Welcome to this week’s ‘Two For Tuesday’, a weekly post hosted by myself, The Reading Nook, where each week I pick a bookish topic and discuss two of my favourite (or least favourite) things about that topic! If you feel like joining in, feel free to use the above picture, and don’t forget to link back to the post so everyone can see!
Welcome to this week’s ‘Two For Tuesday’, a weekly blog post hosted by myself, The Reading Nook, where each week I pick a bookish topic and discuss two of my favourite (or least favourite) things about that topic! If you feel like joining in, feel free to use the above picture, and don’t forget to link back in the post so everyone can see!
“What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?”
‘Sixtee-year-old Starr lives in two worlds : the poor neighbourhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her best friend, Khalil, by a police officer. Now what Starr says could destroy her community. It could also get her killed.’
Welcome to this week’s Two For Tuesday’, a weekly post hosted by myself, The Reading Nook, where each Tuesday I will pick a bookish topic and discuss two of my favourite (or least favourite) things about that topic! If you feel like joining in, feel free to use the above picture, and don’t forget to link back to the post so everyone can see!
‘It is 2003, and in the sweltering heat of Singapore sixteen year olds Szu and Circe develop an intense friendship. For Szu it offers an escape from Amisa, her beautiful, cruel mother – once an actress and now the silent occupant of their rusty house. But for Circe, their friendship does the opposite, bringing her one step closer to the fascinating, unknowable Amisa.
Seventeen years later, Circe finds herself adrift and alone. And then a project comes up at work, a remake of the cult seventies horror film series ‘Ponti’, the same series that defined Amisa’s short-lived film career. Suddenly, Circe is knocked off balance : by memories of the two women she once knew, by guilt, and by a lost friendship that threatens her conscience…’
I love watching tv and movie adaptations of the books I’ve read and loved over the years. I’m always apprehensive though because they’re so often badly done. I’m always so disappointed when an adaptation isn’t faithful to the source material, and can often be heard shouting at the television in frustration, something along the lines of ‘That wasn’t in the book!!’. However, sometimes, they get it right, and this post has five of my favourite book to screen adaptations!
‘Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever!’
For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic layers within the invaluable diamond that her father guards in the Museum of Natural History. The walled city by the sea, where father and daughter take refuge when the Nazis invade Paris. And a future which draws her ever closer to Werner, a German orphan, destined to labour in the mines until a broken radio fills his life with possibility and brings him to the notice of the Hitler Youth.’ – book blurb
‘When she was a little girl, Michelle Robinson’s world was the South Side of Chicago, where she and her brother, Craig, shared a bedroom in their family’s upstairs apartment and played catch in the park, and where her parents, Fraser and Marian Robinson, raised her to be outspoken and unafraid. But life soon took her much further afield, from the halls of Princeton, where she learned for the first time what it felt like to be the only black woman in a room, to the glassy office tower where she worked as a high-powered corporate lawyer – and where, one summer morning, a law student named Barack Obama appeared in her office and upended all her carefully made plans.
Here, for the first time, Michelle Obama describes the early years of her marriage as she struggles to balance her work and family with her husband’s fast-moving political career. She takes us inside their private debate over whether he should make a run for the presidency and her subsequent role as a popular but oft-critized figure during his campaign. Narrating with grace, good humour, and uncommon candor, she provides a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of her family’s history-making launch into the global limelight as well as their life inside the White House over eight momentous years – as she comes to know her country and her country comes to know her.
Becoming takes us through modest Iowa kitchens and ballrooms at Buckingham Palace, through moments of heart-stopping grief and profound resilience, bringing us deep into the soul of a singular, groundbreaking figure in history as she strives to live authentically, marshaling her personal strength and voice in service of a set of higher ideals. In telling her story with honesty and boldness, she issues a challenge to the rest of us : Who are we and who do we want to become?’ – book blurb
I was lucky enough to receive an extra copy of Ponti by Sharlene Teo, via the very kind Alice at Pan Macmillan, so, with her permission, I’ve decided to do a little giveaway! All you have to do to enter is :
-Follow this blog
-Follow me on Twitter @TheReadingNook1
-Like and share my giveaway post over there.
Simple!
A little bit about the book
‘It is 2003, and in the sweltering heat of Singapore sixteen-year-olds Szu and Circe develop an intense friendship. For Szu it offers an escape from Amisa, her beautiful, cruel mother – once an actress and now the silent occupant of their rusty house. But for Circe, their friendship does the opposite, bringing her one step closer to the fascinating, unknowable Amisa.
Seventeen years later, Circe finds herself adrift and alone. And then a project comes up at work, a remake of the cult seventies horror film series ‘Ponti’, the same series that defined Amisa’s short-lived film career. Suddenly Circe is knocked off balance : by memories of the two women she once knew, by guilt, and by a lost friendship that threatens her conscience…’
About the author
‘Sharlene Teo was born in Singapore in 1987. She has an LLB in Law from the University of Warwick and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she received the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship and the David TK Wong Creative Writing Award. She was shortlisted for the Berlin Writing Prize and holds fellowships from the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation and the University of Iowa International Writing Program. In 2016 she won the inaugural Deborah Rogers Writer’s Award for Ponti, her first novel.’ – taken from the press release
This is an ARC of the novel, which is due to be published on the 18th of April 2019. If you’d like to be in with a chance to read this, please follow the steps above!
Good luck!
I can’t believe another month has already passed! It feels like only a few days ago that I was compiling my February wrap up. I’m quite happy with the books I read this month, I got through a good few of the books on my Goodreads list. I would have liked to add a few more to the list but oh well, there’s always April!
The Reading Nook 