Honeymoon reading

I know I haven’t even gotten around to telling you about the ACTUAL honeymoon yet, but it’s worth noting that I managed to take in nearly 5 books in 11 days, which is a damn fine achievement if you ask me. Since I know y’all rely on me for fine reading material, I’m going to tell you about my three favourites.



First Comes Love, then Comes Malaria by Eve Waite-Brown


I came across this book via a blogger who does A-LOT of reading. I’ve taken up a few of her recommendations in the past and always enjoyed them, so I had a feeling this one would go down well too. It’s a memoir, a true story about Eve’s own experiences in the Peace Corps and beyond. She marries her Peace Corps recruiter, and they take off to Uganda for 3 years, where she must adapt to life in the middle of nowhere. The book is both hilarious and poignant, and I sped through it really quickly. For some reason I have a thing about books set in Africa (a continent I’d love to visit one day), so this really appealed to me.



Finny by Justin Kramon


This is Kramon’s first novel, which definitely makes me keen to see where he’ll go from here. Chronicling 20 years, it follows Finny from misfit teenager to steadfast woman. That’s pretty much the basis of the book, which doesn’t sound too interesting on the whole, but I’m sure you’ll love Finny as much as I did. Her whole life she’s been in love with the same boy, which forms the centre of the storyline. But there’s a whole cast of other people who make recurring appearances in Finny’s life, and you find yourself really wanting to know what happens to them all. For a fairly slim volume, it covers a lot of life’s major lessons – love, disappointment, death – but for some reason it all seems very fresh and snappy in this book. The dialogue is great, but it’s definitely the characters that make this book a winner.





The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli



This is a chunkster, but all I can say is WOW. Set during the Vietnam war, this book completely and utterly immerses you in Vietnam during that time period. It is SO evocative and beautifully written, which means you really do begin to think and feel like the characters do. Central to the novel is Helen, a photographer, who becomes obsessed with both the war and her lover, fellow photographer Sam. And then there’s Linh, Sam’s Vietnamese assistant, to whom she feels a strange pull. The three of them push the boundaries to get THE shot, that one, cover image that will tell the whole story of a wasteful war. While Helen and Sam become consumed by the war, almost addicted to it, Linh’s dark past means he only wants to escape it. Honestly, I loved this book, that’s all I can say. Probably one of my best of the year so far.