July Reading Round Up

July was another great month of reading for me, and one where I had lots of time to catch up on requests from Net Galley.  2017 is shaping up again to be a great year for books.

Two of the books that have made my top reads of the month I reviewed earlier The Children of Jocasta and These Dividing Walls but other standouts this month were:

Circe - Madeline Miller.
This was a very early proof (the book isn't actually out until sometime in 2018!) but I loved every word. It is very different from her first book The Song of Achilles whilst still firmly being rooted in Ancient Greece. The scope is huge but told very intimately - I hope it does really well.

The January Man - Christopher Somerville

Another walking book come memoir makes my list this month and this one is also shortlisted for the Wainright Prize. Somerville (and his wife or friend on occasion) takes a different walk around the UK each month. He talks about the history of the area he is walking and the legends but is quite open about how unobservant he is about his surroundings!

The story also tells of Somerville's relationship with his father and is wonderfully moving without being sentimental.

Artemis - Andy Weir

I loved The Martian when I read it on holiday a few years ago (I've not seen the film) I love this type of sci-fi - set in the not too distant future with a premise that could be true. Artemis is just this sort of fiction and added to this is a bit of a crime caper. The icing on the cake? The person "science-ing the shit out of the moon" is female!

The book is out later this year and I hope that it does even better than The Martian because there was no hint of the 'difficult second novel' here.

Travels with my Sketchbook - Chris Riddell
Chris Riddell has just completed his two year stint as the Children's Laureate and he has been a huge supporter of libraries and school libraries throughout his tenure. This is a collection of his sketches, cartoons, drafts for his final work and a diary in image form and a pure delight.  Riddell manages to capture the whimsy of life along with the terrible and I wanted to race through this book and savour every image simultaneously. Who says picture books are just for for children?

One Summer in Tuscany - Domenica de Rosa

This is a real guilty pleasure book - I won it in a Twitter competition with Quercus books and it was a pure delight to read some unashamed chick lit. Okay I guessed the main plot points early on but I enjoyed the ride as we got there and the writing definitely made me think I was in Tuscany in summer with the heat and the food. This was a fun escapist read.