Beryl Bainbridge: Artist, Writer, Friend by Psiche Hughes I will happily go on record to say that Beryl Bainbridge is my favourite author. Earlier this year, I hosted a reading week celebrating her work; you can see my record of that week and a bibliography of Beryl books and reviews on my Reading Beryl page. Read More
Tag: Non fiction
Modern Art is not rubbish
What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye by Will Gompertz The BBC’s Arts Editor, Will Gompertz, is unusual for an arts commentator – he has a sense of humour and a mission to enthuse us about his subject. He is uniquely qualified – having worked for Read More
A book I wish I’d written …
Now don’t get me wrong, as someone who gave up English lessons at O-level, and has only written reports and policy documents, newsletters and blog posts (of course) since, I really don’t think I have a novel in me. More correctly, at the moment I don’t have a novel in me – much as I’d Read More
Through the keyhole …
Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling I defy any browsing bibliomane not to pick this book up on seeing the arrangements of books and comfy armchair through the keyhole on its cover! I’m sure that you, like me, sniff out the bookcases as soon as you go in someone’s house. If Read More
Book Group Report – Land of the grey
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder After the racy delights of Jilly Cooper’s Riders last month, we went for something completely different for our February read. Stasiland by Anna Funder is a work of investigative journalism, chronicling the lives of some people who lived in the GDR before the Berlin Wall came Read More
I should be so lucky ….
The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind by Dr Richard Wiseman Richard Wiseman’s speciality is a fascination with the quirkier side of psychology, (his website and blog are here). A magician and psychologist based at the University of Hertfordshire, (which is still Hatfield Poly in my mind), he and his team investigate the Read More
So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid
Translated by Natasha Wimmer After reading Simon’s post on the wonderful book of essay about books by Anne Fadiman called Ex Libris yesterday, I spotted this little book about books lurking in my TBR. Zaid is Mexican, (I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by a Mexican before). His 2004 collection of articles/short essays mainly Read More
Starting the Canongate Myths series …
A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong One of my reading resolutions for 2010 is to read the entire Canongate Myths series – re-tellings of age old stories by great authors. While I’m not intending to read them in strict publication order necessarily, (I managed to snaffle a copy of the latest addition Orphans Read More
America has never looked better…
The USA Book: A Journey Through America by Carla Zimmerman Last year a copy of the compact version of Lonely Planet’s The Travel Book came into my hands and it was a fascinating but brief tour around the world. (See my write-up here.) That small sized book was a lavish 900 page brick, so when Read More
My Reading Resolutions for 2009 – how did I do #4 (the final one!)
By now you might have cottoned on, by the series of bookish but not books-read posts, that I’m suffering a severe case of end-of-term-can’t-read-itis and have thus resorted to fillers; (all this pondering the stats is helping me formulate my books of the year though). Aside from that, I am reading The Moonstone but mostly Read More
Q&A with science writer Marcus Chown
It’s my great pleasure today to introduce you to Marcus Chown, author of We Need To Talk About Kelvin who is on a blog tour to promote the book (which I reviewed here). Apart from writing great popular science books, Marcus is cosmology consultant of magazine New Scientist, having formerly been a radio astronomer at Read More
Making Quantum Physics Accessible
On Wednesday, I am delighted that Marcus Chown, author of We Need to Talk About Kelvin: What Everyday Things Tell Us About the Universe” will be visiting my blog to do a Q&A as part of his blogtour to promote the book. Marcus is a best-selling science author and cosmology consultant for New Scientist magazine. Read More
Medical Myths debunked
Don’t Swallow Your Gum: and Other Medical Myths Debunked by Dr Aaron Carroll and Dr Rachel Vreeman This short book looks into about seventy-five medical myths and old wives tales, examines the evidence, and debunks them. Many will have read Ben Goldacre’s bestselling book Bad Science – (If you haven’t read it, do! My review Read More
An armchair traveller’s delight
The Travel Book by Lonely Planet Here’s my full written review… This is the new smaller format edition of Lonely Planet’s previous coffee table giant, but it’s still a doorstoppingly thick brick of a book! It has to be 900 pages to give even the tiniest snapshot of every country in the world, (plus a Read More
One down ….
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell I’ve just finished my first book in 2009, although started in 2008. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is an immensely readable analysis of what makes epidemics happen. However its not really about nasty diseases, although they do feature, but more about business and marketing. It is not just Read More
Desert Island Books #2
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Some may consider choosing an encyclopaedic dictionary a bit of a cheat, but I maintain that if you were on a desert island with no internet – there is no better book than Brewer’s for frequent dipping into for little nuggets of information. It is simply the original and Read More
Words of wisdom
From the sublime … “The marvellous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can only mean one thing.” Ronnie Barker … to the sublimely ridiculous but still true… “A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree.” – Spike Milligan “Never trust a man, who when left with a Read More
One from the archives
Updated and republished into it’s original place in my blog’s timeline My eight year old daughter recently asked me what my favourite film is. She probably meant which is my favourite film of hers … but I quickly replied The Blues Brothers. Not the best film ever made, and a close run for my top Read More
School Dinners by Becky Thorn
My sister-in-law has a book out and it’s a real retro nostalgia trip. I saw the manuscript earlier this year, and it got us all talking for hours about stories of our own school dinners when we were little – loved and loathed in equal measure I think. And as for the dinner ladies … Read More
What’s your relationship to your reading?
Can you have more than one book at a time on the go? In other words are you a serial monogamist or a two-timer in your relationship to your reading materials? I’m always impressed by people who can manage to read several books at a go, swapping between them as the mood takes them and Read More