One form of light entertainment largely unaffected by the Great Staying Indoors Times in 2021 has been our ability to curl up with a good – or bad – book. You’ll find none of the latter here: including picks from Buzz Contributors Billie Ingram Sofokleous, Izzy Thomas, David Nobakhat, John-Paul Davies and Emily Edwards, here are the best books we poured through for the purposes of review this year, from sublime poetry collections to heartfelt true-life stories to fantastical fiction and more.
Devil In a Coma, Mark Lanegan
There is a bleak and brutal beauty to the poetry that occupies many of Devil in a Coma‘s pages: they are largely in a similar vein to Leaving California, his previously published collection of poems. This latest title is a must-have for Lanegan fans, or anyone left hungry for more of his pitch-black wit.
Read the full review here.
Price: £12. Info: here
words DAVID NOBAKHT
Can The Monster Speak?, Paul B. Preciado [trans. Frank Wynne]
Can The Monster Speak? is a dense but beautifully-worded short read, challenging both those who are dismissive of trans rights and those who can’t see beyond the binary options in transitioning from one gender role into the other, and presenting instead a radical future that encompasses the diversity of human beings.
Read the full review here.
Price: £8.99/£4.99 Ebook. Info: here
words ISABEL THOMAS
Girl One, Sara Flannery Murphy
More than a zeitgeist-riding exercise, though, Girl One adds far more to the popular canon than it takes. Parthenogenesis – an egg becoming an embryo without the need for sperm – is an inspired idea for a sci-fi that deals with the future role of women in society, and Murphy shores up the concept further by setting the action in the past (coverage of Kurt Cobain’s death landing us in 1994). It feels like a novelisation of a 1970s science experiment, and its inevitable fallout two decades later.
Read the full review here.
Price: £13.49. Info: here
words JOHN-PAUL DAVIES
Sidesplitter, Phil Wang
Comedian Phil Wang contrasts his Malaysian and British roots on Sidesplitter, touching on subjects such as family, upbringing and the source of his funny bones. These comic studies of English and Malaysian humour – taking in linguistic differences, accents, and the challenge of speaking more than one language – make for an entertaining read.
Read the full review here.
Price: £20. Info: here
words EMILY EDWARDS
No Cure For Being Human (And Other Truths I Need To Hear), Kate Bowler
In this moving book, Kate Bowler shares her experience of living with stage IV colon cancer and its profound impact on her once organised life.
No Cure For Being Human is a well-written, open and honest search for truth during some of our darkest times, and offers readers the opportunity to take stock and think, in a world where control is removed further from us and meaning and truth have never felt more poignant.
Read the full review here.
Price: £14.99. Info: here
words EMILY EDWARDS
Easy Meat, Rachel Tresize
Graphic and gruesome, brutal and banal, Easy Meat is a masterpiece ‘painted’ by a master, immersing the reader fully into the evocative sights, sounds, and smells of its chosen environs, as well as into the hearts and heads of its characters. Interestingly, the book is more overtly political than any of Trezise’s previous offerings, taking into account the global situation and placing Wales more firmly within a national and international web of political falsity and failure – rather than, as I often find in contemporary Welsh literature, alone and in isolation. Indeed, this premise forms a pivotal axis to the narrative, as we meet our primary character on the day of the Brexit vote.
Read the full review here.
Price: £9. Info: here
words MAB JONES
The Book of Katerina, Auguste Corteau [trans. Claire Papamichali]
Blurring reality and fiction, The Book Of Katerina serves as a testament to family life and imperfections. There is no artifice, or attempt to smooth out any of the issues surrounding this family. We encounter incidents involving a butchered tutu; a banana liqueur is mistaken for a harmless beverage.
Yet the hidden sadness a family embodies within itself is on full display: here, love comes with restrictions, and it feels like each moment of kindness is countered with hatred by Corteau’s other siblings. The imagination of this writer knows no bounds and I truly enjoyed reading this.
Read the full review here.
Price: £9. Info: here
words BILLIE INGRAM SOFOKLEOUS
Billy Summers, Stephen King
Billy Summers is an intriguing thriller, featuring an interesting and complicated narrator and told from the perspective of the criminal. The eponymous Billy is a former Iraq marksman turned hitman, doing one final job before retirement, and he pours his tragic life onto the page in gripping fashion from which it’s hard to turn away. He’s justified his choice of freelance employment to himself by only accepting jobs that will have him target what he considers to be bad guys… until he’s too far in to back out.
Although this novel is rooted in real life – horrors, done by hideous people and traceable to actual events – a certain kind of enchantment prevails. True crime fiction, done well, intrigues audiences as to how the mind can skew itself and act on such impulses.
Read the full review here.
Billy Summers by Stephen King is out now via Hodder & Stoughton. Price: £20. Info: here
words BILLIE INGRAM SOFOKLEOUS
Skylark, Alice O’Keefe
Skylark by Alice O’Keefe is an acutely observed, beautifully written story of lies and betrayal – one inspired by real events. The novel excellently conveys the impact of such undercover operations on all lives involved and depicts rapidly changing times in national and international environmental movements.
Skylark is a thought-provoking, well-researched and compelling saga of worlds colliding and lives that will never be the same.
Read the full review here.
Price: £16.99. Info: here
words BILLIE INGRAM SOFOKLEOUS
You’ve Got Read On You, Clark Collis
You’ve Got Red On You delves into every aspect of the making of Shaun Of The Dead – including Simon Pegg and cowriter Edgar Wright’s affinities with the zombie genre, as well as their personal relationships with friends and family which they used to flesh out the story.
They also tell the story of how they sought the acceptance of zombie movie legend George Romero before its release: one of hundreds of interesting titbits in a thoroughly compelling book.
Read the full review here.
Price: £19.99. Info: here
words CHRIS ANDREWS
I Hope This Finds You Well, Kate Baer
Erasure poetry is where a writer deducts words from an existing text to produce a completely new piece of work. Kate Baer’s poetry has been popularised on Instagram, creating beauty out of bitterness and toxicity. I Hope This Finds You Well carries on her tradition of transforming online messages into blackout poems, whether through messages she has received or from speeches, quotes or comment threads.
Kate Baer powerfully captures these moments, refusing to bow down to keyboard warriors, whilst appreciating messages of gratitude and positivity.
Read the full review here.
Price: £9.99. Info: here
words COBY BARKER
Safety In Numbers, Roger McGough
A quote from former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy proclaims Roger McGough “the patron saint of poetry,” and it’s an accolade that is in evidence in all the work supporting poets and poetry that McGough undertakes, as well as in the pages of this fine, funny, full-of-feeling collection – Safety In Numbers – which again goes to prove his endless inventiveness and creativity.
There may be ‘safety in numbers’ but McGough, as with his many books before, stands out.
Read the full review here.
Price: £9.99. Info: here
words MAB JONES
Manifesto, Bernadine Evaristo
Bernardine Evaristo’s popularity blossomed following her 2019 Booker win for Girl, Woman, Other, a vibrant yet intricate narrative weaving together the lives of a dozen (mostly Black) British womxn across several generations.
Manifesto serves as not only a beautifully written, measured companion piece to the fictionalised lives of Girl, Woman, Other, but as a testament to Evaristo’s own trailblazing commitment to creativity, education, and activism.
Read the full review here.
Price: £14.99. Info: here
words CHLOË EDWARDS