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.
Kind of Magic by Anna Spargo-Ryan
Why I have it: I enjoy her writing (whether it’s tweet, articles or books).
Summary: Anna has always had too many feelings. Or not enough feelings – she’s never been quite sure. From anxious child to terrified parent, mental illness has been a constant. But between therapists’ rooms and emergency departments, there’s been a feeling even harder to explain – optimism.
I’m thinking: Yes.
The Uninnocent by Katherine Blake
Why I have it: spotted on the Best of 2023 lists.
Summary: One morning in 2010, Blake’s sixteen-year-old cousin walked to a nearby bike path with a boxcutter, and killed a young boy he didn’t know. It was a psychological break that tore through his brain. He was sentenced to die at one of America’s most notorious prisons. Blake, a law student at the time, wrestles with the broken machinations of the justice system, a system she was training to join.
I’m thinking: Yes.
Desire by Jessie Cole
Why I have it: I loved her first memoir, Staying.
Summary: Cole is in her late thirties when she meets a man twenty years older than she is. They become lovers. Both passionate and companionable, fraught and uneven, their relationship tests her fears and anxieties.
I’m thinking: Yes.
I’m tempted by Kind of Magic, I hope you read and review it soon. I enjoy being inside a bit of Spargo-Ryan’s life every day on Twitter.
She finds that balance between humour and raw honesty. I usually wait until the end of the year to choose which of the samples I buy (unless I obtain them via other means first!) but that system is always disrupted by the Stella Prize and my (hopeless) attempts to predict the list, so I am likely to read it soonish.