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{{Frontpage
|author=Sally RooneyMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=IntermezzoThe Disappearing Act|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard Despite her anonymisation of life place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is something unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be a grandmaster guest speaker at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping Detoured by erratic train schedules and so brilliantly frustratingnudged by forces beyond her control, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feeljourney slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Among the many relationships woven into Swept up in this storyseries of events, the central one M eventually offers to step in for readers to unravel is a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubekshow. Ivan, The train functions as a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Petermotif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancerretreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trialsnovel form itself.|isbn=05713654691804272329
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1009473085B0GFQ81YQK|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver How the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made Sky and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established formatEarth Made People: a series of experts from various fields review From the state Oral Stories of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.}}{{FrontpageMalagasy Elders|author=Mark Lingane|title=ChimeraStephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=Science Children's Non-Fiction|summary=''The survivor stumbles forwardBefore people came and joined the animals, her steps echoing in there was only the sky and the oppressive silence. Her heart pounds like a jackhammer. She doesn’t know where she’s heading. All she remembers is running. Terror chasingearth. Everything lost.'' ''Broken was quiet until the earth and fragmented recollections tumble around her headthe sky began to tal to each other. Fear courses through her bodyFirst, the earth created bodies. Her breaths come in shallowAnd then, ragged gasps as desperation claws at her throatthe sky breathed life into them. Dehydration consumes her, These were the first humans and they belonged to both earth and a raging thirst feels unquenchablesky.'' ''There must And so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, especially how they came to be a way out. As she moves through When they grew old and died, their bodies returned to the foreign area, memories begin earth and their life returned to gelthe sky. Disaster had ploughed through her life—not just hers, everyone’sAnd that is why the earth and the sky are both revered.'' As our survivor struggles to orient herself, she's guided by a robot, which looks Only together can they create human-made, but she can't be surebeings. It says it And that is. It says she why people must try not to injure herself. Guided to an interview with an eerie, terrifying group of aliens, she desperately tries pay attention to make sense of flashes of memory - environmental degradation, deals done and then betrayed, horrifying rituals covering desperate attempts to survive - and to attempt to explain how she came to be herecare for, apparently the last human being aliveboth.|isbn=B0DNVWMYP2
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|authorisbn=Max BoucheratB0GHPMNF6P|title=The Last Life of Lori MillsZookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersFantasy|summary=We meet Lori on When Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the first evening sherunning of the family's farm zoo. He's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at worknot expecting much excitement, just until he receives an avidly ruleunidentified egg that his new-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled age stoner uncle Edgar found in a blanket fort, she has one main intentioncave in New Zealand, and that suddenly life is to log on to Voxminer, no longer quite what it seems. Then the world-buildingegg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, critter-collecting game that is but a hit in Loridragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and the zoo's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that part-time café waitress Pearl have to raise this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her ownlittle bundle of scales and joy, despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be not being able to enter shows signs of tamperingtell anyone about it. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, But this tiny little dragon may show them love and her safe place connection in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?|isbn=0008666482ways they had never before imagined…
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|author=Fyodor DostoyevskyStephanie Zabriskie|title=White NightsHow Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008385068|title=The Midnight Feast|author=Lucy Foley|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=ItChildren's midsummer on the Dorset coast and guests gather at The Manor. It's their opening weekend and splendid celebrations are promised. It's all headed up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor was her ancestral home and she's converted it into an impressive retreat for the wealthy and famous. Her husband, Owen, was the architect and work is still ongoing on parts of the site. The heat is oppressive and amongst the guests are enemies as well as friends. Old scores are going to be settled and it won't be long before a body is found.}}{{Frontpage|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Non-Fiction |summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged How Maasai Women Spoke to Hella, who Cows is travelling a children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of Maasai elders in SpainNgorongoro, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himselfTanzania. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.'|isbn=0141186356}}{{Frontpage|author=Ashley HicksonThe Maasai are a cattle-Lovence|title=Wild East|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=Written in verse, herding people and this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white school. The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and be so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of trouble. He listens to music constantly, Cattle are status and has always dreamed of being a rapper. But now, wealth in Maasai culture but this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part doesn't tell the whole story of a poetry writing workshop group the intimate andsymbiotic connection its people, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetryespecially its women, have with their cows and for the natural world. The oral tradition retelling the power of creativity and crafting your wordsmany conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, does.|isbn=0241645441B0G9WTGY6J
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|isbnauthor=1635866847Livi Michael|title=The Lavender Companion|author=Jessica Dunham Elizabeth and Terry Barlin VesciRuth|rating=43.5|genre=LifestyleHistorical Fiction|summary=It's strange, the things that make you 'Elizabeth and Ruth'immediately'' feel that this is a work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the book Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for youher first novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. Before I started reading The ''The Lavender CompanionRuth'', I visited the authorfrom Livi Michael's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] title appears in her novel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and therefinds herself in Manchester's New Bailey Prison after a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes difficult and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerallyunjust hand at life. (There's a recipe Set in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the book Victorian working poor and I was told to make a mess of it. Notes in interrogates the margins are sanctioned. You get extent to fold down which the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I ''loved'' this book alreadywealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=1784633682
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|author=Han KangMakenna Goodman|title=The VegetarianHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=This novelIt could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, winner a disgraced professor on the brink of the International Booker Prize in 2016 losing both his career and penned by an author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature his relationship, embodies this yearfeeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is as close to unputdownable as it getsindirect yet intimate. It more than lives up As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to the acclaimhis potential fresh start. The story introduces uncanny characters with fragilerealtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowablebeyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, elusive soulsHelen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=18035100561804272205
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|authorisbn=Jenny ValentineB0GCB1MQ7D|title=Us in the Before and AfterWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy
|rating=5
|genre=TeensAutobiography|summary=Elk and Mab are best friendsI have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. With 'celebrities', there's frequently a book they might or might not have written, which might or more than might not tell the true story. It's not often that you find a book that evengives the full backstory, their friendship and rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is a once in a lifetime connectionso perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the pleasure the words give. They meet as children ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each otherof those rare exceptions. It's contact details the story of how a boy from the Midlands, born at the time. But then chance brings them back togetherbeginning of the Second World War, and they are inseparablewould become a Professor of Psychology at Dundee University. Something has happened thoughIn fact, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, togetherhe was one of the founders of the department.|isbn=1471196585
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|isbnauthor=1787333175Jeremy Cooper|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji WaterhouseDiscord|rating=3.5|genre=Popular ScienceLiterary Fiction|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, Discord: a glorious mixture lack of insight into the workings agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the NHSnovel, humour and autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered as with empathy and understanding. }}{{Frontpage|author=Mariana Enriquez|title=A Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full most instances of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishapdiscord, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentinais easily located. The circumstances two protagonists of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture. |isbn=1803511230}}{{Frontpage|author=Onyi Nwabineli|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the worldnovel, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals Rebekah Rosen andEvie Bennet, basically, monetary gainare as different as they come. Now Anuri Rebekah is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to get her life backretirement, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri while Evie is battling alcoholisma force of nature, failing to start her PhDbounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online oozing with talent and receiving money from them for doing socharm. Most importantlyThe two, she is desperately worried about her little sisterpredictably, who is the new focus of Opheliadon's online empire. Can she save her sistert always see eye to eye, their approaches different and perhaps herself and her relationship Evie's progressive views at odds with her father at the same time?|isbn=0861546873}}{{Frontpage|author=David Chadwick|title=Headload of Napalm|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary= ItRebekah's September 1973 in Hicksconservative leaning. However, California. Hicks is something connects them beyond just their musical project: a Mojave desert town sort of a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours of LA and Las Vegas both a significant drive away. Not much happens in Hicks. A silver mine and a defence contractor are fragile alliance formed within the main local employers but otherwise, there's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until...clamour.|isbn= B0D321VJ761804272264
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|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
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|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
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|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=The Year of Magical ThinkingDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=This book ''It is Joan Didionnever too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood's heartbreaking autobiographical account ' 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 grief she endured following her husbandnew 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''s sudden death. Books The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that shed light which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful and necessary resource 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 help people feel less alone''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pity|isbn=1804271454}}{{Frontpage|author=Samantha Harvey|title=Orbital|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In 2024, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normalSamantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', lends them a human face compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to wearsee our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=00072168581529922933}}{{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 the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.
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|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.
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|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
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|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
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|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.
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|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
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|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
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|author=Olga Tokarczuk|title=House of Day, House of Night|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=13996130731836284683|title=Moral InjuriesThe Big Happy|author=Christie WatsonDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersDystopian Fiction|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for Well! This is a quarter of murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousbook, which is a bonus when you aim it's nothing like I expected it to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist , and it takes me on a trauma doctorwild ride. Anjali And that is the free spirit of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them theyjust what happened with ''The Big Happy're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going to end in tragedy. We I don't know who suffered the tragedy or want to ruin a similar experience for any of you reading but I'll have to at least set the consequencesscene. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event Once that will impact the three friends. This time, it's their teenage children who are involveddone, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
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|isbnauthor=0241636604Sally Rooney|title=The Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary StevensonIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyGeneral Fiction |summary=If you were to bring up an image Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a city banker in your mindgrandmaster 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, you're unlikely the central one for readers to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces unravel is the pin-stripe suit fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his background 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 the East Enda keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of all, where he was familiar with violenceis an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, poverty and injusticeone at which he excels. There was no posh public school on This hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his CV - but mum that he had been to the London School spends a couple of Economicsafternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright }}{{Frontpage|isbn=1009473085|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=5|genre=Politics and he has Society|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a facility with numbers book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which most of us can only envywill deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. He also realised If that most rich people expect poor people to 's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be stupidbettered for those tumultuous years. It was his ability at what was, essentially, 's a card game which got him compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an internship with Citibankentirely different beast. Eventually, It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this turned into permanent employment as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a traderseries of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.
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|author=Leanne EganJenny Valentine|title=Lover BirdsUs in the Before and After|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=When new girlElk and Mab are best friends, Isabelor more than that even, moves to Loutheir friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabelt get each other's disdain for everything around hercontact details at the time. A misunderstanding between them leaves But then chance brings them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with herback together, and that's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn't she? Even they are inseparable. Something has happened though none of her relationships with boys have gone very well so far, something terrible and she's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabeltragic, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is funnow they must work through their grief, and she definitely just hates Isabeltheir friendship, doesn't she?together.|isbn=000862657X1471196585
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0DGDJRHYD1787333175|title=Nowhere ManYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Deborah StoneBenji Waterhouse|rating=45|genre=General FictionPopular Science|summary=In a quiet suburban house, Patrick I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=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 '' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in her shop, his wife Diana this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing always delivered with empathy and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has doneunderstanding.
}}
