Bookmark – January 2022

Book news, reviews and reading highlights.

All books mentioned in this blog have been read and carefully curated by Bookmark.

News

In the year ahead, we can look forward to new writing from Ali Smith, Marlon James, Elena Ferrante and the follow up to the 2020 Booker Prize winning Shuggie Bain from Douglas Stewart.

New Releases

• The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nathaniel Ian Miller (release date: 20 January). Friendship, solitude and survival in the Arctic Circle. Historical Fiction.
• Devotion ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Hannah Kent (release date: 3 February). A nineteenth century Lutheran community emigrates to Australia to escape persecution. Speculative historical fiction.
• The Leviathan ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rosie Andrews (release date: 17 February). Thomas Treadwater returns from the English Civil War to find his father on his deathbed, his household in disarray, and his sister, Esther, blaming their woes on witchcraft. Speculative historical fiction.

Reading Highlights

This month, Bookmark has also enjoyed:

• The Actual Star ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Monica Byrne (2021). Set in Belize over three timelines ranging across two millennia. Steeped in Mayan mythology. Speculative fiction.
• A Little Life ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Hanya Yanagihara (2015). Four college friends make their way in the world. Among them, Jude’s traumatic childhood threatens to define his life. Literary fiction.
• A Ghost in the Throat ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Doireann Ni Ghriofa (2021). An eighteenth-century poem resonates with a young mother in the present day. Auto-fiction.

Book Club Reading

The Burton Book Club is currently reading The Bees (2014) by Laline Paull.

The next meeting is on Monday 21 February 2022 at 5pm

When Buying

Support local independent bookshops. If you can’t get out to them, many operate online, or you can order through https://uk.bookshop.org.

Until next time, happy reading.