This Week in Books – 08-07-26

This Week in Books is a feature hosted by Lipsy at Lipsyy Lost and Found that allows bloggers to share:

• What they’ve recently finished reading
• What they are currently reading
• What they are planning to read next

A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words.

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There was a bit of a change in plan last week as I started reading Dragonhart by Abbie Eaton, but put it aside as I just wasn’t in the mood for it. I’ll come back to it, but I read Carol by Patricia Highsmith instead.

Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a New York department store when a beautiful, alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter. Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love.

Therese is an awkward nineteen-year-old with a job she hates and a boyfriend she doesn’t love; Carol is a sophisticated, bored suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce and a custody battle for her only daughter. As Therese becomes irresistibly drawn into Carol’s world, she soon realizes how much they both stand to lose…

First published pseudonymously in 1952 as The Price of Salt, Carol is a hauntingly atmospheric love story set against the backdrop of fifties’ New York.

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I’m currently reading The Employees by Olga Ravn and translated by Martin Aitken.

On the Six-Thousand Ship, things have started to feel changed. Since bringing aboard a number of strange objects from a newly discovered planet, the crew – both human and humanoid – have begun to feel a yearning. They want to be near the objects, to feel them pressed against their skin, but they also all now feel a curious new hunger for home: Earth, that place many cannot even remember.

The Board of Directors are eager to understand more, and so instruct a commission to interview each of the employees. Those who are born dream of soil, the smell of warm asphalt, the sound of animals and birds. Those who are made know only what is programmed, and yet feel it deeply, truly. As their testimonies accumulate, a tapestry of longing and quiet rebellion emerges, blurring the lines between work and life, between human and machine.

The Employees was the breakout novel from one of the most celebrated authors in world literature, and is now seen as a masterpiece of twenty-first century literary science fiction. In stark, pristine prose, Olga Ravn forms a timeless meditation on productivity, pleasure and what the far-flung future might miss.

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My next read will probably be This Book Made Me Think of You by Libby Page.

Twelve stories. Twelve months. One chance to heal her heart…

When Tilly Nightingale receives a call telling her there’s a birthday gift from her husband waiting for her at her local bookshop, it couldn’t come as more of a shock. Partly, because she can’t remember the last time she read a book for pleasure. Mainly, because Joe died five months ago…

The gift is simple – twelve carefully chosen books from Joe, one for each month, to help her turn the page on her first year without him.

And so begins a reading-inspired journey that takes Tilly around the world; from bustling sidewalks in New York and the tree-lined avenues of Paris to the tranquil Tuscan countryside and the white sands of Bali. With the help of the bookshop owner, Alfie, Tilly starts to discover who she is now, after Joe.

But can Tilly’s year of books show her how to love again?

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And that’s my week in books! What are you reading this week? Let me know in the comments! 😎