My Books of the Year So Far | 2021

hi and welcome to my channel i'm simon and today i am back with my favorite books of the year so far 2021 the top of the bookish pops basically up to this point now it is august i'm only going to include the books that i read up to the middle of the year and so therefore the end of june and it's been quite interesting doing that because there are some books that i know will join these books and actually what i've done is i've chosen basically six seven non-fiction books and six fiction books and it felt like that quite easily because i don't know if any of you have had the same thing i have read some books that have been absolutely incredible utterly amazing brilliant lots of them and then i've read some of them have been like absolutely brilliant amazing extra amazing and those are the ones i'm going to talk about they've been amazing for all sorts of reasons it's quite a sort of diverse mix which is always a good thing but yeah it shows that i read quite widely and some people might think oh why is that book in there when that one's not et cetera from what i've read so value although to be fair i've not been very good at wrap-ups this year have i so yeah and i wonder if that has added to it this kind of weird feeling that i've got about reading this year because i have felt my reading has been a bit sloppy started i am coming out of a funk which was just because i've been so busy with work and lots of it which i'm very very lucky to have and i'm not meaning at all and a lot of my reading is for work and that's a joy frankly because books are my biggest passion to be able to work in a field that is your biggest passion is like brilliant um but yeah i think it has meant that my relationship has shifted with books a bit where i need sort of breaks from reading more than i used to but anyway this isn't my mid-year thoughts about how reading everything's going this is my telling you what my top 12 13 books have been also random fact 12 is my second favorite number my favorite number is 24. uh which is obviously 12 times 2 but i'm not doing 24 books i'm just doing 12 and i've only got until love island is on so not long so i best get cracking right first up non-fiction wise i'm going to go non-fiction fiction non-fiction fiction non-fiction fiction on fiction fiction non-fiction fiction because why not and i enjoyed saying that i thought i was going to mess it up i didn't anyway non-fiction-wise um somebody to love by alexandra hemlingsley is the book that i want to talk about first this is an incredible memoir about alexandra's life um both in terms of her relationship with her body and also um how when she is pregnant which obviously is something that happens to your body and some of the various things that she goes through with that pregnancy um at the end of it her husband announces that they are transitioning uh to becoming a woman and this book looks at that looks at queer family looks at what family means looks what looks at what our relationships with our bodies are looks at gender in all sorts of ways and is just absolutely fantastic i love alexandra hemmingsley hemo is basically how i know her um and um i thought this was utterly phenomenal i listened to it on audiobook alexandra reads it it's just brilliant you need to get to it if you haven't then um in a similar line of um conversation actually is what's the t by gino dawson oh no i'm interested in fiction next sorry but you got a teaser there whoopsie and so fiction wise i'm gonna go actually i'm switching around a bit with grown-ups by marianne keys which i have read twice this year i read it earlier in the year when it was me and melanie's a book group pick i'll link that video down below if you want to go and find out more and and then i've reread it on audio recently with marianne keys reading it um which is a joy and i've realized i like fiction on audio if i've read the book before it's really comforting and something i didn't realize i'm not very good on a first read on audio with fiction fine with non-fiction but fiction i tend to sort of just wander off and stuff which is longer than an episode of the arches anyway um so this is all about the casey brothers but really is actually all about the casey brothers wives and these three sister-in-laws kind of take the main focus of this novel which is really about all the secrets that are underlying in their family that one sister after hitting her head at the very beginning of the book starts to basically spout all of these truths and secrets in front of everyone and starts airing their door to laundry and and then we go backwards through various family get-togethers as these secrets begin and we watch them kind of tangle and entwine and then obviously everything kind of comes to the fall and how everything unravels afterwards i thought it was brilliant i think it's really really funny and there's lots of characters but every single one is individual and every character has flaws they all come fully formed i think marian keys looks at some really dark topics um really well and i had the pleasure of interviewing her on set at scars book club this year which is the reason that i've listened to an audio i don't know if i said that um and she was an absolute joy and a delight and yeah i want to read a lot more of marianne keyes i didn't think she'd be my cup of tea totally is absolutely bob on sort of thing that i really really love and what i think i've realized as well this year is that i want to read a lot more books that uh how can i put it i don't know there's just a joy to reading marian keys books that that i haven't felt for a little while and i can't quite put that into words properly i'm still thinking about it anyway that's that so it'll be no surprise to you that the next book i'm going to talk about is what's the t by juno dawson which is all about looking at um the conversation around transgender and gino dawson writes with such humor and she really knows how to engage an audience through her non-fiction writing just as she does with her fiction writing but there's just really really lovely slides funny enough i listen to this on audio as well and there's really really funny aside but it's also very frank very direct very honest um and just a brilliant insight into um what it's like to be trans the whole trans movement how we can better allies and i thought i knew quite a bit about um the trans community i clearly didn't know enough this really really helped me learn more and i think it would also be a brilliant starting point for anyone so this is the kind of book that should be in all school libraries and i've actually bought my mom's school library copy of this and i'm buying many more queer and books for it because i think it's really really important so yes incredible book then on to fiction again and this is the manning tree which is by ak blakemore which was our desmond elliott prize winner this year i was lucky enough to judge this uh this year it was really really good fun i had an amazing time with my fellow judges this book gave me the book tingle from the off it's based on the real case of um the mandatory witches uh in the uk and follows in particular rebecca west and her mother i always want to say bedlam and that isn't right beldum that's why beldum west who were um in history although rebecca is only fleetingly mentioned so aka blakemore used that as a way in to then write the story this is the kind of historical fiction that just gets me so excited about that genre because it is very much set in its time and yet in a way as told in a very contemporary relevant way it's really gritty um it's very funny it's very dark there's lots of troubling themes going on but themes that also really really sing out to the present day but not done in a heavy-handed way this is a really deaf novel and also it's just masterful masterful masterful storytelling like utterly phenomenal storytelling and i can't if you're looking for a really good ripping yarn particularly i guess later in the year when it is more witchy season i guess for books then this is something that you simply have to head to um even though you know what is probably gonna happen to lots of these characters especially when the uh which finder general turns up um you are still kind of hoping that history doesn't happen and something else does instead and also what shocked me was there's a love story in here that i absolutely loved i'm not big on love stories so yeah i heartily heartily heartily recommend this then going back to nonfiction i'm including these two books together um i haven't read the third in the trilogy i'm holding off because i don't really want it to ever end they are deborah levy's books first up things i don't want to know which is probably quite a few years ago i think and um the cost of living which is much more recent so to kind of encapsulate both of them the way to describe these are that they are debra levy writing at various different points in her life um and and what she's writing at that time and looking at how she goes about writing but also looking at what it was like for her as a young girl growing up how she left south africa and all the reasons behind that then we follow how um her marriage breaks down and how her relationships with her daughter are and we also hear about some of the things that she likes to read the relationship with her mother so much and it kind of one is just this incredible life story of an incredible woman but two really gives you an insight into the writer behind the books that if you read them and you're like me love them um it gives you yeah like that extra insight in that actual layer so i put off real estate because i just kind of don't want it to end ever but at some point i guess it will these are her living biography basically she's described myself and i really wish it wasn't going to just be a trilogy i think it should be a lot more a book that i just have thought about endlessly since i've read it and is mrs death mrs death by selena godin and i think this is an absolutely phenomenal debut novel i'm so excited to see what selena godin writes next and there's a couple of other debut novels i've read since the middle of the year that have also really really blown me i mean you know that i love a deputy noble anyway because i think authors really really pack a load into it um but yeah this is quite unlike anything i've ever read this is about mrs death who is death but um she's a black woman who a middle-aged black woman who many people would just not notice until she comes to find you and it's how she starts a relationship with a young man called wolf who sort of writes her life story but also at the same time we go into various different periods of history when mrs death meets certain people from those times and we follow their story it's a book that celebrates life to a point celebrates grief and death but also i found very comforting when death has been something i guess that with the you know pandora's box that's been going on the last year and with all of that it has been something that we've been facing a lot more and i think there are some books where if it was about death it might make me turn away from them actually i've just realized the real theme with the next non-fiction book actually but this is so i can't describe it any other way than kind of comforting in a way even though some of the book is very traumatic and the things it looks like very dark and uncomfortable but yet it's just brilliant it's a book that i already want to reread and i didn't think i was a big reader but there's actually a couple of books on here that i would like to reread or indeed have reread spoiler actually book one of the books that i have read twice this year and teams with the theme of mrs death mrs death is the madness of grief by the reverend richard coles which is him his memoir of his partner david dying um and how he has dealt with that and how he's dealt with the grief since and it happened very recently before the pandemic and it's one of the most raw memoirs i think i've read around the subject and you know i i have been with people when they have died and it has given me a real change in my relationship to death i'm a lot less scared of it having seen it i guess um but it is something like i said because of the panda pop i've been thinking about loads over the last 12 months or whatever and what is in 18 maybe even um and this book again whilst being very unflinching very frank you know reverend richard coles gives you everything like even some moments that don't make him look great but also the really funny moments around death and the really bizarre moments around death and also i will say i was nervous this was going to be really religious and it isn't it's in there but it isn't you know and then there's one line in this book that has kind of stayed with me for and will stay with me forever and i almost want to get it tattooed and that's where he says we often think that we're the protagonist or the narrator of our own story but in fact actually we are a library of other people's stories and that honestly just gets me over time i'm getting very emotional thinking about it i am read this uh for a real life book group well online real life book group that i've rejoined but also then read it for the podcast turn up for the books which i am one of the hosts of which is going to be on bbc sounds from october so i've had the pleasure of interviewing reverend richard coles about it and he was incredible which i think has made me love the book even more um so yeah absolutely phenomenal then have i got it no i haven't got a kilter then onto a book that i will admit took me a few chapters to get into but i completely and utterly fell in love with i also really really want to read this again because i think i'll get even more out of it on a second read who am i what's going on here i mean actually doubly who am i i even did a tbr game this month i don't even normally have tbrs i don't know in case you missed it and but what is the book sign get on with it it's this one sky day by leone ross um or known as poppy show in america because that is the fictional caribbean island which is set on and through um kind of a single day we follow various characters um as something big is happening on the island of poppy show but as we follow them we start to discover that they all have a little bit of something something they've all got a little sprinkling of magic about them they can do all sorts of things it might be they can touch things and make it any flavor they want it might be that they can tell when people are lying and feel it through pain some people know when other people are gonna die i mean honestly it goes on and on and on um and as we meet these characters and follow their stories we get kind of the whole history of an island be it literally the history of it the political history the myths and legends the kind of social malls uh the culture the sort of hierarchy of society everything and it comes so fully formed you really feel like this place could exist and the magic within it could exist and i just loved it um and yeah i would really really really like to read it again so i cannot recommend this one sky day or as it's known in america and other countries i think poppy show by leonie ross just phenomenal um yeah i kind of want to give that book its own video and that's actually i feel quite quite a few of those but i don't tend to do single reviews anyway back to non-fiction and this book just kind of i don't want to say blew me away because it sounds quite wrong about it is gaber why we went out by jeremy atherton lynn and this is an absolute non-fiction treat and it's cheeky and irreverent you can tell that from the front because let's be honest it's got a glory hole on it so that kind of says all it needs to it is very salacious it is very sexual um it's yeah it it it's one looks like sometimes i was rooting on publishers and thinking i hope nobody can see what's on this page um but um yeah i just thought it was fascinating and it really looks at the history of the gay bar why gay bars have existed the people that go there what happens um in all of the quite explicit detail but i found that titillating and funny and sexy and great um and also it sort of looks at what the state of that is now and and forget you know the whatever we want to call it pampers um is really silent i've got to think of some better code words for pandemic than that anyway um it looks at kind of these moments of history i guess social history and there was lots of things in this book that really resonated with me but also i think would be well it's possibly shocking and a bit like um a really important read for anyone who's coming to terms with their sexuality but yet also i felt quite sad because this kind of stuff has sort of got lost like i'm not saying i want to go out and do some of the things that go on in this book that i may or may not have done in my youth but um i don't know if it made me feel sad for that these social spaces that have been so important and informing and i don't know uh so building i guess for people to kind of go missing anyway really really great really really saucy get to it sorry i literally sneezed at the camera so uh my penultimate fiction choice is one that gave me nothing but joy is that kind of book it is joy within a book it is still life by sarah women one of the absolute best books i've read in years i think it's going to go into my all-time favorites i can't decide and i know i'm preempting that some of you may ask this in the comments if this beats tim man or not for me i think they're both so different and so incredible in their own ways you just kind of can't even compare which is so exciting when you find an author like sarah who does those sort of books um anyway this is all about ulysses and evelyn who meet during the war on a random night uh where they kind of become friends and that friendship over one single night ripples throughout their lives forevermore we then follow well we sort of follow ulysses but really follow the people back in england who he left behind get to know all of that amazing cast of characters and see what he's coming home to before he comes home then all i will say is this book becomes a case of found family and also very much about this woman evelyn skinner who i think might be one of my favorite characters in fiction possibly ever and i would love like a whole book like sir if you're watching this i really want a whole book about it anyway um it's utterly joyous um it what sarah women manages to do which i think is utterly phenomenal is she can make like a whole story happen in a paragraph like there's a murder that happens and it's literally dealt with in two paragraphs but it's like huge to read i can't quite describe it it's like she makes these mini epics within this epic book um and yet what it's really about is celebrating how the extraordinary nature of the ordinary in a lot of ways and how you know the effects that people can have analyzing that was really knowing and oh found family as i mentioned it's just gorgeous it's got a queerness to it that i also really really adored and um yeah i think it is phenomenal it even had a talking parrot that i really really enjoyed and i hate talking animals in books generally so uh this book now i put it in non-fiction but i guess it could be seen as auto fiction it could be seen as yeah it's an amalgamation of things and i think that's one of the things that i loved most about it apart from the writing which is just utterly phenomenal and wow is how i feel about this book and that is in the end it was all about love by musa okwanga and this tells of a man who is turning 40 which is the age that his father was when he died so he's dealing with all of that and he has left the sort of country of his birth and moved to berlin and wants to find love and find himself there and it's how he goes about it and how that does and doesn't happen and also the ripples of the history between him and his father and his culture and what it's like to be a black bisexual man and honestly it is just phenomenal i don't feel like i can do this book any justice whatsoever no matter how much i try and talk about it because really it's a book that you just need to experience and you need to read and read the kind of there's wonderful poetry within here as well the poet is written on these um black pages of white text that's the book is the other way around and it's just it's written in vignettes which i really really love it's just incredible and it's such a book about kind of now um but has this kind of timeless feeling you know that people can read this in years to come and it will really help them in a lot of ways and the way it looks at love and yeah i just i fell in love frankly with the music conga when i read this so that's all i say about that then um last but not least because technically it's my favorite book of the year so far so i'm doing it this way around but anyway is no surprise to many the profits by robert jones jr and i just love this book i just feel like i've spoken about this book a lot and it got to the point where i was worried i was talking about too much and possibly i was gonna get like a cease and desist because i loved it that much but it's about two men who are slaves on a plantation called empty and it's how they fall in love before there is the term for queer or homosexual or it has a label basically it also looks at the history of um a tribe it kind of looks at the it's got the ripples of so much history within it that i felt like was being channeled through robert jones junior as he wrote to give voice to those who've had no voice and have had no chance to tell their story um and i just i just think it's phenomenal i technically read it um last year first of all well no i didn't technically i did read it last year first of all i got an early proof in front of it then and then had the pleasure of doing an event with robert so got to reread it again for that and i fell in love with it over another reread i fell in love with it over again then and um yeah i just think it's so powerful it's it's very um emotional uh and you need to be in the right frame of mind to read it i would say but i think this is the sort of book that does change you in a way and i can't quite describe that i haven't got the words to describe that at the moment i don't think still and that's after having like ready i think the first time what last autumn into winter so i mean it has been a while but this book has stayed with me i think about the characters so many times i think the way that kind of the book spirals out outside of this outside of these lovers and you know we meet characters that are heinous and we meet characters that are so understanding we meet characters who are villains but we kind of understand why they become villains because of the circumstances that they're in and oh it's just yeah the prophet is phenomenal i think it's a masterpiece i was gutted along with actually leonie ross's and this one's got a day that this wasn't on the booker um long list because i just think it's so incredible um actually why isn't it still live on the bucket anyway let's not go into that um yeah i uh i thought that this was just from i almost don't have the words anymore but i did do a whole video on it which i'll link down below so that you can go and find out more um because sometimes i do think books need a whole video and quite a few of these i feel like that could be the case and then i feel like i should change them by only mentioning them here and then wrap ups when i've done them this year but wrap-ups are going to be back anyway there we go those are the books of the year for me so far my top books of 2021 so far let me know in the comments down below if you've read any of them what you thought of them which ones you're thinking of heading to are you now going to try and read all of the books that i mentioned you could um and um yeah let's have a chat about brilliant books and tell me what your favorite books of the year have been so far that i would love to know too until next time which might be a lie with my mother uh because it is summer book hibernation from friday which is a week of reading um from your bookshelves from prompts that me and mum pick which i'll link down below so you can find out more because people quite possibly watch this video because these are some of my favorite videos to watch at the middle of the year even though now we're admittedly heading quite quickly towards the end of the year anyway blah blah blah i'm waffling because i can't do end of videos properly i will speak to you soon bye

Channel: SavidgeReads

Views: 6,048

Rating: 4.9421964 out of 5

Keywords: Books of the Year So Far, BookTube, Savidge Reads, Favourite Books of 2021 So Far, Wrap Up, Alexandra Heminsley, Marian Keyes, Juno Dawson, A. K. Blakemore, Deborah Levy, Salena Godden, Reverend Richard Coles, Leone Ross, Jeremy Atherton Lin, Sarah Winman, Musa Okwonga, Robert Jones Jr

Id: HeC7ap9SIdk

Length: 24min 21sec (1461 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021