Tag: writing

My Favourite Books of Last Year, Only Half a Year Late.

In 2018 I read more books that I ever had in a year and here are the standouts. It may seem rather weird to post this in May, but after recently looking back over the books I read last year I just had to express my thoughts of some of the books which captured my mind last year. So here we go – my favourite books I read in 2018.

5 – An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

While I no longer tend to read a lot of fantasy series anymore, this book (which I essentially picked up on a whim) inspired me to read all three of the novels in the series. This book truly grabbed my attention, engaging me fully in the novel’s political landscape.

4 – There But for The by Ali Smith

This book I struggled to know where to place on this list, as despite being one of the last books I read in the year, is one of the novels I have spent the most time thinking about. The impact of this book is insane, the novel manages to be intriguing without being unfulfilling which is a tremendous fleet.

3 – The Children Act by Ian McEwan

Not going to lie I was inspired to pick up this book after watching the trailer for the film and thinking that the plot seemed right up my alley, and boy was I right. This is another one of those novels that will occupy all of your thoughts, with both its issue-based plot and overwhelmingly human characters.

2 – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The character of Evelyn Hugo feels like a real famous actress and that is what makes this novel so special. When reading this novel you yearn to watch her films, you yearn to see her iconic outfits and you yearn to know even more about her life.

1 – Autumn by Ali Smith

I think the first place has to be reserved for the first book which I read in 2018. It was a little hard to put this book at number one as it has been so long since I read it with other novels being more at the forefront of my mind, however when I read it this book became my favourite novel and made it quite clear to me that Ali Smith is my favourite author, as is probably unsurprising considering this list. This novel is fantastically funny, moving, intriguing and when combined with Smith’s magical writing style is a must read.

In Conversation with Conversations with Friends

‘What is a friend?’

‘What is a conversation?’

If you have read Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, you will know that there isn’t an answer to these questions. However, this doesn’t mean that these questions are unanswerable or that the answer is floating just out of reach, it is instead saying that these questions don’t need to be answered. The novel is an exploration of these two titular concepts to show the reader that there isn’t an objective answer to their definitions, but there still exists an objective answer to them in the minds of the characters.

Rooney tells the story of Frances, a 21-year old college student, and her perceptions of the people in her life – her best friend, and ex-girlfriend, Bobbi and as well as writer Melissa and Melissa’s husband Nick, who she embarks in an affair with. The story is told through Frances’ limited perspective with her assumptions of others being the driving force of the novel. All the characters seem to be in similar states of emotional repression with their own feelings being unattainable to themselves, and consequently, the people around them.

This is then what hit me when reading the novel – the looming sense that you can’t ever truly know a person. Frances doesn’t completely understand Bobbi or Nick, and in many ways doesn’t even seem to try, instead, she forces her perceptions of who they are onto them meaning that the reader is aware that they only see Frances’ interpretation of who they are.

The novel ultimately suggests that while we can’t ever fully understand people we can understand people better, and have people understand us better, if we guide their assumptions by quite simply having Conversations with Friends. This is what the novel is, it is Frances having a one-sided conversation with her friend, the reader, to both show her own sense of who Frances is and shape, through her honest experience, who Frances is to the reader.

Every Sunday is a Sunday

It’s a Sunday, again

In this little town, in my mind

Flowers are blooming

Along the coast

On the beach

(If you can call that a beach)

People stomp and walk

In their walking boots

They go from shop to shop

To not-quite standing, still

The day goes on

Sundays don’t stop for them

Like they don’t stop for a Sunday

Lunch or a sundae, in the heat

(The artificially real heat)

I sweat waiting for their Sunday to end

And my Sunday to begin.

Being hungry

The hungry caterpillar takes it all

And then the butterfly takes more than just the hunger.

 

The caterpillar needs to be hungry to exist.

I need food to survive.

 

The butterfly exists in a world away from food

Is she pretty, is she colourful?

She isn’t bubbly, and she certainly isn’t hungry.

 

I take things away to be this butterfly,

The swan we were promised to be.

We were never told this would be hard

We were never told we would lose ourselves

We were never told that we could be neither hungry nor the butterfly.

 

I don’t want to be seen as hungry

No, I don’t want to be hungry

But a butterfly is different

Then a caterpillar who isn’t hungry.

Forever a Blur.

Inside my blurred confusion is a girl too young to die.

 

She was a constant stranger,

A familiar shadow,

A book I recognised yet never read.

 

Later she was a cigarette butt.

I was pulled in to an underworld

Where the gravity was consumed by flames.

 

Later still we were each other’s soundboards,

Soundboards or chalkboards,

With just two days of use.

 

I knew you, yet I didn’t.