I start reading Bookworm in my childhood bedroom, unaware of how perfect the setting is. All around me lies the backdrop of my imagination – the library that raised me – and by the end of the first chapter, I’d laughed and wept and texted three of my friends to find out if they’d read … Continue reading Book Review: Bookworm, Lucy Mangan’s Memoir of Childhood Reading
Alongside the deft management of tricky subjects: female friendships, toxic relationships, miscarriage and fertility, internalised sexism, mental health – Perfect Liars by Rebecca Reid takes a long, hard look at the fragility of civility what lines can be crossed.
Perhaps it’s the passing of yet another birthday (oh hi I'm 27 now) or perhaps it’s the autumnal turn in the air, but September for me has always been a time to embrace change. It’s a month of shedding the worries of the last year and making good on those promises made back in January. … Continue reading Inspirational books to curl up with this autumn
Tuesday, 7.30pm, logging on to twitter. I’m leaving work, passing elegant Georgian houses-turned-offices, cutting through leafy squares full of exhausted suits, smiling when I run into someone with a friendly dog that doesn’t care that it’s London and talking to strangers just isn’t the done thing. There’s something about that time of the day: the shackles … Continue reading No Taboo, No Problem: Writing about Controversial Topics
If you're like me and you chase that feeling where it's like an author has just bitchslapped your brain with a brilliant idea, when you can feel your hair stand on end because you *just never thought of it that way before*, or when your whole world turns into a warm ball of goo because everything has been tilted on its axis and you barely know up from down anymore then here are six non-fiction books for you (fiction recommendations coming soon).
After the Fire by Jane Casey Mysteries lie within mysteries in Jane Casey's sixth Maeve Kerrigan novel... but was it arson, an accident, or murder? It was twitter that introduced me to Jane Casey and the Maeve Kerrigan series – a turn of good fortune I’ve celebrated since opening the first page … Continue reading Book Review: After the Fire, Maeve Kerrigan Returns in Jane Casey’s Latest Mystery
Time Magazine might have thought it popped up by surprise, but in reality Amazon’s first physical bookstore has been a long time coming. Yes, you read that right. Amazon’s first physical bookstore. To be exact, they’ve opened a 5,500-square-foot bookstore, carrying a not-that-impressive 5,000 to 6,000 titles with 15 employees under the direction of Amazon … Continue reading Amazon Killed the Bookstore, Long Live the Bookstore
I would recommend Career of Evil to any crime fan, but if you're looking for the goofy and sly satirical plot of the previous two novels, that's not what you'll find here. This is Robert Galbraith at "his" most fiendish and entertaining.
As a twentysomething, I often feel as if I am 'in training to be a heroine' like Jane Austen's Catherine Morland. Because even though I know there's no real narrative to any life outside of books, there's still a part of me searching ... after all if I'm not the heroine in my own life then what's the bloody point?
So many of these questions were answered by a) Harry Potter, b) crime fiction, and c) literary classics, d) fantasy and e) young adult… I've decided I'm splitting those off into their own little subsects. Some of the answers are in here anyway. And you'll be able to link through to the other editions once they're live.
