Category: Book of the Week

  • Book of the Week #44

    Book of the Week #44

    Sally Rooney is an author who has grown on me, and is probably one of Ireland’s best standouts of the modern literary world. Her fourth novel, Intermezzo is set in Dublin and rural Ireland, following brothers Peter and Ivan Koubek. The former is the eldest and a lawyer, the latter in his twenties competing in…

  • Book of the Week #43

    Book of the Week #43

    It’s been a little while since I brought up a Japanese novel, even though that is sort of my speciality here on The Steady Read. So why not mention a novel where Japan is quite literally gone, swallowed by the sea? Scattered All Over the Earth primarily follows Hiruko, a former Japanese citizen now living…

  • Book of the Week #42

    Book of the Week #42

    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…

  • Book of the Week #41

    Book of the Week #41

    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…

  • Book of the Week #40

    Book of the Week #40

    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…

  • Book of the Week #39

    Book of the Week #39

    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…

  • Book of the Week #38

    Book of the Week #38

    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…

  • Book of the Week #37

    Book of the Week #37

    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…

  • Book of the Week #36

    Book of the Week #36

    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…

  • Book of the Week #35

    Book of the Week #35

    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…