Something I wanted to include in my blog was a weekly roundup of things that I have enjoyed. This will mainly be things I’m reading, listening to or watching. Maybe something non-bookish may slip in one day, who knows. I’d love for this to be a conversation where people can share their own recommendations too! So here’s my first Sunday Stories, named such because a) Sunday is a good day to reflect and b) alliteration.
Reading
For those of you who are writers, I enjoyed this short piece on ‘How to be creative in lockdown’. The tips come from a handful of successful authors who all have their own take. As someone who is studying Creative Writing, the fear and procrastination is real! So these sort of tips remind me that the best in the business struggle too and are learning to cope.
For normal reading, I’ve just started Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan. There’s been a flurry of interest over this book online so I’m looking forward to getting properly stuck in. As a young Irish woman, Dolan is being compared to Sally Rooney which is probably unfair (and slightly lazy). I like to read things on their own merit! You can see more about my other recent reading activity on my April Wrap Up post.
Watching
This week I came across BookBound Online Literary Festival in aid of Mind, the mental health charity. It’s a week-long online festival that has brought together a variety of authors to do readings, panels and interviews. Amazingly, all the content is free and available on YouTube (although donations are recommended). I particularly enjoyed the discussion ‘Novel(la) Ideas‘ between Professor Susan Rudy and authors Emma Glass and Margarita García Robayo. In this, they talked about writing as a job, being asked to justify their own authenticity as a women writer and how they focus on language over plots in their work.
I am generally awful with TV programmes and lose interest really quickly (Gilmore Girls being the main exception). However, I am completely obsessed with the TV adaptation of ‘Normal People’, the best-selling novel by Sally Rooney. The series does an incredible job of capturing the connection between the main characters Marianne and Connell. It’s so beautifully shot, Marianne’s wardrobe is excellent and it really hits you in the feels. Plus, if you’re like me with that short attention span, it’s only 12 episodes. You can watch it on BBC iPlayer and Hulu. Let me know if you’ve seen it so we can obsess over it together.
Listening
Finally, the last thing I’ve enjoyed this week is the podcast Banned Books and Silencing Women from Books That Matter. Somehow I’ve only recently come across Books That Matter which is a feminist book subscription. I am definitely going to sign up for their collaboration with the Women’s Prize for Fiction, which looks amazing. Anyway, this podcast is a conversation between the host Molly and author Rachel Edwards about banned books and the voices of women, and in particular women of colour, that society tried to silence. It was a really interesting and stimulating conversation, so I’m going to go through the back catalogue now!
I hope you enjoyed my first Sunday Stories post and that maybe some of these things interest you too. I’d love to know what you’ve all been doing this week, so drop me a comment below.
