Category: Book of the Week

I think this constitutes as one of those books everyone must read at some point in their life; its continual referencing in popular culture seems to affirm such a sentiment. This satirical and quite short novel follows a group of schoolboys who become stranded on an uncharted island following a plane crash. At first, without…

Although I have yet to read The Handmaid’s Tale (despite owning it), I Who Have Never Known Men always seems to appear alongside Atwood’s dystopian gender-focused novel as a comparable work. Harpman’s relatively short novel follows a young girl who is locked up in a ‘bunker’ of sorts with thirty-nine other females, kept in place…

Just like last week, it’s another book centring on family. The Rest of Our Lives focuses on the story of a father, Tom Layward, who is staying together with his unfaithful wife until their youngest daughter turns eighteen. After that, he’s done with her. One day, while driving his daughter to Pittsburgh University, he recalls…

First of all, what an aesthetically lovely cover for this book about the tensions and strangeness of a stepdaughter and now-dead stepmother. The story follows Leah, a web editor and young mother, having to clear out her dead stepmother’s stuff back in the countryside. Yet, she discovers all sorts of oddities: sculptures made from industrial…

I’ve heard a lot about Yellowface, and considering it recently got a paperback release, I think now is the time to draw some attention to the few of you that may not have heard about it at all. The story follows June, who steals the the freshly finished manuscript of a recently dead friend and…

Do you ever say, ‘Yes, I want to the read that book’ solely because of how aesthetically pleasing its cover is? Well, that’s what Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City is for me. It seems to be an energetic novel that centres on the Korean city of Seoul, particularly its bright and lively…

Despite seeming like an interesting novel, Dizz Tates Brutes seems to have middling reception online. On average, it seems to skirt around the three-star territory, which I did not expect considering I have seen it popping up a lot on social media across the last couple of years. This novel, at its core, appears to…

Cutesy, feel-good novels aren’t something I often seek out, but I’m also not opposed to occasionally indulging in some pleasant reading material. So, novels like The Door-To-Door Bookstore don’t often appear on my reading radar. Carsten Henn’s bestseller is set in a small German town, focusing on a book delivery man called Carl and a…

I have made my love for both short stories and Japanese fiction rather obvious here on The Steady Read. So, logically, it makes sense that the The Book of Tokyo: A City in Short Fiction has been on my radar for almost two years now. Containing short stories written by nine different Japanese authors, this…

As a Brit, Orwell’s cautionary tale of a dystopian society in Nineteen Eighty-Four feels increasingly relevant to modern-day politics and living. Naturally, there’s some truth and hyperbole in that opening, but what else am I supposed to say? Almost everyone knows about George Orwell’s famous final novel, and it has been referenced and parodied a…