Tag: recommendations

My favourite books of 2022: non-2022 publications

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As usual, I feel a need to give a shout out to my favourite books I read in 2022 that were not published this year. Apparently this is how I found the particularly good fiction this year (particular note for The Haunting of Hill House and Lost Souls for both living up to expectations) and a poetry anthology that I know I will be returning to over and over again.

See my favourite fiction and poetry books of 2022 for the more up-to-date offerings.

fiction

  • The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson – My review of this at the time was simply “Oh right yeah it is THE haunted house novel, fair.” and I stand by that. The writing, the atmosphere, the house. Watch Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House on YouTube for more great haunted house stuff.
  • Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead – Someone living in the big city has to return to their roots is a classic formula, and in this book, young Two-Spirit Jonny Appleseed has to attend the funeral of his stepfather and bring together the elements of his life.
  • A Safe Girl To Love by Casey Plett – Any short stories that can make it onto one of my lists must be impressive as it’s a form I often have issues really enjoying, but Plett’s range of trans girl experiences is a fantastic collection.
  • We Are Made of Diamond Stuff by Isabel Waidner – I read this whilst trying to kill time sitting outside and in a cafe and it really transported me into a surreal world of British culture to explore national, queer, and migrant identity in a very weird way.
  • Lost Souls and Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite – It was finally the year, after wanting to since my teenage horror/vampire loving years, to read both Lost Souls and Exquisite Corpse and they were so far up my street. The former is The Lost Boys run through a Dennis Cooper novel (who I also read a lot of this year) and the latter the serial killers in love novel you didn’t know you needed. I’m actually glad it took this long to read them so I could fully appreciate them rather than just like the vibes as a teenager.
  • Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo – As I wrote when I finished it: “Loved this southern gothic street-racing in-love-with-your-best-friend suspicious-academia haunting horror novel.”

poetry

  • Ports by Calum Rodger – This pamphlet from SPAM Press reimagines poems through the lens of video games and I just really enjoyed the playfulness and form, plus what you could get about poetry, narratives, and games from doing that.
  • Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Díaz – There is a lot of poetry about bodies, but this collection really stands out. I’d been meaning to read it for a long time and was very happy that I did.
  • We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics ed. by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel – A beautiful anthology that’s perfect if you’re a poet as it’s packed full of inspiration and great if not just because there’s a lot of great innovative and experimental trans poetry in there.

My favourite books of 2022: poetry

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As I mentioned yesterday, I read a lot of great poetry in 2022, so it was tricky to put together this list. A lot of my poetry reviews boil down to ‘vibes good’ and ‘imagery or lines that just hit me in the chest’ so this isn’t the most articulate list of why these collections are good, but just some of my favourites of 2022. Links to full reviews in the titles where I’ve written them.

  • Please Press by Kat Sinclair – A powerful pamphlet that I sadly cannot say anything else about because I am many miles from my copy currently and I did not write anything about it at the time. But go get it from Sad Press and see why it’s great.
  • Limbic by Peter Scalpello – I ended up with two copies of this, one from each of the book subscriptions I had in 2022 (Cipher Press and Lighthouse bookshop’s poetry subscription), which tells you it must be a good intersection of my taste. Sex, queerness, tracksuits, tiny moments – there’s plenty to enjoy.
  • All The Flowers Kneeling by Paul Tran – A collection exploring violence and storytelling that was so compulsive I accidentally stayed up late reading it, not something I tend to do with poetry.
  • A Little Resurrection by Selina Nwulu – Some of my favourite parts of this great collection was the use of imagery and the engagement with space, as poems look at race and place and bring in elements of climate and convenience.
  • Yo-yo Heart by Laura Doyle Péan – Powerful poems moving through a breakup to show the political nature of healing, filled with wit and sadness.
  • The Moral Judgement of Butterflies by K. Eltinaé – I loved the form of these poems, which explore trauma and immigrant experience and the idea of home. One of the books I got from my Lighthouse bookshop poetry subscription and wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.
  • Time Is A Mother by Ocean Vuong – Beautiful and highly readable. I expected a lot from Vuong and wasn’t disappointed.
  • At Least This I Know by Andrés N. Ordorica – Going to steal a line from my own review to sum it up: “I knew I was going to like the collection from the first poem ‘November 16th, 2014’, which is a perfect opening for it: a moment at border control, encapsulating fear and desire for a place to belong, and a poem that almost makes you laugh and cry at once.”

My favourite books of 2022: fiction

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It’s been an interesting year for me for reading. As well as a lot of new and upcoming books, many of which did not make the cut for these lists, I read a lot of horror (including a month of it in October) and plenty of poetry. So much of the poetry was good that I’ve split up fiction and poetry into two different ‘best of 2022’ lists, so we’ll start with fiction. 

A lot of fiction I read this year was good, but not so good as to be one of my top books, so it is quite a brief list this year. Not only that, but two of them aren’t actually from 2022, only first published in the UK in 2022, which I’ve decided to count on a whim. Links in titles to full reviews where I’ve written them.

  • Nevada by Imogen Binnie – I’m counting the UK publication this year as making it released in 2022, though clearly it’s not from 2022. I actually read it right at the start of the year, before this rerelease, but still. Classic trans roadtrip novel.
  • Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li – This book was just very fun and I thought highly of it for that, plus it’s basically a genre of a film I enjoy. Chinese-American students do heists to steal artefacts and have various drama along the way. Ridiculous but great to read.
  • The Arena of the Unwell by Liam Konemann – A coming-of-age novel about male mental health and queerness in the grimy indie music underbelly that retains humour whilst looking at a toxic relationship and the realities of NHS cuts.
  • Shredded: A Sports and Fitness Body Horror Anthology ed. by Eric Raglin – Such a fresh way of viewing both body horror and the whole world of fitness, with a really diverse set of sports, characters, and takes on the brief. There was a lot around who can find places within sports and fitness (and what kinds of bodies), which felt like the perfect use of body horror.
  • Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton – Truly an epic. Another one where I’m counting the UK publication as making it a 2022 book, this is a complex tale of a trans woman obsessed with 60s band the Get Happiness and their mysterious leader B—. Fascinating look at music, creativity, self, and constructing stories and histories.

My favourite books of 2021

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I was all ready to be like ‘I read a lot of books I liked, but not so many I completely loved’ and then I started writing this list and it got pretty long, so I’m saying it was actually a decent year for books. Some of these are very, very good, and others are very good in a specific way that I loved.

Unlike my favourite non-2021 books of the year, this will be in order of when I read them, starting with the book I read as a proof last year but did actually come out at the start of this one…

Fiction

Starting with fiction because I read a lot of it. I also fully embraced getting back into horror, which was good.

  • Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters – Need I say anything? Listen to the hype. 
  • The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe – Is this a trashy YA action story about accidentally becoming part of a heist? Yes, and that’s why it’s on the list – it’s fun and it’s the sort of narrative I like in a film.
  • Assembly by Natasha Brown – A novel about race, class, and millennial success, as an unnamed narrator takes you through preparing for a party in her boyfriend’s parents’ garden. One of the only times I’ve really loved the ‘immediate thoughts of narrator going to London job etc’ style of narrative.
  • Gunk Baby by Jamie Marina Lau – Felt like an instant cult classic to me. A book about a shopping centre and capitalism, all in a haze of muzak.
  • Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon – Not the kind of book I’d usually go to, but this genre-defying tale of a separatist escapee developing powers just really punched you in the gut and questioned who the monsters really are.
  • Reprieve by James Han Mattson – A horror novel about a full contact haunted house escape room that turns into a character study and an exploration of social dynamics. Come for the premise, stay for what it’s exploring.
  • Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So – I’m not always the biggest short story person, but the way these connected and built up a sense of Cambodian American life in California was very impressive.
  • Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke – A novel told over Slack, as someone gets trapped in their workplace Slack workspace. I almost hate how much I enjoyed this as someone who works with technology, uses Slack at work, and loves silly premises.
  • Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt – This was my most ‘I’ve got to read this’ book of 2021 and it did not disappoint. Haunted house gothic but the house is fascism and the racist 80s singer poster is scary. Not for the faint-hearted, but probably my most breathtaking book of 2021. Trans horror forever.
  • Stay Another Day by Juno Dawson – What’s one of my end of year book list without one of Juno Dawson’s books? This Christmas romcom was fun but, as might be expected from her, didn’t shy away from some more serious stuff too.
  • Sterling Karat Gold by Isabel Waidner – It’s very hard to describe this one – a bizarre trip round gender, football, time travel, and a whole host of other things – but it’s very good.
  • Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles – This is a novel in verse so I’m sticking it here just because I’m not writing anything about the ones in the poetry section. A sci-fi novel written in Orkney dialect verse and probably the ultimate ‘so you want to read something different’ recommendation.

Poetry

I can’t think of any good ways to summarise poetry collections so I’m just putting the titles of my favourites.

Non-fiction

I thought this category would literally just be Crying in H Mart, but then I found an obvious second.

My favourite non-2021 books I read in 2021

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I always do a ‘best books I read this year that weren’t out this year’ list, to fully appreciate any books I was catching up on/not born for/etc, but this year it is crucial, because this year is the year I read Lote and the year I read Tommy Pico. So we have to start with my two new faves:

  • Lote by Shola von Reinhold – Not so much the book I didn’t know I needed as much as the book I knew I needed but did not have. A friend gave me this thinking I would like it, maybe not that it would quickly become one of my favourite books of all time. We follow Matilda through Transfixions, aesthetics, and questions of who gets to define history and taste in a book that does Gender Feelings and made me google people and just generally feel like I got so much from it. I read it twice in 2021 and that may have not been enough.
  • IRL, Nature Poem, and Feed by Tommy Pico – I read three of Tommy Pico’s poetry books this year, and the only reason I’ve not read the fourth is that I’m saving it on my ‘to read’ pile that some kind of hoarder. I love long poems, I love books that are a single poem, and I love how Tommy Pico writes. I was sold and then I read the lines “Stop fucking / posting about “veggies,” truly / America’s most disgustingly / perky word”. Also, this year I watched Reservation Dogs because Pico writes on it, so got even more great content.

Okay, fine, I did read some other great books from not-2021 this year too, so here’s a few others that I’ll go less feral for:

  • Homie by Danez Smith – I read a whole bunch of recent-ish poetry on catch up this year and this was another stand out book, about friendship and loss.
  • Small Beauty by jia qing wilson-yang – A short novel about where you come from, as a trans woman deals with grief and explores her aunt’s secret relationship, that was just really good.
  • Infect Your Friends And Loved Ones by Torrey Peters – If we’re talking short… this novella was one of those ‘I know I need to read it’ and then I read Peters’ Detransition, Baby (which will come on the proper year list) and then I finally read this and it was fantastically witty and dark.
  • The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen – The only graphic novel I read this year, and it gets onto my top books list… the art style is beautiful (I basically picked this up because I saw a picture of the cover) and the tale of using stories to communicate where you don’t have other words is very emotional.

I read some other great poetry this year, but actually a lot of the non-out-this-year books I read this year were a bit of a let down, maybe because with all the reviewing and actual day job I didn’t get time to read as much of a mix as I’d like, especially not older stuff. Still, I got some new obsessed-with favourites out of the year, which I’ll take as a win.

Anyway, my list of actual 2021 books will be coming soon (and then, if you’re lucky, some kind of ‘spite list’/things I didn’t like in books this year)…

Fave non-2020 books of 2020

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As ever, I’m balancing out my top books of 2020 with some books I read in 2020 but didn’t come out then. It was a random year for picking what to read and accidentally this lot is half non-fiction and half fiction (and only that if you stretch the definition of ‘fiction’ to include poetry). Not sure what that says – possibly that I’m catching up with recentish non-fiction after not tending to read much of it.

Shoutout to the Heady Mix book subscription I had as a gift for some of the year, as that introduced me to some amazing books I wouldn’t have read otherwise, and for library borrowing apps giving me the chance to borrow books without going out.

  • Pet by Akwaeke Emezi – Unforgettable YA about fighting all-too-real monsters when adults are in denial.
  • Flèche by Mary Jean Chan – Poetry about identity, history, and self.
  • Girl at War by Sara Nović – One from Heady Mix book subscription, that I wouldn’t have picked up otherwise. The horror of war, as a woman returns to Croatia after years in America, to face what happened to her and her family during the civil war.
  • Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch – A book about internet language that is particularly enjoyable if you grew up using different internet sites with different linguistic conventions and are interested in thinking about that.
  • Pachinko by Min Jin Lee – Another from Heady Mix, this was a breathtaking multi-generational look at Korean life in Japan and I was gripped in spite of the length and the fact I don’t normally enjoy multi-generational novels.
  • Superior by Angela Saini – Thorough and interesting debunking of race science.
  • Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher – Hard to know what to say about this classic on the inconstancies and glitches in capitalism.
  • Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsch – A powerful look at race and identity in modern Britain.

My favourite books of 2020

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I guess here’s where I’m meant to write that it’s been a strange year and all. Anyway, passing over that, here’s my usual list of my favourite books that came out this year. I’ve been quite picky with what I’ve included (and split into fiction, poetry and drama, and non-fiction) as I’ve read a lot of ‘good’ books this year, but I really wanted to highlight the best ones.

Books not published in 2020 are going to come separately, so my top books I’ve read this year are basically split into ‘stuff I’ve reviewed’ (this post) and ‘other things’ (the non-2020 publication lot). Links are to full reviews if you’re interested.

Fiction

  • The Magnificent Sons by Justin Myers – Biting look at what happens when two brothers with a big age gap both come out.
  • Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know by Samira Ahmed – YA mystery through the streets of Paris as teenage Khayyam tries to solve an art history puzzle (with bonus Byron as my real selling point).
  • Homes and Experiences by Liam Williams – Email epistolary novel satirising gentrification and millennial culture and guilt, with a bittersweet narrative.
  • Wonderland by Juno Dawson – The final of her three books in a loose trilogy (following Clean and Meat Market), this one is Alice in Wonderland retold as a fall into an elite world of ‘old money’ teenage parties. Dark, thrilling, and hard hitting, it’s my favourite of the three.
  • Loveless by Alice Oseman – Working out asexuality whilst adjusting to weird university life and realising there’s not ‘one’ experience for everyone – just the sort of book I’m glad teenagers now have.
  • The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeki Emezi – An entrancing novel about whether parents really know their child.
  • Boy Parts by Eliza Clark – Perhaps very predictable of me to love this, an artsy Northern female take on the aesthetic antihero, but it was thrilling, very dark, and brilliant.

Poetry and Drama

  • Tongues of Fire by Sean Hewitt – Lyric poems combining nature and modern, like moving from a walk to a Berlin club and back again, and beautifully describing tiny moments.
  • My Darling from the Lions by Rachel Long – Short, storytelling poetry with vivid images and messages.
  • Underground, Monroe, & The Mamalogues by Lisa B. Thompson – Three very different plays looking at the black middle class and elements of race, gender, and respectability.
  • Poor by Caleb Femi – Witty and cutting poetry and photography about growing up on a Peckham estate and the reality of geography and gentrification with class and race.
  • The Girl and the Goddess by Nikita Gill – A novel in verse about a girl growing up in India, discovering herself, and interacting with gods and goddesses, whilst considering the power of storytelling.

Non Fiction

  • The Reality Game by Samuel Woolley – Good primer on online disinformation and technology.
  • Data Feminism by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein – How to think about data science from an intersectional perspective.
  • So Hormonal from Monstrous Regiment – Collection of essays about how hormones impact people’s lives, full of a vast range of eye-opening experiences.
  • White Tears/Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad – A look at how white feminism affects women of colour and how important intersectionality is (technically this first came out in 2019, but I read an edition out in 2020 so I’m saying it counts here).

My favourite non-2019 books I read in 2019

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It always feels unfair to only document my favourite books I read during a year that came out that year, so I’m also listing my favourite catchily-named-non-that-year books, as I did last year and the year before. This year my comments on each may have become a little more facetious, as the actual books got more heavy-going.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor – The version I read was technically published this year, but seeing as it was published before it’s going here. This is Ovid for the modern day: a 90s LGBT culture shapeshifter story with a picaresque vibe.

The Arsonists by Max Frisch – Thanks to watching Philosophy Tube this year, I discovered not only works of philosophy, but also some more-modern-than-my-early-modern-degree plays, and this one had me sat up reading it in one go. In short, don’t play with fire.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo – I live-tweeted my response to reading the book I had never read due to irrational dislike until the BBC adaptation tempted me to give it a go. On here because it was actually an enjoyable, if occasionally digressive, experience.

No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre – I said I’d got into 20th century plays (that aren’t just Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead).

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus – Yes, really. Was it not a year for the absurd?

To Save Everything, Click Here by Evgeny Morozov – I keep recommending this or bringing up concepts from it to everyone so it has to go on here. Why finding tech solutions to everything isn’t always the answer.

Hello World by Hannah Fry – My year really was all existentialism or technology. Fry’s account of how algorithms shape our world and what we can do about it is engaging and deeply interesting. Plus it helped me shape some of the articles in our online Digital Wellbeing course.

Radical Technologies by Adam Greenfield – Another one, I know. Each chapter is about a different technology and how it has or might change our world, and it is surprisingly possible to even understand the chapters on blockchain and cryptocurrency (mostly).

My favourite books of 2019

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That time again: for reading through lists of books and thinking ‘oh yeah, I did mean to read that this year’. My list seems shorter this year, possibly because I read a lot of decent books that came out this year, but not that many which count as favourites (and you can see the Spite List for the other end of the scale). My favourite books that came out in 2019, in order of when I read them (links to full reviews where written):

Fiction

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes – Another female retelling of the Trojan War, but this time epic in scope and style.

Water Shall Refuse Them by Lucie McKnight Hardy – Eerie heatwave coming of age gothic set in 70s Wales.

Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn – Set between Jamaica and America, this novel tells the story of Patsy and her daughter Tru and their struggles with identity, sexuality, and finding a home.

Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson – Winterson’s retelling of Frankenstein to feature AI, gender, and what is life and death – not always nuanced, but interesting.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong – Lyrical prose about telling your story in Vuong’s debut novel, about trauma, addiction, and growing up.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone – Two rival agents fall in love across the battlegrounds of time in this short novel that seems to have made a lot of people fall in love with it and its two female protagonists, ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’.

Meat Market by Juno Dawson – If you’ve read her previous novel Clean, you won’t be surprised that this is a sharp, sometimes shocking look at the fashion industry, abuse, and teenage models, aimed at but not only for a YA audience.

Birthday by Meredith Russo – Part of this made me cry on a plane, but it’s okay because it has a happy ending – a YA novel about Morgan and Eric, best friends whose love story is told through their shared birthday each year.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead – A tense novel about a reform school’s corruption and abuse, combining the history of a real institution with a well-plotted narrative.

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston – What would happen if the son of a female US president realises his rivalry with the Prince of Wales might not be about dislike after all? Everyone raved about this feelgood read and eventually I overcame the monarchy aspect to agree that it is very sweet and funny.

Nonfiction

Underland by Robert Macfarlane – My real surprise of the year was enjoying this account of subterranean travel and thought as much as I did.

The Creativity Code by Marcus du Santoy – What AI can (and can’t) do with creativity, but written in a way that is pretty accessible.

No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference by Greta Thunberg – Must be on so many lists, but it really is powerful and short enough to just give to everyone to read.

Mindf*ck by Christopher Wylie – The story of Cambridge Analytica, from the inside. Brings it all together in a terrifying way (I should add that’s the actual title, I didn’t censor it).

My 2018 in reading: the awards

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I’ve done my top books that came out in 2018, and my top books I happened to read in 2018, but what about some more specific and dubious honours? I didn’t really have a good enough selection for a simple spite list this year (though if anyone’s interested, I can share my least favourite reads of 2018), but have gone for a few random categories and some anecdotal justification.

The ‘finally read it this year’ – tie between Don Quixote and The Odyssey

Apparently 2018 was the year I sat down with some famous journeys. Homer was the greater omission, having read and studied The Iliad in translation at undergrad, and it was thanks to the Emily Wilson translation that I finally got around to it. Don Quixote was more impulsive, but I do now understand references to Don Quixote (and I managed to spill quite a lot of Vimto on my copy of it). A bonus mention to both Metamorphosis and The Trial, as I finally read some Kafka this year, motivated by going to Prague, though it felt less of an achievement.

The ‘oh hurry up and finish’ – Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin

Summed up above, really. I thought Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho, which I read not long before this, was slow (it really does take a long time to get to Udolpho), but Maturin does impressively well at making a narrative within a narrative within a narrative that just takes forever. Not an experience I enjoyed (Sarah Perry’s rewrite is worth a read, though).

The ‘thank god the sequel was worth waiting for’ – The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

The first book, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, may be my ideal fun read: a YA historical romp across Europe by a bisexual eighteenth century young aristocrat, taking liberties with the bounds of possibility and throwing in a lot of adventure tropes like pirates and highway robbery. The sequel, focused on his sister intent on becoming a doctor, was worth the wait, a novel which kept the fun, adventure, and travel, but wove in more issues around gender and race in the period. Bonus mention to the novella that was a preorder bonus with the sequel, because it was joyous and proves how wonderful Lee’s characters are that you just want to keep reading more of them, their flaws and their triumphs.

The ‘gamble on the sequel of a book I didn’t enjoy’ – Kill ‘Em All by John Niven

I really don’t like Kill Your Friends. I found it boring, trying to be the British American Psycho or similar without really saying or doing anything interesting. I liked another Niven novel slightly more, so thought I’d gamble on this sequel to Kill Your Friends, set in the modern, post-truth world. I found it clever, darker, and more satirical than the first book, no longer just about excess and murder, but about how you can frame excess and murder in new ways.

The ‘knew it wasn’t for me, was vindicated when I was right’ – Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Despite its prize winning, the plot of Lincoln in the Bardo never appealed, and that was before I knew what the structure was. A colleague leant it to me because she didn’t like it (always a great way to come to a novel) and despite odd flashes when I was engaged with what was going on, I mostly just didn’t care.

The ‘YA that made me wish I actually could read it as a young adult’ – Clean by Juno Dawson

This is quite a tough category because there’s some great YA I read now that would’ve been great to read as a young teenager (at which point I mostly read Point Horror and books about teenage spies). However, Clean wins for 2018 because it is an honestly brilliant balance between suitably hard-hitting and grown up in its topics (kinds of addiction predominantly) and full of teenage drama amongst mostly rich, messed up young people. It would’ve been the kind of book that felt exciting to read, but was also bringing new perspectives.

The ‘how was it so actually bad when it could’ve been trash enjoyable’ – The Vampyre by Tom Holland

I know, it’s shocking that I didn’t enjoy the novel with the premise of Byron’s life, but he was actually a vampire. However, it was just…not fun. Too long, too slow, didn’t actually do much justice to any character except Percy Bysshe Shelley who was suitably busy talking about revolution. Better to just read Fiona MacCarthy’s Byron biography and then use your imagination.

The ‘most called out by its satire’ – Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton

Are the categories getting more facetious? Possibly. Anyway, Burton’s focus on hipster bars and stupidly specific tea blends felt very much an attack on some of my more hipster habits (I drink a lot of a flavoured tea and do enjoy themed cocktails in themed bars). Though thankfully I don’t use Instagram even vaguely as much as her protagonists.

[Side note: If you fancy seeing everything I read this year (not quite sure why you would), take a look at my Goodreads reading challenge for 2018.]