134,826
edits
Changes
Book Reviews From The Bookbag (view source)
Revision as of 17:15, 27 February 2026
, Yesterday at 17:15no edit summary
There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews}}''' [[:Category:Reviews|reviews]] at TheBookbag.
Want to find out learn more [[About Us|about us]]? __NOTOC__
==The Best New Books==
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
{{Frontpage
|author=Han KangMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The VegetarianDisappearing Act|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|isbn=1804272329}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GFQ81YQK|title=How the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Children's Non-Fiction|summary=This novelBefore people came and joined the animals, winner of there was only the sky and the earth. Everything was quiet until the International Booker Prize in 2016 earth and penned by an author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature this yearsky began to tal to each other. First, the earth created bodies. And then, the sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and they belonged to both earth and sky. And so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, is as close especially how they came to unputdownable as it getsbe. It more than lives up When they grew old and died, their bodies returned to the earth and their life returned to the acclaimsky. The story introduces uncanny characters with fragileAnd that is why the earth and the sky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. And that is why people must pay attention to, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowableand care for, elusive soulsboth.|isbn=1803510056
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Jenny ValentineB0GHPMNF6P|title=Us in the Before and AfterThe Zookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews|rating=4.5|genre=TeensFantasy|summary=Elk and Mab are best friendsWhen Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the running of the family's farm zoo. He's not expecting much excitement, or more than until he receives an unidentified egg that evenhis new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a cave in New Zealand, their friendship and suddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. Then the egg hatches into neither a once in reptile nor a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on bird, but a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each otherdragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and the zoo's contact details at the part-timecafé waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of scales and joy, despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and not being able to tell anyone about it. But then chance brings this tiny little dragon may show them back together, love and connection in ways they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.|isbn=1471196585had never before imagined…
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787333175Stephanie Zabriskie|title=You Don't Have How Maasai Women Spoke to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji WaterhouseCows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders
|rating=5
|genre=Popular ScienceChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have How Maasai Women Spoke to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This Cows is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into children’s nonfiction book drawn from the workings oral traditions of the NHSMaasai elders in Ngorongoro, humour and autobiographyTanzania. ''You Don't Have The Maasai are a cattle-herding people and this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to be Mad..so.Cattle are status and wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn'' promised t tell the whole story of the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness intimate and symbiotic connection its people, and especially its women, have with their cows and for the work of a psychiatristnatural world. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but The oral tradition retelling the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered many conversations Maasai women have had with empathy and understandingtheir cows, does. |isbn=B0G9WTGY6J
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Mariana EnriquezLivi Michael|title=A Sunny Place for Shady PeopleElizabeth and Ruth|rating=3.5|genre=Short StoriesHistorical Fiction|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that ''Elizabeth and Ruth'' is disturbingly reala work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing best known for her paranormal plots on gritty realities: first novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. The ''Ruth'' from Livi Michael's title appears in her settings include an novel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter as a child and finds herself in Manchester's New Bailey Prison after a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentinadifficult and unjust hand at life. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that Set in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and interrogates the supernatural or otherworldly horror extent to which seeps into the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these spaces adopts a similarly tangible textureinjustices. |isbn=18035112301784633682
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Onyi NwabineliMakenna Goodman|title=Allow Me to Introduce MyselfHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to It could be argued that the world, thanks pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on social media, where she posted every step the brink of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals losing both his career andhis relationship, basicallyembodies this feeling. However, monetary gainGoodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. Now Anuri The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her his life back, suing her step-mother past tied to take down his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the content protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes heras ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GCB1MQ7D|title=Why My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=I have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. Anuri is battling alcoholismWith 'celebrities', there's frequently a book they might or might not have written, failing to start her PhDwhich might or might not tell the true story. It's not often that you find a book that gives the full backstory, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and receiving money from them sentences, just for doing sothe pleasure the words give. Most importantly, she ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is desperately worried about her little sisterone of those rare exceptions. It's the story of how a boy from the Midlands, who is born at the beginning of the new focus Second World War, would become a Professor of Ophelia's online empirePsychology at Dundee University. Can she save her sisterIn fact, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at he was one of the founders of the same time?|isbn=0861546873department.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=David ChadwickJeremy Cooper|title=Headload of NapalmDiscord|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary= It's September 1973 in HicksDiscord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The two protagonists of the novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, Californiaare as different as they come. Hicks Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a Mojave desert town force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a few thousand people precocious saxophonist, oozing with its nearest neighbours of LA talent and Las Vegas both a significant drive awaycharm. Not much happens in Hicks. A silver mine The two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and a defence contractor are the main local employers but otherwise, thereEvie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua treesconservative leaning. Life is quietHowever, until...something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|isbn= B0D321VJ761804272264
}}
{{Frontpage
|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
|isbn=1398527122
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Edward W Said
|title=Representations of the Intellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Edward Said's ''Representations of the Intellectual'' is less a strict theory of what intellectuals are and more a passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the comfortable image of the intellectual as a detached expert speaking only to other specialists. Instead, he insists on the intellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and unpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is inconvenient or risky.
|isbn=1804272248
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008551375|title=When Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Joan DidionNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the 'what a stupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a killer on the loose.}}{{Frontpage|author=Paul B Preciado|title=Dysphoria Mundi|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood'' Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The Year whole text is framed against the backdrop of Magical Thinkingthe Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. |isbn=1804271454}}{{Frontpage|author=Samantha Harvey|title=Orbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyGeneral Fiction|summary=This book is Joan DidionIn 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital''s heartbreaking autobiographical account , a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the grief she endured following her husband's sudden deathInternational Space Station. Books Through a narrative lens that shed mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light .|isbn=1529922933}}{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful the floor somewhere'' and necessary resource has persuaded our narrator to help people feel less aloneaccompany him. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like selfWhy not? Not much else is clear either -pity, denial but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and delusion and makes them utterly normal, lends them the train is a human face to wearsteam locomotive.|isbn=0007216858
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=02416784121035043092|title=The Proof of My InnocenceKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Jonathan CoeAnn Cleeves|rating=45|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Life after university hasnI can't worked out quite have been the way that Phyl anticipatedonly person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. SheIt's back homebeen seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with her parents Willow Reeves and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of Heathrow Airporthis former partner. All those ideas of becoming a writer seem to have come to nothing. The situation improves when Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'Uncle' Chris comes to stay and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughterbe on maternity leave, Rashida. Christopher Swann (described by some as but when the body of a lefty blogger) popular islander, Archie Stout, is investigating a think tank which originated at Cambridge University found, in the 1980saftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. It plans to push He'd been battered about the government in head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a more extreme direction and is ready to actmuseum.
}}
{{Frontpage
|titleauthor=Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?Thea Lenarduzzi|authortitle=Claire DedererThe Tower|rating=35|genre=Politics and SocietyLiterary Fiction|summary=Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a ''biography How unctuous are the fats of the audienceanother's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream'' in a deconstructed. In this compelling novel, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the old aphorism identity of separating the art from the artist in T, the context protagonist of contemporary ''cancel culture''this tale. DedererJust as T's work story is original and expressive. The reader gets being told, the impression that the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. In particularstory of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the prologue packs daughter of a punch: she simultaneously condemns and exalts wealthy family in the director Roman Polanski19th century, an artist she personally admires for his artwho died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, and yet despises for his actionscaptures T's imagination. This model of Annie''monstrous men'' as she calls them, s fate is consistent for the first few chapters, interrogating the likes of Woody Allenabove all, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picassoan enticing story to T. Her critical voice It is acutely present throughouta story which she consumes avariciously, never slipping into anonymity both in a quest for truth and maintaining her own subjectivityknowledge, as she holds it so dearlyand in service of myth, fable and a personal, rather than collective voicefantasy. |isbn=13997150701804271799
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1739526910Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Where I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen SibleyBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's lifeEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, he arrives is steeped in an unfamiliar Devon town to recoveranguish and distortion. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday homeEven a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, he dreams becomes evidence of reconnecting with everything he has love lost. But as those tentative plans falterWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, he becomes swept up in '' it is less an invitation than a local world desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of unlikely friendshipsthis plea is Xavier, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilitiesher ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.''|isbn=1804271934
}}
{{Frontpage
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)
|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.''
Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.
|isbn=1804271845
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)
|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.
|isbn=1804271977
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1399613073Olga Tokarczuk|title=Moral Injuries|author=Christie WatsonHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on ''What's the first day good of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousDay, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit House of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them theyNight''re at a drug and alcohol, somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities -fuelled party and it's going the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to end in tragedynight, however quotidian, causing chaos. We don't know who suffered But, the tragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event constant in that will impact image is the three friends. This timehouse, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it's their teenage children who are involvedis perceived.|isbn=1804271918
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=02416366041836284683|title=The Trading Game: A ConfessionBig Happy|author=Gary StevensonDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyDystopian Fiction|summary=If you were to bring up an image of Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a city banker in your mindbook, youit're unlikely s nothing like I expected it to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East Endbe, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school it takes me on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envywild ride. He also realised And that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at is just what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship happened with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.}}{{Frontpage|author=Leanne Egan|title=Lover Birds|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=When new girl, Isabel, moves to Lou's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with her, and thatThe Big Happy's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn. I don't she? Even though none want to ruin a similar experience for any of her relationships with boys you reading but I'll have gone very well so far, and sheto at least set the scene. Once that's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabeldone, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she?|isbn=000862657XI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
}}
{{Frontpage
|summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.
|isbn=0571365469
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn= 1836285493
|title=The Double Life of a Wheelchair User
|author=Rob Keeley
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= Will is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of all, he is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. This hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Max BoucheratJenny Valentine|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit Us in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, Before and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?|isbn=0008666482}}{{Frontpage|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=White NightsAfter
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Written in verseElk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, this their friendship is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at once in a mostly white schoollifetime connection. The move is initiated by RonnyThey meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don's mum who is worried for Ronnyt get each other's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of troublecontact details at the time. He listens to music constantlyBut then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has always dreamed of being a rapper. But nowhappened though, in this new schoolsomething terrible and tragic, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group andnow they must work through their grief, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetrytheir friendship, and the power of creativity and crafting your wordstogether.|isbn=02416454411471196585
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=16358668471787333175|title=The Lavender CompanionYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin VesciBenji Waterhouse|rating=4.5|genre=LifestylePopular Science|summary=It's strange, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is the book for you. Before I started reading was tempted to read ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited the author's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I donYou Don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally. (There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told Have to make a mess of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get be Mad to fold down the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I Work Here''lovedafter enjoying Adam Kay'' this s first book already.}} {{Frontpageamazonurl|isbn=B0DGDJRHYD1509858636|title=Nowhere Man|author=Deborah Stone|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=In a quiet suburban house, Patrick This is making his final plans. A meticulous manGoing to Hurt}}, he makes sure a glorious mixture of every preparation, down to insight into the last detail. Some last reflections, and then he says goodbye to his wife, workings of the worldNHS, humour and his lifeautobiography. It ''You Don's horribly sadt Have to be Mad. At work in her shop, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has done.}}{{Frontpage|author=Virginie Despentes|title=King Kong Theory|rating=4|genre=Autobiography |summary=''King Kong Theory'' is a hard-hitting memoir promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and feminist manifesto, which can be seen as the work of a call psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to arms be looking for women humour in a phallocentric society broken at its core. Originally written in French, this setting but the book laughter is directed at a collection of essays in which Virginie Despentes explores her experiences as situation rather than a woman through the complex prism of her varied life: from rape to sex work person and it is always delivered with empathy and pornography. Though these discussions are intertwined, their placement within the book can feel somewhat disjointed, a reflection of their original form as independent essaysunderstanding.|isbn=191309734X
}}