A new month has arrived and, once again, I have an ambitious pile of books to work my way through. Here is my June 2024 Book Preview.
Children’s Selection.
As my desire for escapism escalates, possibly something to do with upcoming elections just about everywhere on the planet, I have found myself increasingly enjoying reading the children’s books I have been sent.
I’ll be kicking off June with the culmination of the delightful Alice Eclair series. I’ve very much enjoyed these books by Sarah Todd Taylor, so I shall be sad to see the series completed. Let’s hope Alice goes out, if not with a bang, then at least a very large baked confection.
As predicted, the Wanderdays by Clare Povey slid off May’s pile into June, so I’ll be reading that as soon as possible too.
Another Usborne book published next month is Shipwrecked by Jenny Pearson. I loved her Christmas story Operation Nativity, and I’m looking forward to something set in sunnier climes. (Hopefully, it will bring the sunshine to the UK. The weather so far this year has been very wet here in the UK.) “Children stranded on an island” is a literary device that has been used before, but judging by the whimsical cover and the promise of pirates, Shipwrecked isn’t going to go all Lord of the Flies on us.
The Boy to Beat the Gods by Ashley Thorpe draws on the same mythology as one of my earlier 2024 reads, Shigidi and the Brass Head Of Obalufon, albeit with a much younger target audience in mind. I found the pantheon of Yoruba gods in Shigidi an interesting backdrop for a novel and I am looking forward to learning more about them.
My final book children’s book is one I picked up after reading a tremendous review in the UK Times. Movies Showing Nowhere promises a time-traveling journey through memories, thanks to a dusty old cinema. Shades of The Black Hole Cinema Club, perhaps? The Times reviewer described Movies Showing Nowhere as “a story about time travel in the same way that Watership Down is a story about rabbits,” an observation which piqued my curiosity so much, I couldn’t not buy the book.
Books for Grown-Ups
I didn’t manage to read Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz in May, so I definitely hope to get to that in June.
Head of Zeus has sent me a copy of Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi. The Windup Girl has been on my wish list for a long time so I jumped at the chance to read this novel set in what sounds like a fantasy version of Medici Italy. It promises intrigue, catacombs, and assassinations, as well as, the enticing prospect of a crystalline dragon’s eye.
Cursed Under London is written by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch, a contributor to, among other things, the BBC’s Horrible Histories adaptations. These may be some of the funniest TV programs ever written, so I have high hopes for this one. It’s set in an Elizabethan England and features Fang and Lazare who have both died but aren’t quite dead. They’re undead, but they’re not werewolves, vampires, or zombies. They don’t resemble any of the denizens of a newly discovered underground London.
This book looks like great fun and I can’t wait to dive in.
More serious is Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. This won the UK’s Booker Prize, but even before that, I’d identified it as a book I wanted to read. It’s set in an Ireland, ruled by a fascist government with secret police on the streets. I imagine this is a dark read, but with the far right rising across Europe, and beyond, it will undoubtedly be a timely one.
The Waterstone’s SFF Book of the Month choice for May was The Ferryman by Justin Cronin. Cronin is famous for his novel The Passage, an apocalypse, vampire/zombie virus, end-of-days type novel. We seem to be back in post-apocalypse territory again in a community called Prospera that “lies in a vast ocean: in splendid isolation from the rest of humanity, or whatever remains of it.” Looking forward to trying this one out.
Once again, the elephant in the room for my June schedule is my book club choice. We’re meeting on June 3rd, and it will inevitably lead to another book added to the pile. Not only that, there is the promise of the new Keiran Larwood book, called Dungeon Runners that comes out in June. This looks to be a Dungeons & Dragons-type crawl for younger readers and I can’t wait to check it out. I don’t have a copy yet, but fingers crossed I can pick one up before the end of the month.
Another ambitious reading month for June. Place your bets now on the books I’ll fail to read!
