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[[Category:Autobiography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Autobiography]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove --> <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Esterly0241636604|title=The Lost CarvingTrading Game: A Journey to the Heart of Making|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Bouncing between his studio in upstate New York and the sites of various English sojourns, woodcarver David Esterly's seems to be an idyllic existence. Yet it's not all cosy cottages in the snow and watching geese and coyotes when he looks up from his workbench. There is an element of hard-won retreat from the trials of life in this memoir, but at the same time there is an argument for the essential difficulty of the artist's life. 'Carvers are starvers,' a wizened English carver once told him. Certainly there is no great fortune to be won from a profession as obscure as limewood carving, but the rewards outweigh the hard graft for Esterly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649191</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewConfession|author=Edzard Ernst|title=A Scientist in Wonderland: A Memoir of Searching for Truth and Finding TroubleGary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Professor Edzard Ernst was born If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in Germany not long after your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the end of World War II pin-stripe suit and grew up with guilt about what had happened in his background is the years before East End, where he was born as well as an insatiable curiosity - familiar with the two not being entirely entirely unconnectedviolence, poverty and injustice. He also developed an attitude of speaking There was no posh public school on his mind CV - as an early challenge but he had been to his step-father about the death of six million Jews in the course London School of the war provedEconomics. In his teens he wasn't determined to become a doctor Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he had has a hankering facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be a musician - despite the fact that it stupid. It was his ability at what was the family business, so to speakessentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, but came round to the idea and practiced in various countries before settling in Exeter this turned into permanent employment as Professor of Complementary Medicine at the universitya trader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845407776</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alan Kennedy1529395224|title=Oscar & LucyLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=With Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the film about Alan Turing, strain that being on-call put on his father''The Imitation Game'' getting rave reviews and award nominations right, left and centre, s life. When he was seventeen he took the sterling opportunity of doing work done by experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the Bletchley Park cryptographers during WWII is quite high in our mindsjob for him. Before long, he was at Liverpool University. But Enigma wasn It hadn't the only code broken and Turing wasn- as with so many students - been his dream since he was a child. If anything, he't the only one doing secret but heroic workd wanted to be a professional footballer. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>095646968X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andy MillerEdel Rodriguez|title=The Year of Reading DangerouslyWorm: How Fifty Great Books Saved My LifeA Cuban American Odyssey
|rating=4
|genre=BiographyGraphic Novels|summary=Andy Miller We're in childhood, and his wife both worked we're in Cuba. The revolution has happened, and they had Castro, first thought of as a three-year-old son. Despite saviour of the fact that Miller was an editor for country, has proven himself a London publisher he felt that he'd 'lost' reading from his life. He seemed Communist, and not done nearly enough to acquire create a lot of books, but making time level playing field for reading them was an entirely different matterall. With the help Well, those hours-long speeches of his were kind of taking his wife he developed a time away. Our narrator'list of betterments family weren' - initially a limited number t in the happiest of great books which places here, an uncle refusing to be the good soldier the country demanded (especially as he determined would probably be shipped off to read but eventually it became fifty great books some minor pro-Communism skirmish, such as Angola) and the father being watched and watched, and two not so greatliked for his successful photography business, which he was going success being frowned upon. The mother gets the couple jobs with the party to master over ease some of the heat, but in this sultry island country, it remains the space kind of a year. He was re-integrating books into everyday life.heat forcing you out of the kitchen…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00QJV7OAI</amazonuk>1474616720
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane Hawking1035025299|title=Travelling Went to Infinity: The True Story Behind the Theory of Everything|rating=3.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Travelling to Infinity maps the tapestry of a rich and complex life.  Jane HawkingLondon, Took the first wife of acclaimed scientist Stephen Hawking, reveals the inner-workings of their life together. Reflecting on the meteoric rise of her husband alongside his physical deterioration, she charts the path of their marriage and family throughout the highs and lows of their circumstance. As asserted by the author herself this story could indeed belong to any English family of the era. What sets this one apart, however, is the fame and publicity of one family member, the widely celebrated, Stephen Hawking.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846883660</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDog|author=Paul Forkan and Rob Forkan|title=Tsunami Kids: Our journey from survival to success Nina Stibbe
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=On Boxing Day 2004, when many of us were celebrating the Christmas holidays with our families, eating leftover turkey, reading books and enjoying time with loved ones, Nina Stibbe is returning to London for a huge tragedy was unfolding on the other side of the worldsabbatical after being away for twenty years. The Boxing Day Tsunami killed over 230,000 people, and caused widespread devastation She's been at Victoria's smallholding in Leicestershire which isn't all that conducive to large parts of Sri Lankawriting, Thailand, India, the Maldives and Somaliaas there's always something smallholding happening - as you might expect. The Forkan family - Mum, Dad, and four other side of their children, were in Sri Lanka, the decision was sealed when a spur of the moment choice room became available (courtesy of destination that ultimately proved to be tragic. The parents, Kevin and Sandra, were killed in the flood. The children, orphaned, injured and without any possessions, traveled the 200 kilometres back to Deborah Moggach) at a city, where they contacted elder siblings and were swiftly flown back to the UKvery reasonable rent.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782433570</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen MacdonaldChristopher Fowler|title=H is for HawkWord Monkey
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=When I saw Helen Macdonald speak at a nature conference, she recounted a conversation with a Samuel Johnson Prize judge. S/he had remarked that MacdonaldIt's was three books the first of August in one: a memoir the middle of grief after her father's unexpected death, a biography cool wet summer in East Anglia. I decided not to swim at the pool in favour of Tgoing to my beach hut. H. White The weather closed in, rain arrived, and an account of falconry experiments with Mabel the goshawkI decided not to do that either. Macdonald quipped that the description made her When I finished reading this book sound like washing powder, but I realised it's accurate nonetheless, was because (a) I wanted to finish reading this book and explains why the book won the Samuel Johnson Prize (b) I did not want to do so anywhere near my shack. No spoiler alerts, the dust jacket tells us who Christopher Fowler 'was' – and his first memoir chapter tells us about his terminal diagnosis. There is something very strange about being made to do so) laugh by a man who repeatedly reminds you that he is dying, and you know he actually is shortlisted for the Costa Biography awardat that point, because he does. He did.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224097008</amazonuk>0857529625
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dylan Thomas and Peter BaileyKit De Waal|title=A Child’s Christmas in WalesWithout Warning and Only Sometimes|rating=4.5|genre=Children's Non-FictionAutobiography|summary=Christmas time growing As Philip Larkin so eloquently put it, “They f*** you up , your mum and dad/ They may not mean to, but they do” Without Warning and Only Sometimes by Kit De Waal focuses on this idea of parenthood and the bonds that bind family. This book is a memoir focussing on the author’s formative years as a teenager living in a Welsh seaside town was magical lower class area of Birmingham. Her father is from St. Kitts in the Caribbean and her mother is an Irish woman ostracized by her family for Dylan Thomasbecoming pregnant by and marrying a black man. This intersectionality plays a large role in the autobiography. Kit De Waal faces multiple hurdles due to her race, always snowy her class and full of adventureher gender. From attempting to extinguish house fires Her parents loom large and are written with snowballs to hippo footprints in care, love, and the snow his childhood in the snow was kind of anger only a time of wonder and pure joychild can express to their parents.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444013467</amazonuk>1472284852
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Henry Marsh1638485216|title=Do No HarmBlack, White, and Gray All Over: Stories of A Black Man's Odyssey in Life, Death and Brain SurgeryLaw Enforcement|author=Frederick Reynolds
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=We've all heard the phrase 'it's Corruption is not brain surgery' but what is it really like to operate on someone's brain in the frightening knowledge that a small slip, a slight error can have the most devastating consequences for the patientdepartment, with death probably not being the worst? Henry Marsh is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and Consultant Neurosurgeon at Atkinson Morley/St George'sgender or race specific. If anyone knows what it's like then Henry Marsh is the man It has everything to tell youdo with character. Period.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178022592X</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Jennifer Klinec|title=The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran|rating=3''One more body just wouldn't matter''.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Jennifer Klinec is the daughter of Hungarian immigrant parents who ran an automotive factory in southwest Ontario. She learned early on to be self-sufficient, even enrolling herself in boarding schools in Switzerland and Dublin. After graduation she moved to London, made a pile as an investment banker, and opened her own cookery school. At age 31, though, she decided to travel to the Iranian city of Yazd to learn Persian dishes. She met Vahid, 25, a military veteran with an engineering background, in a park and he introduced her to his mother for cooking lessons.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844088235</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Marion Coutts|title=The Iceberg: A Memoir|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary='Something has happened. A piece murder of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old black man, on 25 May 2020 by Derek Chauvin, a forty-four-year-old police officer, in the US city of newsMinneapolis sent shock waves around the world. We have had rarely see pictures of a diagnosis that has the status of murder taking place but Floyd's death was an eventexception. The news makes a rupture with what went before.' With these plain, unsentimental words Coutts begins her devastating yet mysteriously gorgeous account image of her husband Tom LubbockChauvin kneeling on George's decline neck is not one which I'll ever forget and death from the protests which followed cannot have been unexpected. There was a brain tumour. Shortlisted for backlash against the Costa Biography award police - and longlisted for the not just in Minneapolis: whatever their colour or creed they were ''Guardianall'' First Book Award, it was also a finalist for tarred by the Samuel Johnson PrizeChauvin brush.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782393501</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Wendy CopeBjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, Caroline Bankeler, Navid Modiiri and Agnes Bromme (Translator)|title=Life, Love and the ArchersI May Be Wrong
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography|summary=As a ruleWhen the Dalai Lama adds his words to your frontispiece, poetry does not appeal I'm inclined to me - at school think it was something to be learned and recited, regardless doesn't really matter how the rest of merit or meaning and I came the world responds to dread those lessons - but there are two exceptionsyour book. I love John Dryden's ''Absalom and Achitophel'' for its irreverence - and Wendy Copeknow, because she speaks to me having read the book in words I can understand about matters which concern mequestion, that Lindeblad would disagree with that thought. He knows (and at core so do I discovered her when my daughter gave me a copy ) that it matters very much how the rest of {{amazonurl|isbn=0571167055|title=Serious Concerns}} and her humorous poems tempted me the world responds to read some of this book, because it tells the more serious content. I was smitten. Over the years I've followed with interest what she has had to say about such matters truth as copyright and the chance to review ''Lifeit is, Love and in the Archers'' was far too tempting to missearly 21st century.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444795368</amazonuk>1526644827
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=gareth_steel|title=A Tour of Bones: Facing Fear and Looking for LifeNever Work With Animals|author=Denise IngeGareth Steel|rating=54|genre=AutobiographyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=American-born Dr Denise Inge was an expert on seventeenth-century mystic poet Thomas Traherne, mother I don't often begin my reviews with a warning but with ''Never Work With Animals'' it seems to two daughtersbe appropriate. Stories of a vet's life have proved popular since ''All Creatures Great and Small'' but ''Never Work With Animals'' is definitely not the companion volume you've been looking for. As a TV show the author would argue that ''All Creatures'' lacked realism, as do other similar programmes. Gareth Steel says that the book is not suitable for younger readers and wife to an Anglican clergyman- after reading - I agree with him. Her husbandHe says that he's appointment as Bishop of Worcester saw them move to a townhouse adjacent written it to Worcester Cathedral – inform and attached to a charnel houseprovoke thought, particularly amongst aspiring vets. Whatever to do It deals with a basement full of bones? An even more pressing question was what to do with her fear of the death they representedsome uncomfortable and distressing issues but it doesn't lack sensitivity, especially although there are occasions when Inge was diagnosed with inoperable sarcoma late in the writing processyou would be best choosing between reading and eating.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472913078</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to her Son John Julius Norwich 1939-1952Dave Letterfly Knoderer|authortitle=Diana CooperSpeedy: Hurled Through Havoc
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Though she is perhaps little remembered these days except as How to summarise the mother life of Dave Letterfly Knodererv in a pithy sentence to kick off a review of writer his memoir? Do you know, I really don't think I can.  Dave is an author and historian John Julius Norwichan artist. An inspirational speaker and a professional horseman. And a recovering alcoholic. The son of a Lutheran minister, he's struggled with a controlling father, Lady Diana Cooper was one of run away to join the towering figures in society life between the wars circus (not a metaphor), trained horses, painted caravans, designed and painted theatre sets, and for much of hit rock bottom when the period before her death in 1986bottle took over.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009957859X</amazonuk>B0965V3LLN
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008350388
|title=We Need to Talk About Money
|author=Otegha Uwagba
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...'' ''We Need to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba
{{newreview|author=Pamela O'Cuneen|title=Hummingbirds '0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in My Hair: Adventures England study a book by a writer of colour while only 7% study a Diplomatic Wife in the Caribbean|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Pamela O'Cuneen was what is known in the business as book by a woman.'diplomatic wife': the spouse of a diplomat sent abroad to represent his country. It's generally unpaid and extremely hard work - I've always thought of it as one of The Bookseller'' 29 June 2021 Otegha Uwagba came to the original BOGOF dealsUK from Kenya when she was five years old. When we first meet Pamela she Her sisters were seven and nine. It was her husbandmother who came first, KJwith her father joining them later. The family was hard-working, principled and determined that their children would have been transferred from their beloved Africa to Suriname, or ''Suri-where?'' as people the best education possible. There was always responded when a painful awareness of money although this did not translate into a shortage of anything: it was mentioned to themsimply carefully harvested. When Otegha was ten the family acquired a car. It ''used'' For Otegha, education meant a scholarship to be Dutch Guyana on the Caribbean coast of South America a private school in London and there are few people who would think of it in terms of then a holiday destinationplace at New College, Oxford.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373637</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571365884|title=Hitler's Last WitnessMy Mess is a Bit of Life: The Memoirs of Hitler's BodyguardAdventures in Anxiety|author=Rochus MischGeorgia Pritchett|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I am proud to declare an interest in all things HolocaustGeorgia Pritchett has always been anxious, one of even as a child. She would worry about whether the monsters under the key areas of which bed were comfortable: it was the last days sort of Hitler – the Downfall, life where if you like, way before youtube satiristsshe had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and far between. So this bookOn a visit to a therapist, as an adult, from the man who for some unspecified years when she was the last eye-witness completely unable to have been in the Fuhrerbunker at the end of the Nazi regime, speak about what was wrong with her it was always going to be suggested that she should write it down and ''My Mess is a great read. It remained that even after the foreword dismissed its own book, pointing out differences here to the canon Bit of thought about a Life: Adventures in Anxiety'' is the timings etc of April/May 1945, and declaring the author somewhat naïve in not being result - or so aware, circumspect and authoritative about the major points of WWIIwe are given to believe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848327498</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Diary of a Mad DivaDaniel Gibbs with Teresa H Barker|authortitle=Joan RiversA Tattoo on my Brain
|rating=3.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=The late Joan Rivers was, without a doubt, a character. Actress, comedian, writer, director, presenter, she was well known in the USA and beyond for her sharp tongue and no holds barred persona. This was the last of the dozen books she published, her final title before her death in September 2014.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0425269027</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|title=Life on Air
|author=David Attenborough
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I was one of the generation who grew up when David Attenborough was Alzheimer's is a giant among presenters disease that slowly wears away your identity and sense of wildlife programmes on televisionself. I have been directly affected by this cruel disease, as have many. Your memories and anything with his name attached was personality worn away like a must-watchstatue over time affected the elements. At the time, I had no idea It seems as if nature wants that he was also one of the pivotal characters in the development of broadcasting, having been controller of BBC2 final victory over you and director of programming for BBC TV for several yearsyour dignity. This is what makes Daniel Gibbs' memoir so admirable. These days, he Daniel Gibbs is probably best remembered for writing a neurologist who was diagnosed with Alzheimers and presenting the nine ‘Life’ series, a comprehensive survey of all life has documented his journey in ''A Tattoo on the planetmy Brain''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849908524</amazonuk>1108838936
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1529109116|title=The Last EscaperCall Me Red: A Shepherd's Journey|author=Peter TunstallHannah Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryLifestyle|summary=''The Last Escaper'' opens differently I want the image of a British farmer to many simply be that of the great escape biographies that were released soon after the war as it a person who is told some 70 years later. Peter Tunstall was an RAF pilot who was shot down and spent many years as a Prisoner Of War across occupied Europe, including proudly employed in Colditzfeeding the nation. He lived through the war, but also lived through many decades of peaceI don't think that is too much to ask. Will these years of the relative quiet life lesson the tales of bravery and dare doing of the war? Of course not!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>071564923X</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|title=The Animals|author=Christopher Isherwood stereotypical farmer was probably born on the land where ''his'' family have farmed for generations. He's probably grown up without giving much thought as to what he really wants to do: he knows that he'll be a farmer. It's not always the case though. Hannah Jackson was born and Don Bachardy|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Christopher Isherwood is brought up on the Wirral: she'd never set foot on a writer whose work commercial farm until she was often (in fact nearly twenty although she'd always) biographicalhad a deep love of animals. Her original intention was that she would become 'Dr Jackson, whale scientist' and one who she was always very open about his personal well on her way to achieving this when her lifechanged on a family holiday to the Lake District. Interest in the life of Isherwood seems to have been rife recently, with She saw a film about Isherwood lamb being born and Bachardy released in 2008, an adaptation of Isherwoodalthough 's book Hannah Jackson, farmer'A Single Man' released in 2009lacked the kudos of her original intention, and she knew that she wanted to be a BBC adaptation shepherd. With the determination that you'll soon realise is an essential part of 'Christopher and his Kind' released in 2011her, as well as the seemingly countless revivals of 'Cabaret'she set about achieving her ambition.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784700827</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rick Stein0008333173|title=Under a Mackerel SkyHungry: A Memoir of Wanting More|author=Grace Dent|rating=45
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Rick Stein was born if not to wealth then certainly to privilege. He was raised I'm always relieved when Grace Dent is one of the judges on an Oxfordshire farm and spent holidays at the family's home in Cornwall'Masterchef''. His parents were gregarious and intelligent and he was one You know that you're going to get an honest opinion from someone whom you sense does real food rather than fine dining most of five children who led the sort of open-air life that country children did in those days before we worried about stranger dangertime. He enjoyed school and loved Cornwall, where he gained a reputation as he got older for giving riotous parties in a barn You also ponder on the Cornish property. It was idyllic - until the day how she can look so elegant with all that his father (who was bi-polar) committed suicidegood food in front of her. SteinI's reaction to this was to head to ve often wondered about the woman behind the Australian outback where he worked in media image and ''Hungry: A Memoir of Wanting More'' is a variety of jobs (some more palatable than others) stunning read which will make you laugh and finally came back to England, via America and Mexicobreak your heart in equal measures.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091949912</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1504321383|title=Me After YouSingle, Again, and Again, and Again|author=Lucie BrownleeLouisa Pateman
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=People die all the time''You can't be happy and fulfilled on your own. I’m You are not trying complete until you find a man''. This was what Louisa Pateman was brought up to be crude, they just dobelieve. It’s It wasn't unkind: it was simply the circle of adults in her life, or some less Disney-fied sentiment. And if everyone whose partner or parent died wrote a book about it, well, advising her as to say that what they thought would be less than good would be a severe understatementbest for her. It was reinforced by all those fairy tales where the girl (she's usually fairly young) is rescued by the handsome prince who then marries her so that they can live happily ever after. For a book on such a theme Few girls are lucky enough to be worth reading, it has to brought up ''without'' the expectation that they will marry and have a pull, a twist, something to make you look twicechildren. In Lucie’s case it’s the fact that her husband Mark It was only 37 a belief and it would be many years old when he died. And not only before Louisa would conclude that, he died during ''a bit of nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Talk about going out with belief is a bangchoice''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753555832</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ellie LaksSakinu Ahronglong|title=My Gentle Barn: where animals heal and children learn to hopeHunter School
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=As The flyleaf to this little collection tells us that it is a child Ellie Laks was abused, but work of fiction. That's possibly misleading. I am not only did she suffer at sure whether it is "fiction" in the hands of her abusersense that Ahronglong made it all up, she also had or whether it is as the blurb goes on to endure parental indifference to what was happening to hersay ''recollections, folklore and autobiographical stories''. Her only relief came through animals - and even then she had to cope when It feels like the animals were taken from herlatter. As It feels like the stories he tells about his experiences as a child, as an adolescent, as an adult she discovered that she had a are real talent for healing animals - and that they helped her to heal tootrue. In But memory is a brilliant leap of intuition she realised that if the animals could help her to heal they could do the same for others fickle thing, and maybe poetic licence has taken over here and so the Gentle Barn was born - a place where animals were brought as a place of safety there and where disadvantaged children maybe calling it fiction means that its safer and special needs groups could use as therapytherefore more people will read it. More people should.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099584883</amazonuk>1999791282
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1544641923|title=Any Other MouthAmbassadors Do It After Dinner|author=Anneliese MackintoshSandra Aragona
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=With a title like ''Any Other Mouth'', you know from the outset that this is, shall we say, a rather niche book. It’s not all about orifices, though. Partially autobiographical, this is the messy, ludicrous, wildly entertaining story of a girl who’s just a little bit different. Ok, make that a lot different.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754575</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|title=My Outdoor Life
|author=Ray Mears
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Sometimes, a seemingly insignificant incident in oneIt's youth can have far-reaching tempting to think that the diplomatic life is privileged and profound consequencesluxurious. Life It might be privileged, but family connections tell me that it is punctuated with pivotal moments that can completely alter a course of eventsfar from luxurious. Ray Mears recalls such an incident when aged six Now you're not going to get many ambassadors telling you what it's really like (it's not ''diplomatic'' to do so, you know), he opened an encyclopaedia and saw a picture of cavemen for but the first time. A few months laterdiplomatic spouse, the same volume was sitting on the edge his deskaccompanying baggage, when suddenlywell, it started to slidethat's an entirely different matter. Mears reached out to grab She (and itstill usually is a 'she') can tell us exactly what goes on...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444778218</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joanna Rakoff0241446732|title=My Salinger YearOur House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg
|rating=5
|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Joanna Rakoff The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was twenty three when she an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took a job as assistant to a literary agent in New Yorkon most of the parenting of their two daughters. She'd not long left graduate school (Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and her 'college boyfriend') talking and her dream sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was to become a poethappening. The job was for experience and for income - her parents were somewhat dismissive of the positionIn such circumstances, pointing out that it was what used 's natural to be called seek a secretary - solution close to home, but there was a bonus which Rakoff had not anticipatedeventually, or even appreciated when she first heard of it. The agency might be stuck in became clear to the past family that they were ''burned- with Dictaphones and typewriters rather than computers out people on a burned- but its main client was J D Salingerout planet''. Rakoff knew the name - obviously - but she had never read one of his booksIf they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408830175</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lynne Martin191280493X|title=Home Sweet Anywhere: How We Sold Our House, Created a New Life, and Saw the WorldComing of Age|author=Danny Ryan
|rating=4
|genre=TravelAutobiography|summary=Lynne ''He began writing novels and Tim Martin had known each other decades ago poetry at the age of twelve, but when we meet them they've only been married for it was to take him a short time. There's just one thing though further forty- they're not ready eight years to settle down, despite the fact realise that they're what might be called 'upper middle aged'he wasn’t very good at either. Their roots are in the US - both have adult children there and the Martins have Consistently unpublished for all that time, he remains a house in California - but they want to travel and not just as touristsshining example of hope over experience.. They want to see the world as the locals see it and to experience what it's like to live there. Lynne describes them as not being wealthy, but they decide to sell their home, invest the money and become 'home-free'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00J0CRNKE</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview
|author=Dave Roberts
|title=Sad Men: A Memoir
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Before he was twenty Dave Roberts had had a lot of jobs - far too many to list - but he really wanted to work in advertising and specifically for Saatchi and Saatchi, whom he saw as the ''best'' advertising agency and given their predominance in the early years of the eighties it's hard to argue with his judgement. The only problem was that jobs with the agency were hard to come by and Dave eventually accepted that he would have to start rather lower down the ladder with the intention of working his way up to the top. And that rung at the bottom of the ladder was a job with an agency in Leeds.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593071301</amazonuk>
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{{newreview|title=A Woman's Story|author=Annie Ernaux|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=After spending two years in an old people's home, Annie Ernaux's mother finally succumbs to Alzheimer's Disease. It has been This a terrifyingly protracted end, and one that has spawned feelings of absolute helplessness in her daughter, who watched as her mother's life crumbled before an 'imagination' that bore 'no relation to reality'. Yet Ernaux's distress is also fuelled by the realisation that she'll 'memoir from someone you have never hear the sound of her [mother's] voice again', and by the fact that the fraying bond between the present and the past has finally been 'severed'. Impulsively, Ernaux decides to recreate that past, hoping to 'bring her [mother back] into the world' through a piece heard of writing- but will feel like you have. In short, she is 'incapable of doing anything else'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373440</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=190874572X|title=Call the Vet: Farmers, Dramas and Disasters - My First Year as a Country VetLetters from Tove|author=Anna BirchTove Jansson (Author), Boel Westin (Editor), Helen Svensson (Editor), Sarah Death (Translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Newly-qualified vet Anna arrives in Back at the sleepy coastal village of Ebbourne filled with dreams beginning of following in the footsteps of her herocentury, James Herriot as she starts her new role working in I went on holiday to Nepal. I met a rural mixed practicewonderful Finnish woman and we became sort-of-friends. She will be treating farm animals, as well as smaller pets, in I can't remember if it was on that holiday or a friendly community in a stunning locationlater one that Paula told me I really had to read Tove Jansson. However I do know that it was four years later that I finally acquired an English translation of The Summer Book, Anna barely has time to settle in before being thrown headlong into and that I eagerly awaited the thick ''Sort Of'' translations of things with two tricky calvings to deal with and plenty the rest of muck, blood Jansson's work and gore. “Oh yes Mum, it’s a glamorous job...” she lamentsdevoured them as soon as I could get my hands on them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753555077</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1908745819|title=Slow Getting UpSurfacing |author=Nate JacksonKathleen Jamie|rating=45
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Sporting autobiographies are often written by those sports men and women who made Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it to the very pinnacle of ''. Mostly we take them at their profession. Their stories surround past glories and how word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they lifted themselves up above thought so, unless it turns out that we didn't like the great book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to become hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why. The blurb speaks of the very bestauthor considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself. '' However, for every superstar footballer or tennis player, there needs to be Older. Less tethered. That's not a lot more average Joes and Joettes for them to shine againstbad description of where I am. And who is Add to say that being an average player in a professional league is my love of the natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not an achievement in itself? form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it. Nate Jackson It was one such ‘average’ player in the NFL – but written for me. It would you call him that have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to his face?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00IO19CYW</amazonuk>have it fall onto my path so quickly.
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1906852472|title=Levels of LifeWild Child: Growing Up a Nomad|author=Julian BarnesIan Mathie|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=If you read For Ian Mathie fans there is good and bad news. Ian has come up with the missing link in his narrative, the story of a broadsheet you will know very unusual childhood (yes, the very years that made him the amazing man he became). The bad – well it's hardly news two years later – is that the format of this book from when is published posthumously. As always, it came out in hardback – indeed 's beautifully written, with many exciting moments. What I recognised a great portion most enjoyed was the feeling that many of the third part as having been excerpted somewhere. Part one of this triptych is a look back at pioneering aeronauts questions in hot air balloons – either Ian Mathie's later books are answered in 'hydrogen balloons'Wild Child' or ''flame balloons'', whatever they arewith a satisfying clunk. They may have had crash landings, they may have suffered problems here and there and risked life and limb, but they travelled, they saw the world from unique angles, and almost in homage to BarnesSeemingly all that' characters chasing the sun s now left in an airplane in his own book, saw themselves as a photographic negative writ large in shadow form on the tops of cloudsdrawer is unpublishable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099584530</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1999811402|title=To Bed On ThursdaysPainting Snails|author=Jenny Selby-GreenStephen John Hartley|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=The advert asked for It's very difficult to classify ''Painting Snails'': originally I thought that as it's loosely based around a year on an allotment it would be a young manlifestyle book, but seventeen year old Jenny Selby-Green applied anywayyou're not going to get advice on what to plant when and where for the best results. She met all The answer would be something along the other attributeslines of 'try it and see'. Then I considered popular science as Stephen Hartley failed his A levels, did an engineering apprenticeship, became a busker, finally got into medical school and the alternative would be having is now an A&E consultant (part-time). I found out that there's an awful lot more to take whatever job she was offered via what goes on in a Major Trauma Centre than you'll ever glean from ''Casualty'', but that isn't really what the Labour Exchangebook's about. There's a lot about rock & roll, seeing as she’d already rejected which seems to be the maximum real passion of two offers under Hartley's life, but it didn't actually fit into the 1950s Direction of Labourentertainment genre either. And so, she became Did we have a journalist, or journalist of sorts anywaycategory for 'doing the impossible the hard way'? Yep - that's the one. It's an autobiography.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906852170</amazonuk>
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{{newreview|author=John Jackson|title=A Little Piece of England: A tale of self-sufficiency|rating=5|genre=Lifestyle|summary=Here at Bookbag we're great fans of John Jackson. We loved his Move on to [[Tales for Great Grandchildren by John Jackson and Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini|Tales for Great GrandchildrenNewest Biography Reviews]] ''and'' [[Brahma Dreaming: Legends from Hindu Mythology by John Jackson and Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini|Brahma Dreaming: Legends from Hindu Mythology]] so it was something of a treat to meet the author on his own ground, so to speak. Originally published as ''A Bucket of Nuts and a Herring Net: The Birth of a Spare-Time Farm'' this is actually Jackson's first book and thirty-five years later we're delighted that it's been republished in hardback complete with the original black-and-white illustrations by Val Biro.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909661031</amazonuk>}}

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