Bibi’s Beach Reads

If you’ve been keeping an eye on Browns’ content, then you might recognize Bibi Abdulkadir - perhaps from when she waxed lyrical about Louisa Ballou, or maybe by her industry-approved beauty tips. What you might not know is that Bibi is also the brains behind “Bibi’s Books”, a book club which explores diverse literature through meet-ups, book curation and more. As we get set for our summer holidays, we asked Bibi to recommend her favourite reads for beach time, bedtime and beyond… Lock away your smartphones now!

1. All The Lovers In The Night by Mieko Kawakami

Themes: Discovery, loneliness, romance

A poetic tale that follows a 34-year-old proofreader, Fuyuko Irie. Fuyuko has few friends or hobbies, and is painfully introverted and socially awkward. She makes the liberating decision to take her career freelance, leaving a toxic publishing company on the advice of her only friend (and now manager), Hijiri.

Working from home in Tokyo, she is further confined to her one-bedroom apartment, where she discovers an enchanting loneliness. Through Fuyuko’s invisible profession, we learn the delicate skills of proofreading, and her remarkable power of observation and meticulous attention to detail. However, when she turns this eye onto herself, catching her reflection in the mirror, the image is haunting.

Here is where her character begins to unfold, excessively drinking sake daily and attempting to join an educational class in the city where she meets an unassumingly charming physics teacher, Mitsutsuka. Following the development of their tentative friendship, they discuss the concept of life and death through the physics of light. All The Lovers In The Night is not solely a romance novel, but a brilliant narrative on how a woman rejects society's gendered expectations and regains control of her life.

Best for reading… In the evening light of a solo city adventure.

2. All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

Themes: Love, community, psychology, empathy

Our book club book this month, and my second time getting through this precious book. I remember the feeling that struck on the opening line; “When I was a child, it was clear to me that life was not worth living if we did not know love.” bell’s world of love has the ability to give breath to me and so many others. Love is defined as a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust - used radically as a verb.

These are the book’s essential teachings, told across 13 key chapters which encompass spirituality, community and values. A deeply personal novel, sharing some of her own tribulations on her vulnerable search for love. Her ideas are supported by philosophical and psychological theories, to accurately identify and articulate the nuances of love that often cannot be comfortably vocalised. As a Black woman and intellectual activist, hooks’ seminal All About Love is a book that everyone should read.

Best for reading… On a trip to feel nurtured and grounded

3. Ways Of Seeing by John Berger

Themes: Art, technology, history

Another essential book for the beach - or anywhere else you are in the world, if you’re looking to expand your perspective beyond the limits of the elitist Western art space. Consisting of seven essays that can be read in any order, Berger’s book crystallised a new way of seeing for me, revealing hidden meanings in visual images.

Encouraging independent thought through meditational storytelling, Ways Of Seeing, reassess narratives around the tradition of 19th Century oil paintings, modern advertisements, the female nude and the many mediums designed to imitate reality prior to photography. I like to revisit this book when travelling because it continually births a new attitude to culture that is so instrumental today.

Best for reading… Anywhere where you’d like to expand your way of seeing

4. The Island Of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Themes: History, belonging, displacement

The Island of Missing Trees is a mythical novel filled with magical realism, partly set in the golden lands of 1970s Cyprus with its “turquoise waters and lucid skies”. A deeply captivating novel, it delicately tells the tumultuous history of Cyprus via an immigrant fig tree, placed at the heart of the book.

The tale begins with Ada, born to a Greek Christian Father and Muslim Turkish mother. Young lovers in a painfully divided postcolonial Cyprus who embark on the migration to England, alongside the principle voice of the fig tree, “on board a plane, inside a suitcase made of soft black leather, never to return.”

The significance of the fig tree, born of a cutting from Cyprus symbolises the travelling stories of our ancestors; questioning what it means to be rooted and uprooted, belonging and becoming. One of my favourite quotes from the book is from the very first page: “Cartography is another name for stories told by winners. For stories told by those who have lost, there isn't one” - The Island of Missing Trees personifies the stories of the lives forever changed by displacement.

Best for reading… On a sun filled holiday where you might be able to spot a fig tree.

5. How To Wash A Heart by Bhanu Kapil

Themes: Hospitality, diaspora community, immigration

The soft pages of Bhanu Kapil’s How To Wash A Heart will wrap you up in an intimate ritual of tender poetry. A prescient and powerful collection of poems, Kapil’s collection was inspired by seeing a news snippet about a couple in California who offer accommodation in their home to a person with a precarious visa status. The story explores the beauty and misery that surface within the layered act of hospitality, the unspoken dynamics between host and guest, told in an unconventional language charged with unexpected sharp turns.

The book finds the words to give life to “the heart displaced from its context, a cavity”, and defines true hospitality as creating the conditions in which a guest can be free, whilst opening up the question of belonging (which remains unanswered). One of my favourite sequences opens: “How do you live when the link/ Between creativity/ And survival/ Can’t easily/ Be discerned?” This book is a nuanced exploration of the concept of hospitality, laced with the delicate queries of the heart. How To Wash a Heart for me is like a trusted remedy you can go back to time and time again.

Best for reading… When you need poetry as a remedy.

Words by Bibi Abdulkadir