reading days: the erl king, female boxing comps and cyberpunk bands
what I read in august 2024
Hey! Welcome to my substack! This will (hopefully) be a monthly post I do summing up everything I’ve read for the month! Reading days, whilst seeming like a basic title I came up on the whim, is inspired by the bookstagram account I made and didn’t post on.
If you want to get real time updates, you can follow me on my goodreads and storygraph! Thanks for reading!
As summer is falling and the cold is rising, I can feel a change growing. It’s probably the descent from warm summer into bitter winter (it definitely is), but the urge to curl up into a ball with a good book and a good cuppa (a fixation on chai lattes is bound to return soon) whilst my partner watches video essays is prevailing more with each degree dropped in temperature.
I am also feeling the urge to reread The Secret History. Yes, autumn is on its way and I feel it in my bones.
A Study in Drowning (A Study in Drowning #1)
by Ava Reid
If you know me personally, you will surely know Ava Reid is one of my favourite authors. Her writing is visceral and gothic, and is exactly why I loved her young adult debut A Study in Drowning. Ava Reid is truly an expert on creating an eery atmosphere, so much so that they are characters in themselves. Maybe I’m not reading in the right places but it’s not very often that I find a writer who does this as well as Reid.
With that being said, the first couple of chapters are rather painful. Effy is the only girl in the architecture college (because the literature college flat out refuses to take anyone that is not a man) and she reaps the full consequences of the patriarchal education model. She is bullied relentlessly and is taken advantage of by her professor. It made the opening rather uncomfortable to read; it’s not due to subject matter (in fact Ava Reid carefully handles similar topics on a much more explicit level in Lady Macbeth), it’s more due to she has accepted her place in the school and in life as inferior. Once the plot advances and she arrives at the manor house, things take a turn for the better, like I predicted they would.
A Study in Drowning despite being 300 and something pages isn’t as dense as her other novels, due to its targeted age range. Yet you still get well crafted prose and the literary feel. The best of both worlds.
I gave this a 4.5 rating and I’ll be picking up it’s sequel whenever it comes out.
If this sounds right up your street, don’t know where to start with her works and want some spooky atmosphere to welcome back autumn, I’d recommend A Study in Drowning.
Daisy Miller & The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
Out of the two, I definitely preferred Daisy Miller due to her Daisy’s character being unapologetic and independent against the stark background of societal expectations and the threat of social ruin. She is refreshing, but I would say James’ writing of her is anything but.
Oftentimes, I felt like Daisy Miller was a conquest for the men in her life. Winterbourne’s view battled between enthral and confusion of her way of life. I got the sense that Mr. Giovanelli had ulterior motives, but I think this is due to Winterbourne’s interpretation.
Which brings me onto my next point. Yes, Mr Giovanelli is described as Italian, but there is something racially ambiguous about his character that classic writers often branded their ‘characters of colour’ with. I also find it suspicious that Daisy dies of Roman disease. It almost makes it sound like Henry James’ wrote Daisy’s downfall not to be of some illness she caught, but rather her choosing of the ‘other’ man, not Winterbourne, who thinks of himself as a pure, gentleman. Hmm. Suspicious.
As for The Turn of the Screw, I found it lacking of narrative. The characters and plot couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. If I ever get around to watching the TV adaptation, I may give it another go (I most likely won’t do either).
3 stars.
Headshot
by Rita Bullwinkel
I chose this as my next read because of two reasons:
The Booker Prize longlist had just been released and out of the thirteen books on the list, this was the only one I owned.
The Olympic female boxing controversy started by Angela Carini regarding Imane Khelif has occurred a couple of weeks prior.
As someone who did martial arts as a young girl, I also found the subject matter appealing. Whilst I did taekwondo and didn’t compete, I found myself somewhere I didn’t think I would ever return to. Oddly familiar. Waves of childhood nostalgia returned. I found it easy to get its these characters’ mindsets. Call it bias all you want, but Bullwinkel gives each of these girls their own distinct character voice. It’s such a simple task that seemingly a lot of writers fall short on. Bullwinkel is different. Her craft and characters are well thought out and it’s why her novel shines.
The form is also worth noting, and is the other reason I really liked this. It’s told with third person omniscient: it knows these characters intimately and yet feels so cold. Each chapter is a fight and we tumble through each of the girls’ ambitions, fears and where they will end up however many years down the line when they no longer think about this tournament.
I can see why it was nominated for the Booker Prize this year. 4 stars.
Extremophile
by Ian Green
I was super excited about this when I first spied it on Netgalley. I mean, listen to this!
Charlie and Parker are punks by night, biohackers by day, living in the stuttering decay of near-future climate-collapse London. (Goodreads)
This is just the premise but in my mind I was thinking of a Daisy Jones & the Six crossover with Cyberpunk. How amazing would that be?!
With the perfect set up: the promise of a cyberpunk versus solarpunk aesthetics, climate activism, attempting to go from dystopia to utopia without sacrificing the technological aspects, I had high expectations for this!
And they weren’t met, unfortunately.
I wasn’t hooked from the beginning. Instead of info-dumping about the world, the reader is thrown straight into the deep end of the world - and not in a good way, unfortunately. The reader has no time to adapt because we don’t witness the negatives of this society, we are witnessing our narrator clean up a brawl outside of a gig.
Extremophile would have benefited from being a collection of short stories. Green tries to do too much and it shows. If he spilt all of these ideas into their own short stories - or even novellas, either would be great! - then each idea could develop without battling for dominance on the page.
Thank you to Netgalley and Head of Zeus for an ARC.
Small Worlds
by Caleb Azumah Nelson
In centuries down the line, if Caleb Azumah Nelson’s work is not in some series of classic literature special editions, know with absolute certainty I will personally dig up my own grave and make it happen!
I have already written on Small Worlds and my adoration in a previous post. If you haven’t I’ll link it below. If not, keep reading and I will summarise.
Caleb Azumah Nelson is one of Britain’s best current voices. His prose is well crafted, emotive and inspiring. If I can write a novel in this style, I know I will have succeeded in one thing as a writer.
Here is my original personal essay and review:
Honourable Mentions!
I also read these this months, I just don’t have a lot to say about them.
Break the Nose of Every Beautiful Thing by Jack Cooper. Amazing verses and beautiful language. A nice breath of fresh air from Instagram poetry. 4 stars.
Queer as Folklore: The Hidden Queer History of Myths and Monsters by Sacha Coward. I wish I had this ARC when I did my folklore and oral tradition module in second year of university; it would have made my life easier. Very dense and full of information, but also makes use of images. Coward also recognises colonial impact and in the foreword makes noticeable effort to be respectable to the cultures researched and mentioned that are not their own. 3.5 stars.
Her, Him and I by Christian Weissmann. Another ARC and another poetry collection. Though I appreciated the commentary on male bisexuality and its authenticity, I found the contents of the poems repetitive at times. 3 stars.
Stats!
Now here is one for all you nerds!
Thanks for reading!
I have no idea what I’m going to read next month. So far, my plans are to finish Giovanni’s Room, start The Eyes are the Best Part by Monika Kim and get into the autumnal reading spirit. But who knows?! I am and will always be a mood reader at heart.
Love from,
Hannah
(ig, spotify, goodreads, letterboxd)
Not Henry James 🥲 I thought I'd left him behind in first year Prose...
Love this post though! Honestly haven't read any of these but might have to add A Study in Drowning and Headshot to my tbr ☺️
Your reviews are so insightful Han! Any you’d recommend?