The Next Five Books (Written by Women) that I Want to Read in 2018

If you follow me on Twitter you will know that I’ve recently made the decision to read (almost) only female-authored books for the rest of the year. The exceptions to this are a couple of Christmas books and one review copy which the author kindly sent to me all the way from Australia.

                By doing this, I hope to go some way towards rectifying the gender imbalance on the my2018 reading list – it’s unlikely I’ll achieve the goal of a 50/50 split but I want to get as close to it as possible. For those keeping count, I’d need to read about 35 pieces from women to reach the 50/50 goal.

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• This Savage Song – Victoria Schwab. I’m currently 33% of the way through this audiobook and I have to say that I am not enjoying the story anywhere near as much as I enjoyed the author’s more adult books (the Shades of Magic and Villains series).I’ll finish this one soon so keep an eye out for a review if that’s something you are interested in.

• City of Ghosts – Victoria Schwab. This is a short middle-grade novel (the audiobook only being about 5 hours long) and has received good reviews so far. I’m interested to see if my issue with This Savage Song is because it’s a non-adult Schwab book, or whether the author has just massively improved over the past few years. If City of Ghosts convinces me that the issues with the above book are down to Schwab’s development as an author, then I may at some point return to her YA series with OurDark Duet.

• The Gospel of Loki – Joanne Harris. I’ll be honest – my interest in The Gospel of Loki originated in its awesome cover design and intriguing name. Then I read the blurb and I was convinced that this is a story I will enjoy. The novel follows Loki across the rise and fall of Norse mythology from his own (first person) point of view –and that is definitely a plot I can get behind. My previous experience with the Norse gods comes from the Marvel films and Gaiman’s book from 2017, Norse Gods, which I didn’t enjoy too much due to its lack of detail. Hopefully, a more fleshed out version of events is more entertaining!

• HarryPotter and the Philosopher’s Stone – J.K. Rowling. Some of you might know this… but I have never really read the Harry Potter series. Okay, I read The Half-Blood Prince when it first came out but by that point, I had no idea what was going on and had missed the latest film release. I’m going to be listening to the Stephen Fry audio version of these stories to finally try and see why the series was (and continues to be) so popular.

• A Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula K. Le Guin. Le Guin’s name almost always pops up in discussions about the origins of fantasy, and I picked up the first four Earthsea books not too long ago. I’m not actually too sure what this one is about (apart from wizards and maybe dragons?) and I’d like to keep it that way – the story is only 160 pages long so it won’t take me long to get through it.