What I read in November

November's online and offline reading recs. Including: Nicola Dinan, Camilla Grudova, Lorrie Moore.

Hello!

A little while ago, I asked on instagram what else you’d like to see here, and reading recommendations was top of the list, so, here we are! I think this will probably work best as a monthly post, and it’ll likely be a mixture of actual books and online long(ish) reads, because we all only live on the internet now (and because I put all my book-reads on my instagram anyway, so this’ll be a nice place to share other things I’m reading that aren’t in book-form).

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Books

Bellies, by Nicola Dinan

This was my book club pick for the (last!) #nottheohcobookclub (it’ll still be going next year, just in a slightly different form), and I loved it. It’s about a couple who meet at a university party, and then one of them - Ming - transitions, and one of them - Tom - decides to stay and support her, even though he’s not attracted to women. It’s really beautiful, and written from both Ming and Tom’s perspectives, as their relationship shifts along with their ideas about who and how they are in the world.

The Coiled Serpent, by Camilla Grudova

Surprising exactly no-one, this was EXCELLENT. A second collection of short stories, following a novel Children of Paradise and debut short story collection, The Doll Alphabet, this really captures my favourite bouncy-morbid style of writing.
(TY to Atlantic Books for the early copy of this!)

I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, by Lorrie Moore

I found this (a signed one, too!) in the charity shop for £2, with it’s receipt (and a bookmark!) from the Portobello Bookshop still tucked into the front flap. I think I liked it much more than its previous owner, and I’m glad they brought it to Elephant and Castle from Edinburgh for me to find. I thought it was going to be vaguely ghost-ish, but I hadn’t realised it’s actually a perfect zombie love story. Loved.

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Online reads

Closely Reading

is incredibly good, and really, I’d like to link Haley’s whole Hallowe’en series of spooky reads, but instead, I’ll just put you on to the fox is probably not god, and I’ll let you ago from there.

I can’t remember who recommended this, but Joan Baez and Jane Fonda’s conversation for Interview Magazine was great.

I loved this haunted house piece by Jeanette Winterson from Elle so much that I cut it out, glued it into my journal and annotated it. (Yes, I am aware that this is… not normal.)

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My December reading plan is vaguely to load up my kindle because I want to ship the majority of my books before we move and (hopefully) not have to pack too many in my suitcase, so I’m going to be a victim of the Daily Deal emails for a while.

What did you read this month?

Terri-Jane x

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