Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.

Scream by Tama Janowitz

Why I have it: Janowitz is hailed as one of the literary ‘Brat Pack’, alongside Mark Lindquist, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jay McInerney. So basically, I’m curious.

Summary: Janowitz recalls the quirky literary world of young downtown New York in the go-go 1980s and reflects on her life today far away from the city.

I’m thinking: Maybe.

The Undercurrents by Kirsty Bell

Why I have it: Spotted Kirsty Bell in the Edinburgh Book Festival program, and the premise of the book immediately appealed.

Summary: A combination of biography, memoir, and cultural criticism told from a precise vantage point: a stately nineteenth-century house on Berlin’s Landwehr canal, a site at the centre of great historical changes, but also smaller domestic ones.

I’m thinking: Yes, yes, yes.

Get Her Off the Pitch! by Lynne Truss

Why I have it: Have enjoyed Truss’s writing in the past.

Summary: Truss spent four years as an unlikely sports writer for The Times. It was a job that took her round the world (via the most difficult journeys and least glamorous hotels) and introduced her to some of the greatest living sportsmen (and a lot of obstructive men with clipboards).

I’m thinking: Maybe.