I bet you've never heard of any of these books.
So today on Book Break, we are talking about hidden gems.
Those books that maybe weren't as widely buzzed about as some others, but you find them hidden
away on your bookshelf and they're absolutely brilliant.
So a really great example that you will probably have heard of is Stoner by John Williams.
So a few years ago, this suddenly blew up, fifty years after it was first published,
and was described in the New Yorker as the greatest American novel you've never read.
And of course now, it is so widely beloved, it was so worth rediscovering.
So, we thought we would dig around and see what other hidden gems we could find.
So I've been asking the team, I've been raiding my own bookshelves, and we've come up with
a list of nine books that you probably have never heard of, but you really should read.
And while we're talking about hidden gems, can we just take a second to appreciate this
gorgeous backdrop?
I am here at the Tea Bar in Teatulia in Covent Garden, which is this gorgeous tea bar, and
I'll link everything in the description box below so you can go and check it out.
Definitely a hidden gem in London!
So, on with the books.
After we were just talking about Stoner, a similar book is A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler.
So again, this is about a man's whole life, and lots of very sad things happen to him.
And he never quite achieves any of the things that we, as a society, place value on for
meaning success.
And yet that doesn't mean that he doesn't live this wonderful whole life.
So the book, rather than having this great sweeping narrative, is made up of a series
of small moments that add up to a life.
And it's about the main character's relationship with his community, and his relationship with
nature.
It's a very very moving book, and definitely a hidden gem.
So this next book was recommended by Alex, our email marketing manager, and this is Tender
by Belinda McKeon.
So this is set in 1990s Dublin, and it's a story of desire and obsession.
It's about two university students, Catherine and James, who strike up a very intense friendship,
but Catherine starts to want more from James than he can give her.
So James is gay, in an Ireland that's still very unfriendly to gay men, and Catherine,
whose perspective the novel is from, and who filters all the events through her perspective,
longs for him so intensely that she doesn't want him to be close to anybody else.
So it starts to get quite dark and obsessive in that way.
And John Boyne described it as one of the best Irish novels he's ever read, and compared
Belinda McKeon to Anne Tyler, in terms of how amazing her characters are.
So that is some very high praise.
And now another one from my bookshelf.
This is The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
So you can tell from the very distinctive grey cover, this is a Persephone Books book.
And Persephone books are all about hidden gems, they're basically devoted to rediscovering
neglected 20th century female writers.
And The Home-Maker felt to me so ahead of its time.
So it's about this married couple, Mr and Mrs Knapp, who are stuck in the gender roles
of their time.
So Mr Knapp goes out to a job that he hates, and Mrs Knapp stays at home and runs the house
with almost military precision.
Until one day, an accident means that Mr Knapp is no longer able to leave the house and go
to work, and so they're forced to switch.
Mrs Knapp goes out and works in a shop, and Mr Knapp stays home and looks after the children
and does the housework.
And suddenly, these characters come back to life, because they're doing what they all
along wanted to do.
Mrs Knapp can now challenge all of her business management skills into a work environment,
and the very gentle Mr Knapp loves spending time with his children and listening to what
they have to say.
And it's still really relevant today, even though we're no longer in a society where
women are expected to stay at home and do the housework, it still felt so relevant in
terms of questioning the gender roles that are still forced on us.
The next book was recommended by Lee, our Marketing and Communities Director, and this
is The Storyteller by Rabih Alameddine, also known as The Hakawati.
So in this book, the main character Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years
living abroad in America, to find his father on his death bed.
And his father was a Hakawati, which means a storyteller, and so as the whole family
begin to gather around, all of these stories start to emerge.
So it's this sort of Canterbury Tales, 1001 Nights-esque book, with this mix of classic
middle eastern stories, and the unique bewitching stories that Osama's father used to tell.
And this book was very popular in Spain, but never quite caught on in the UK, so I think
it's time we changed that.
So a book that I discovered as a teenager and was completely obsessed with, but nobody
else I know seems to have read it, is Don't Ask Me Why by Tania Kindersley.
So this is about two Oxford students in the 80s, Ashley and Virge, and the first half
of the books follows their time at Oxford. And they're part of this rather pretentious
Bloomsbury group-esque group of friends.
So it's just about them swanning around Oxford being pretentious in the best way to read
about.
But then half way through the book they graduate from Oxford, and then the rest of it follows
them as the reality of life hits.
And this is where the book really comes into its own.
It so perfectly nails that feeling of the loss of youth and the disillusionment with
the real world, which comes with its fair share of tragedies.
And my best friend and I at school used to actually call each other Ash and Virge, named
after the characters in this book, that's how obsessed we were with it.
So this next one is a bit of a cheat, I'm doing three books in one.
This is the Otori series by Lian Hearn, and these were recommended by Elle, the other
half of the Book Break team.
So this is a fantasy series, suitable for YA readers and adult readers alike.
And it's set in this medieval feudal system, in a fictionalised version of Japan.
It started off as this trilogy, but there actually now five books in the series, and
they all follow a young warrior named Takeo, on a quest to avenge his adoptive father and
pursue the love of his life.
But all the while caught up in a much larger scale power struggle between all the rival
clan lords.
So it is massive scale fantasy, a lot of fun.
And finally, some lesser known classics.
So these three were suggested by Harriet Sanders who is the publisher of the Macmillan Collectors
Library books, and I always love these gorgeous books, as do you guys, they're so beautiful.
But they don't just publish the really big hitters, they also have some gorgeous hidden
gems that you might not have heard of.
So for example, I've got here Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles, which is one of the best
and earliest examples of the inverted detective story, like Columbo-style, where right from
the beginning you know the murderer, you know why they did it, the question is will they
get away with it?
My Antonia by Willa Cather is quite a well-known classic in the US but much less well-known
over here.
And it follows a group of rural pioneers in the early 19th century, and particular, two
children from these families, Jim and Antonia.
And the way that their early experiences follow them throughout their lives.
And finally, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, which is about a woman having an affair, and
so was completely scandalous when it was first published in 1899.
And the main woman is on holiday with her husband and children when she first meets
the man that she goes on to have an affair with.
So it's considered now one of the earliest examples of feminist fiction, and it questions
ideas of motherhood and femininity.
So was I right? Had you heard of any of those books?
Do give this video a thumbs up if you liked it, and leave a comment below letting me know
your favourite hidden gems that we should all check out.
And of course, do subscribe to Book Break, we post new videos every Thursday.
And coming up next week, we have a special guest, who's going to tell us all about her
favourite Scottish books.
And in the meantime, you can always go and follow us over on Instagram @bookbreakuk.
See you next time!