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Reviews by readers from all the many walks of literary life. With author interviews, features and top tens. You'll be sure to find something you'll want to read here. Dig in!
 
Reviews by readers from all the many walks of literary life. With author interviews, features and top tens. You'll be sure to find something you'll want to read here. Dig in!
  
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There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews}}''' reviews at TheBookbag.
 
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<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1472134710
+
|isbn=1529337925
|title=Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death
+
|title=The Mirror Dance (Dandy Gilver)
|author=M C Beaton
+
|author=Catriona McPherson
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=Agatha Raisin has taken early retirement and she's left South Moulton Street for a cottage in the Cotswold village of Carsley.  She's have preferred one of the more romantic names but at least Carsley is off the tourist trail with all the problems that brings.  Now the problem is settling into a different way of life - and Agatha has never done small talk or even being pleasant to people.  The first move is to enter the village quiche-baking competition and the beginning of the campaign is taking the judge, Reginald Cummings-Browne, and his wife Vera out to dinner.  She knows she's being ripped off at the pub in the next village but this is necessary and it's a good investment as she knows that she's going to win.  How?  Well, ''her'' quiche is coming from a Chelsea Bakery...
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author= Claire McGowan
 
|title=The Push
 
|rating= 5
 
|genre= General Fiction
 
|summary= Six mums-to-be meet at a prenatal class. It's NCT ''style'', but not the proper NCT. This bit is important, but you have to wait a little to see why. This being London, such a class attracts a wide variety of people, from all sorts of backgrounds, but for most of the ladies the thing they have in common is it's their first baby. Probably after the first one, you don't have time for classes, or think you've got child-rearing down pat.
 
|isbn=1542019990
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=1472255917
 
|title=The Roots of Evil (Bob Skinner)
 
|author=Quintin Jardine
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=On New Year's Eve, Sir Robert Morgan Skinner was celebrating at the golf club with his wife, Professor Sarah Grace, daughter Alex Skinner and the man with whom she shares a house, Dominic JacksonJackson would be better-known to the criminal fraternity of Edinburgh as Lennie Plenderleith but he's reformed and the new name reflects a new manThe Skinners don't stay much after midnight at the clubhouse and are dropped home not long into the new year.  Skinner's tempted to let the phone ring but knows that he cannot: it's Mario McGuire asking for his presence at a crime scene in the centre of Edinburgh. Skinner's not technically with the police now - he's chairman of InterMedia UK - but the police value his knowledge and experience.
+
|summary=It was the August Bank Holiday weekend and, as so often happened, it was cold enough to have the fire lit and Bunty the Dalmation wasn't inclined to leave it to keep Dandy Gilver warm on the sofaThe thought of work was almost cheering when Dandy took the call from Sandy Bissett in DundeeShe was the publisher of a magazine and had been told that the man running the Punch and Judy show in the local park had used copies of two of her cartoon characters - Rosie Cheek and her sister Freckle - to drum up some local interest in his show.   Sandy Bissett's request was simple: she wanted Gilver and Osborne to warn the man about infringement of copyright - and Dandy and Alex would be cheaper than employing a solicitor to do the same job.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B087JXQ3JQ
+
|isbn=0099551063
|title=The Long Dark Road
+
|title=The Wisdom of Psychopaths: Lessons in life from Saints, Spies and Serial Killers
|author=P R Black
+
|author=Dr Kevin Dutton
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Thrillers
+
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Two years ago Dr Georgia's Healey's nineteen-year-old university-student daughter went missing as she walked along the lonely A928 at Ferngate Bridge. There was a furious storm going on and she'd already refused the offer of help from one man in a big vehicle.  We'll see - but no one else will know - that another car stops and Stephanie is bundled into the car and driven offThere has been no sign of her - or her body - in the two years sinceGeorgia is back is Ferngate, determined to find out what happened and she's not going to be stopped.
+
|summary='' 'Donald Trump outscores Hitler on psychopathic traits' claims Oxford University researcher.''
}}  
+
 
 +
Until the events of 6 January 2021 that might have surprised, even shocked many readers: now they're probably convinced that they knew it all alongThe statement has lost a little of its shock value but it does help us to understand more about the nature of psychopathyIt's too easy to associate psychopathy with the Yorkshire Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, Saddam Hussein or Robert Maudsley, the real-life Hannibal Lecter, but the truth is that having psychopathic traits can sometimes be a good thing.
 +
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author= Katharine Orton
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|author=Alex Wheatle
|title= Glassheart
+
|title=The Humiliations of Welton Blake
|rating= 4
+
|rating=2.5
|genre= Confident Readers
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= Nona and her Uncle Antoni have lived together ever since the Blitz claimed the lives of her family. Now, in the aftermath of the war, they travel all over the country, replacing stained-glass windows in buildings destroyed by bombs. Their latest job takes them out to the wilds of Dartmoor, where Nona discovers that her world is full of ancient and powerful magic. She also discovers that a mysterious entity, known only as The Soldier, is hell-bent on using Nona's innate magic for his own ends, and will not stop until he has her…
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|summary=We meet Welton Blake at the worst of times – only they should be the best of times. He should be getting a text from the most bae-worthy girl in school in regards to a cinema date, but his phone has packed up, he's chundered last night's meal and his breakfast over another girl in class, who's duffed him up in response, and the wanna-bae seems to actually be with someone else anyway. On a bigger scale he's living with his mother and not much income now that the dad has left the picture – yes, things are so bad they're resorting to having cabbage for dinner.  I know, right?  But surely this is just a blip, a day at school to forget, and everything (like his vomit) will all come out in the wash?  This can't be the start of a most nightmarish time for young Welton?
|isbn=1406385239
+
|isbn=1781129495
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B08KKQ85FN
+
|author=Karen M McManus
|title=But Never For Lunch
+
|title=The Cousins
|author=Sandra Aragona
+
|rating=5
|rating=4
+
|genre=General Fiction
|genre=Short Stories
+
|summary= The rich and famous Story family led a life of luxury on Gull Cove Island, until 25 years ago when each of the Story children - Anders, Archer, Adam and Allison - received a mysterious letter from their mother and were cut off completely. But now, a quarter of a century later, their children have been called to return to the island for the summer by their grandmother. What does she want with the cousins? Why did she cut off her children all those years ago? Are the deaths on Gull Cove Island really what they seem? The dark web of twisted lies, secrets and tragedy that has held the Story family up - and held them apart - for a quarter of a century is about to come crashing down.
|summary=''If a woman approaching the menopause can be likened to a Rottweiler in lipstick, an Ambassador nearing retirement resembles a pampered peacock about to be released into the company of carrion crows or, more to the point, about to discover the real world of bus timetables and paying his own gas bills.''
+
|isbn=0241376947
 
 
You don't get many better opening sentences than that, do you? We first met His Excellency and The Ambassador's Wife in [[Sorting the Priorities: Ambassadress and Beagle Survive Diplomacy by Sandra Aragona|Sorting the Priorities]] and we learned what it was like to be moved around countries like accompanying baggage by the Italian Government but the time has come for HE to retires and for Sandra Aragona to become The Wife of Former Ambassador...  They have left The Career and settled in Rome.  Well 'settled' rather overstates the situation and their dog, Beagle, has no intention of slowing down any time soon, despite being sixteen and deaf.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author= Susi Holliday
+
|isbn=1786495902
|title= The Last Resort
+
|title=The Natural Health Service: How Nature Can Mend Your Mind
|rating= 3.5  
+
|author=Isabel Hardman
|genre= Thrillers
+
|rating=5
|summary=A group of strangers gather on a private island. They have been invited to an all-expenses paid retreat to test a brand-new product from the mysterious Timeo Technology company. The group includes a games designer, social media influencer, gossip columnist and hedge fund manager. Everyone seems to have an area of expertise that makes their attendance necessary. All except Amelia whose presence is a mystery. We follow the group as they explore the island, and each other's histories and it becomes clear that they all have a dark secret they would rather keep hidden. As the clock ticks down, these well-kept secrets are revealed, and it soon becomes clear that this luxury retreat is really a gilded cage. In a race against time, Amelia must struggle to uncover the reason for her attendance and protect the rest of the guests from the increasingly sinister accidents that befall them.  
+
|genre=Lifestyle
|isbn=1542020018
+
|summary=Isabel Hardman suffered a trauma which she chooses not to share. She says that a friend who does know, burst into tears and health-care professionals' jaws have sagged in disbelief. Hardman dealt with this at the time by 'keeping going': the next day she went to work to cover the budget, next there was the EU referendum, the political party leadership contests and then it was party conference season. One night she had to be sedated and returned home to begin long-term sick leave. That was what brought me to this book: 2020 was the year when the bins went out more often than I did.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B08GFSK2WZ
+
|author=Emma Carroll and Kaja Kajfez
|title=The Karma Trap
+
|title=The Ghost Garden
|author=Lisette Boyd
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=4
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|genre=Women's Fiction
+
|summary=Fran, the gardener's daughter at a posh country house, is worried.  She's just cracked her garden fork through quite a grim discovery - a large bone, buried under the potatoesBut she's even more worried when she learns that that event coincided with Leo, the older child of the house, breaking his leg while playing cricket on the lawn.  She is due to get even more worried when she finds something else that also seems to foretell a surprise.  Tasked with shoving Leo around the grounds in his bathchair, she might have reason to be out of her mind with fear, when she learns what he is seeking - a long-forgotten burial chamberBut surely that won't act as a premonition to anything - not here in the sultry, summery days of 1914?
|summary=George Jackson is thirty-three years old, absolutely gorgeous to look at - and single.  She's not had sex for eight months and she's stuck in the karma trap: an awful lot of bad luck is being visited on her and she has a real talent for attracting dramaHer life's chaotic: she dealt with the leak from the shower by putting something down at the bottom of the stairs to absorb the water - then the shower fell through the roof whilst she was in it and left her, stark naked, staring at the pervy postmanShe only has to take her mother's dog out for a walk for her to end up with dog poo spattered across her face - and a photo being taken by someone who shares it around the office.
+
|isbn=1781129002
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008333173
+
|isbn=reed3
|title=Hungry: A Memoir of Wanting More
+
|title=Why You? 101 Interview Questions You'll Never Fear Again (3rd Edition)
|author=Grace Dent
+
|author=James Reed
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
+
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=I'm always relieved when Grace Dent is one of the judges on ''Masterchef''. 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 the time. You also ponder on how she can look so elegant with all that good food in front of her.  I've often wondered about the woman behind the media image and ''Hungry: A Memoir of Wanting More'' is a stunning read which will make you laugh and break your heart in equal measures.
+
|summary=Six years on from the original edition, the book is being re-issued with a bonus chapter entitled ''The Future of Work'' which includes an additional 10 questions.   I've come to this some 6 years after reviewing the original book and my life has changed significantly in the meantime. I'm no longer working in middle-management having opted for a down-shift into reduced hours freelancing to enable me to focus on other (not necessarily paying) work.  I can therefore relate to the first point made in this chapter namely that independence and flexibility are core skills that employees need to have.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1838773169
+
|author= Deborah O'Connor
|title=Her Majesty the Queen Investigates: The Windsor Knot
+
|title= The Captive
|author=S J Bennett
+
|rating= 4
|rating=5
+
|genre= Thrillers
|genre=Crime
+
|summary=Hannah knows the cage, intimately. It lurks in the corner of her eye. Soon, it will be occupied. Then what? What if he speaks to her? What if he escapes? What if he hurts her? What if she hurts him?
|summary=It's early 2016 and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is at Windsor for the Easter Court.  She's having a dine and sleep at the request of Prince Charles, who's attempting to raise money from some rich Russians for one of his pet projects. There'd been a distinctly Russian flavour to the evening and one of the performers brought in to play the piano has been found dead in what can only be called embarrassing circumstances.  The immediate reaction is that one of the guests is responsible. The Queen mentally rules out her racing manager, an ex-ambassador to Moscow, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Sir David Attenborough. One couldn't bear to go down any of ''those'' roads.
+
|isbn=1838772650
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Matt Haig
+
|isbn=B08CR3WNFT
|title=The Midnight Library
+
|title=The Therapist
 +
|author=B A Paris
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary= Between life and death there is a library. And so, 38 minutes after Nora decided to die, she finds herself in the Midnight Library. Everything that could've gone wrong in Nora's life has. Her cat died, she lost her job, her brother won't speak to her, her parents are dead, the boy she teaches piano to no longer cares about piano, she called off her wedding, and old Mr Banerjee next door no longer needs her help. She gave up on all the things that would've let her escape the wet, cold town of Bedford and given her life some purposeful direction. So at 23:22, she realises that she isn't made for life and decides to die. But instead of death, she finds the library. Each infinite shelf is filled with books, each book providing a chance to try another life she could have lived, in a parallel time. And so, just after midnight on Tuesday the 18th of April, Nora Seed begins to live every life she could've.
+
|summary=When Leo Curtis found the house in The Circle, a gated community, Alice Dawson was in Venice. Leo wanted to move quickly on the property as it was on the market at such a reasonable price that Alice wouldn't have to sell her cottage in Harlestone for them to be able to afford it.  Alice agreed - she was tired of their long-distance relationship. Now they would be able to spend most of the week together instead of just the weekends.  Leo had some work done on the house: he made two bedrooms into one and although Alice knew that the house was stunning she just didn't feel comfortable there.
|isbn=1786892731
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0349423083
+
|isbn=1406395404
|title=Death and the Brewery Queen (Kate Shackleton Mysteries)
+
|title=The Awesome Power of Sleep: How Sleep Super-Charges Your Teenage Brain
|author=Frances Brody
+
|author=Nicola Morgan
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=Crime (Historical)
+
|genre=Teens
|summary=Kate Shackleton runs her investigation agency from Batswing Cottage, ably assisted by Jim Sykes, who lives in Woodhouse and her housekeeper, Mrs SugdenShe's been approached by William Lofthouse of the Barleycorn Brewery in MashamSomething is going wrong with his business and he'd like Kate to look into it discreetly: he's hoping that his nephew and right-hand man, James Lofthouse, will be back from a trip to Germany before longJames went to see what the continental brewers were doing and what changes Barleycorn might need to make.  William is worried that James is perhaps enjoying himself a little bit ''too'' much or is going to bring back a German bride but he'd like the business to be ship-shape before his nephew returns.
+
|summary=2020 has been a strange year: I doubt anyone would argue with that statementLots of our routines have been completely dismantled and for some teenagers this will have brought about sleep problemsSome teens will dismiss this as irrelevant ('who needs sleep? - I've got loads to be doing) and others will worry unnecessarilyMost people, from children to adults will have the odd bad night but worrying about your lack of sleep is only likely to make it worseAnd there's also the fact that for far too long, lack of sleep has been lauded as a virtue and sleep made to seem like laziness.  Being up early, working late has been praised and the ability to survive on little sleep has almost become something to put on your CV.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Caroline Scott
+
|isbn=000820831X
|title=When I Come Home Again
+
|title=The Coffinmaker's Garden
|rating=4.5
+
|author=Stuart MacBride
|genre=Historical Fiction
+
|rating=4
|summary=1918 and a young man is arrested in Durham Cathedral. He refuses to give a name, no matter how hard they push he will not say who he is. Eventually, they determine this isn't willful obstinance, he doesn't answer because he doesn't knowHe remembers being on the road for a long time and being frightened, and some of the faces from the road, but other than that – everything that came before has goneThey need a name for the forms and so they call him Adam and, because he was found in the Galilee Chapel, it becomes Adam GalileeA fanciful name for a tired young man in a dishevelled uniform who doesn't know who he is, where he is or how he got there.
+
|genre=Crime
|isbn=1471192172
+
|summary=At the coastal village of Clachmara, the headland is slowly eroding into the sea. Storm Trevor speeds up the processA ship - the Ocean-Gold Harvester is stuck on the rocks and young Alfie Compton cannot resist sneaking out of the house to see what's happeningMargaret runs after her son and as she grabs him to pull him back to safety she glances across at the newly-exposed cliff front and sees human bonesGordon Smith's home is falling into the North Sea and the evidence of what he's been doing for decades is going with it - except for what Ash Henderson of LIRU can grab as he later escapes the tumbling ruin.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529410347
+
|isbn=B08BC4D58S
|title=Death Awaits in Durham (Kitt Hartley Yorkshire Mysteries)
+
|title=Winterkill (Dark Iceland)
|author=Helen Cox
+
|author=Ragnar Jonasson
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Kitt Hartley's assistant, Grace Edwards, has left her library job and taken a place on the Venerable Bede Academy's vocational library studies course in Durham.  It's an unusual place to study as students with government grants are not accepted, so most of the people attending are scions of the seriously rich, scholarship students - or they've managed, somehow, to scrape together the moneyGrace, who's 22, comes into the last categoryHer parents agreed to fund the course but told her that if that was what she chose to do then they were finished with her.  Not long after she started the course, Kitt Hartley came for a visit - and immediately discovered an unsolved disappearance of a student from a year ago.
+
|summary=Ari Thor Arason is the police inspector in Siglufjordur and he's still living in the house on Eyrargata which he shared with his wife Kristin and son Stefnir before Kristin left to go to Sweden to do a Masters degree, taking three-year-old Stefnir with her.  They were supposed to spend Christmas together but Kristin cancelledIt's now the Thursday of Holy Week and his family is due to arrive in Siglufjordur that afternoonAri Thor is having trouble sleeping but when he finally managed to get to sleep the phone rings: the body of a young woman has been found on Adalgata, the main street of the town.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Vincent Panettiere
+
|author=Rob Winters
|title=These Thy Gifts
+
|title=His Name Was Wren
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=''2006 is a tumultuous year for the Catholic Church. Reports of horrific sexual abuse are becoming widespread. Monsignor Steven Trimboli is troubled. He worries for the future of the church—and rightly so. A new crime will soon reverberate throughout his church and hit closer to home than he ever imagined.''
+
|summary=In September 1944 something came down in Oban Woods, near the village of Hurstwick. It came down hard, taking the spire of the village church with it, destroying a stone shack,  and leaving a wide trail through the wood, but no trace of what it actually was.  German secret weapon was the local gossip, but there should have been an explosion and a crater, and there were neither of those things.
 
+
|isbn=B08KGVNVNB
As ageing priest Steve Trimboli begins to try to make sense of the child sexual abuse scandal that is rocking his beloved Catholic church, he discovers that one child in his own parish has been abused by a priest sent by his bishop. And this isn't just any boy: this is Steve's grandson whose mother is the offspring of a long past relationship between Steve and a gangster's widow. Steve is determined to seek justice for this boy and all children victimised by priests who have been protected by his church. But he must also face up to his own failings, going right back to his breaking of the celibacy vows.
 
|isbn=1503199886
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=1800321104
 
|title=The Body on the Island
 
|author=Nick Louth
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=A prison transport left HMP Wakefield, heading for HMP Spring Hill.  Steve and Aaron were accompanying Neil Wright who was 67 years old and had served six years for the manslaughter of his wife.  Only that wasn't who he was.  Sixty-three-years-old Neville Rollaston had served thirty years for the murder of five boys between the ages of ten and seventeen.  He was being ghosted out of Wakefield and into a new identity set up in a deal whereby he divulged the whereabouts of the body of one of his victims.  The Bogeyman was going to be set free on 2 July 2019.  He appeared to be a reformed character but he had a list of people upon whom he wished to exact revenge.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1473692407
+
|author=Stephen Clarke
|title=The Book of Two Ways
+
|title=The Spy Who Inspired Me
|author=Jodi Picoult
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dawn Edelstein is a death doula: that's someone who is there for the person who is dying, to make their passage to whatever they believe in as easy as possible and to support their carersIt's a rewarding, caring occupation and Dawn puts her heart and soul into it but this wasn't always her lifeSome fifteen years ago she was a graduate student at Yale working towards her doctorate: as an Egyptologist, she was working with her supervisor, Professor Ian Dumphries, on the Djehutyakht tombs at Deir el-Bersha on the Nile in Middle Egypt.  Then she was Dawn McDowell: that was her maiden name, the name she published under.
+
|summary=This is a spoof spy story, that isn't about James Bond.  Or Ian FlemingBut it features a man called Ian Lemming, who dresses well and 'likes the ladies' and who works for the secret service, but in the planning side of things more than the active serviceLemming finds himself put on a mission with a female spy called Margaux, and the pair end up stranded in Normandy, with Margaux on a desperate mission to unearth traitors in the resistance network, and Lemming desperately trying to keep up with her!
 +
|isbn=2952163855
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Delia Owens
+
|isbn=3110706075
|title=Where The Crawdads Sing
+
|title=Making a Difference: Leadership, Change and Giving Back the Independent Director Way
|rating=5
+
|author=Gerry Brown
|genre=General Fiction
+
|rating=4
|summary= In 1952, Kya's mother disappeared up the dirt track to town, wearing her alligator heels, and never came home. Then one by one her siblings left, ran from the shack on the North Carolina marsh that served as home and the life that would lead to nothing but suffering, leaving 7-year-old Kya with her drunken father. Years pass and Kya - now nicknamed 'Marsh-Girl' – still yearns for a mother that would never return and grew up far too fast for a girl who can neither read nor write. Finally, one night her father never came home leaving Kya completely alone to survive on the marsh. Eventually, as the years drift painfully by, the time comes when Kya, now an emotional and vastly intelligent young woman, yearns for company besides the gulls and the land, yearning to be loved and to be held. So, when 2 boys from the town of Barkley Cove find their way to her, she finds a new way of life. But in 1969, the body of former star quarterback and new husband Chase Andrews is found lying in the mud of the marsh, and everyone in town immediately suspects the mysterious, run-down Marsh-Girl. Who is Kya now, after years of isolation and a broken, hardened heart? Is she really capable of murder?
+
|genre=Business and Finance
|isbn=1472154665
+
|summary=''You're not there to run the organisation.  You are there to make sure that it is run properly.''
 +
 
 +
Gerry Brown is passionate about the benefits which Independent Directors can bring to a board - not just a corporate board, but the board of an NHS Trust, a university, a sports organisation or a charity. He's particularly keen that there's increased diversity on these boards and feels that this would help to avoid some of the scandals (Oxfam, Kids Company - we're thinking about you) which have occurred in recent years. For this to happen, boards need to have a wider field of people to choose from when they're looking for an ID.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=David C Mason
+
|isbn=1786495902
|title=Pandora's Gardener
+
|title=The Natural Health Service: How Nature Can Mend Your Mind
|rating=3
+
|author=Isabel Hardman
|genre=Crime
+
|rating=5
|summary= John Cranston is a gardener, although what he did before he became a gardener, he claims, is classified. That is just as well because he is about to be caught up in a criminal / spy / terrorist plot, where only he can save the day.  
+
|genre=Lifestyle
|isbn=0956180523
+
|summary=Isabel Hardman suffered a trauma which she chooses not to share. She says that a friend, who does know, burst into tears and health-care professionals' jaws have sagged in disbelief. Hardman dealt with this at the time by 'keeping going': the next day she went to work to cover the budget, next there was the EU referendum, the political party leadership contests and then it was party conference season. One night she had to be sedated and returned home to begin long-term sick leave. That was what brought me to this book: 2020 was the year when the bins went out more often than I did.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0356512479
+
|isbn=3030513025
|author= Alix E Harrow
+
|title=The Independent Director in Society: Our current crisis of governance and what to do
|title= The Once and Future Witches
+
|author=Gerry Brown, Andrew Kakabadse and Filipe Morais
|rating= 5
+
|rating=5
|genre= Fantasy
+
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=''There's no such thing as witches, but there used to be.''
+
|summary=Independent Director: ''a job for which no one is qualified'' (''Financial Times'')
  
In 1893, after the purges and the burnings, witching has been reduced to little more than weak charms and simple spells. If women want to hold power in their hands, to have their voices heard, it is now through women's suffrage.
+
Independent Director: ''An independent director is a member of the board of directors who (1) do not have a material relationship with the company, (2) is not part of the company's executive team, and (3) is not involved with the day-to-day operations of the company.  (Corporate Finance Institute)
 +
 
 +
Gerry Brown, Andrew Kakabadse and Filipe Morais feel that the relationship between the executive members of boards and the independent directors (formerly known as non-executive directors), trustees or governors of organisations is frequently unbalanced. The function of the independent director is to have general oversight of the executive side of the board - to spot when and where things are going wrong - but all too often the relationship is too cosy, too antagonistic or the independent director lacks the knowledge and/or experience to understand what's happening or to know how to intervene. Covid-19 has highlighted the failings and weaknesses of leadership and governance and you might be tempted to think that these are extraordinary times and that all will be well once we get back to 'normal' but a pandemic was predicted and modelled in the past and there has been a general failure to prepare for what has happened - and is still happening.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Onjali Q Rauf
+
|isbn=B002SQCYWQ
|title=The Night Bus Hero
+
|title=The Complete Barchester Chronicles
|rating=4.5
+
|author=Anthony Trollope
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|rating=5
|summary=Hector is a bully.  Egged on by his two 'friends', he takes other children's sweets, harasses and threatens, plays pranks at school, and gets into trouble at every turn.  Yet he finds himself frustrated when something actually isn't his fault, but then he isn't believed as everyone expects him to be telling lies.  Nothing seems fair.  His parents are barely home, and seem to only care about his perfect sister and his annoying little brother when they are, and his teachers have abandoned him as a lost causeSo what happens when, in trying to tell the truth & fight to be believed, Hector finds himself embroiled with the police; first trying to accuse, and then trying to save a homeless man from his local park?
+
|genre=Literary Fiction
|isbn=1510106774
+
|summary=When I told my daughter that I didn't know what to listen to now that I'd finished [[The Complete Novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen|The Complete Novels of Jane Austen]] for the second time on the trot she had the perfect answer: The Barchester Chronicles and they were in my inbox in a matter of minutesThey're not ''quite'' as well known as the Austen books but they're an excellent follow on.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1849767343
+
|isbn=0008214468
|title=Count on Me
+
|title=A Time to Lie
|author=Miguel Tanco
+
|author=Simon Berthon
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=The title and format of this book might lead you to think that it's either about responsibility - or it's a basic 1-2-3 book for those just starting out on the numbers journeyIt isn't: it's a hymn of praise to mathsIt's about why maths is so wonderful and how you meet it in everyday life.
+
|summary=A workman has a nasty surprise when he pulls a package out of an excavation on a building site.  It's wrapped in part of an old shower curtain and is a hand, severed above the wrist.  It's been there for about twenty-five to thirty-five years.
 +
 
 +
Robin Sandford - generally known as Robbie - is Prime MinisterHe's married to heiress Carol van Koon and they have two daughters, Becca and Bella.  Sandford's determined to be a better type of politician: he wants ''a government that is not just practically good, but morally good.'' One of the ways he's planning on going about this is to ban arms sales to dubious regimes.  Henry Morland-Cross, the Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, wishes that he'd been warned about this: it's easy to see that he wouldn't have been in agreement.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1849766920
+
|isbn=B077K6BQFD
|title=Everything is MINE
+
|title=The Complete Novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion
|author=Andrea D'Aquino
+
|author=Jane Austen
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
+
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Marcello Von Cauliflower Bonaparte Jackson is a schnauzer: what else could you be with a name like that?  He knows that you'll realise that he's kind, clever and loyal.  You'll also need to know that everything is '''MINE'''.  And he means ''everything''.  It begins with the slipper: mum still has one.  Why would she need more?  You sense that Marcello feels that he's being generous in allowing that.  Then it was the pork chop.  Well, did you see anyone's name on it?  ''And'' he left the carrots for Leo.  That's another example of Marcello's generosity.  There was the acorn which squirrel was gnawing at: there was no documentation to prove ownership. And talking of ownership the tree would provide all the sticks he could ever want to chew.  There's nothing unreasonable in any of that, is there?
+
|summary=Yes - that's over eighty-one hours of listening for the purchase of one audio bookAll six major novels are read by conmedienne Alison Larkin and they're presented in the order in which they were published.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1849767009
+
|isbn=0241453585
|title=It Isn't Rude to be Nude
+
|title=Banking On It: How I Disrupted an Industry
|author=Rosie Haine
+
|author=Anne Boden
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
+
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=This could have been one of those books which 'preaches to the choir': the only people who'll buy it are the people who know that nudity is OK and the ones who ''know'' that it's shameful will avoid it like they avoid the hot-and-bothered person in the supermarket who is coughing fit to bustBut... Rosie Haines makes it into something so much more than a book about not wearing clothes. It's a celebration of bodies: bodies large and small and of every possible hue.  Bodies with disabilities and markings.  They're fine.  In fact, they're wonderful.
+
|summary=Anne Boden had an impressive track record in the financial services sector: she had thirty years experience at a senior level including Group Chief Operating Officer at Allied Irish Bank.  AIB was in the throes of recovering from the 2008 financial crisis when she arrived and she was one of the first to realise that banks needed to do things differentlyAIB thought it was at the cutting edge when it proposed opening a branch which allowed customers to access their accounts via a terminal. Boden took things a step further, realising that customers could access their accounts from their homes: the old branch network, employing thousands of people, would soon become redundant.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241295955
+
|author=Lauren Martin
|title=Trio
+
|title=The Book of Moods
|author=William Boyd
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
+
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=It was 1968: the year when Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated.  It's also the year when YSK Films are making a movie in Brighton.  It's called ''Emily Bracegirdle's Extremely Useful Ladder to the Moon'', or ''Ladder the Moon'' as it's known on set.  Anny Viklund is the female star in a production which is proving to be just a little bit rackety.  There are odd pressures on the producer, Talbot Kydd, to employ this old actor friend for a couple of days because he needs the money, allow a fading star to use his catchphrase, or include a song from the leading man, whose musical star is fading.
+
|summary= I was in a great mood when I first learnt of this book, and because sarcasm doesn't always translate well into writing, imagine the word ''great'' being delivered with an eye roll and a sigh, through clenched teeth. I had spent the best part of a rainy, windy weekend afternoon out on the water at our local sailing club in the rescue rib, on standby in case anyone who was racing needed support. It's a volunteer duty we all do during the year, and normally I'm happy to, but that day the weather was miserable and I was miserable, and it all came to a head that evening when I noticed on the website that we had been thanked for our time as "Dave and wife". Wow. I had never needed this book more.
 +
|isbn=1538733625
 
}}
 
}}
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B08B39QNRH
+
|author=Becky Albertalli
|title=The Curious History of Writer's Cramp: Solving an age-old problem
+
|title= Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
|author=Michael Pritchard
+
|rating=5
|rating=4
+
|genre=Teens
|genre=Popular Science
+
|summary= Sixteen-year-old Simon Spier has a great life. He has a close group of friends, a loving family, and even an adorable dog. But he has a secret: he's gay. Only one person knows this, and that's Blue – a boy who he has been emailing almost daily since he found out that there was another closeted guy at his school. Their emails are a safe space for Simon; it's his own private universe without the fear of being judged. Until one day, these emails fall into the wrong hands, and everything Simon knows is turned upside down.
|summary=''Society is based on speech but civilisation requires the written word''.
+
|isbn=014135609X
 
 
I came to Michael Pritchard's ''The Curious History of Writer's Cramp'' by a rather strange route. I have problems with my hands which orthopaedic surgeons refer to as 'interesting': I prefer the word 'painful' but I have an interest in the way that hands work. An exploration of the history of a problem which has defeated some of the best medical minds for some three-hundred-years seemed liked excellent background reading and so it proved, with the book being as much about the doctors treating the sufferers and the changing medical attitudes as the problem itself.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Blake Nuto and Charlotte Ager
+
|isbn=3110641119
|title=Child of Galaxies
+
|title=The Journey Mapping Playbook: A Practical Guide to Preparing, Facilitating and Unlocking the Value of Customer Journey Mapping
 +
|author=Jerry Angrave
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
+
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=What does it mean to be alive?  What are we made of, and where are we going?  ''Child of Galaxies'' is a lovely children's picture book that deals with all the big questionsWritten as a poem, the lyrical words don't shy away from darkness, nor talk down to the children you are reading to, but rather than work beautifully together with the illustrations to create a powerful, uplifting reading experience.
+
|summary=I had no idea what 'journey mapping' was until I read this playbook but any business that engages with their customers will benefit from reading the book and acting on the contentsYou're going to learn how to run a workshop to discover what it feels like to be one of your own customers.  At this point, please don't say 'oh (expletive deleted) not another workshop' because this is going to be fun and you're going to be surprised by what emerges.
|isbn=1912497425
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Lilja Sigurdardottir and Quentin Bates (translator)
+
|isbn=3110641291
|title=Betrayal
+
|title=The Radical Innovation Playbook: A Practical Guide for Harnessing New, Novel or Game-Changing Breakthroughs
|rating=3
+
|author=Olga Kokshagina and Allen Alexander
|genre=Crime
+
|rating=5
|summary=Meet Ursula, the stand-in minister, drafted in from outside the leading party to cover the post for a year.  You might get to meet her hunky husband she can't believe she deserves, and the children who are ignorant of just how she spent all her empathy for them on previous jobs in the foreign aid charity sectorYou'll meet her ministry's cleaner, who bizarrely has fallen into the task of helping a famous newsreader with her Tinder profile.  You'll certainly meet a homeless tramp, who has taken one look at a newspaper image of Ursula, and, knowing her of old, decided she needs saving from the devil posing beside her.  You'll meet the ministerial bodyguard and driver the tramp almost immediately forces Ursula to accept.  But as for the first ministerial case, of a woman demanding her daughter's rape get looked at and pronto, nobody can say, for all records of Ursula's meeting with the woman have been wiped…
+
|genre=Business and Finance
|isbn=1913193403
+
|summary=So, why bother?  Every time you set out to do something new you end up with the same thing in a slightly different form and quite a bit of money spent.  Why not just leave it as it is?  After all, it's ''roughly'' working, isn't it?
}}
+
 
{{Frontpage
+
You might not have said it, but you've probably thought it.  You've also thought the small, incremental improvements which you have been able to make - the optimisation of your core business with cost efficiencies wherever possible, the extension of your existing products into new areas - haven't really delivered in terms of ''growth''.  It's been manageable and largely risk-free but you could easily be challenged by a competitor who takes a more radical approachYou've merely kept the business ticking over and there's a nagging suspicion in the back of your mind that an organisation designed for the twentieth century might not survive in the twenty-firstWhat you need is innovation - ''radical'' innovation.
|author=Tania Unsworth
 
|title=The Time Traveller and the Tiger
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Elsie is an ordinary sort of girl.  The sort of small girl who often gets overlooked, and forgottenShe is quiet, and compliant, and makes the best of whatever happens to her.  So when her parents forget that her school holidays have started before they are free to take care of her, they have to arrange for her to go and stay with her Great Uncle for a week.  Poor Elsie, forgotten again, just decides to make the best of things.  On investigating the house she finds that her Great Uncle had lived in India as a boy, and he has an enormous tiger rug on the floor of one of the roomsWhen Elsie asks him about the rug he seems unhappy, and he says he has to keep it because he was the one who shot the tiger when he was 12 years old, and he says it was the worst thing he ever did.  So when Elsie suddenly finds herself magically transported back many, many years, to the time in India when her Great Uncle was 12 years old, she believes that she must try to stop him from killing the tiger, in order to put something right that happened a long time ago.
 
|isbn=1788541707
 
 
}}
 
}}

Revision as of 10:02, 19 January 2021

Reviews by readers from all the many walks of literary life. With author interviews, features and top tens. You'll be sure to find something you'll want to read here. Dig in!

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Review of

The Mirror Dance (Dandy Gilver) by Catriona McPherson

4.5star.jpg Crime (Historical)

It was the August Bank Holiday weekend and, as so often happened, it was cold enough to have the fire lit and Bunty the Dalmation wasn't inclined to leave it to keep Dandy Gilver warm on the sofa. The thought of work was almost cheering when Dandy took the call from Sandy Bissett in Dundee. She was the publisher of a magazine and had been told that the man running the Punch and Judy show in the local park had used copies of two of her cartoon characters - Rosie Cheek and her sister Freckle - to drum up some local interest in his show. Sandy Bissett's request was simple: she wanted Gilver and Osborne to warn the man about infringement of copyright - and Dandy and Alex would be cheaper than employing a solicitor to do the same job. Full Review

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Review of

The Wisdom of Psychopaths: Lessons in life from Saints, Spies and Serial Killers by Dr Kevin Dutton

4star.jpg Popular Science

'Donald Trump outscores Hitler on psychopathic traits' claims Oxford University researcher.

Until the events of 6 January 2021 that might have surprised, even shocked many readers: now they're probably convinced that they knew it all along. The statement has lost a little of its shock value but it does help us to understand more about the nature of psychopathy. It's too easy to associate psychopathy with the Yorkshire Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, Saddam Hussein or Robert Maudsley, the real-life Hannibal Lecter, but the truth is that having psychopathic traits can sometimes be a good thing. Full Review

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Review of

The Humiliations of Welton Blake by Alex Wheatle

2.5star.jpg Confident Readers

We meet Welton Blake at the worst of times – only they should be the best of times. He should be getting a text from the most bae-worthy girl in school in regards to a cinema date, but his phone has packed up, he's chundered last night's meal and his breakfast over another girl in class, who's duffed him up in response, and the wanna-bae seems to actually be with someone else anyway. On a bigger scale he's living with his mother and not much income now that the dad has left the picture – yes, things are so bad they're resorting to having cabbage for dinner. I know, right? But surely this is just a blip, a day at school to forget, and everything (like his vomit) will all come out in the wash? This can't be the start of a most nightmarish time for young Welton? Full Review

0241376947.jpg

Review of

The Cousins by Karen M McManus

5star.jpg General Fiction

The rich and famous Story family led a life of luxury on Gull Cove Island, until 25 years ago when each of the Story children - Anders, Archer, Adam and Allison - received a mysterious letter from their mother and were cut off completely. But now, a quarter of a century later, their children have been called to return to the island for the summer by their grandmother. What does she want with the cousins? Why did she cut off her children all those years ago? Are the deaths on Gull Cove Island really what they seem? The dark web of twisted lies, secrets and tragedy that has held the Story family up - and held them apart - for a quarter of a century is about to come crashing down. Full Review

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Review of

The Natural Health Service: How Nature Can Mend Your Mind by Isabel Hardman

5star.jpg Lifestyle

Isabel Hardman suffered a trauma which she chooses not to share. She says that a friend who does know, burst into tears and health-care professionals' jaws have sagged in disbelief. Hardman dealt with this at the time by 'keeping going': the next day she went to work to cover the budget, next there was the EU referendum, the political party leadership contests and then it was party conference season. One night she had to be sedated and returned home to begin long-term sick leave. That was what brought me to this book: 2020 was the year when the bins went out more often than I did. Full Review

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Review of

The Ghost Garden by Emma Carroll and Kaja Kajfez

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

Fran, the gardener's daughter at a posh country house, is worried. She's just cracked her garden fork through quite a grim discovery - a large bone, buried under the potatoes. But she's even more worried when she learns that that event coincided with Leo, the older child of the house, breaking his leg while playing cricket on the lawn. She is due to get even more worried when she finds something else that also seems to foretell a surprise. Tasked with shoving Leo around the grounds in his bathchair, she might have reason to be out of her mind with fear, when she learns what he is seeking - a long-forgotten burial chamber. But surely that won't act as a premonition to anything - not here in the sultry, summery days of 1914? Full Review

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Review of

Why You? 101 Interview Questions You'll Never Fear Again (3rd Edition) by James Reed

5star.jpg Business and Finance

Six years on from the original edition, the book is being re-issued with a bonus chapter entitled The Future of Work which includes an additional 10 questions. I've come to this some 6 years after reviewing the original book and my life has changed significantly in the meantime. I'm no longer working in middle-management having opted for a down-shift into reduced hours freelancing to enable me to focus on other (not necessarily paying) work. I can therefore relate to the first point made in this chapter namely that independence and flexibility are core skills that employees need to have. Full Review

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Review of

The Captive by Deborah O'Connor

4star.jpg Thrillers

Hannah knows the cage, intimately. It lurks in the corner of her eye. Soon, it will be occupied. Then what? What if he speaks to her? What if he escapes? What if he hurts her? What if she hurts him? Full Review

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Review of

The Therapist by B A Paris

5star.jpg Thrillers

When Leo Curtis found the house in The Circle, a gated community, Alice Dawson was in Venice. Leo wanted to move quickly on the property as it was on the market at such a reasonable price that Alice wouldn't have to sell her cottage in Harlestone for them to be able to afford it. Alice agreed - she was tired of their long-distance relationship. Now they would be able to spend most of the week together instead of just the weekends. Leo had some work done on the house: he made two bedrooms into one and although Alice knew that the house was stunning she just didn't feel comfortable there. Full Review

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Review of

The Awesome Power of Sleep: How Sleep Super-Charges Your Teenage Brain by Nicola Morgan

5star.jpg Teens

2020 has been a strange year: I doubt anyone would argue with that statement. Lots of our routines have been completely dismantled and for some teenagers this will have brought about sleep problems. Some teens will dismiss this as irrelevant ('who needs sleep? - I've got loads to be doing) and others will worry unnecessarily. Most people, from children to adults will have the odd bad night but worrying about your lack of sleep is only likely to make it worse. And there's also the fact that for far too long, lack of sleep has been lauded as a virtue and sleep made to seem like laziness. Being up early, working late has been praised and the ability to survive on little sleep has almost become something to put on your CV. Full Review

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Review of

The Coffinmaker's Garden by Stuart MacBride

4star.jpg Crime

At the coastal village of Clachmara, the headland is slowly eroding into the sea. Storm Trevor speeds up the process. A ship - the Ocean-Gold Harvester is stuck on the rocks and young Alfie Compton cannot resist sneaking out of the house to see what's happening. Margaret runs after her son and as she grabs him to pull him back to safety she glances across at the newly-exposed cliff front and sees human bones. Gordon Smith's home is falling into the North Sea and the evidence of what he's been doing for decades is going with it - except for what Ash Henderson of LIRU can grab as he later escapes the tumbling ruin. Full Review

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Review of

Winterkill (Dark Iceland) by Ragnar Jonasson

4star.jpg Crime

Ari Thor Arason is the police inspector in Siglufjordur and he's still living in the house on Eyrargata which he shared with his wife Kristin and son Stefnir before Kristin left to go to Sweden to do a Masters degree, taking three-year-old Stefnir with her. They were supposed to spend Christmas together but Kristin cancelled. It's now the Thursday of Holy Week and his family is due to arrive in Siglufjordur that afternoon. Ari Thor is having trouble sleeping but when he finally managed to get to sleep the phone rings: the body of a young woman has been found on Adalgata, the main street of the town. Full Review

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Review of

His Name Was Wren by Rob Winters

4star.jpg Confident Readers

In September 1944 something came down in Oban Woods, near the village of Hurstwick. It came down hard, taking the spire of the village church with it, destroying a stone shack, and leaving a wide trail through the wood, but no trace of what it actually was. German secret weapon was the local gossip, but there should have been an explosion and a crater, and there were neither of those things. Full Review

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Review of

The Spy Who Inspired Me by Stephen Clarke

4star.jpg General Fiction

This is a spoof spy story, that isn't about James Bond. Or Ian Fleming. But it features a man called Ian Lemming, who dresses well and 'likes the ladies' and who works for the secret service, but in the planning side of things more than the active service. Lemming finds himself put on a mission with a female spy called Margaux, and the pair end up stranded in Normandy, with Margaux on a desperate mission to unearth traitors in the resistance network, and Lemming desperately trying to keep up with her! Full Review

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Review of

Making a Difference: Leadership, Change and Giving Back the Independent Director Way by Gerry Brown

4star.jpg Business and Finance

You're not there to run the organisation. You are there to make sure that it is run properly.

Gerry Brown is passionate about the benefits which Independent Directors can bring to a board - not just a corporate board, but the board of an NHS Trust, a university, a sports organisation or a charity. He's particularly keen that there's increased diversity on these boards and feels that this would help to avoid some of the scandals (Oxfam, Kids Company - we're thinking about you) which have occurred in recent years. For this to happen, boards need to have a wider field of people to choose from when they're looking for an ID. Full Review

1786495902.jpg

Review of

The Natural Health Service: How Nature Can Mend Your Mind by Isabel Hardman

5star.jpg Lifestyle

Isabel Hardman suffered a trauma which she chooses not to share. She says that a friend, who does know, burst into tears and health-care professionals' jaws have sagged in disbelief. Hardman dealt with this at the time by 'keeping going': the next day she went to work to cover the budget, next there was the EU referendum, the political party leadership contests and then it was party conference season. One night she had to be sedated and returned home to begin long-term sick leave. That was what brought me to this book: 2020 was the year when the bins went out more often than I did. Full Review

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Review of

The Independent Director in Society: Our current crisis of governance and what to do by Gerry Brown, Andrew Kakabadse and Filipe Morais

5star.jpg Business and Finance

Independent Director: a job for which no one is qualified (Financial Times)

Independent Director: An independent director is a member of the board of directors who (1) do not have a material relationship with the company, (2) is not part of the company's executive team, and (3) is not involved with the day-to-day operations of the company. (Corporate Finance Institute)

Gerry Brown, Andrew Kakabadse and Filipe Morais feel that the relationship between the executive members of boards and the independent directors (formerly known as non-executive directors), trustees or governors of organisations is frequently unbalanced. The function of the independent director is to have general oversight of the executive side of the board - to spot when and where things are going wrong - but all too often the relationship is too cosy, too antagonistic or the independent director lacks the knowledge and/or experience to understand what's happening or to know how to intervene. Covid-19 has highlighted the failings and weaknesses of leadership and governance and you might be tempted to think that these are extraordinary times and that all will be well once we get back to 'normal' but a pandemic was predicted and modelled in the past and there has been a general failure to prepare for what has happened - and is still happening. Full Review

B002SQCYWQ.jpg

Review of

The Complete Barchester Chronicles by Anthony Trollope

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

When I told my daughter that I didn't know what to listen to now that I'd finished The Complete Novels of Jane Austen for the second time on the trot she had the perfect answer: The Barchester Chronicles and they were in my inbox in a matter of minutes. They're not quite as well known as the Austen books but they're an excellent follow on. Full Review

0008214468.jpg

Review of

A Time to Lie by Simon Berthon

5star.jpg Thrillers

A workman has a nasty surprise when he pulls a package out of an excavation on a building site. It's wrapped in part of an old shower curtain and is a hand, severed above the wrist. It's been there for about twenty-five to thirty-five years.

Robin Sandford - generally known as Robbie - is Prime Minister. He's married to heiress Carol van Koon and they have two daughters, Becca and Bella. Sandford's determined to be a better type of politician: he wants a government that is not just practically good, but morally good. One of the ways he's planning on going about this is to ban arms sales to dubious regimes. Henry Morland-Cross, the Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, wishes that he'd been warned about this: it's easy to see that he wouldn't have been in agreement. Full Review

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Review of

The Complete Novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Yes - that's over eighty-one hours of listening for the purchase of one audio book. All six major novels are read by conmedienne Alison Larkin and they're presented in the order in which they were published. Full Review

0241453585.jpg

Review of

Banking On It: How I Disrupted an Industry by Anne Boden

5star.jpg Business and Finance

Anne Boden had an impressive track record in the financial services sector: she had thirty years experience at a senior level including Group Chief Operating Officer at Allied Irish Bank. AIB was in the throes of recovering from the 2008 financial crisis when she arrived and she was one of the first to realise that banks needed to do things differently. AIB thought it was at the cutting edge when it proposed opening a branch which allowed customers to access their accounts via a terminal. Boden took things a step further, realising that customers could access their accounts from their homes: the old branch network, employing thousands of people, would soon become redundant. Full Review

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Review of

The Book of Moods by Lauren Martin

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I was in a great mood when I first learnt of this book, and because sarcasm doesn't always translate well into writing, imagine the word great being delivered with an eye roll and a sigh, through clenched teeth. I had spent the best part of a rainy, windy weekend afternoon out on the water at our local sailing club in the rescue rib, on standby in case anyone who was racing needed support. It's a volunteer duty we all do during the year, and normally I'm happy to, but that day the weather was miserable and I was miserable, and it all came to a head that evening when I noticed on the website that we had been thanked for our time as "Dave and wife". Wow. I had never needed this book more. Full Review

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Review of

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

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Sixteen-year-old Simon Spier has a great life. He has a close group of friends, a loving family, and even an adorable dog. But he has a secret: he's gay. Only one person knows this, and that's Blue – a boy who he has been emailing almost daily since he found out that there was another closeted guy at his school. Their emails are a safe space for Simon; it's his own private universe without the fear of being judged. Until one day, these emails fall into the wrong hands, and everything Simon knows is turned upside down. Full Review

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Review of

The Journey Mapping Playbook: A Practical Guide to Preparing, Facilitating and Unlocking the Value of Customer Journey Mapping by Jerry Angrave

5star.jpg Business and Finance

I had no idea what 'journey mapping' was until I read this playbook but any business that engages with their customers will benefit from reading the book and acting on the contents. You're going to learn how to run a workshop to discover what it feels like to be one of your own customers. At this point, please don't say 'oh (expletive deleted) not another workshop' because this is going to be fun and you're going to be surprised by what emerges. Full Review

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Review of

The Radical Innovation Playbook: A Practical Guide for Harnessing New, Novel or Game-Changing Breakthroughs by Olga Kokshagina and Allen Alexander

5star.jpg Business and Finance

So, why bother? Every time you set out to do something new you end up with the same thing in a slightly different form and quite a bit of money spent. Why not just leave it as it is? After all, it's roughly working, isn't it?

You might not have said it, but you've probably thought it. You've also thought the small, incremental improvements which you have been able to make - the optimisation of your core business with cost efficiencies wherever possible, the extension of your existing products into new areas - haven't really delivered in terms of growth. It's been manageable and largely risk-free but you could easily be challenged by a competitor who takes a more radical approach. You've merely kept the business ticking over and there's a nagging suspicion in the back of your mind that an organisation designed for the twentieth century might not survive in the twenty-first. What you need is innovation - radical innovation. Full Review