Welcome back to Book Break! It is time for another round of your personalised
book recommendations. So you guys have been sending in loads of requests for
the exact book you're looking for right now, and oh boy did you make them hard
this time. I have been trawling through my bookshelves to come up with the
perfect book for each of you. So as always, do leave comments below if you
have something specific you're looking for, because I love finding these
recommendations for you. But let's get started! The first request was from
boojingleful, who wanted a book set on a campus, but not focused on a middle-aged
professor's midlife crisis over a young female student, and preferably not a
romance. Quite the challenge there! So I've actually come up with three options.
The first one is The Secret History by Donna Tartt.
I love this book. This is set on an American university campus, and it
centers around a group of classics students, who we learn from the beginning
are somehow responsible for the death of another student. And so we keep flashing
back to find out what happened. But a totally different kind of book that I also
wanted to throw in here is Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. So this one does have
some romance, but that's not the centre of the story. It's more about our main
character Cath and her relationship with her twin sister. They were always
really really close until they went to university, and her sister is much more
of an extrovert than she is, so suddenly they start leading these pretty
different lives. And it's also a lot about Cath's relationship with her writing,
her passion for creative writing and fanfiction. And then one more, I couldn't
help it, because all these books are so different I just wanted to mention them
all. My last one is Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. So this is
about two Nigerian university students who are forced to leave their university
because of the strikes, and so one of them ends up at an American university
and the other ends up an undocumented immigrant in London. And so the story is
only partly set on a campus, but the academic experience is quite central to
the book, so I still thought it would be relevant for your prompt. So do let me
know which of the three of those sounds most exciting to you. But now moving on
to James Simson. He asked for a book with an author
similar to Evelyn Waugh, and so I had to go for PG Wodehouse. I absolutely love PG
Wodehouse. Start with the Jeeves and Wooster series.
So this is about a ridiculously posh man called Bertie Wooster, who's a bit stupid
really, and he hires a valet called Jeeves who always has to end up saving
the day and getting Bertie out of these ridiculous scrapes he ends up in, but
also somehow manages to slightly humiliate Bertie along the way. And there
was a TV show where Jeeves and Wooster were played by Stephen Fry and Hugh
Laurie, and they were just such a fantastic comedy double act.
Steve Megan asked for a cynical piece of cult fiction that will make me question
the meaning of life. And for this I'm going to recommend A Clockwork Orange by
Anthony Burgess. So this one is set in a dystopian future with a really violent
youth culture, and our main character is a 15 year old boy who's the leader of
one of these gangs, and commits a series of really brutal crimes, until he's
arrested. And he's then forced through this treatment that's supposed to cure
him of his violent urges. And the book basically explores whether this
treatment is actually more cruel and immoral than the crimes he was
committing in the first place. So lots for you to question about life in there!
Little spark of Ronnie had lots of ingredients for the perfect novel:
diverse characters, strong female lead, LGBTQ, hurts your heart, but not fantasy.
So I'm going to recommend Under the Udala trees, by Chinelo Okparanta. I
think this book has got everything you asked for. So it's about two Nigerian
girls from different tribes, who meet during the Nigerian civil war and fall
in love. And the book then follows one of these girls Ijeoma as she grows up and
wrestles with hiding her sexuality and her relationship with her family and
with her faith. So this is a really powerful book that was written in
response to the 2014 laws that were passed in Nigeria against homosexuality,
which were some of the strictest in the world. Abitchreads wanted a summery book
written by an author of colour that focuses on a list. So this one was quite
the challenge, but I have found the perfect book, and that is A Bucket Full
of Awesome by Zainab T Khan. So this is a YA novel about a teenage girl called
Summer Wallace, who's a basketball player who's really wild, and tries to turn
every day into an adventure. But then when she's diagnosed with cancer she
comes up with this bucket list of things that she still hasn't done, and she
recruits her best friend Blake, who I am willing to bet is secretly in love with
her but I can't guarantee, to help her complete it. PaigeEmily95 wanted the
book version of Desperate Housewives, so a tight-knit community drama. So for this
I'm going to recommend The Rumour by Lesley Kara. So this is set in this small
town, lots of gossiping around the school gates,
it's very Desperate Housewives, it's very Big Little Lies, but in this book the
rumour going around is that one of the women in their community is actually in
witness protection, and previously has committed a murder. So it's partly a
mystery as we try and work out which of the women has this secret identity, but
it's also this just claustrophobic, really tense drama, as the people in the
town start to turn against the people they're suspicious of. Librocubiculorist
asks for three things. One: family drama. Two: food. And three: cosiness. So for that I'm
going to recommend A Not Quite Perfect Family by Claire Sandy. So this is about
a big eccentric family with a marriage in trouble so lots of drama. It's also
very much about food, it starts and ends with this big midsummer dinner that the
family throw in their garden, and takes us through the whole year, with each
month matching up to a different course of this dinner. So lots of drama, lots of
food, but it's also this really cosy book because of all of the hilarious
characters that pop up to support the couple through their difficult year. So
it's a really funny story but with lots of drama and lots of heart.
Courtney41 wants to read about wealthy housewives navigating turmoil in the way
only spoiled bougie females can do, and this instantly made me think of The
Favourite Sister by Jessica Knoll. Though I have to say these women aren't
housewives, they're actually cast members on this feminist reality show about
career women. But I think you'll find it has everything you're after. These women
are all so awful in their own ways. They are spoiled and competitive and selfish
and all of the things that make reality TV so compelling, but the book is also
really self-aware and feminist, and actually dives into some pretty
controversial issues. burnsreadsbooks wanted a book with dark humour and sad
bits, so I'm going to recommend The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne. So this is
about the whole life of this man. We meet him for the first time when he's still
in his mother's womb, and then check back in every seven years to see him growing
up and navigating life as a gay Irish man. So a lot of the things that happen in
his life are so sad, on paper it's just tragic, but the book is told in this
really funny way, lots and lots of dark humour. You kind of end up laughing your
way through all of these really sad things that happen in his life, it's
absolutely brilliant. Mbthe1975 wants a book about a group
of friends that go on an adventure, but not YA, and not It. So I've got two
options for you here. The first one is skirting dangerously close to the things
you said you didn't want. You said you didn't want It but you didn't say no
Stephen King, and so I'm going to recommend The Body by Stephen King which
is the book that the film Stand by Me was based on. And it's not YA but it is a
coming-of-age story about four young boys who set out to investigate the
disappearance of a boy from their town. But if you want one that's about adults
I have a horror recommendation which is The Ritual by Adam Nevill. So this is
about four old uni friends who meet up for a camping trip that goes horribly
wrong. Pretty early into their trip they stumble across this old house where they
find the remains of a pagan sacrifice, and this dark ritual that maybe hasn't
completely died out yet. Next Lianne from the YouTube channel Literary
Diversions and the Instagram account thenovelmenagerie asked for a psychological
thriller not about a romantic relationship. So I'm going to recommend
You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. I'm sorry Lianne I
can't remember if you've already read this one or not, but it's funny I
realized that Lianne was right when she said this, so many psychological
thrillers revolve around these dark romantic relationships, and this one
doesn't at all. This is about a group of friends. So it begins when our main
character witnesses a woman jumping in front of a subway train, and is obviously
really traumatized by this, but then by chance she ends up meeting some of this
woman's friends and so she gets sucked into this new friendship group and finds
her life seeming to just get better and better. So much so that she doesn't
notice her new friends have sinister motives of their own. Stranded Island
reading wants a sci-fi book by an LGBT author. So you
should read A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. So this is a political
sci-fi with loads of plot twists. It's got a female female romance and a big
cast of other queer characters. The book has really strong world-building and
dives into loads of really deep issues. So there are these AIs who carry the biases
of their human creators, and the book also dives into themes of culture and
empire. So it sounds really intriguing. I'm not even a big sci-fi fan and even I
am intrigued by this one. Thrilledreader asked for a dystopian book set in nature.
So you should read the trees by Ali Shaw. So this is a really unusual book
where one nigh,t when people are asleep, these fully formed trees just shoot up
from the ground, impaling people as they sleep, shattering houses, and then there
is silence. So in this book we follow our main character Adrian as he ventures
into this new wood to try and find out how to contact his wife Michelle. So it's
part dark fairy tale, part wilderness survival story, part apocalypse, and part
just a musing on nature, and how there is no good or bad in nature, it's just this
force without morality that will devour its weakest. And then finally I've got
room for one more. Maria_fr12 wanted a cosy classic
written by a woman other than Jane Austen, so you should definitely read
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. So this is set in this English country town in the
mid nineteenth century about two spinster sisters called Miss Mattie and
Miss Deborah. And the book is made up of a series of vignettes of country life. So
there's not a ton of plot, it's just this cosy meandering story of community life,
and always centered on the friendship and affection between these two women.
So hopefully you all now have your perfect book recommendations, do leave
comments below if you want me to scout out any more books for you. And we have a
whole playlist of videos like this if you'd like to click through and browse
them all. See you next time.