Tom's treasures of fiction, poetry, literature and more...

I am back again to bring yet another fascinating review and am keeping with the LGBTQIA+ theme. For this one I am diving into what quickly became my favourite book when I first read it - Bernadine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other  (2019). From the first page, the first sentence even, I knew there was something special about this and as I read it I could easily understand why it won the Booker prize in 2019 (alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments 2019)  I think the first thing I noticed was Evaristo's use of punctuation and capital letters because without giving too much away, she rather tends to challenge the grammatical rules with which we are familiar  with as I found on page one:     ‘to her right is the bend in the river as it heads east past Waterloo Bridge towards the dome of St Paul's’. ¹ This not only drew me in to Amma's world but also Evaristo's world as a writer. I find that her craft is such a joy because of the way she structures her words, sentenc...

 Hello again, sorry for being quiet here but I have not been doing good lately and have had to shut myself away. But fear not, I am back! I thought I would take you through some of my favourite books and whatnot regarding the LGBTQIA+ society. That includes LGBTQIA+ authors, themes such as lesbianism or queerness. I might also hunt down some LGBTQIA+ bookshops! To kickstart this run of the LGBTQIA+ theme, I have delved deep into my bookshelves to fetch out a novel of pure grief, greed and truth. For the first review of mine, I have picked Jackie Kay's melodic novel Trumpet . The reason I picked this novel is because this is different to most in the fact that Joss Moody, who the whole novel is about, is dead. Kay has written the book as if Joss is the protagonist even though he is dead. But that's just it... He is  dead and we don't  hear from/see his ghost. From Joss's wife, to his doctor, to even the vile reporter Sophie Stones, they all speak about him, relive what ha...

For my first official post I wanted to give a review of Hastings-born poet Daisy Lafarge's Life Without Air  collection. This was an interesting read for me from the moment I opened the book. Even the contents page drew me. You might ask why but whenever I pick up a new poetry pamphlet or collection for the first time, I like to examine the titles of the poems as it gives me intrigue. Life Without Air  for instance includes a poem entitled 'Axiology' and as I had never come across that word before, I was intrigued into what the poem was about. Then there is a poem entitled 'Jennifer'. I wondered who Jennifer could be - her sister? Her friend? Her lover? Also, what is her story? These I discovered when I read the poem, but don't worry I won't spoil it for you! Now 'Axiology' and 'Jennifer' are only two poems out of many. But they stand out from the others in many ways, as do they all. What Lafarge does with her poetry is she is able to careful...