whatcathyreadnext

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too? Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

Yinka, where is your huzband? by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn (Viking)

Yinka wants to find love. The problem is she also has a mum who thinks she’s better qualified to find it for her.

She also has too many aunties who frequently pray for her delivery from singledom, a preference for chicken and chips over traditional Nigerian food, and a bum she’s sure is far too small as a result. Oh, and the fact that she’s a thirty-one-year-old South-Londoner who doesn’t believe in sex before marriage is a bit of an obstacle too…

When her cousin gets engaged, Yinka commences Operation Find A Date for Rachel’s Wedding. Will Yinka find herself a huzband? And what if the thing she really needs is to find herself?

The Woman with the Map by Jan Casey (Aria via NetGalley)

February 1941. The world is at war and Joyce Cooper is doing her bit for the effort. A proud member of the ARP, it is her job to assist the people of Notting Hill when the bombs begin to fall. But as the Blitz takes hold of London, Joyce is called upon to plot the devastation that follows in its wake. Each night she must stand before her map and mark the trail of turmoil inflicted upon the homes and businesses she knows so well.

February 1974. Decades later, from her basement flat Joyce Cooper watches the world go by above her head. This is her haven; the home she has created for herself having had so much taken from her in the war. But now the council is tearing down her block of flats and she’s being forced to leave. Could this chance to start over allow Joyce to let go of the past and step back into her life?

Recently finished

The Marsh House by Zoë Somerville (Apollo)

Latchkey Ladies by Marjorie Grant (Handheld Press)

The Night Shift by Alex Finlay (Aries Fiction)

Lean On Me by Serge Joncour, trans. by Louise Rogers Lalaurie and Jane Aitken (Gallic Books)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

China Room by Sunjeev Sahota (Harvill Secker)

Mehar, a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. She and her sisters-in-law, married to three brothers in a single ceremony, spend their days hard at work in the family’s ‘china room’, sequestered from contact with the men. When Mehar develops a theory as to which of them is hers, a passion is ignited that will put more than one life at risk.

Spiralling around Mehar’s story is that of a young man who in 1999 travels from England to the now-deserted farm, its ‘china room’ locked and barred. In enforced flight from the traumas of his adolescence – his experiences of addiction, racism, and estrangement from the culture of his birth – he spends a summer in painful contemplation and recovery, finally gathering the strength to return home.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s topic is Books On My Spring 2022 TBR. Where do I start? Okay, here are just ten with the emphasis on those I need to read for blog tours and books on the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2022. The shortlist in announced at the beginning of April so I need to get a move on…

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson – The winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2021, this is March’s pick for my book club.

Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu – Described as ‘a moving debut novel about war, migration, and the power of telling stories’ following three generations of a Chinese family on their search for a place to call home.

China Room by Sunjeev Sahota – On the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize, it combines the story of Mehar, a young bride in rural Punjab in 1929 and that of a young man who in 1999 travels there from England in enforced flight from the traumas of his adolescence.

Traitor in the Ice by K. J. Maitland – Historical crime novel set in 1607 by a favourite author of mine, the follow-up to The Drowned City.

The Magician by Colm Tóibín – Another book on the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize, it’s the story of the life of writer Thomas Mann.

Still Life by Sarah Winman – A Walter Scott Prize longlisted book, in which young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, and middle-aged art historian, Evelyn Skinner, meet in Tuscany in 1944 setting off a chain of events.

The Fall by Rachael Blok – A simple case of suspected suicide turns into an investigation into a long-buried past, involving a mental hospital, a pregnant woman, and fifty years of silence.

The Dark Flood by Deon Meyer – The eighth in the Benny Griessel series of crime novels by an author described by Wilbur Smith no less as ‘the undisputed champion of South African crime’.

The Birdcage by Eve Chase – Set on the Cornish coast, it’s the story of Kat, Flossie and Lauren, half-sisters who share a famous artist father – and a terrible secret.

Fortune by Amanda Smyth – Another book on the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize. Set in 1920s Trinidad, and based on a real-life event, it’s described as a novel about love, money, greed and ambition.