This is, without a doubt, my best book so far of 2022 and it’s going to take some beating (not that it’s a competition). I was immediately intrigued first and foremost by the title because I love a memoir but do also often mull the boundaries inherent in writing such a piece - who is it for, what’s its function for the writer and so on. I’m also aware that Abi Morgan is a writer for stage and screen and so I was interested in how her work might translate to the stage.

Every year I do my literary round up and every year it sparks off lovely conversations - whether that be with fellow fans of similar books or those that use this list as a jumping off point for their next read. If you’re in the latter camp I’ve included some categorisation/genre information for each book which might make finding what you’re looking for a bit easier.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post I’ve found the last couple of months challenging. Oddly enough it’s this period in the pandemic when I should be imbued with optimism that I feel most helpless and overwhelmed. I mention this only to explain why I’m doing a May/June culture wrap up rather than a monthly one which is that I’ve really just not been reading much.

With fiction you’re able to seamlessly blend reality and imagination to produce some kind of truth without the reader knowing quite how much of the actual you they’ve encountered. With memoir, so we assume, everything is as close to truth as it can be.

This month was a delightful one for reading. I found myself constantly engrossed in a one book or another and ended the month with my nose still in about three different novels!

If I were writing in the before times the blog would be chock a block with theatre trips or stand-up comedy nights.

I assume I must have snapped up Anna Wilson’s A Place For Everything on Netgalley as soon as I saw that it was a memoir about her mother’s late-diagnosis of autism but I have no memory of doing so. However, when I came across it one evening recently I was absolutely hooked within the first few lines.

Everything I read in 2020!

Maus is one of those classic ‘one day I’ll read that’ books. Or two books, depending on which version you have. The downside to having a well-stocked bookshelf and a prolific book buying habit is that I’m constantly reminded of how much I haven’t read.