Big History in a Small Book | Small Things Like These Book Review | Booker 2022 Shortlist

This week I will be reviewing a book from the 2022 shortlist every day! Then on the last day I will be ranking all of the longlisted and shortlisted books and providing my winner prediction! This will lead us right into the day of the announcement of the winner.

📚Review Week Schedule📚
Monday: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Tuesday: Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
Wednesday: Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
Thursday: The Trees by Percival Everett
Friday: Glory by NoViolet Bulawayu
Saturday: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
Sunday: Ranking all Longlisted Books and Winner Prediction

⌚Timestamps⌚
0:00 - Intro
1:48 - Synopsis
2:22 - Magdalene Laundries
5:54 - Morality
7:31 - Bystander Effect
9:12 - Overall Thoughts

🌠Book Wishlist🌠

🎵Music🎵

Instagram: @freshlyreadbooks
Twitter: @FreshlyBooks

[abhisekpal]

Love how you did your post-reading research and processing. Wonderful review.

[carlydonoghue]

so helpful for my Leaving Cert thank u

[SavidgeReads]

I totally agree this book could be longer. For me it’s brevity was kind of it’s downfall. I couldn’t get emotionally attached and I think the background is really lacking, I don’t need everything explained but I do need to feel invested. And I didn’t. Though I think I’m very much in the minority.

[ianp]

I really liked the book and loved the writing. I just feel that the Booker is about something more than a fairly straightforward tale of 100 pages!

[CGyog]

I love this book, & it has made me want to read everything else Claire Keegan has written. It was the ultimate show, not tell story, with a wonderful sense of time and place, and there is very little I would have changed about it.

[starstuffpuff]

This little book had such a huge emotional impact on me, I loved it!

[luatkeswick]

You might be interested in Philomena by Martin Sixsmith. It's also a film, with Judy Dench

[kseniyasbooknook]

I loved reading this little book last week and thought it had so much going for it: great writing, interesting historical background, setting, etc. But I felt like I got a book that stopped at the climax with no resolution... I really wanted to see how the main character would grow and change as a result of this choice- would he be able to stay on good terms with his family, his village, his own consciousness, with no regrets?

[thebobsphere]

Great review: have you watched the film The Magdalene Sisters (2002)?

[dylanwolf]

Have you heard Joni Mitchell's song, "The Magdelene Laundries"?

Great review of a superb novella. "off of"!? "Off of" is both wrong and extremely ugly. I know in America people say "based off" rather than "based on" and that's weird, but OK. However the preposition is just "off" not "off of"; "of" is an entirely different word with an entirely different meaning. I suspect this has evolved from Americans saying "offa". Do you ever use "from"? e.g. 'This book is taken from the Booker shortlist' or 'I took the book from the table'?