Tuesday 29 August 2017

August Book Haul




As its Summer and as you all well know I'm a renowned self confessed book worm; I felt like it was definitely about time I went out and purchased a few new reads ready to keep me busy over the Summer and I can't wait to share with you what books are part of my August haul!

But before I get into giving you a quick run down of all my book purchases, I just want to let you know that there won't be any spoilers as obviously if you fancy reading them for yourselves, I don't want to ruin them for you. I'm also not going to be giving a massive description about the books, just a quick lil debrief of why I brought them and what I'm hoping for them to be like as I want to start writing more blog posts where I actually review books a bit like my blog post on Patti Smith's Just Kids.  So enough of the small talk and lets get this book haul rolling..



 Swing Time Zadie Smith

First one on my list of purchases has to be Swing Time by Zadie Smith. So I've heard great things about this lady and although I already own her debut novel, White Teeth( a book I have still not gotten round to reading yet oops!) I know for certain this is going to be a book that I'm going to love as its gripped me from the get go. I just had to kick off my book haul with this absolute beauty of a book, the bright yellow cover definitely drew me in and after reading the blurb I knew I would be making this my latest read. The book is described as being 'a story of finding happiness in the meanest of places and feeling sad when all around you are happy' so for me this just sounded like such a feel good summer read, I couldn't not buy it! It sounds like quite a different read from what I'm normally used to but I can't read to get my mind lost in it!


Woolgathering Patti Smith

Now if you've seen my recent post about Patti Smith's novel Just Kids(as mentioned earlier), you'll know how much I was absolutely obsessed with it. So of course after seconds of putting that book down, I had to check out her other pieces of work and I was so so happy when I stumbled across Woolgathering. The book is written in a similar style to Just Kids as it is too a memoir but instead this book captures her recollections of her childhood and earlier years whereas Just Kids recollects more of her life as a young adult and focuses mainly upon her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. I've already read the first chapter and I'm oh, so happy that her poetic tone which I fell in love with in her last book, still persists in Woolgathering as her style of writing has to be my favourite part about her work. Another fave about Patti Smith's books, is always the fact that she includes photographs from periods of her life and they just capture her words so perfectly, I bloody love her work.


East of Eden John Steinbeck

I mean how could I have a book haul without purchasing an absolute literary classic ey? I'm an absolute sucker for reading classics and I guess they're typically what I read, as I don't read genre specific books(although I do love love love thrillers) I more or so read pieces of Literature that I guess are classed as timeless and have a historical rep as I love reading them to see whether they live up to my expectations and so on. Anyway, off on a tangent as always but back to East of Eden..Now this is one of them books that I've always wanted to read but never gotten round to reading it, I guess like most of the classics on my shelves. So I finally bit the bullet and popped to Waterstones to pick myself up a copy. Although like any other teen I read Of Mice and Men when I was at school, I've never actually read any others of his works so I'm actually looking forward to checking this one out and hopefully i won't be as distraught as I was after the death of Lennie at the end of Of Mice and Men!! But after hering so many great things about this novel and about Steinbeck himself, I cannot wait to get reading this; Steinbeck has even admitted that 'There is only one book to a man' and to him it is East of Eden so I definitely have high hopes for this book.


Born to Run Bruce Springsteen

Huge Bruce Springsteen fan over here so of course this was on my shopping list, what more can I say? This has been on my want list for a very long time now but I just never got round to buying it as it was pretty pricey when it was first released and instead of buying the book I ended up buying his latest record at the time so I sadly have had to wait until I could actually justify buying it after pay day. Although I haven't read it thus far, what I absolutely love about it after flicking through the pages, is the photographs of Springsteen, they're just so amazingly well presented, I mean there are polaroid shots, scribblings of when and where they were taken; photographs of him in his youth, photographs of his gigs and his hometown and they're all just so beautiful.




Set The Boy Free Johnny Marr

Similarly to Springsteen's book, I'm a big big fan of The Smiths but I've never really paid much attention to the band members other than Morrissey. Now of course I know of Johnny Marr and the tensions between him and Morrissey but I wanted to familiar myself more with Marr himself and what he got up to after the band split up.I guess I just thought it would be a really interesting read and I mean it'll be so amazing to read about all of Marr's stories from when he was in The Smiths.



Anyway, that is all for my August book haul and I cannot wait to get reading them all!! What I have absolutely loved about not being at university, is that I can once again spend my time reading my days a way; something that I absolutely love doing! I mean I have been waiting and waiting for so so long until I have some spare time so I can finally waste my days curled up with my earphones in, listening to the likes of Springsteen, Dylan and Simone, with a perfectly placed book in hand. Bliss. So hopefully my recent purchases will give you guys some new reading inspo too!


The Clueless Blogger 

2 comments:

  1. I haven't read any of these but I always get excited for when I have new books! The feeling of them is unlike anything else xx Enjoy these reads! x Nikita

    BLOG//Jasmine Loves

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  2. Thank you so much! I'm exactly the same, I'm such a book worm its unreal!! xo

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