May's reading list

It is that I have to choose, otherwise I would take all the books in front of me on vacation. I haven't read them yet, but I selected them based on rave reviews, passages, and first sentences, as well as previous books by the author that made me very curious about their second ‘offspring’. Here we go.

1. Ahmet Altan – I will never see the world again

I read an interview with this Turkish journalist who is in prison and immediately ordered the book. Ahmet criticized Erdogan and was subsequently sentenced to life in prison. What struck me? His words: ‘I am a writer. Even if you put me between walls meters thick, my mind will keep traveling. You cannot catch me.’

2. Jayson Greene – Up there we saw the stars again

Don't read if you wish for lightness, but I was so captivated by the true story. Jayson Greene lives in Manhattan. His two-year-old daughter was sitting on a bench with her grandmother when a broken piece of stone (from a windowsill, how do you come up with it) fell on her head. The girl will never wake up again. This sentence offers hope: ‘In the elevator down, an impossible thought comes to me: it will be okay with us. We will survive this. We are now entering the unimaginable, but we will also come out of it again.’

It is about grief and loss, truly, but just as much about hope and recovery.

3. Manon Uphoff – Falling is like flying

I wanted to have it because Saskia Noort this book was written to the stars. Thomas de Veen from NRC calls it a stylistic starry sky. The back cover puts it so beautifully: ‘Falling is like flying’ is a reality-rooted novel about the ever-growing, painful past. And then the first sentence: ’Reader. I did not want to tell this story.‘

But she did it anyway.

4. Joanne Harris – The strawberry thief

Do you still remember ‘Chocolat’? Joanne Harris was the author and now wrote ‘The Strawberry Thief’. According to The Guardian: ‘A captivating novel about family, loss, and finding what was lost.’

It takes place in France where the main character runs a chocolate shop with her daughter. The daughter receives an inheritance from a surprising corner and then it begins.

Real fiction with a capital F, I prefer ‘wrapped in truth’, but if you love daydreaming, then this book will surely make you happy. And the cover begs for a terrace in France.

5. Elizabeth Gilbert – City of girls

Gilbert wrote ‘Eat, Pray, Love’. You must have read it because there have been 750,000 copies sold in the Netherlands and Belgium alone. This book is about New York in the 1940s and zooms in on the showgirls and actresses who are searching for freedom and fun.

She had me at New York, this one is going in the suitcase.