IBW 2016 is happening from 18th-25th June, so get involved and do the tag if you wish!
1. What book(s) are currently in your bag?
Before We Met by Lucie Whitehouse has been my bag now for longer than I care to admit. I've just got the part where the main character, Hannah finds a thread of possible truth about her husband which might explain why he didn't return home from his business trip to New York. This was my 'post-interview' book a few months back, and it even featured when one of the interviewees asked me what I was currently reading. Despite all this, I'm still only about half way through it. As I said... not a good book year.
2. What’s the last great book you read?
As already stated a few times in this blogpost (if this were a CV or a cover letter, it would have been thrown in the dustbin by now for careless repetition), I haven't been reading much in 2016, so I just found my 'Notes' App on my iPhone where I have listed all the books I read in 2015. There were some corkers, but it's a toss up between Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (because it's impossible to deny that it isn't a great book) and The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Therialt.
3. What book have you gifted the most?
As Will from the original Vintage Books video said, I don't think there's one book that I tend to give as a gift. It very much differs from person to person. In my family we tend to put book wishlist on Amazon so that we get the ones that we're really after, so it really depends. Saying that, I've had some great ones bought for me which weren't on there. (Side note: I still haven't quite gotten used to this whole 'using the word 'gifted' as a verb' thing!).
4. What’s your favourite independent bookshop?
I'm going to cheat and pick two...
The first is the Minster Gate Bookshop in York. It's all about the setting for me; picture an old creaky building living in the shadow of York Minster with stairs that somehow keep producing rooms upon rooms of books. This bookshop is a wonderful escape from the busy streets of York. They sell new and old books on everything and even prints, pictures and old maps.
The second is Shakespeare and Company in Paris. I first visited here on a school art trip to Paris years ago and fell a little bit in love. Every square inch of this place has a book crammed into it, I'd never seen anything quite like it! It feels like a little, intimate den of possibilities. With a piano on the second floor, the occasional Parisian (or tourist) will play to you while you float through the shop with delight. When I saw this shop in the film Before Sunset, I was so excited! Ask for any books that you buy to be stamped whilst you're at the till. It's just what you have to do!
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| Shakespeare and Company featured in Before Sunset |
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| Yep, I got mine stamped! |
5. What’s been your favourite book recommended by a bookseller (or fellow Booktuber)?
I had to think about this one for a minute, but I think my favourite book recommended by a Booktuber was Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman, recommended by Just Kiss My Frog. The way Leena talks so passionately about all the books she's read just makes me want to rush out and buy every single one. I have chosen this one because for me, it was a gateway drug to everything else Caitlin Moran ever wrote. Upon finishing this book I went into a sort of mad frenzy. I was addicted; watching every interview on YouTube, reading every column in The Times and buying everything she had previously and subsequently written. Thanks Leena, thanks Caitlin Moran, I can now say with confidence that I am a feminist!
6. What’s your favourite bookshop memory?
Meeting the YA Book Prize winners in 2015 at Foyles bookshop in Charing Cross. This was one of the events I attended when I worked in publicity, and I was so lucky to spend the evening with some wonderful and insightful authors including Louise O'Neill and Sally Green! I met some fabulous people that evening, some of whom I am still in touch with now. I even wrote a blog post about it, which is available here.
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| YA Bookprize Shortlistees |
7. What do bookshops mean to you? What do you love about them?
Bookshops are a place for wonder and discovery. I love meandering around the tables at the front of Waterstones, looking at all the books that I've caught discussions on or seen in the Bookseller list. This excitement was heightened when I used to work in publicity and a number of them were ones I was working on! I love gazing in awe at the beautiful cloth-bound Penguin Classics. I love letting my eyes be drawn in by interesting covers (everyone knows that books really are judged by their cover, at least initially!). I love the feeling that you might find something that can speak to you in a way that nothing ever has before.
8. What are the books that made you? Which books have most affected or influenced you?
I know I just talked about this one but I've been thinking long and hard and I have to choose How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran. She has single-handedly identified everything that is unfair/unequal/annoying about being a woman today and even laid it out very kindly in handy chapters!
9. What book do you recommend readers gift for Father’s Day?
If I knew the answer to this, I'd be a very happy lady!
10. What book is currently at the top of your TBR pile?
Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin.
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