Reading list

Hallå homies!

The clocks have gone back and now the next few months are about hunkering down and being cosy. Craving crumble, watching black and white movies with the dog snuggled into my armpit, and taking to my bed with a really good book.

Often on the Twitter, I’m asked to recommend books that are just like mine. Well, I hope that my books aren’t like anybody else but me and I also find it hard to rec books because mostly I read books either set or written between 1920 – 1949. Generally, I don’t read a lot of contemporary commercial women’s fiction because I like to write in a vacuum where I’m not worrying that my plot is similar to something I’ve read or my heroine has the same name as a character in another book.

That said, there are some books that I’ve read that I’ve loved and I want to spread that love around. But, I would warn you that none of these books are romance novels with big makeover scenes and cupcakes a go go and a loveable ditz of a heroine. A million times no.

You Had Me At Hello by Mhairi McFarlane

Full disclosure, Mhairi and I are Twitter friends and she asked if she could send me an advance copy of her first novel. And because Mhairi is darkly funny and quite, quite rude, I had no qualms about reading You Had Me At Hello. It’s a breath of tart, Northern air in a genre beset with cupcakes and lovable ditzes. Rachel is a court reporter in Manchester and had just walked away from her imminent wedding when the boy who got away ten years ago, now a married man suddenly walks back into her life. What happens next is not what you expect to happen next and I loved Rachel because she was real and chaotic and fucked things up but was never a victim.

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Rainbow is another writer I know from Twitter (what can I tell you? I follow a lot of writers) but I started following her after I’d read Attachments, which I loved. Rainbow’s writing has that grown-up Sassy magazine vibe, which i eat like salted caramel chocolate. Set in 1999, when you could ‘do’ the entire internet in an afternoon (and I often did) it’s the story of two women exchanging countless emails about their lives and the IT guy who spends hours reading them in the still of the night until he realises he’s in love with one of the women but can’t approach her because of the whole creepy ‘I’ve read your emails’ thing. Also, Rainbow’s forthcoming book is called Fangirl and she once lurked in the near vicinity of Tavi Gevinson so she is obviously ace.

The Girl You Left Behind by JoJo Moyes

Guess what? JoJo is another friend from Twitter and we have actually met in real life twice. She’s lovely! And I’m sure most of you must have sobbed your way through her last book Me Before You. The Girl You Left Behind is another book that will see you through a box of tissues. Set in France during WW1 in France and some hundred years later in the present day, this is the story of two women linked by a painting, both of them unable to be with the men they love. II swear, I’m welling up just writing that brief description.

Fabulous Nobodies by Lee Tulloch

I have recc’ed this book to SO many people. Blogged about it before too. And though it remains obscure and out of print, it’s going to be made into a film, apparently, so I really hope that it reaches the audience it deserves. I first read Fabulous Nobodies many, many years ago when I was struggling to find any kind of paid job as a writer. This was before Sex And The City, before Bridget Jones, before rom-coms and chick lit were known as rom-coms and chick lit and Fabulous Nobodies is head and shoulders above it all. Set in NYC, Reality Nirvana (hippy mother, friends call her Really) has a closet full of vintage frocks who all have names and talk to her, in her tiny apartment and is the door whore at a fashionable club until she gets the sack and decides to open her own fashionable club in her tiny apartment. There’s a sneering love interest, a gay best friend (before gay best friends became such a cliche,) heaps of zingy one liners and gorgeous descriptions of clothes. This is one of my Desert Island books. You will love it too. I have no doubt.

Lace by Shirley Conran

I really worry about a generation of girls (and also grown women) reading Twilight and Shades of Grey and thinking that true love means being a passive, helpless moon of a girl because that’s what it takes to attract an emotionally abusive (and actually downright physically abusive) man. It doesn’t. But then I think of my generation who grew up passing copies of Lace round the classroom and wonder if this is the reason that we aspired to be strong, independent women. Anyhoo, I digress. Lace has been re-released for its 30th anniversary and all you need to know is that there’s a sex scene where a goldfish features quite heavily and the very first line of the book is “Which one of you bitches is my mother?”

I hope you enjoy these five books. I’ll be posting some more book recs in a big Christmas gift guide (I don’t like to think that I Pinterested in vain all year!) in the next few weeks.

Now tuck up warm and don’t forget to wear a vest.

Live on

Sarra x