Welcome back to Book Break!
Today I am bringing you our December TBR.
So I've been chatting to people around the office
and finding out all the exciting books that people are planning to read in the next month.
So let's start with my TBR
I have got three very exciting proofs here that I have grabbed from around the office
and I just cannot wait to start reading them.
These are all coming out next year
so I'll tell you loads more about them once I've read them.
So the first one I've got here is Writers and Lovers by Lily King.
So this has been described basically as a modern Bridget Jones
I know everything gets described as that
but this really does sound like it's going to capture some of that humour and emotion
there.
So this is about a woman in her 30s
who doesn't feel like she's really had success,
she's been trying to write a book for about six years,
she's single and she finds herself beginning this love triangle.
So it's partly about her decision that she has to make between
these two men and the different paths that they offer her,
but it's also, and here's what I've heard kind of, you know, sets it apart from Bridget
Jones
is that it is this more modern approach to it.
So whereas in the world of Bridget Jones,
being single in your 30s was seen as this terrible thing,
this is set in the present day where that's actually so much more normal,
so it's kind of about capturing that particular time in your life for women
which will feel so relatable to so many people.
Next I'm going to pick up The Sin Eater by Megan Campisi.
So this is about a real historical thing that I didn't know anything about before
I read the premise of this book which is Sin Eaters.
So basically, these were people who had been ostracised from society for some crime they
had committed
and their punishment is that now
when somebody is on their death bed,
the Sin Eaters consume this ritual meal
so different foods stand for different sins
and they cleanse the sins from that person.
So the person who dies can then safely get into Heaven
whereas the Sin Eater is then burdened with all of the sins of all of the people they've
done this for.
So this book is about one particular Sin Eater,
a girl named May,
who I think is punished for stealing a loaf of bread or something
and doomed to become a Sin Eater.
So that sounds absolutely fascinating
but actually what really made me pick this up
is what's written on the back here.
And we heard this in a video from the author, this is how she described it.
So she talked about how people say
there's really only two stories:
a man goes on a voyage, or a stranger arrives in town.
This is the third: a woman breaks the rules.
I mean how could you not want to read that after that?
And then my third one, a proof that I just picked up this morning and I'm so excited
about
is When I Was Ten by Fiona Cummins.
So I have read all of her books so far,
Fiona Cummins is a thriller writer and her books are just so dark
and so disturbing and I love them.
And this one is about two sisters.
Books about sisters, this is my other buzzword for books that I just have to pick up,
so from reading the description here, it implies that one of the sisters
when she's ten years old
kills their parents.
And then we're going to see the sisters as adults,
looking back on what really happened
and what might have compelled this girl to do that.
So those are the three books that I'm most excited to read in December,
then I've been asking some other people as well.
I asked Katrina from HR and she said that the next on her list is
the audiobook of My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
which again is one I've just been dying to read.
I mean you can probably guess that, it's about sisters, it's about serial killers,
it's got all of my buzzwords.
I've heard so many amazing things about this book,
it's basically about a woman whose sister keeps murdering her boyfriends.
And then one day, the next boyfriend that this sister gets
is the man that our main character has a crush on.
And so she has to decide where her loyalties lie and what she's going to do.
This sounds brilliant, Katrina's going to be listening to the audiobook
so I can't wait to ask her all about it when she's read that one.
Then I asked Tom in Finance
and he said that he just has a never-ending TBR pile,
which is very relatable.
But two that stand out.
The first is Eventide,
which is the second in a trilogy.
Tom said that he read the first book, Plainsong,
a long time ago, and loved it but hasn't got round to finishing the rest of them yet.
So I actually don't know anything about this trilogy
so I'm just looking it up now
but it sounds, again, just my kind of thing.
So it's described here as a story of family and romance,
it's set in a small town in Colorado,
and it's about all these intertwining lives,
and the trilogy is going to span four generations
of these families and how their lives affect each other.
And the second book on Tom's TBR is Modern Nature by Derek Jarman.
And I've heard about this one from the author Olivia Laing,
she describes it as one of her favourite books.
So this is basically a diary about Derek Jarman's famous garden at Dungeness.
So after he found out that he was HIV positive,
he threw himself into creating this beautiful wild garden,
and the book is partly a diary about this creation,
and partly a meditation on his own life.
Again, really looking forward to hearing Tom's thoughts on both of those.
Then I asked Lizzy from Publishing Operations,
and she said that the next book on her TBR is The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern.
So I've been seeing this one all over BookTube and Bookstagram,
partly because of that gorgeous cover,
can we all just admire that,
and of course, because Erin Morgenstern is the author of The Night Circus,
which is another completely beloved book,
and this next one, The Starless Sea,
has been seven years in the making,
but it's finally here!
So what I know about this one is it's about a student
who discovers a book which basically leads him through a series of clues
to this underground world.
And it sounds like it's going to be just as magical and weird and wonderful as The Night
Circus was.
And then finally,
I asked Alex from the Digital team because she was sitting right next to me.
And she's got two great-sounding books on her TBR.
So the first is Targeted by Brittany Kaiser,
who used to work for Cambridge Analytica,
and Alex said that she picked that one up
because it's just so relevant to our jobs in Digital.
As people who chose to work in digital marketing
because we obviously see the amazing positive power of the digital world
as this place of social bonding and harmony,
it's actually really interesting and important to see the flip side of it,
and see how it can be used for manipulation
and fostering ill will.
And then the second book she's got on her TBR is The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel,
so she's been very lucky to get an exciting proof of this.
So Emily St John Mandel is the author of Station Eleven,
which again is a super beloved one.
So The Glass Hotel is a whole new story, very different.
This one is not a dystopian,
but it sounds like it's still going to have Emily St John Mandel's amazing way of
creating these worlds and bringing everything so visually to life.
So we have The Glass Hotel, which is this five star glass palace on Vancouver Island.
There is a ship from which a woman is going to mysteriously disappear.
It's got various different characters and their interweaving lives,
and apparently it does have some easter eggs in here for fans of Station Eleven.
So again, I'm going to be asking Alex all about this one as soon as she's read it.
So I would love to know what is on your TBR for the month of December.
Do leave me a comment below letting me know.
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See you next time.