Just some book recommendations!
Sometimes all we have a book recommendations. Books are great! Read books! All of these will have affiliate links, because baby's got to eat.
The Red Notebook, Antoine Laurain
My aunt, who is a librarian and illustrator and who reads everything, sent me this for my birthday in a classic Matthewson case of giving Janina a book she already has. Many such cases. I have had this book for years but I hadn't ever read it and now, because my lovely, clever aunt sent me a new copy, I have! It's lovely! Fanciful and wistful, a little bit Amélie, pretty short.
Several People Are Typing, Clavin Kasulke
This one comes via Jamie, who works at a bookshop and therefore knows every book. It's about a guy who gets uploaded into Slack. It's weird and funny and kind of Night Vale Presents coded so probably if you like me you will like it.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë
Everyone's been talking about Wuthering Heights so I'm here to remind you all that this is a much better book and we should talk about it more than we do. Justice for Anne!
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
All of the air going again to That Woman because of the TV remake of Harry Potter, so I'm here to tell you that the TV remake we actually need is The Princess Diaries. It's not that I don't like the film, but there's so much fun stuff in the books – Lars, and Tina, and the proper, Yzma-esque grandmother. This is the sort of shit Netflix should be making, honestly. But with a higher budget and more respect than its current slate of YA aimed at girls.
This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
This is really hard to describe, but it's quite short so you might as well just give it a go! It's strange, lyrical, painful love story. I've never read anything like it. A real you can write books like this? book.
We went to Italy on holiday a while ago and I left my kindle on the plane, so we went to a bookshop and Jamie recommended the first of the Blackwater books. Which I read, but I only had the one, and it took till recently for us to get the rest, which I have now also read! It's really fun and strange and steady, a long saga over several generations of a logging family in Alabama and, and one of them is secretly a river monster.