Matthew reads, I guess...

This is a bit of an odd one for me. So, my plan has been to make a post on the concept of a blind date with a book, and in that involves getting two blind dates with books, one from a physical bookstore, and one online. This post, about Chocolat by Joanne Harris, revolves around the blind date with a book that I got from a physical bookstore. The blurb says that in the small French village of Lansquenet, nothing much has changed in a hundred years. Then an exotic stranger, Vianne Rocher, blows in on the changing win with her small daughter, and opens a chocolate boutique directly opposite the church. Soon the villagers cannot keep away, for Vianne can divine their most hidden desires. But it’s the beginning of Lent, the season of abstinence, and Father Reynaud denounces her as a serious moral danger to his flock. Perhaps even a witch… I got the twentieth anniversary version of this book, and this version has a foreword where they talk about the book, and in that they mentioned how the ...

Let’s all say this together: I got this book from Gay’s the Word in London simply after seeing the vibrant cover and the pretty splayed edges to the pages. I’m very easily pleased, and I absolutely do judge a book by its cover. Well, I don’t judge it by its cover, but a nice cover inspires me to physically pick it off the shelf. I also read the entire thing on two train journeys lol. The blurb says that in Sai Gon, Lan is always trying to be the perfect daughter, dependable and willing to care for her widowed mother and their bánh mì stall. Her secret passion, however, is A Bánh Mì for Two, the food blog she started with her father, but has stopped updating since his passing. Vietnamese-American Vivi has never been to Vietnam. Her parents rarely even talk about the homeland that clearly haunts them. Now a college freshman, Vivi has secretly chosen Vietnam for her first semester study abroad program. She’s hungry for the truth about why her parents left – and for everything she’s seen o...

So I picked this book up in Gay’s the Word (who is shocked?) because the cover looked fun. That was it. Well, no. I picked it up physically because of the fun cover, I bought it after reading the blurb and thinking it sounded wild. Miss blurbarina and the diamonds says that all his life, Sir Cameron has stayed as far away from danger as possible. He is quite frankly too handsome to die a pointless death in battle. But then the Church hands down a prophecy to his fellow knights: the only way to defeat their nemesis, the mad sorcerer Merulo, is to kill Sir Cameron. Short of ideas, Cameron throws himself on the mercy of the one person who now actually wants him to survive: the mad sorcerer. Merulo isn’t thrilled to be babysitting a spoilt, attention-seeking knight, but transmogrifying him into a vulture is at least entertaining. Cameron, meanwhile, is on a voyage of self-discovery. It turns out he’s really, really into surly sorcerers who lock him up and tell him what to do. Who knew? A...

Fun fact! I’ve met Erik J Brown. That is relevant, since I’m talking about Better The Devil by the aforementioned Brown. But I got to meet him when he was doing an event in London at, I believe, The Common Press Bookshop, which is a queer bookshop. I’d very much recommend giving it a visit if you find yourself in London. I will say, I tend to go to Gay’s the Word more, but that’s just because of ease of location. But Brown was doing an event for his second novel, The Only Light Left Burning , and I think I was going to be in London for a gig or something, and the event was the night before, so I decided to go to London a day earlier so I could go. The blurb says desperate to escape a family who will never accept him, a queer runaway in police custody borrow the identity of a boy who vanished years ago: Nate Beaumont. But when Nate’s family come to take their son home, he’s trapped in a web of lies. Then he meets Miles – the cite, clever and true-crime-obsessed boy-next-door – who know...