort of men doing this deliberately. Rather, it is this failure to recognise how long-held, subliminal biases knock back any women who try to succeed. The failure to see that just because the world treated you one way, that it doesn’t mean everyone else experiences the same treatment. I would have loved Coulter to push her writing just that little bit further. You can tell she’s got it in her. The language is otherwise quite plain. Can’t wait to read more of her stuff soon, and see how her language changes across pieces. Check it out!!! Especially if you have an interest in the intersection of female ambition and the corporate world 💁🏼‍♀️ PS extra Barcelona pics to your right ➡️ #Bookstagram #BookishLife #Bibliophile #booklover #aussiereaders

This book went in a flash! …and that was the problem… I wanted more! I love love this concept. I was a huge fan of the Crucible, but never really enjoyed how John Proctor took the limelight, and the women fell a bit out of the spotlight by the conclusion. This book, by the blurb, looked like it would address all of these issues! Alas… we didn’t get to dig into the stories of these five girls as nearly as much as I would have loved. We see them in glimpses, and the prose is so succinct and tidy that the book races by and we miss the chance to learn more. Really, the main reason for my rating is that this book could have pushed so much further - even 100 pages more could have done the trick. That said, this book is great story when you want an action-paced, creepy story. Would definitely reccomend for lovers of the crucible, and historical fiction that errs on the spooky side 👀 #Bookstagram #BookishLife #Bibliophile #booklover #aussiereaders

Heading to Spain tomorrow, so wanted to share a great Spanish short story collection with you all! Hungry for What contains a series of gritty, raw stories set in the dusty, sand-swept northern Spain. These are tales of marginalised young girls, off-balance relationships, and the terror of what we otherwise consider normal. The stories are not for the faint of heart, and to be honest, I had to skip one because of how graphic some of these scenes were. But I don’t think this macabre world of Bastaró means these short stories should be skipped over…. If you can stomach it 🤐 #Bookstagram #BookishLife #Bibliophile #booklover #aussiereaders

I for one ☝️ had never heard of this community of people, the Nenets, before picking up this book. A nomadic group in the Russian Arctic, living on the precipice of the world; this book was bound to be riveting. Every word, every sentence of this incredible book is about the proximity to nature, both in its beauty and terror. Life in this world is always walking a fine line between surviving the next day and death. I found it quite striking, how almost every other paragraph contained a survival tip of sorts. But it’s fitting really - you need to remember and never forget these facts, otherwise you won’t see the next day. My one main drawback are the female characters. Only one has a name! And the one that does never appears in the present narrative. All the others, young or old, have no name. We do get quick glimpses of how they feel, yet more often than not they exist within their roles and duties, which appear rigid in the Nenets community. I’m definitely keen to read more literature like this 🙌🏻 it’s a world I know little about, and so vastly different to my own life. Read White Moss!!! #Bookstagram #BookishLife #Bibliophile #booklover #aussiereaders