This week we’re discussing our autobiography buddy read, H is for Hawk.

Hannah has been for a getaway to Pembrokeshire after the dramas of the haunted cottage (see ep 3) and enjoyed a much-needed reset, complete with dolphins and seals.

Nikki, meanwhile, is off to Florida - Disney awaits! She’s been preparing by cleaning her flat to within an inch of its life, including a long-overdue rejigging of her bookcase.

Spoiler Warning: Full spoilers for plot, themes, and ending.

Trigger Warning: Discussion includes grief and depression.

H is for Hawk (Costa Book of the Year winner) follows Helen Macdonald after the sudden death of her father. In her grief, she buys and trains a goshawk, Mabel, and the book traces that process alongside her experience of mourning and emotional recovery.

We both came into this slightly hesitant about autobiography as a genre. Nikki reflects on being more drawn to other people’s personal stories outside of her own experience, while Hannah talks about expecting autobiography to be a full-life narrative, which this challenged. She was also initially drawn in by her interest in birds rather than memoir.

Key questions we kept circling:

• How authentic can an autobiography be when memory and narrative inevitably shape events?

• Does writing your life story change how you live it?

• Do we expect “truth,” and does it matter if a memoir is more constructed than we assume?

• Is this primarily Helen’s autobiography, or also a biography of Mabel?

We also reference Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert), Wild (Cheryl Strayed) and The Salt Path (Raynor Winn) in relation to wider questions about memoir, authenticity, and reader expectations.

Structure and response

The book’s structure is non-linear and at times meandering, without a conventional narrative arc. That said, the writing is consistently lyrical, with a strong sense of rhythm and quality.

Our reactions shifted while reading; from strong engagement to moments of feeling quite detached.

We both also wanted more context around Helen herself, particularly her relationship with her father. Without that, it was harder to fully grasp the depth of her grief and what came before it.

The T.H. White thread

We discuss the parallel narrative involving T.H. White, which blends biography and fictionalisation. This element divided us:

• What purpose does it serve—parallel, counterpoint, or distraction?

• Does it enhance or dilute the main narrative?

• Why might it be absent from the film adaptation?

We also reflect on the importance of having good people around you and the role relationships play in shaping emotional resilience.

Next episode

We’ll be sharing our current reads and TBR piles. Our next buddy read will be science fiction (much to Hannah’s horror), so stay tuned and do read along with us.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, and if you can rate and review the podcast, it really helps us be found - thank you!

With love, Hannah & Nikki

www.boundbybooks.co.uk

hello@boundbybooks.co.uk

Instagram: @boundbybooks2026

Hannah celebrated her birthday this week with a trip to London to visit the Samurai Exhibition at the British Museum and a wander around Covent Garden’s stationery shops. Meanwhile, Nikki has been busy assembling her miniature Book Nook model…although she still hasn’t managed to find a suitable home for her Jonathan Bailey cut-outs (!).

Upcoming Buddy Read

H is for Hawk – Helen Macdonald (Autobiography pick)

Book Blurb:

An instant international bestseller and prize-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald's story of adopting and raising a goshawk has soared into the hearts of millions of readers. Fierce and feral, her goshawk Mabel's temperament mirrors Helen's own state of grief after her father's death, and together raptor and human discover the pain and beauty of being alive.

We’ll be discussing H is for Hawk in Episode 7 (available 30th April), so why not read along with us and share your thoughts?

Book Talk

This week we dive into the great debate: e-readers versus real books. Hannah explains why she struggles to warm to e-readers, while Nikki shares why her Kindle has become a favourite.

In this episode we chat about:

• How the experience of reading on an e-reader differs from reading a physical book

• What books - and how we display and collect them - might reveal about us

• Whether men and women approach book collecting differently

• The ever-growing “to-be-read” pile: Does it matter if we buy books we never get around to reading?

• The influence of social media and book influencers on our reading habits

• When books become more than reading material - decor, identity, or even companions

• Bookshops versus the rise of digital reading

• When Kindle Direct Publishing is the only way to access work by certain writers

We’d love to hear where you stand in the e-reader vs real books debate. Join the conversation and let us know your thoughts!

Current Reading

Hannah Reads

Seed to Dust – Marc Hamer

Hannah shares why this reflective memoir has been the perfect calming read at the end of a busy day.

Nikki Reads

Nobbled at Christmas – Helen Golden (Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing)

After finishing The Lamb in Episode 5, Nikki needed a palate cleanser and this light, frothy cosy crime was just the thing.

She Speaks: What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said – Harriet Walter

Nikki has recently finished this one and loved its imaginative approach - revisiting Shakespeare through the voices and inner lives of his female characters.

The Great When – Alan Moore

Nikki initially found this novel challenging to get into, but is now fully immersed and enjoying its strange, inventive ideas and unusual style.

If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a comment. We’d love to hear your thoughts about any of the books or topics we discussed. And if you’re able to rate and review the podcast (it really helps others discover us), we’ll love you forever.

You can also get in touch by emailing hello@boundbybooks.co.uk

Or visit our website and explore further at: www.boundbybooks.co.uk

Nikki’s been stretching out her birthday celebrations with dinners in Shoreditch, new plants and plans to rejig her bookshelves. Hannah, on the other hand, started “reorganising” her cottage… then abandoned ship halfway through and headed to IKEA instead.

Book Talk

Spoiler Warning: This week we dive into The Lamb by Lucy Rose.

FULL spoilers ahead: plot, themes, and the ending are all on the table.

Trigger warning: We discuss difficult themes including child abuse, cannibalism, bullying, murder and toxic relationships.

In this episode, we’re talking about The Lamb by Lucy Rose; a novel neither of us can stop thinking about (or talking about).

Which raises the big question: does the fact that it lingers like that mean the book is actually successful? Along the way, we get into the tension between sensational moments and deeper meaning and whether the shock factor sometimes threatens to overwhelm what the novel is trying to do.

We spend some time appreciating the writing itself - especially the lush descriptions of the natural world outside the cottage - while also questioning how the book has been framed. Is it really a “folk tale” or an “enchantment,” as the blurb describes? That leads us into a conversation about the narration through Margot’s perspective, and how the author’s own experiences might shape the voice telling the story.

While we both admire the quality of the prose, we talk about how the plot doesn’t always live up to it and how certain ideas and bits of language start to repeat. We also unpack the expectations created by the promise of something folkloric and whether the story actually delivers on that, especially when it’s grounded so firmly in the real world, with all the logistical questions that brings.

We also tackle some of the novel’s darker elements: its depiction of child abuse, the striking (and slightly troublesome) brilliance of the opening line and the unsettling thread that links desire, sex and cannibalism. Then there’s Eden: what we expect from her as a character, what she might symbolise, whether she works as a counterpoint to Ruth and how she’s used to push the story and relationships forward.

In this episode we wonder whether our own lack of horror-reading experience affects how we respond to the book. And of course, we talk about that ending: the tension between reality and metaphor, the choice to kill off so many characters and whether the novel leaves us with any sense of hope…or just a lot of unanswered questions.

Other questions we consider:

• What themes or elements might cause readers to put the book down and what this says about our own limits and boundaries as readers.
• Whether the novel ultimately feels meaningful.
• Whether taking the reader into such a dark psychological place provides a satisfying payoff.
• Ruth as a character: why she might be the way she is, whether she has a sense of right or wrong and the question of nature versus nurture.
• Whether themes such as alienation, parental obsession, adolescence, independence and loneliness are explored in enough depth.
• How we might have changed the novel if we had written it ourselves.
• The publishing “war” over the novel and why it generated so much competition.

Books we reference in our discussion:

Fairy Tales – Angela Carter

Grimms Tales – Philip Pullman

Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

Tender is the Flesh – Agustina Bazterrica

Upcoming Buddy Read Genre: Autobiography. Title to be confirmed in the next episode! Read along with us!

Please leave a comment about anything we’ve discussed as we’d love to hear from you, and if we can ask you to rate and review the pod (as it helps us to be seen and found), we’ll love you forever.

With Love,

Hannah & Nikki

Website: www.boundbybooks.co.uk

Email: hello@boundbybooks.co.uk