Hi everyone it's Lauren and I have a book haul for you today. I'm really pleased
with this book haul actually because it's not too big and that means I've
been acquiring books at a much slower rate, which is very healthy for my living
space and bank account. So I'll start with some of the books that I got for
Christmas and I have a couple of books on ballet here which I'm very excited to
read. The first one is The Everyday Dancer by Deborah Bull. Deborah Bull was
a dancer in the Royal Ballet and this book has been around for quite a long
time I think, I'm not sure when it was first published, but I feel like this
is a a book about her life in the Royal Ballet and this is one of those books
which always comes up as recommended if you want to know what will it's like to
be a professional ballet dancer and I am obsessed with wanting to know what
it's like to be a professional ballet dancer, I keep watching YouTube videos
about people preparing their pointe shoes and kind of what their daily
schedule is. I'm just I'm going down that rabbit hole and I wanted my reading
a to follow suit. So I'm excited to read this one, I also
have and The Sugarless Plum by Zippora Karz. This is about
a dancer who was diagnosed with diabetes and then how that affected her training
and her dancing and this one was recommended to me by somebody who
commented on a video when I talked about dance, so thank you very
much and to the person who recommended that! I would also like to read some more
fiction books on dance as well so if anybody has any recommendations of books
that aren't YA about ballet, I would be all over that because I enjoyed
reading The Cranes Dance a few years ago by Meg Howrey I think....it's over there!
Because there's quite a lot of nonfiction about, but I would like to mix
it up and read some fiction on dance as well I think. So some of the other books
that I got for Christmas are My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki. The
reason I asked for this is basically because I've never read any Ruth Ozeki
and I've heard that she's very very good and lots of people like her and this was
her first book I believe, I hope so, I hope I've got that right, and I thought I
would start from the beginning as it were and this book I think is about two
women, one in Japan, one in the US and there's something like some US cooking
program about cooking meat which somehow brings them together that's what I think
but I'll be honest just picked it up because I wanted to
read some Ruth Ozeki, I wasn't like thinking about the plot or anything
particularly and so I'm excited to read her.
I also...another book which I just wanted to read the author of is What We Lose by
Zinzi Clemmons and this is about a young woman whose mother's dying and she's
mixed race and I think it's looking back at kind of culture and family. Again, I
didn't actually ask for this book based solely on the plot of the novel itself
but I had heard a lot about Zinzi Clemmons. This is a debut novel that she's
written but she's been in the news kind of attacking Lena Dunham's brand of
feminism which i thought was quite interesting and there's been a lot of
praise for this book kind of as a debut so I just thought put it on the list, see
if anyone gets it for me and they did. so I'm kind of intrigued by this one! Then
we have a lovely surprise Christmas present which I got the other day from
Simon at SavidgeRreads and that is Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon and this
is like the best present I could have got because I was about to buy this
myself and this was going to be the next thing I bought it so I'm very pleased
that I he's got it for me and I hadn't already bought it! I really loved Joanna
Cannon's debut novel The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, which came out last year
and this is her second. This is about an old woman in an old people's home and
she's kind of narrating the novel I think and telling us about her friend
Elsie and the impression I get from this book is it that it's going to be very
similar to The Trouble With Goats and Sheep where it's about kind of everyday
English lives and how they all intertwine together and I also kind of
get the Elizabeth is Missing vibes about this as well because it's about an
older woman kind of looking back on her life, so I just think this is going to be
right up my street and I just love the cover, a little tasty Battenberg cake!
The next two gorgeous books I have here were sent to me by a vintage as part of
their new dystopian series so you may remember that they released a new
edition of The Handmaid's Tale last year to coincide with the release of their TV
show and they've expanded that range now so we also have 1984 by George Orwell
and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and these are absolutely gorgeous
editions. I think the covers are very clever you see that's like a baby, and
I'm so delighted to have them because I haven't read either of these two books
these two books, so I'm really pleased to have them in these gorgeous editions. I
did post about these on Instagram when I first received them and asked people
which one they thought I should get to first and overwhelmingly people
said Brave New World because this directly inspired 1984, so this is right
up there on my on my list. If I don't read this in February you can come back
and tell me off because this is like the next thing I want to read, because I want
to try and read some more I was gonna say classics I guess more modern classic
literature as well and this is the perfect excuse. Another gorgeous edition
I have here is Folk by Zoe Gilbert, now this was sent to me by Bloomsbury and
this is about a an island community I believe but it's kind of a fantastical
island called Neverness and there's a child that's born with a wing instead of
an arm, a young girl who gets taken by a monster to it's like underwater lair and
it sounds really gorgeous, like a mix of fairytales and kind of folklore and I
don't know that I've heard a lot about it kind of since people have received it
so it sounds a bit odd, but I'm going into it with a little bit of trepidation
because I think some people I know kind of looked at this book I thought oh my
god it's so beautiful it's going to be amazing and then I'm not sure that I've
heard amazing things since people have read it. It does sound like a really
interesting book and Zoe Gilbert won the Costa short story award in 2014 and
then this is her debut novel I believe so very interested and then another
cheeky addition which I actually got in the post today and that was sent to me
by Granta that's Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday and Granta are very
naughty, they always send me stuff unsolicited and I always want to be like
Granta, you should ask me before you send me books and then we say send me things
like this and I think oh go on then, you always send me nice stuff! Now this is I
don't really know what this about obviously because they just sent to me but
I'll read you the blurb in here and it says 'In New York Alice a young editor
begins an affair with Ezra Blazer a world-famous, much older writer. At
Heathrow Airport Ammar an economist on route to Kurdistan
is detained by immigration and locked in a holding room and some years later Ezra
Blazer reappears as a castaway on Desert Island Discs to reflect on his legacy
life and love' so it sounds like kind of a cast of characters
looking at different people's lives across time, across places it says here
it 'challenges the power plays between the imbalances of contemporary life
between male and female, young and old, West and Middle East, talent and luck and
the personal and political' so it sounds quite timely from that description and
you know I'm a sucker for a pretty book and a nice cover and it's another debut
novel as well so always good to discover new writings. And finally two small books
which you may have seen in a previous video when I was doing a walk with and
Lauren from Lauren and the Books we popped into Libreria in Brick Lane and
I picked up these two beauties. So I have a poetry collection Why God is a Woman by
Nin Andrews. Now this book is...basically this was recommended by Jen Campbell
like a million years ago, it's not stocked in a lot of book shops in the UK,
I certainly haven't seen it in a physical book shop, so since it was in
there while we're in Liberia I thought I'd better pick it up. I think all of
these poems are about a kind of utopia sort of idea where it's just women
ruling the world and I also picked up Women and Power by Mary Beard. If you
don't know who Mary Beard is she's a quite famous academic in the UK, she
studies Greek and Roman history and she's done some TV programs, she's quite
outspoken kind of on Twitter and in the press and she's just completely
fantastic and this book is a look back at women and how they've been perceived
throughout history. I believe it's looking at instances where women
have been silenced by men and where women with power are always seen to be
more of a threat and kind of shut down by the more powerful me,n and I'm really
looking forward to reading something by Mary Beard actually because I had her
Roman history book SPQR but it's so big and I haven't read it I'll be honest and
this is much more bite-sized, much more easy to digest! So that's my haul I'm
super excited about all of these. I know I say that at the end of every haul
because why would I have books if I didn't want to read them?But some of
these particularly I'm just really looking forward to getting to. I would
love to hear from me if you've read any of these and I'd like to hear what
you've got for Christmas as well actually because I'm always interested
in terms of what people want to read and what they're excited to read next. I know
Christmas was a while ago now, it kind of seems like a million years ago
and but I'm so excited about my Christmas gifts, so if you want to talk
about that then talk about that, and I'll see you in my next video, bye!