The thinking woman's beach read part 2
2 beach 2 read
I wholeheartedly recommend blowing all your wedding savings on a holiday. Holidays (unlike weddings) are relaxing, rejuvenating and you do not have to wear any make-up or get your hair done. Finally, crucially, people do not get angry with when you don’t invite them on holiday. There’s no downside.
M1 and I went to Analipsi, a small village in Crete, for a week, and we read hard. We read on the terrace with sandwiches and Radlers, in taverns over Saganaki and carafes of cheap rosé, in bed with sunburns, by the pool with the local cats, on the plane with pins and needles and salty snacks. There were a couple of things that got in the way of our reading time: we took a bus to Knossos2, a Bronze Age archeological site that used to be a major palace and city centre, and we also spent a few hours in Heraklion, but we were able to dedicate most of our time to the main event.
My reading mindset for this holiday was newness and a bit of challenge. I wrote a rom-com recently3 and due to this, I have read TWENTY-TWO romance novels this year, for research. This has been a delight, obviously, but I’m a little troped out (should I write a post on all my favourites???? because i have a lot of opinions….). So, coming into this holiday, I was looking for NOT ROMANCE and also trying to pick up things I’d been intending to read for a while but hadn’t got round to for whatever reason. I ended up reaching for a lot of funny books, in the end, and there are also two Booker prize 2025 shortlisted novels here which were NOT funny but WERE very good.
AN ASIDE - I’d like to brag that I read Flesh and The Rest of Our Lives before the short list was announced and they both made it on so I guess I have impeccable taste! Other 2025 Bookers I wanna read are Audition by Katie Kitamura (Didn’t love Intimacies but my best friend did, so I’m giving her another go), and Universality by Natasha Brown. Am I missing any bangers?
Anywayyyy - back to business. The recommendations!
Book one: Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
I’d been meaning to read this for a while, and it came highly recommended. The blurbs for this one were CRAZY, like three pages of gushing praise from everyone you’ve ever heard of and a bunch of people you haven’t. I chose this as my plane read because I wanted something fun, and I knew it was set in Ancient Greece, so I thought it would psych me up for the holiday. And… I really enjoyed it. Read it in a single (uncomfortable) sitting and found it very charming. The elevator pitch is this: Two normal lads in 400-ish BC decide to force a bunch of Athenian prisoners to stage a Euripedes play in a quarry. This was an original read, a real laugh, and a testament to the power of making things and telling stories. I thought Lennon did a good job at writing believable characters who were lovable and frustrating. Also made me want to read The Trojan Woman by Euripedes which is defo above above my pay grade.
Book two: The Idiot by Elif Batuman
This was a reread and also a banger of unbelievable and epic proportions. Funny books are a tantalising mystery to me - how do you write prose that makes the reader laugh out loud??? How do you become such a master of pace??? If you know please tell me. The elevator pitch is this: Eighteen year old Selin goes to Harvard in the nineties and attempts to understand the world through language and study. It’s one of those books where a summary tells you nothing; you have to read it yourself because the true genius is in the power of the narrative voice. Selin is singular and relentlessly entertaining. Charming, absurd, profound, silly; this is a bildungsroman campus novel for the ages. No real chapters, minimal plot, metatextual Russian stories about young women moving to Siberia to study reindeers. One of those books where everyone is mental in a very entertaining way. Miranda July blurbed it well: “It’s a novel about being young and stupid that’s both wise and clever.” I also recommend the sequel, Either/Or. More literary novels with sequels please!
Book three: The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
I read an article (and by this I mean, saw a Tik Tok), doing a sort of ‘if you liked this, try this’ guide with the 2025 Booker long list, and this book was suggested in tandem with All Fours by Miranda July, which I loved (and wrote about here). I’m pretty sure they were compared because they’re both about roadtrips… even though All Fours isn’t really about a roadtrip… and Markovits is sort of talking about the mid-life crisis in the way July is talking about perimenopause… but again, that’s quite a reach. I personally would compare The Rest of Our Lives with Everyman by Philip Roth or maybe even some parts of Commonwealth by Ann Patchett.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this. It’s just my sort of novel: quiet, compelling, mildly depressing and concerned with domestic life. I liked the conversational, almost intentionally mundane writing style, but I suspect that might be polarising for some. Don’t pick it up if you like your prose flowery. I said to M the other day that I wanted to read a novel about a man’s internal life and feelings about ageing… and this is that novel! I also enjoy novels that embed you so deeply into a narrator’s head that you find it quite difficult to tell how they’re coming across/whether they’re a prick or not. Lol. Elevator pitch: A middle-aged man drops his daughter off at uni and then goes on a spontaneous road trip while contemplating if he should leave his wife. I will say that I absolutely loved the opening stretch of this novel and was slightly disappointed when the daughter in question actually gets dropped at said university. I just love novels about families! And I don’t really care about basketball although I do find the concept of sports very moving!
Book four: The Trees by Percival Everett
Can you believe I’d never read a book by Percival Everett before??? It’s one of those things I’d been meaning to rectify for a while, and I think I picked a goodie for my first one. The Trees is a equal parts profound, angry and funny horror murder mystery revenge story which is SO COMPULSIVE that I read it in an afternoon and got sunburnt. The still, powerful moments of this novel (of which there are many), hit even harder when they’re contrasted with Everett’s flashy writing and larger than life characters. I know that’s quite a nerdy thing to say, but his work makes you want to write an essay about it. A fun essay. Elevator pitch is: Mysterious identical murders rock Money, Missisippi where mutilated white corpses keep popping up next to the same Black corpse. I know it sounds confusing but don’t let it prevent you from picking it up. One of those novels that feels like it’s own experience. Everett is so assured and confident in his writing, it made me jealous.
I’m going to read Erasure next, because I liked the film, and I’m also going to lend The Trees to my Dad, because he luvs a quipping detective duo moment.
Book five: Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
This was such an absorbing read, one of those books where the writing itself could be shite and you’d still race through it. ALTHOUGH, Younis’s writing is certainly not shite. The writing is funny, irreverent and down to earth, which is the perfect tone for this particular story. The characterisation is also really interesting, swinging between slightly satirical depictions of UN workers and a singular compulsive portrait of Sara. She was such a slippery, magnetic character, I was thrilled every time she appeared on the page. Elevator pitch: A lapsed muslim academic accepts a job in Iraq rehabilitating former ISIS wives. I literally don’t have to say anything else, you want to read it right? Honestly you probably did already read it, because it’s huge. And rightly so.
Book six: Flesh by David Szalay
Flesh is like if Sally Rooney wrote a Hemingway novel (complimentary). Prose almost brutally sparse combined with a narrator that is so opposed to introspection that it feels almost satirical and so passive it often feels like he doesn’t exist at all. Elevator pitch: The reader meets Ivan as a teenager in Hungary and follows his journey across several decades as he experiences various lifestyles. Sorry for keeping it vague, but I think it’s better to just let this novel wash over you while you read it. I’m finding it difficult to pick apart all of the reasons why I loved this book, but I read it so quickly I felt dazed afterwards and I stayed up reading it well into the small hours after coming home reasonably drunk from a Greek taverna. The two highest compliments you can give to a novel, right?
And that’s all the books I read on holiday! I’m happy to say that this time it was all winners.
Other quick mentions….. I started Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy on the plane home and girls I am loving it so far! There’s so much gossip and general Having A Laugh. I thought it was going to be tough but it is surprisingly readable. M read Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami and he loved it and kept reading me one star Goodreads review of it in an incensed voice which is the sign of a truly great novel. Earlier in the year I read The Compound by Aisling Rawle and I thought it would be a great holiday read. Think (even more) dystopian Love Island but written in a very eerie, flat prose. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley was also just delightful! Read it if you like fan-fiction about hot arctic explorers mixed with sci fi sort of thrillers.
Okay, bye! See you soon or maybe in another six months. Isn’t the mystery intriguing?
I’m sick of saying boyfriend or partner all the time so we’re being mysterious now sorry
This, and the accompanying museum in Heraklion was genuinely amazing. We couldn’t stop talking about it afterwards. I would so recommend visiting, especially if you’re a Percy Jackson girl
Currently editing it, which sux