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[[Category:Autobiography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Autobiography]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove --> <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lena Mukhina and Amanda Love Darragh (translator)0241636604|title=The Diary of Lena MukhinaTrading Game: A Girl's Life in the Siege of LeningradConfession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=If life as you were to bring up an image of a girl of school-leaving age is hard enoughcity banker in your mind, think about it when you're stuck in a great city under a horrendous siegeunlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. Lena Mukhina's diary only covers half A hoodie and jeans replaces the 800pin-odd days stripe suit and his background is the nightmare in Leningrad lastedEast End, but so palpably singular were the circumstances that it feels like one is given the clearest insight into what it where he was likefamiliar with violence, courtesy of these pagespoverty and injustice. I've There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been there and never felt the ghost of the siege in the modern St Petersburg, anything like (for example) to the ruination London School of Warsaw had lived onEconomics. But Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a dreadful time this wasfacility with numbers which most of us can only envy. At the peak times of Nazi oppression and aerial bombing, the city lost 2 or 3 residents' lives ''every minute'' of the day on averageHe also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. The city It was his ability at what was desperate for fuel, and food – and this is essentially, a place where it can – and does here – snow in Junecard game which got him an internship with Citibank. Without giving too much of the diet awayEventually, it's notable that later on Lena dreams of having this turned into permanent employment as a menagerie of small animals to live with – but no dogs or catstrader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144726987X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Margery Kempe and Anthony Bale (editor)1529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Book Secret Life of Margery Kempea Vet|author=Sion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=AutobiographyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Born around 1373Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footsteps, Margery Kempe grew up in particularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father's life. When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a family of good standing friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the job for him. Before long, he was at Liverpool University. It hadn't - her Father serving as with so many students - been his dream since he was a mayorchild. If anything, he'd wanted to be a professional footballer.}}{{Frontpage|author=Edel Rodriguez|title=Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey|rating=4|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=We're in childhood, and we're in Cuba. The revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of as a member saviour of parliamentthe country, has proven himself a Communist, and not done nearly enough to create a level playing field for all. Whilst no records remain Well, those hours-long speeches of her childhood, it is unlikely that Margery would have received any his were kind of formal educationtaking his time away. She was Our narrator's family weren't in the happiest of places here, an uncle refusing to be the good soldier the country demanded (especially as he would probably be shipped off to some minor pro-Communism skirmish, howeversuch as Angola) and the father being watched and watched, taught religious textsand not liked for his successful photography business, which may well have set success being frowned upon. The mother gets the couple jobs with the way for party to ease some of the visions she would encounter later heat, but in life.this sultry island country, it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0199686645</amazonuk>1474616720
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Esterly1035025299|title=The Lost Carving: A Journey Went to London, Took the Heart of MakingDog|author=Nina Stibbe
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Bouncing between his studio in upstate New York and the sites of various English sojourns, woodcarver David EsterlyNina Stibbe is returning to London for a sabbatical after being away for twenty years. She's seems to be an idyllic existence. Yet itbeen at Victoria's not smallholding in Leicestershire which isn't 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 memoirthat conducive to writing, but at the same time as there is an argument for the essential difficulty of the artist's lifealways something smallholding happening - as you might expect. 'Carvers are starvers,' The other side of the decision was sealed when a wizened English carver once told him. Certainly there is no great fortune to be won from room became available (courtesy of Deborah Moggach) at a profession as obscure as limewood carving, but the rewards outweigh the hard graft for Esterlyvery reasonable rent.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649191</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edzard ErnstChristopher Fowler|title=A Scientist in Wonderland: A Memoir of Searching for Truth and Finding TroubleWord Monkey|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Professor Edzard Ernst was born It's the first of August in Germany not long after the end middle of World War II and grew up with guilt about what had happened a cool wet summer in the years before he was born as well as an insatiable curiosity - with the two East Anglia. I decided not being entirely entirely unconnected. He also developed an attitude of speaking his mind - as an early challenge to his step-father about swim at the death of six million Jews pool in the course favour of the war provedgoing to my beach hut. In his teens he wasn't determined The weather closed in, rain arrived, and I decided not to become do that either. When I finished reading this book, I realised it was because (a doctor - he had a hankering ) I wanted to finish reading this book and (b) I did not want to be a musician - despite do so anywhere near my shack. No spoiler alerts, the fact that it dust jacket tells us who Christopher Fowler 'was the family business, so ' – and his first chapter tells us about his terminal diagnosis. There is something very strange about being made to speaklaugh by a man who repeatedly reminds you that he is dying, but came round to the idea and practiced in various countries before settling in Exeter as Professor of Complementary Medicine you know he actually is at the universitythat point, because he does. He did.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845407776</amazonuk>0857529625
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alan KennedyKit De Waal|title=Oscar & LucyWithout Warning and Only Sometimes|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=With the film about Alan TuringAs Philip Larkin so eloquently put it, “They f*** you up, ''The Imitation Game'' getting rave reviews your mum and award nominations rightdad/ They may not mean to, left but they do” Without Warning and centre, the sterling work done Only Sometimes by Kit De Waal focuses on this idea of parenthood and the Bletchley Park cryptographers during WWII bonds that bind family. This book is quite high a memoir focussing on the author’s formative years as a teenager living in our mindsa lower class area of Birmingham. Her father is from St. But Enigma wasn't Kitts in the only code broken Caribbean and her mother is an Irish woman ostracized by her family for becoming 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, her class and her gender. Her parents loom large and are written with care, love, and Turing wasn't the kind of anger only one doing secret but heroic worka child can express to their parents. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>095646968X</amazonuk>1472284852
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andy Miller1638485216|title=The Year of Reading DangerouslyBlack, White, and Gray All Over: How Fifty Great Books Saved My A Black Man's Odyssey in Life|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Andy Miller and his wife both worked and they had a three-year-old son. Despite the fact that Miller was an editor for a London publisher he felt that he'd 'lost' reading from his life. He seemed to acquire a lot of books, but making time for reading them was an entirely different matter. With the help of his wife he developed a 'list of betterment' - initially a limited number of great books which he determined to read but eventually it became fifty great books and two not so great, which he was going to master over the space of a year. He was re-integrating books into everyday life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00QJV7OAI</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewLaw Enforcement|author=Jane Hawking|title=Travelling to Infinity: The True Story Behind the Theory of EverythingFrederick Reynolds|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Travelling ''Corruption is not department, gender or race specific. It has everything to Infinity maps the tapestry of a rich and complex lifedo with character. Period. ''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen MacdonaldBjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, Caroline Bankeler, Navid Modiiri and Agnes Bromme (Translator)|title=H is for HawkI May Be Wrong
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography|summary=When the Dalai Lama adds his words to your frontispiece, I saw Helen Macdonald speak at a nature conference, she recounted a conversation with a Samuel Johnson Prize judge. S/he had remarked that Macdonald's was three books in one: a memoir of grief after her fatherm inclined to think it doesn's unexpected death, a biography t really matter how the rest of Tthe world responds to your book. H. White I know, having read the book in question, and an account of falconry experiments that Lindeblad would disagree with Mabel the goshawkthat thought. Macdonald quipped He knows (and at core so do I) that it matters very much how the rest of the description made her world responds to this book sound like washing powder, but because it's accurate nonetheless, and explains why tells the book won the Samuel Johnson Prize (the first memoir to do so) and truth as it is shortlisted for , in the Costa Biography awardearly 21st century.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224097008</amazonuk>1526644827
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dylan Thomas and Peter Baileygareth_steel|title=A Child’s Christmas in WalesNever Work With Animals|author=Gareth Steel|rating=4.5|genre=Children's Non-FictionAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Christmas time growing up in I don't often begin my reviews with a warning but with ''Never Work With Animals'' it seems to be appropriate. Stories of a Welsh seaside town was magical 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 Dylan Thomas. As a TV show the author would argue that ''All Creatures'' lacked realism, always snowy as do other similar programmes. Gareth Steel says that the book is not suitable for younger readers and full of adventure- after reading - I agree with him. From attempting He says that he's written it to extinguish house fires inform and provoke thought, particularly amongst aspiring vets. It deals with snowballs to hippo footprints in the snow his childhood in the snow was a time of wonder some uncomfortable and distressing issues but it doesn't lack sensitivity, although there are occasions when you would be best choosing between reading and pure joyeating.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444013467</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Henry MarshDave Letterfly Knoderer|title=Do No HarmSpeedy: Stories of Life, Death and Brain SurgeryHurled Through Havoc|rating=54
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=We've all heard How to summarise the phrase 'it's not brain surgery' but what is it really like to operate on someone's brain life of Dave Letterfly Knodererv in the frightening knowledge that a small slip, pithy sentence to kick off a slight error can have the most devastating consequences for the patientreview of his memoir? Do you know, 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 GeorgeI really don's. If anyone knows what it's like then Henry Marsh is the man to tell yout think I can.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178022592X</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Wendy Cope0008350388|title=Life, Love and the ArchersWe Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba
|rating=5
|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=As ''To be a rule, poetry does not appeal to me dark- at school it was something skinned Black woman is to be learned and recitedseen as less desirable, less hireable, regardless of merit or meaning less intelligent and I came to dread those lessons ultimately less valuable than my light- but there are two exceptionsskinned counterparts... I love John Dryden's ''Absalom and Achitophel '' for its irreverence - and Wendy Cope, because she speaks We Need to me in words I can understand about matters which concern me. I discovered her when my daughter gave me a copy of {{amazonurl|isbn=0571167055|title=Serious Concerns}} and her humorous poems tempted me to read some of the more serious content. I was smitten. Over the years I've followed with interest what she has had to say about such matters as copyright and the chance to review ''Life, Love and the ArchersTalk About Money'' was far too tempting to miss.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444795368</amazonuk>}}by Otegha Uwagba
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pamela O'Cuneen0571365884|title=Hummingbirds in My HairMess is a Bit of Life: Adventures of a Diplomatic Wife in the CaribbeanAnxiety|author=Georgia Pritchett
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Pamela O'Cuneen was what is known in the business Georgia Pritchett has always been anxious, even as a 'diplomatic wife'child. She would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it was the spouse sort of a diplomat sent abroad life where if she had nothing to represent his country. It's generally unpaid worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and extremely hard work - I've always thought of it as one of the original BOGOF dealsfar between. When we first meet Pamela she and her husband, KJ, have been transferred from their beloved Africa On a visit to Surinamea therapist, or ''Suri-where?'' as people always responded an adult, when she was completely unable to speak about what was wrong with her it was mentioned to them. It suggested that she should write it down and ''used'' to be Dutch Guyana on the Caribbean coast My Mess is a Bit of South America and there are few people who would think of it a Life: Adventures in terms of a holiday destination.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373637</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=HitlerAnxiety's Last Witness: The Memoirs of Hitler's Bodyguard|author=Rochus Misch|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=I am proud to declare an interest in all things Holocaust, one of is the key areas of which was the last days of Hitler – the Downfall, if you like, way before youtube satirists. So this book, from the man who for some unspecified years was the last eyeresult -witness or so we are given to have been in the Fuhrerbunker at the end of the Nazi regime, was always going to be a great read. It remained that even after the foreword dismissed its own book, pointing out differences here to the canon of thought about the timings etc of April/May 1945, and declaring the author somewhat naïve in not being so aware, circumspect and authoritative about the major points of WWIIbelieve.|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=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
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{{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>}}''
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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 StoriesAutobiography|summary=With a title It's tempting to think that the diplomatic life is privileged and luxurious. It might be privileged, but family connections tell me that it is far from luxurious. Now you're not going to get many ambassadors telling you what it's really like (it's not 'Any Other Mouth'diplomatic'' to do so, you know from ), but the outset that this isdiplomatic spouse, shall we say, a rather niche book. It’s not all about orifices, though. Partially autobiographical, this is the messyaccompanying baggage, ludicrouswell, wildly entertaining story of a girl who’s just a little bit that's an entirely differentmatter. Ok, make that She (and it still usually is a lot different'she') can tell us exactly what goes on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754575</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0241446732|title=My Outdoor LifeOur House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Ray MearsMalena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg
|rating=5
|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Sometimes, a seemingly insignificant incident in one's youth can have far-reaching and profound consequencesThe Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Life is punctuated with pivotal moments that can completely alter a course of events. Ray Mears recalls such Malena Ernman was an incident when aged six, he opened an encyclopaedia opera singer and saw a picture Svante Thunberg took on most of cavemen for the first timeparenting of their two daughters. A few months later Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, the same volume Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was sitting on the edge his deskhappening. In such circumstances, it's natural to seek a solution close to home, when suddenlybut eventually, it started became clear to slidethe family that they were ''burned-out people on a burned-out planet''. Mears reached out If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to grab it..be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444778218</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joanna Rakoff191280493X|title=My Salinger YearComing of Age|author=Danny Ryan|rating=54
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Joanna Rakoff was twenty three when she took a job as assistant to a literary agent in New York. She'd not long left graduate school (and her 'college boyfriend') He began writing novels and her dream was to become a poet. The job was for experience and for income - her parents were somewhat dismissive poetry at the age of the positiontwelve, pointing out that but it was what used to be called take him a secretary further forty- but there was eight years to realise that he wasn’t very good at either. Consistently unpublished for all that time, he remains a bonus which Rakoff had not anticipated, or even appreciated when she first heard shining example of ithope over experience. The agency might be stuck in the past - with Dictaphones and typewriters rather than computers - but its main client was J D Salinger. Rakoff knew the name - obviously - but she had never read one of his books.''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408830175</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dave Roberts190874572X|title=Sad Men: A MemoirLetters from Tove|author=Tove Jansson (Author), Boel Westin (Editor), Helen Svensson (Editor), Sarah Death (Translator)|rating=45
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Before he was twenty Dave Roberts had had Back at the beginning of the century, I went on holiday to Nepal. I met a lot wonderful Finnish woman and we became sort-of jobs - far too many to list - but he friends. I can't remember if it was on that holiday or a later one that Paula told me I really wanted had to work in advertising read Tove Jansson. I do know that it was four years later that I finally acquired an English translation of The Summer Book, and specifically for Saatchi and Saatchi, whom he saw as that I eagerly awaited the ''bestSort Of'' advertising agency and given their predominance in translations of the early years rest of the eighties itJansson's hard to argue with his judgement. The only problem was that jobs with the agency were hard to come by work 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 Leedsdevoured them as soon as I could get my hands on them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593071301</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1908745819|title=A Woman's StorySurfacing |author=Annie ErnauxKathleen Jamie|rating=45
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=After spending two years in an old Sometimes when people's homesuggest that you read a certain book, Annie Ernauxthey tell you 's mother finally succumbs to Alzheimer's Disease. It has been a terrifyingly protracted end, and this one that has spawned feelings of absolute helplessness in her daughter, who watched as her motheryour name on it's life crumbled before an 'imagination' . Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so, unless it turns out that bore 'no relation to realitywe didn't like the book. Yet ErnauxThat's distress is also fuelled by a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why. The blurb speaks of the realisation that sheauthor considering 'll 'never hear the sound an older, less tethered sense of her [motherherself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's] voice again', and by the fact not a bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the fraying bond between natural world, of those aspects of the present poetic and the past has finally been 'severed'. Impulsively, Ernaux decides to recreate lyrical that pastare about style not form, hoping to 'bring her [mother back] into the world' through a piece and substance most of writingall, about connection. In shortOf course, she is 'incapable of doing anything else'this book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373440</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1906852472|title=Call the VetWild Child: Farmers, Dramas and Disasters - My First Year as Growing Up a Country VetNomad|author=Anna BirchIan Mathie|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Newly-qualified vet Anna arrives in For Ian Mathie fans there is good and bad news. Ian has come up with the sleepy coastal village of Ebbourne filled with dreams of following missing link in his narrative, the footsteps story of her heroa very unusual childhood (yes, James Herriot as she starts her new role working in a rural mixed practicethe very years that made him the amazing man he became). The bad – well it's hardly news two years later – is that the book is published posthumously. She will be treating farm animalsAs always, as well as smaller petsit's beautifully written, with many exciting moments. What I most enjoyed was the feeling that many of the questions in a friendly community Ian Mathie's later books are answered in ''Wild Child'' with a stunning locationsatisfying clunk. However, Anna barely has time to settle Seemingly all that's now left in before being thrown headlong into the thick of things with two tricky calvings to deal with and plenty of muck, blood and gore. “Oh yes Mum, it’s a glamorous job...” she lamentsdrawer is unpublishable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753555077</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1999811402|title=Slow Getting UpPainting Snails|author=Nate JacksonStephen John Hartley|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Sporting autobiographies are often written by those sports men and women who made 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 lifestyle book, but you're not going to get advice on what to plant when and where for the very pinnacle of their professionbest results. Their stories surround past glories The answer would be something along the lines of 'try it and how they lifted themselves up above the great to become the very bestsee'. HoweverThen I considered popular science as Stephen Hartley failed his A levels, for every superstar footballer or tennis playerdid an engineering apprenticeship, there needs to be became a lot more average Joes busker, finally got into medical school and Joettes for them to shine againstis now an A&E consultant (part-time). And who is to say I found out that being there's an average player awful lot more to what goes on in a professional league is not an achievement in itself? Major Trauma Centre than you'll ever glean from ''Casualty'', but that isn't really what the book's about. Nate Jackson was one such ‘average’ player in There's a lot about rock & roll, which seems to be the NFL – real passion of Hartley's life, but would you call him it didn't actually fit into the entertainment genre either. Did we have a category for 'doing the impossible the hard way'? Yep - that to his face?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00IO19CYW</amazonuk>'s the one. It's an autobiography.
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