Well here we are!!

I know people are going to be annoyed All Fours is on here, I don't mind so much - I love a book that makes people incomfy and gets people talking.

Good Girl and Fundamentally I had waffled on both being on the prize.

I guess the judges this year I just don't jive with.but I am incredibly glad Adichie didn't make it. I think it is down to Safekeep or Strout for the win.

Oh this one hurts! RIP Iceman.

When Top Gun came out I was immediately obsessed, so much so my dad destroyed the VHS because he couldn't handle having it on one more time 😂

Be my Huckleberry - Tombstone

What is your favorite Val Kilmer?

Trans authors you should read! This is a very American based list. I think it is very cool and important to read Sarah McBride now that she is the first Trans senator! Read her life in her own words as you see her making headlines for wanting to use the toilet at work....
Others to read who I love:
Akwaeke Emezi - Vivek is my absolute fav
Imogen Binnie
Nicola Dinan
Janet Mock
Aiden Thomas

Yesterday was Trans Visibility day, and in the spirit of we should be reading trans author all year round I wanted to make a post for 6 books I intend to read this year by Trans authors!

I am SO excited for Disappoint Me, I loved her Bellies and I have the ARC I have already started, Stag Dance is up next I really enjoyed Detransition Baby and Peters latest interviews, I am impatiently waiting for Gentleman's Gentleman!

Who are you reading?

#WP25 short list prediction/hope

I thought this was not the best list I have seen from them, but then I went to make my predictions and had 8 I wouldn't mind seeing make it!

Thinking about the qualifications of the prize the book must show: excellence, originality and accessibility. From this I thought that the 6 above were my good guesses of what we might see tomorrow.

2 Books that I thought would be okay were Good Girl and Fundamentally

Aarvark peeps!
I was thinking about signing up, and was checking out their IG and saw this. I would love to give someone a free credit!

If you are a user of this book box comment below and we will organize. (I can only subscribe once so sorry first person here gets it)

Tagging my favorite book of the month, one I was very disappointed was not on the Women's Prize Longlist.

March was a...do I have a mental illness or is my country a dumpster fire reading month. Some people cannot concentrate on anything, I cannot get enough stories. I read 18 books in March, no DNFs

Only 3 are Nonfiction, so I need to pick up way more of those in April.

This is really very good. Green reads the audiobook, which if you are a fan you will enjoy. I loved the mixture of history, little trivia facts, and heart wrenching personal stories. There is just enough levity here to not have the facts and heart of the book take you down. But the information is here and it is easy to see the urgency and why Green is so obsessed.
4.5/5

#bookspin #doublespin and 3 #bookspinbingos

This was a good reading month!

Bring on April, I am ready to get past the Women's Prize books and read some fun things.

This was my most anticipated book of the #WP25 longlist, and once I got used to the writing I enjoyed it. I did think it went a bit long at the end, I started to struggle picking it up and it took me longer to finish then I would have thought, but overall I thought it was original, creative and a good read. I found the characters endearing (though Tibb needed some therapy, hearing how she blamed herself over and over was a bit wearing)
4/5

A soft pick for this #WP25 book.
I think I am just a bit burnt out, I can see why the judges picked it, there are some really good scenes, and the characters are compelling, it was just missing something a little extra that I expect from Women's Prize books. I also had a hard time keeping the storylines straight and would pick the book up and be confused who the POV was on.
Good not great 3.5/5 ⭐

The Women's Prize For Fiction Shortlist will be announced on Wednesday the 2nd of March, which is just days away!
I am finishing The Persians and Trickerie today, and have Strout queued up on audio I am trying to decided between Amma and Birding for my next read, has anyone read both? Which is a quicker read? It looks like I am not going to get to all of the books before the shortlist drops, but I will read enough to get a prediction out on Tue!

We laugh so we do not cry ......
#Libraries

April?
Oh my!

#bookspin
#bookspinbingo
@thearomaofbooks

And the short list for Nonfiction is out! What does everyone think? I know a few didn't enjoy Cherry's book, I DNF'd What the Wild Sea Can Be but might try it again.

I think the winner will be down to the Heart or the Hare.

I still have some reading to do here... most of them actually.
#WPNF25

You need to be prepped going into this, it is a Gay Horror Book, set in Hollywood. Our MC is a screenwriter who is mostly in the closet, but he has a boyfriend. Zeke, my boyfriend. The one thing I couldn't get past was how often his boyfriend was pointed out. The writing is not great, but the story is original and propulsive, I really grew to like and root for our MC. I thought the horror elements were brought in well, if a tiny predictable
4/5

This is a slow, quiet character study of a man who is supposed to be moving houses but cannot seem to make himself. The professor contemplates his life and how he got to where he is. I thought it was interesting, but maybe a bit too scattered I really enjoyed the bits about his time excavating Native areas in New Mexico but thought the jump from that to other topics was too abrasive.
Still enjoyed it, I always like Cather's writing

#Weeklyforecast trying to finish up the #WP25 this week, not sure I can make it! The tagged is my #doublespin for this month should finish it today
I started Chuck Tingle yesterday and I am obsessed, then going back to A Little Trickerie which I was excited for but which has proven not as easy to get started on.
Disappoint Me on my Kobo for Trans Awareness Readathon

I spent 10 years working events at Barnes and Nobles up and down the West Coast, and I now live in PDX with Powell's books so I have been lucky enough to meet and work with a few big names some are so terrible I don't read their books, some are utter delights!!
Some of my favorites: Carlos Ruiz Zafon (RIP), Angie Thomas, Jodi Picoult (who I still call Jodi Pickles in my head) Patrick Rothfuss, Aiden Thomas, and Curtis Sittenfeld

My first book for the #TransRightsReadathon is one I found in an article interviewing Torrey Peters on her recommended Trans books. It wasn't on my radar before.

I tried the audio and kept getting confused on the timeline. I liked this, I understand why it won so many awards. It is fresh and interesting. I think my expectations were set a bit too high. The writing is great, I liked Breq as a character, I just wanted a bit more action maybe. Where it is a lot about interpersonal relationships.
Still great read 4/5 ☀️

I haven't seen people talking about this new book prize, Climate Fiction Prize. This is the first year, and the shortlist was announced today
https://climatefictionprize.co.uk/2025-prize/shortlist/

This is interesting, if not at all surprising.
I remember the first time I was called a feminist - I was 10 or 11 and my cousin used it as a dirty word against me, I had no clue what it meant but the next 35 years I have really Leaned in 😂

I scored lower on cultural feminist I think because I believe that women can be just as brutal as men.... Thinking of the tagged

Thanks @Catsandbooks for this!

One week until the shortlist drops!!

Any you are hoping to see?

I am struggling to get things from the library off this list, but I hope the ones I bought are here - Private Revolutions, Tracker, Peepshow. Them being on the shortlist might push me to read them!

The online website is still struggling so my list for people to tag isn't coming up sorry about that!

Book 9 #WP25
This is a low pick for me. The last 100 pages were a bit of a struggle, I didn't want to pick it up and read more about her self destruction, but I was still interested in her life as an Afghani-German and what it was like as a German immigrant with so much hate that we don't talk about.
The writing throughout is solid, and the perspective is one I don't see a lot of in English Lit so it makes sense why this was chosen for the WP

The trans rights annual readathon is almost here!

March 21-31

I will be reading:

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan
Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi
Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

#WeeklyForecast
#WP25 I have 100 pages left of the tagged then I can start A Little Trickerie which I am super excited for
🎧This week's listen will be Ancillary Justice my January #DoubleSpin

Then hoping to sneak in The Coin which needs to go back to the library.

Book 8 #WP25
Phew that was good. Love a book where I can catch myself shouting at the characters.
This is a tense book. Ciara (pronounced K-ear-a which, glad I listened to this I wouldn't have in my brain) has left her abusive husband but it is a struggle, so many people probably do not see him as abusive but her fear is palpable on the page.
Great writing, and really eye opening about the housing crisis in Ireland
4.25/5

"Yet the hymns, the hosannas and hevenu shalom aleichem, the psalms, the lessons of Genesis and Revolution, they did not remain. What remains is the searing loneliness I felt, the nights I stayed awake by myself, reading Wuthering Heights and Lolita, underlining everything, trying to forget the fact I was one of the only girls at school who had black hair.

#WP25

Women's Prize nonfiction long list

I enjoyed this! It was a quick read, Cherry is an empathetic and understanding person. I love that her whole family and everyone in her orbit are true artists. I appreciate how she can see people's flaws and love them anyways
I thought she was a good storyteller, she reiterated issues she found important but always kept the story pushing forward
I honestly thought Eagle -Eye Cherry was a band name...
3.75/5

#weekendreads are all about women, music, partying

Neneh Cherry - A Thousand Threads #WPNF25
Aria Aber - Good Girl #WP25
Maud Ventura - Make Me Famous #ARC

“If everything was amazing all of the time, I think we‘d all be speechless, and if you make that your starting point for creativity, you‘re going nowhere.”

I thought this was such an interesting take about creativity. About how you have to have downtime and sometimes some things that are not amazing are just as important as amazing things.

#WPNF25 Also I love this cover of her as a babe so cute!

Oh no. Everyone loves this and I am struggling. This is taking me back to college where to get my chem degree I had to take some geology and biology classes and was bored outta my mind. I do love that she is using the Māori word Aotearoa for what we call New Zealand.
I hope I can get more interested in this as we go along but 2 chapters in and so far, not so good

Big news for our Marilynne Robinson fans!

It is impossible to judge a memoir of a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. Mukasonga had escaped through Burundi, married a French man and was living in France when 27 of her family members were murdered. She is a survivor, and with that comes guilt and a desire to tell her story.
I think it is helpful to know about this time and place before going in, she does not attempt to explain the politics or landscape (I had a map open while reading)
4/5⭐

#WP25 book 7/15
This is very good. It has feelings of Handmaid's Tale to it while being wildly different. The story focuses on a group of women but we know women are not the only ones targeted. The crimes they "might" commit are hypothetical. If you were not paranoid about government monitoring before reading this you soon will be. Everything here feels horrifically plausible (thinking of Musks brain implants people are actually getting)
4/5

Reading about how the Rwandan regime made the Tutsi people dig up food to plant coffee plants that the government would sell and keep the money from as I sit drinking coffee halfway across the world and 60 years later.
This is not a pleasant book but so important, especially today and thinking that I had believed that the '96 Genocide happened pretty much overnight but learning it was a 40 year battle.

I think I like the name on the American publication best - The Artist and The Feast. It fits the story better.
At first I thought this was overwritten and I wasn't sure I would get along with it. But after a bit either she toned it down or I just got use to it and it didn't bother me. I loved how the chapters go from mostly Joseph's POV to mostly Ettie as we see more and more of her layers and she comes out from behind her uncle (The Artist)👇

The #WPNF25 nonfiction list has taken a total back seat to the fiction prize for me, but I do have Wild Sea, and Cherry's autobiography checked out from the library so I will be reading one of those as I wait for more fiction books to arrive in the mail.

So far I have read 2 - Autocracy and Fish. How is everyone else doing?

#WP25
How are people liking the list? Are you able to get your hands on all the books you want?
I am doing pretty well from the jump on the fiction side. I will not be reading Adichie due to her transphobia, but I do think I have decided to read Strout even though I have only read one of hers and found it a bit boring.

I am finishing The Artist now (30pgs left) and have started Dream Hotel, now just to wait for the rest to come in mail.

I found this boarding pass in my used book!
John here is going from Shannon to London on the 29th of May (year unknown) and he is in the smoking section!

Amazing how an Ireland to England flight stub ends up in a used bookstore in Portland Oregon.

Found a nail in my tire as I was running errands, now patiently waiting the tire guys to clear me to drive, and this is why we never leave home without a book.
Starting this #bookedintime read so far it is a bit wordy for me but going to push through and hope I can get in the groove

Book 5 #WP25

I loved this!! The biting humor (jokes about Elizabeth Warren's 1/8 Cherokee claims, sandstorms being micro dermabrasion, and milkshakes for Nigel Farage) mixed with a more serious and deep ideas around the UN, aide workers, and extreme Islamists.
Younis worked in Iraq for 10 years as an aide worker. This unique perspective allows for the author to be one of the few who can accurately and compassionately tell this story.

Book name drop on this week's Abbott Elementary which is all about something I know people here are passionate about - book banning.

If you gave not watched this show you need to it is amazing 😍

I think it is best to go into this not knowing much, I feel like I expected something a bit more crime based from the synopsis. But this is more of a character study of a VERY unpleasant woman in the middle of a South African drought. Props to the writing here it feels visceral - the dryness the smells, it is uncomfortable. I felt a bit at sea about when things were happening. Overall not a favorite Women's Prize read. #WP25

I didn't realize until the end how autobiographical this was. To the point that Ditlevsen doesn't even change any of her 4 husbands names. This is a sad story, without a happy ending. It was originally 3 short novellas Childhood (where Tove is told over and over how ugly and stupid she is) Youth (where she starts to write and come into her own & starts jumping from man to man) & Dependency (more men and throw in drug addiction) 👇

Glad I have a cat, because I am finishing these 2 incredibly bleak books tonight and will need some pet loves. I hope my next reads are a bit more fun.

#WP25
“I was asked by the Iraqi government to design a program to deradicalize ISIS women. It got me thinking about my years as a religious teenager. When I was seventeen, I studied with the cleric Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American preacher who was smart, charming and inspiring. He later joined Al-Qaeda. I‘d always wondered what I‘d have done, in those naïve teenage years, had he tried to recruit me.“

Art outside the library 😍