It is here! The longest of sixteen books which I mentioned last month (when I mentioned blowing off the cobwebs on this blog, cough – more on that below) have been whittled down to six fantastic titles which are… The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite Milkman by Anna Burns Ordinary People by Diana Evans An American Marriage by Tayari Jones Circe by Madeline Miller I have made a video talking about the shortlist below (I might have had a little prewarning, on the promise of my lips being firmly sealed until now)&n ..read more

What better excuse to blow the cobwebs off this blog than with the 2019 longlist announcement, of what is probably my very favourite prizes, the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Those of you who have been visitors of the blog for a long time (and sorry it has been the most defunct on and off book blog in the blogosphere, possibly) will know how much I love the prize and have done for many a year. I have played at guessing the longlist for yeeeeeeeears, you can see me doing this recently in a video on my channel here if you have missed it, I have also read the longlist for a few years now. I will be ..read more

So I have been an absolute tinker and let the second half of the year whizz by and get much busier than I meant to. I didn’t even post about doing Cheltenham Literature Festival last week on here which is very shameful of me. I swear I should change the blog to Savidge Apologises. Anyway, at Cheltenham I was talking about how much I have been missing blogging and how now things are winding down before Christmas (yes I mentioned the C word, sorry) I wanted to get back to it. So sat in my hotel with a bit of time to kill I thought ‘let’s make today the day’ and today is a particularly bookish da ..read more

Eleven years ago today that I first pressed publish on a blog post here on Savidge Reads and look what has gone and happened since… Okay, so I haven’t always been consistent in blogging (especially in more recent years) however what I hope has been consistent over the last decade-and-a-year (which sounds so long) is my love of books, reading and the sharing of the love of both and chatting to you all about them on various mediums. So a huge, huge, HUGE thanks to all of you who’ve followed this blog, be it way back at the beginning or those of you who have joined me on here since or on The Rea ..read more

One of my favourite books of the year so far (and if you want to see my top books and possibly win a selection of them, then head here) is without question Kate Mayfield’s debut novel The Parentations. Now I mention getting nervous about books quite a lot, like I am constantly having to smell salts in my library which is not the case, but the size (500 pages) and premise of this book (immortality) did originally give me pause for thought. Yet I was swiftly enveloped in this novel and reminded that there can be nothing more rewarding than a big chunky book with an incredible tale to tell, and t ..read more

So the Man Booker Prize 2018 longlist has been announced. It has seemed strange in the last few years that I haven’t done a ‘guessing the longlist’ post or video, as since I started Savidge Reads in any form I have always followed the prize and then the Man Booker International Prize. When I first started reading again in my twenties (after the six years where I didn’t pick up a book, imagine) the Booker was a signpost for me of some great reads that I should really head to. Over the last few years however the love has waned somewhat. I’ve felt a little like it had lost its way somewhat. I act ..read more

One of the best discoveries of my time blogging has to be the fiction of Carys Davies. I first read her short story collection The Redemption of Galen Pike, when I was judging Fiction Uncovered back in 2015 as a submission and remember pondering if we could give it all of the prize money, it was that good. Every tale defied expectation, without the need for twists in the tale, and each had an epic scope even if it was a pages long. I then read her debut collection Some New Ambush at the start of 2016 and was blown away once more. So I was very, very, very excited when I heard that she had writ ..read more

I have been wracking my brain to work out if I have ever done a post mid-year about the books I have loved so far that year? I think it is only something that I have done since Booktube, but I could be wrong. I know I have done books that I am excited in the second half of the year, but I don’t think that I have done favourite books so far. Anyway, I could debate that for hours it seems and you don’t need that in your life. What you might need, or maybe like, in your life is (as part of us catching up) is to know what my books are so far this year and, possibly even better, win some of them. H ..read more

Another book that I was hugely anticipating the arrival of this year, especially when the magpie part of my brain started seeing the gorgeous proofs going out, was Emma Healey’s Whistle in the Dark. Her second novel following Elizabeth is Missing which I absolutely adored when I read it back in 2014, so much so it was in my top three reads for that year. So no pressure for Whistle in the Dark then… Penguin Books, hardback, 2018, fiction, 336 pages, kindly sent by the publisher The sun had sunk behind the building and all the previously golden edges were now grey. The relief Jen felt at seein ..read more

So now that I am back into the world of blogging, what is the plan? The fact of the matter is that I don’t really have one. I know I want to keep it bookish, I mean obviously that isn’t even in question really – although someone did once say to me ‘why do a book blog and a book vlog’ and I think having been away from blogging for a while the answer is ‘I miss a bit of depth’. No, I don’t mean that I think all BookTube is shallow, quite the opposite I actually think it is brimming with some of the loveliest, most thoughtful and intelligent people I know. What I mean is that here I can really ge ..read more