I’m always really interested in those challenges that ask you to spell out certain works using book titles. It’s always fun. I never really struggle with spelling out my name because, weirdly, the letter U is pretty easy. I liked the idea of spelling out the months with books but, being the overachiever that I am, I needed to go one step further. I secretly decided that I would tailor my reading material in January so I would have one book for each letter. In my attempt to keep my intentions hidden, I didn’t read them in order. Although, I’m not actually that paranoid. It was more to do with the fact that I had already started reading an A book when I made this decision. I can’t promise I’ll do this every month because some of them of really long. Plus, I think I’ve used up one of my only Y titles and I’m meant to be buying fewer books this year. But, we’ll see how it goes.
J
Jonathan Unleashed by Meg Rosoff
Book 2 of the month.
Synopsis:
“Jonathan Trefoil’s boss is unhinged, his relationship baffling and his apartment just the wrong side of legal. His girlfriend wants to marry someone just like him – only richer and more organised with a different sense of humour. At least his two flatmates understand him – but they only speak dog.
Poor Jonathan. The world wasn’t this confusing back in the good old days before everyone expected him to act like a person. But one thing’s for sure: if he can make it in New York City, he can make it anywhere. Will he get out of advertising, meet the girl of his dreams and figure out the meaning of life?”
Read my review.
A
A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
Book 1 of the month.
Synopsis:
“For disgraced TV presenter Martin Sharp the answer’s pretty simple: he has, in his own words, ‘pissed his life away’. And on New Year’s Eve he’s going to end it all . . . but not, as it happens, alone. Because first single-mum Maureen, then eighteen-year-old Jess and lastly American rock-god JJ turn up and crash Martin’s private party. Turns out it’s hard to jump when you’ve got an audience queuing impatiently behind you.
A few heated words and slices of cold pizza later and these four strangers are suddenly allies. But is their unlikely friendship a good enough reason to carry on living?”
Read my review.
N
Nothing Can Hurt You by Nicola Maye Goldberg
Book 7 of the month.
Synopsis:
“On a cold day in 1997, student Sara Morgan was killed in the woods surrounding her liberal arts college in upstate New York. Her boyfriend, Blake Campbell, confessed, only to be acquitted following a plea of temporary insanity.
In the wake of this senseless act of violence, the case comes to haunt a strange and surprising network of community members, from the young woman who discovers Sara’s body to the junior reporter who senses its connection to convicted local serial killer John Logan.
As the years pass, others search for retribution or explanation, including Sara’s half-sister who, stifled by her family’s silence about Blake, poses as a babysitter and seeks out her own form of justice, and the teenager Sara used to babysit, who begins writing to Logan as part of a class project.”
Read my review.
U
The Unadoptables by Hana Tooke
Book 4 of the month.
Synopsis:
“Way back in the autumn of 1880, five babies are discovered at the Little Tulip Orphanage in most unusual circumstances. Those babies are Lotta, Egbert, Fenna, Sem and Milou.
The vile matron calls the children ‘the unadoptables’ but this talented gang of best friends know that their individuality is what makes them so special – and so determined to stay together.
When a sinister gentleman tries to get them in his clutches, the children make a daring escape across the frozen canals of Amsterdam, embarking on an adventure packed with pirate ships and puppets. But is their real home – and their real family – already closer than they realize?”
Read my review.
A
after the quake by Haruki Murakami
Book 3 of the month.
Synopsis:
“For the characters in after the quake, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago. Satsuki has spent thirty years hating one man: did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away. Fourteen-year-old Sala has nightmares that the Earthquake Man is trying to stuff her inside a little box. Katagiri returns home to find a giant frog in his apartment on a mission to save Tokyo from a massive burrowing worm. ‘When he gets angry, he causes earthquakes,’ says Frog. ‘And right now he is very, very angry.”
Read my review.
R
Romeo and Juliet by Billy Shakespeare
Book 10 of the month.
Synopsis: I’m not writing the synopsis for this. Everyone knows how Romeo and Juliet goes.
Blog post coming soon.
Y
Yes Please by Amy Poehler
Book 8 of the month.
Synopsis:
“In Amy Poehler’s highly anticipated memoir, Yes Please, she offers up a big juicy stew of personal stories, funny bits on sex and love and friendship and parenthood and real life advice (some useful, some not so much).
Powered by Amy’s charming and hilarious, biting yet wise voice, Yes Please is a book full of words to live by.”
Review coming soon.
Yipee ki-yay, motherbooker 
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