Then and Now #1 (7/18 - 7/25)

I'm realizing that finally having a summer holiday again means that my reading is majorly speeding up! Who knew that a 9-6 job in Sales that required overtime and exhausted the spirit wasn't conducive to reading... Anyway, I decided to join in on Sunday Post alongside Mailbox Monday from now on since I'm getting more reading done so it'll be nice for me to round everything up and start fresh!

The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted @ Caffeinated Reviewer. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week.  It is hosted weekly over at Mailbox Monday and every Friday they do a round-up of some of their favourite, shared reads!

Last week I got back to the Netherlands on Tuesday and spent the entire train journey reading The Jasmine Throne. I then took Toothless for his vaccinations and now he's on a diet which he seems to kind of be accepting, which is great! I also enjoyed watching the Opening Ceremony of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, especially the Pictogram segment which was just great fun!

Here's what I got up to last week:

• Review: She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan - 5/5 
• Review: The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms #1) by Tasha Suri - 5/5
• Friday Friyay: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Review: Women in the Picture by Catherine McCormack - 4/5
• Review: The Hive by Gregg Olsen - 3/5
• Review: Magma by Thóra Hjörleifsdóttir, trans. by Meg Manich - 4/5

Next week I hopefully have reviews coming up from Possession by A.S. Byatt, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten, The Wolf & the Woodsman by Ava Reid and Aftermath by Harald Jahner! 

These are the books that came in this week! The first two I bought myself, the final two came in through Netgalley.

Death in her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh (Vintage; 2021)

While on her daily walk with her dog in a secluded woods, a woman comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground by stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." But there is no dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, alone after the death of her husband, and she knows no one.

Becoming obsessed with solving this mystery, our narrator imagines who Magda was and how she met her fate. With very little to go on, she invents a list of murder suspects and possible motives for the crime. Oddly, her suppositions begin to find correspondences in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to fade into menacing certainty. As her investigation widens, strange dissonances accrue, perhaps associated with the darkness in her own past; we must face the prospect that there is either an innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one.

I have been wanting to read something by Moshfegh since I first heard about My Year of Rest & Relaxation. So when I saw this in a bookstore I decided to grab it, especially as my granddad had just given me money for books! (I am eternally grateful for my family that indulges and supports my bibliomania!)

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo, trans. Jamie Chang (Scribner, 2018)

The runaway bestseller that helped launch Korea’s new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.

In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul, Kim Jiyoung—a millennial “everywoman”—spends her days caring for her infant daughter. Her husband, however, worries over a strange symptom that has recently appeared: Jiyoung has begun to impersonate the voices of other women—dead and alive, both known and unknown to her. Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that very person.

As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, Jiyoung’s concerned husband sends her to a psychiatrist, who listens to her narrate her own life story—from her birth to a family who expected a son, to elementary school teachers who policed girls’ outfits, to male coworkers who installed hidden cameras in women’s restrooms and posted the photos online. But can her doctor cure her, or even discover what truly ails her?

Rendered in eerie prose, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 announces the arrival of a major international writer.

I read so many good and insightful reviews about this book but realized I wasn't quite ready for it yet. But when I saw it I realized that now that I have the time to properly sit with it and think about it, it is indeed time. 

The New Home by Chris Merritt (Bookouture, 9/7/2021)

Freya loves her new home on a quiet suburban street. And her beautiful neighbour Emily is everything she’s ever wanted in a best friend. Finally, she has somebody to share her secrets with over a glass of wine. But as Freya watches her new friend setting the table for dinner one evening, she sees something shocking that makes her think that Emily’s life might not be as perfect as it seems. Days later, Emily and her daughter vanish…

When you meet Emily’s husband, you will think you know what he’s hiding.

You will ask yourself whether Emily and Freya really did meet by chance.

You will think you know what happened to Emily and her little girl the night they went missing.

But when you discover the truth, it will shake you to your core and you will lie awake at night wondering if you can ever really trust the people in the house next door…

Of course I couldn't go a week without requesting a domestic thriller! I love the way the blurb is phrased as well, directly addressing the reader and their expectations.

Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages by Dan Jones (Head of Zeus; 9/2/2021)

Dan Jones's epic new history tells nothing less than the story of how the world we know today came to be built. It is a thousand-year adventure that moves from the ruins of the once-mighty city of Rome, sacked by barbarians in AD 410, to the first contacts between the old and new worlds in the sixteenth century. It shows how, from a state of crisis and collapse, the West was rebuilt and came to dominate the entire globe. The book identifies three key themes that underpinned the success of the West: commerce, conquest and Christianity.

Across 16 chapters, blending Dan Jones' trademark gripping narrative style with authoritative analysis, Powers and Thrones shows how, at each stage in this story, successive western powers thrived by attracting – or stealing – the most valuable resources, ideas and people from the rest of the world. It casts new light on iconic locations – Rome, Paris, Venice, Constantinople – and it features some of history's most famous and notorious men and women.

This is a book written about – and for – an age of profound change, and it asks the biggest questions about the West both then and now. Where did we come from? What made us? Where do we go from here?

Tis I, the girl who adores the Middle Ages. I can't wait to see what new things Dan Jones can bring to what I already know about the Middle Ages. Umberto Eco was one of the first to note we, in Europe at least, search the Middle Ages for our origins, so I'm intrigued to see how Jones picks that up!

So that was my last week and my new books! What's new for you?