TBR: Mini Loots from My Best Friend

Among my best friends, Uli is probably the only one who loves to read as much as I do—or, you know, close enough. We often share stories about books that we love and find that we also share similar interests in numerous titles. And, because of that, we often trade books. She tends to borrow books from me and I tend to borrow books from her. We stop by each other's house quite often that we can borrow a truckload at once or little by little and know we can always do it again. The other day, by pure chance, I managed to stop by Uli's house after an event, and I used that chance to borrow some of her books—it was perfect timing too, because I've just finished the previous book. Since this year I'd like to take it rather slow, I thought it was fine to only do a mini haul. Here are the books that I picked.

Moon Over Soho

by Ben Aaronovitch

Five years ago, I read this book called River of London—it was borrowed from a library. It's taken quite a long time, but I can finally continue on the series and read the sequel. It's all thanks to Uli's interest in reading the series last year. She has since, however, found problems in the series, so had donated the first book. She kept this one for me and—though I have forgotten most of what went on—I decided to try it out again. The story revolves around Peter Grant, the new addition to this police force in London—if memory serves me right—who has to face spiritual and/or mythical beings in his day-to-day. That's pretty much all I remember. Can't wait to dig in—and see if I still like it.

A Little Life

by Hanya Yanagihara

Oh gosh, this one is a big one—both physically and content-wise. As you can see from the cover, this book might actually give you a head- or heartache. Uli herself—and many other readers—has given this book major trigger warning. As far as I know, the book tells the story of this character who has depression and suicidal tendencies. According to Uli, this book is pretty...detailed in its description of what the character goes through. Also, it takes you on a roller coaster ride of emotions, just as our main character keeps on going back and forth between joy and gloom—to the point that it actually exhausts the readers. I wouldn't recommend it to people who actually do have depression—or worse.

A Brief History of Seven Killings

by Marlon James

Having seen this title being read by someone on Goodreads, I was quickly attracted to this volume on Uli's shelf as soon as I spotted it. The title itself is absolutely intriguing and the cover doesn't really uncover a lot. Now, upon reading the back of it, knowing that it's based on a real event, set in Jamaica and written by a person of colour, I am ten times as excited about reading it than ever before. It is basically based on a little-known attack back in 1976 at Bob Marley's house—wounding him, his wife and his manager. It just makes me think that there was a little shady cover-up going on around this incident—which, I guess, I need to read to find out. Can't wait!

Bloom

by Estée Lalonde

Ah, a Youtuber book. There's got to be one, right? Full disclosure: to this day I have never read a Youtuber book before—not even John Green's. No hate, no prejudice—I just haven't wanted to actually spend money on one. A few years ago, one of my favourite Youtubers (at the time), Estée Lalonde, published a book—and it turns out Uli loved her too. I was interested to find out what her book would contain, but not enough to want to buy one. So, when Uli said she bought it, I was ready to just borrow hers. This, by the way, felt like a lifetime ago somehow, because I feel like the Youtuber in question has since changed so much, that I barely recognise her now. It's nice to read her words from way back when.

Okay, yeah, as you can see on the right sidebar of this blog—if you're reading this realtime—I am currently reading some other book. Until that book is over, unfortunately, I have to put aside the books in this post. Hopefully, soon I'll be able to flip through them. Not going to lie: I'm only very excited to read 50% of the books in this pile—the rest are okay, but I don't feel like I'd be missing anything if I don't read them, somehow. I think you can tell very easily which ones go into which category. As per usual, I wasn't well prepared and was quite distracted when I was at Uli's place, so there are probably a lot of titles I wish I could have borrowed too. Well, there's always the option of going back, right?