Category: Read If You Like

Books · Read If You Like

Read, If You Like… Ostrich Boys, by Keith Gray

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I could have sworn that I reviewed this way back in the day before I called it Read, If You Like, but I can’t find it so clearly it didn’t get past the idea stage. I’ve had this book lying around for ages, and although it took me a while to get to it, it was one of those that surprised me in the best way. It’s either on the children’s end of YA or on the young adult end of children’s (do we let children read the word ‘tits’? I just saw it when I was flicking through) but I think it’s one of those that, should you be emotionally mature enough for tits, you’ll enjoy it.  Anyway. I meant to blog on Saturday, but I looked up the publication date for Ostrich Boys just now and it was actually published on this exact day nine years ago. So that’s a point for my lack of organisation…

Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray (2008)

Read, if you like…

  • Groups of kids
  • Grieving kids
  • Kids who kidnap
  • Okay, one of the kids is a dead kid. Not in a ghost way, in a ‘present in our thoughts’ way
  • Day trips (as in one trip over multiple days not multiple trips)
  • Ostrich metaphors
  • The hamlet of Ross in Scotland
  • Honestly, the best thing is the kids read it for them

Ostrich Boys Keith Gray

I was going to give this away but now I think about it, I might keep it on and read it again. I think it’s one of those that you can take something from each time you pick it up. Also, it involves teenagers kidnapping an urn of human ash, so it’s worth reading just for the escapism (if you’ve ever actually kidnapped an urn of human ash, hit me up. How’d it go?). I’m rereading The Raven Cycle at the moment but I think I’ll make it on to something new next week. I’m a bit harassed with Village Green until Saturday – I have an internship to attend, hair to dye and several paper bags to stamp before then – so comfort reading is paramount. A stiff drink may be in order on Saturday night. I should probably go and stamp some paper bags. Any ideas for my to-read list?

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Books · Read If You Like

Read, If You Like… #GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso

FrancescaLeave a comment

If any of you are familiar with Sophia Amoruso, the ‘#Girlboss’ movement/Insta hashtag and/or Nasty Gal, you are probably aware that Nasty Gal is a clothing brand, originally on eBay, that enjoyed one of those meteoric rises to fame that puts its founder on the Forbes front cover and wields legions of loyal fans. Said founder, Sophia Amoruso, amid the meteorism, wrote #GIRLBOSS as a part memoir and part ‘this is how a young woman can become a financial success’ guide book. Last year Nasty Gal went bankrupt, and has since been sold to BooHoo. If I hadn’t read #GIRLBOSS before the bankruptcy, I would look at it and think ‘clearly this woman has no idea what she’s doing, why would I read that?’ But I had – it was recommended to me last year – and when I gave it another whirl a few weeks ago, I found it as inspiring and helpful as I had the first time round. Most businesses fail and most within the first five years; Sophia was at the helm of Nasty Gal for the best part of a decade, and the company is actually still going. So with all that in mind…

#GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso (2014)

Read, if you like…

  • Self help books that don’t require a PhD in Translating Corporate and/or Hippie Bullshit
  • Cute illustrations
  • No-nonsense advice. Sophia does not mince her words and the book’s underlying massage is ‘get off your bum and get to work’
  • Words of financial wisdom that don’t sound like your Careers teacher went off on a rant about Millennials buying avocados
  • A really Instagramable cover and hashtag
  • The occasional slightly annoying almost-cliche. I nearly didn’t include this as a point because I’m aware people have difference levels of tolerance for sage advice wrapped up in snappy, alliterative sentences. My tolerance is very, very low so maybe I picked up on the odd sentence here and there, but the advice itself is solid gold so who cares
  • An entrepreneur who doesn’t tear down the competition or pretend they were born with a company that had already succeeded. Other ‘girlbosses’ have passages in the book, and Sophia is very open about her past lives as a freegan and a petty thief. She started her eBay store as a way to avoid getting a proper job, so she kind of had me at hello
Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso review
That stain? I dropped the book in the sink.

Maybe this is a book too close to home for me not to recommend it. I also run an online shop, swear frequently and dislike being told what to do; I think what I like most about #GIRLBOSS is that Sophia is all of those things and she’s successful. Bankruptcy or no, she’s one of America’s richest self-made women. This isn’t a book about somebody I could never recognise in myself – it’s about somebody I recognise in a tonne of people I know, most of them young women who are usually patronised by people with Sophia’s level of money and influence. So if you’re in the market for something that might improve your bank balance, get this. From the library, obviously.

Books · Read If You Like

Read, If You Like… The Midnight Fox, by Betsy Byars

FrancescaLeave a comment

As you read this I’m probably staring at my newly-carpeted bedroom, sighing in happiness and planning the perfect way to display my MCR CDs. Operation Instagramable Bedroom will be in full swing, ladies and gents, and there will be fairy lights. Anyway, this week’s Read, If you Like… is something I’ve had on my shelf for a good decade. The cover wasn’t interesting enough to pull me in, but it’s a Puffin Modern Classic so I thought it was one I should probably read at some point to score literary brownie points. I ended up enjoying it way more than I thought I would, so well done Puffin.

The Midnight Fox, by Betsy Byars (1968)

Read, If You Like…

  • Children’s books
  • Something you can finish in an evening
  • Animal stories
  • Snapshots of Deep Southern ’60s life
  • An author who doesn’t patronise the children she writes for either linguistically or socially
  • Retrospective storytelling (there might be another term for this? The main character is looking back, like To Kill a Mockingbird which I am assuming you have read)
  • Stories about families
The Midnight Fox by Betsy Byars, 1968, Puffin Modern Classics
That white smudge is a price sticker, not a special piece of 3D illustration. The fox looks like she’s gazing at it though haha

The afterword in my edition points out that Betsy Byars has written a male main character whom small boys will ‘tolerate’ because the plot isn’t particularly packed with action; I have a good gut feeling that boys, when left to their own devices, do not give a shit, but I like the notion that Byars decided to write a male hero who doesn’t fit Ye Olde Gender Sterotypes. That could explain why the novel is a Puffin Modern Classic with its own afterword.

I’m not sure what I’ll review next week because I’ve not read anything new lately – my books have been in cupboards behind clothes and handbags and other books, and a bed covered in boxes has been in front of the cupboards, so I’ve been reading an old edition of The Economist… as fascinating as the rise of Bitcoin is, I might have to review something I’ve read loads of times, or pop down the library. Any suggestions?

Books · Read If You Like

Read, If You Like… The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams 

Francesca4 Comments

When Isobel gave me The Hitchiker’s Guide at Christmas in our newly-minted Secret Santa tradition, I thought it was because she’d heard me talk about how it was one of those books that I’d always wanted to read but hadn’t gotten around to (also on that list: War and Peace, most of Artemis Fowl, the Chilcot Report). It turns out that her university is on the cover.

That did not detract from my enjoyment of it.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (1979)

Read, if you like…

  • Disappointing cups of tea
  • Excellent narration
  • Mice
  • Space travel that’s less exciting than Han Solo in the Millenium Falcon but more exciting than actual space travel inevitably will be
  • Mentions of your home town, if your home town in Southend
  • Computers
  • The general unhappiness of council employees and/or petunias
I’m totally going to work on photos but I have 16GB memory and very little motivation to find props.

I’m also on typing on my mobile and the spelling checker on here is appalling so I am one hundred per cent sure I’ve spelt appalling wrong.

Just go read this book regardless of whether your uni’s on the cover.

Books · Read If You Like

Read, If You Like… Nimona, by Noelle Stevenson

FrancescaLeave a comment

This is the second in a series. Possibly I am onto a good thing here. It helps I can write them in ten minutes, but let’s not be picky…

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson (2015)

Read, if you like:

  • Shapeshifting
  • Heroes versus villians
  • Male characters with beautiful flowing hair
  • Female characters who don’t have beautiful flowing hair
  • Comics (this one’s a dealbreaker; it started as a webcomic)
  • The illustrations in Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl; Noelle Stevenson did those too
  • Dragons
Nimona graphic novel by Noelle Stevenson
I know I said I’d work on my #bookstagram, but there’s so little light in Southend at the moment that I dashed outside in my socks, put the book on a stone table, snapped and dashed back. It’s artfully crooked amirite

I don’t read a lot of comics, so shoutout to Ruby for giving me this a couple of Christmases ago. I’ve misplaced my library card so I’m making my way through the Shelves of Ignored Books in my room instead of just borrowing everything that sounds good (there is so much that sounds so gooooood). Be prepared for a mishmash of novels I’ve been too busy to read or novels with covers I don’t like. I started Oliver Twist this week – I managed to go 15 years in British education without ever studying Dickens, so my lazy Twitter-accustomed brain is struggling a bit – and I’m pretty sure there are some other total classics waiting to be discovered. The second Game of Thrones is a classic, yes?

Books · Read If You Like

Introducing Read, If You Like… The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins

Francesca2 Comments

Me: [sits down to write a blog that isn’t about Asia or coming home}

Me: [gets up for a jumper, looks at BuzzFeed, brews a coffee]

Me: nope, got nothing

[cont. for three weeks]

In light of my resolution to blog frequently/do interesting things/get my shit together, I’ve been brainstorming blogs I could do regularly, and so far I’ve come up with: the Six O’Clock News (again), book blogging (again), and the 50 blogs challenge I started and joked would take forever… two years ago. The problem is, the news makes me want to go back to a Cambodian island. I read very few blogs. And I can’t stand book reviews.

Whenever someone reviews a book and says they didn’t like, say, a certain character, if I read the book I also don’t like that character. If someone says they loved a plot twist and I read the novel, I feel obliged to like the twist. I’m also always on the lookout for the twist. Often the twist is shite because I knew there would be one. I do not want to inflict anything similar onto other people, so I stopped book blogging. But that’s not the attitude. After several seconds of thought, I’ve come up with a new way to review books that’s quick to read, offers none of my opinions and will let you know if this is the next book you should pick up. So sit down and enjoy the very first instalment of Read, If You Like…

The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins (2015)

Read, if you like…

  • Unreliable, unlikable narrators
  • Domestic dramas
  • The first person
  • Thrillers of any kind
  • Multiple points of view
  • Trains

I’m not being facetious on that last one. There are rather a lot of trains.

The Girl on the Train Paula Hawkins Review
My #bookstagram game needs work – I was going to add my National Rail ticket holder to the photo but I couldn’t be bothered to walk upstairs.

And there you have it. If you haven’t read The Girl on the Train, now you have a reason to if you like any of the above. Geddit? Read, if you like…?!

I’m trawling my way through my to-read shelf, but if you have any recommendations for books, do your own Read, If You Like… in the comments!