Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, is another book I didn’t actually pick up myself, and I’m not sure I would have if I hadn’t been loaned it. Despite being part of a genre I tend to turn to, it’s not a book I’d heard of before it was being snuck into my bag.

The New Yorker read Conversations with Friends “a new kind of adultery novel”. Faber says “you can read Conversations with Friends as a romantic comedy, or you can read it as a feminist text. You can read it as a book about infidelity, about the pleasures and difficulties of intimacy, or about how our minds think about our bodies.” Personally, I read it as a coming of age for the time we actually live in.

The actual plot of the novel follows Frances a 21-year-old university student and poet who finds herself entangled in a complex ménage-à-quatre and her affair with Nick, an older married man, all whilst she tries to work out who she really is on her own.

Frances was a character I really felt a connection too, read into that what you will about my personality. Rooney’s writing does at times fall into the trap of self-indulgence which is always a threat in first person bildungsroman’s especially those written in the last couple of decades. But as a student, as someone still navigating my sense of self in relation to those around me I found the way she tested the boundaries of her personality really well written and relatable. You can tell that this a novel about being a young woman right now, written by someone who knows what it’s like.

My alternative cover design for this month’s pick

As much as Rooney’s first novel is described as “literary” (whatever that may or may not mean) and intelligent it’s never hard to read or overly pretentious in a way that’s serious. It is intelligent. It does deal with big ideas. But conversation, as you would expect from the novel’s title, flows easily and quickly and in and out of emails, messages, phone calls and asides at parties. Frances and Bobbi show off, but they show off in the way you would expect of university students and poets. There is never a hard transition into serious topics, as is often the case when authors try to shoe horn academic discussion into their prose.

So, if you’re after a side of engaging and intelligent conversation with your next bed time read this one’s as good as any you’re going to find.

SOME QUESTIONS TO PONDER AS YOU READ

• What impact do you think the location of the novel has on the story?
• Conversations is driven by women, to what extent did you think this was a distinctly female story?
• Frances has a tumultuous relationship with her body, and pain in particular, how does that impact your reading of her character? Was it something you were able to relate to? 
• How reliable a narrator is Frances?

IF YOU WANT SOME FURTHER READING TRY…

• You know I almost always kick these lists off with a Guardian review, and this month is no different
• This New Yorker review offers a really clear and insightful look at Rooney’s writing
• As someone who doesn’t know all that much about the Irish canon (although I have been reading a fair few Irish novels recently) the focus on the Irishness of Conversations with Friends in this New Statesman review was super interesting
• Succinct and easy to read this Vulture review is a great intro to the novel

IF YOU WANT MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS HAVE A LOOK AT…

• Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend
• Donal Ryan’s All We Shall Know
• Stephanie Danler’s Sweet Bitter
• Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar
• Miranda July’s The First Bad Man

I was recently gifted Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo Quest Expeditions by Sir David Attenborough because despite having spent many years watching, and loving, his documentaries, I’d never actually read any of his books. Despite initially being daunted by getting to grips with such a big hard back, I was just as delighted by reading about Attenborough’s adventures as I would have been watching them.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Sir David Attenborough is an English veteran broadcaster and naturalist.

Essentially, he’s something of a British broadcasting legend. Adventures of a Young Naturalist combines three books he wrote in the 1950s to accompany three series of the BBC program Zoo Quest, which were the first nature shows of their kind and were the beginning of Attenborough’s illustrious career. The three logbooks have been updated and abridged in places but retain their original spirit and include a number of photos from the time.

As Adventures of a Young Naturalist is a collection of other books, it follows that the three key sections are discrete and each cover a single trip. Within each section, every chapter also contains a discrete story, as if each one is a mini-episode, which means the books lend themselves well to comparison with Attenborough’s small screen programming.

It’s easy to get swept up in Attenborough’s storytelling. Each story has just the right mix of excitement and gentle humour that it keeps you engaged but always feeling safely along for the ride. I think the fact that you can genuinely hear his voice in your head as you read is both the greatest asset of the book and a real testament to his power in broadcasting. There are few voices I know so well in audible and stylistic tone.

It’s not just how the stories are told, that keeps you reading. It’s fascinating to learn more about the way nature was approached what is now half a century ago. I’ve grown up with nature documentaries and google image search at my fingertips, so I can clearly picture the majority of the animals the team set out to find in the books. But to imagine seeing many of these creatures for the first time, through the eyes of someone so passionate is thrilling. Plus, there are some real characters in the book both animal (the armadillos are some of my favourites) and human, who really make these stories feel like adventures rather than just a catalogue of exotic creatures.

I do think that if I were to read this again, or if I could go back in time and have a chat to my January self, I would recommend reading Adventures of a Young Naturalist in sections. I would even, perhaps, read something else between the different Zoo Quests. I say this, not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because I think each story loses its impact when read hurriedly – like if you try and walk around the entire Louvre in an afternoon, by the third hour all of the master pieces you’re seeing blur into one. So perhaps this would be a perfect commute companion.

If you already know and love programs like Blue Planet, or if you just have an interest in adventure, I would highly recommend picking this one up. It’s easy to pick up if a little tricky to put down.

SOME QUESTIONS TO PONDER AS YOU READ

• Do you think that a similar expedition could be done now? Why? Would anything have changed?
• Did you enjoy the episodic nature of the chapters and sections of the book?
• Who did you think stood out more within the narrative the animals or the people encountered?
• If you’ve seen any of David Attenborough’s documentaries, how did reading about his adventures compare to seeing them on the screen? What were the similarities/differences?

 IF YOU WANT SOME FURTHER READING TRY…

• As ever, I’m leading with a Guardian review. This one’s a little different to normal though, as it focuses in on some of the best images from the book
• Damian Whitworth’s review for The Times really gets to grips with the nostalgic aspects of the book
• It’s the people rather than the animals who are the stars of the show, says Patrick Galbraith, in this piece for Country Life

IF YOU WANT MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS HAVE A LOOK AT…

• Any of Attenborough’s other books
• Roger Deakin’s Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees
• Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk
  Ernest Hemmingway’s The Moveable Feast
• Alice Oswald’s Woods Etc.