June reads

1. Telling the story of one summer in which protagonist Ben's girlfriend moves to New York from their home in the Bay Area, suggesting they "take a break," and he flits from one unsatisfactory encounter to another, Shortcomings was beautifully drawn but my gosh, Ben was an unlikeable character!  Which, based on the title of the graphic novel, was obviously kind of the point but didn't necessarily make for an enjoyable read.

2. Having never heard of Ariel Schrag before, I stumbled upon her collected high school comics, Awkward & Definition, in Hay-On-Wye and was drawn to her chaotic style.  Very obviously written and drawn by a teenager (which is no bad thing), the comics took me back to being 15, with all the friendship drama and music obsession that it involved.  I'll definitely be hunting for the follow-up volume, Potential.

3. Embroideries is a short graphic novel by the same author as the wonderful and highly-acclaimed Persepolis.  Billed as an 'Iranian Sex & The City', it surprisingly lived up to that claim.  Based around a series of intimate chats between women at the author's grandmother's house, it was witty and wonderfully drawn in a simple woodcut style.

4. Two Boys Kissing is the latest novel by acclaimed YA author David Levithan and consists of three interwoven stories following seven young gay men as two of them  - Craig and Harry - attempt to break the world record for the longest kiss.  Narrated by a Greek chorus of men who died of AIDS, a touch I at first found affected but quickly came to enjoy, it's a well constructed and very moving portrayal of what it means to be young, queer, weird, unhappy, in love, out of love, or all of the above.

5. I love crime novels, and I love Harry Potter, so I'm surprised it's taken me this long to read the first in J.K.Rowling's detective series, The Cuckoo's Calling (published under the name Robert Galbraith).  I did like it - the main character, Cormoran Strike, is convincingly well-rounded (even if his name is rather contrived) and it's well plotted - but in common with some of the later Potter novels it's vastly over-long and there are some weird attitudes to race in it that bothered me.

6. The Vacationers was recommended to me on Twitter after I asked for something fun and easy to read in the vein of Where'd You Go Bernadette.  The thing I most enjoyed about The Vacationers was the stunning way in which Straub evokes the Mallorcan countryside; it made me want to get on a plane to Spain right this second.  It's hard, though, to ever sympathise too deeply with the cast of characters - the Post's, whose marriage is in crisis, their adult children Sylvia and Bobby, his girlfriend Carmen, and Franny Post's oldest friend Charles and his husband - who flit from one fairly predictable crisis to another.  It really was fun and easy to read, I just could have done with a bit more depth.

7. I absolutely loved Paul Mason's Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere, an account of the uprisings, protests, revolutions and occupations that marked 2010-2011.  The book is at it's best when he's on the ground, talking to activists in Greece or Egypt or London as riots occur around him, but he also sets the unrest into a political and historical context.  As viewed from 2014, however, where austerity continues to bite but most seem content to just put up with it, it seems rather depressing that nothing more came of the Arab Spring, summer riots or autumn Occupations.

8. An Utterly Exasperated History Of Modern Britain was peppered with amusing and weird facts.  I didn't enjoy it quite as much as John O'Farrell's first history book - once he reached the 1980s and Thatcher it became pretty depressing, in fact - but it was still a very funny and enjoyable guide to modern British history.

9. When I heard that Harper Collins had contracted a number of my favourite authors to write updated versions of Jane Austen's novels, I was tentatively excited.  Sadly, on the basis of Northanger Abbey, my excitement was misplaced.  I love Val McDermid's crime novels but in trying to recreate the breathy satire of Austen's earliest novel, she falls flat.  Her Cat Morland is a one-dimensional creation, unconvincingly obsessed with vampires and Facebook and talking like a stereotype of a teenager, rather than a real one.  I couldn't even finish the book, and approach the next one on my list - Sense & Sensibility re-told by Joanna Trollope - with trepidation.

10. The List is completely and utterly not my usual kind of book but, after seeing Siobhan's recommendation and then finding it was something like 98p on Kindle, I decided to take a chance.  Following 32 year-old single woman Phoebe over the course of a year, as she goes through a list of challenges to improve her sex life, its resolutely trashy but nevertheless a quick, funny and sexy read.  I hated the ending though!

11. Finally, a re-read.  I first reviewed Mutton last summer, you can read what I thought here.