November is the month of two huge memes – Novellas in November (#NovNov25) hosted by Rebecca and Cathy, and Nonfiction November with five hosts! Add to that German Literature Month XV hosted by Caroline and Tony this year. Naturally, I’m hoping to take part in ALL of them, so I’ve not signed up to any Read More
Tag: Non fiction
Nonfiction November – My Year in NF
Nonfiction November runs for 5 weeks from today! As always, week 1 is ‘My Year in NF’, and is hosted by Heather. I’ve participated since 2017! My best ever NF year was 2019 when I read 33 books, making up 25% of my total. This year, I’ve read the fewest non-fiction books for ages, 11 Read More
Shiny Linkiness
I’ve had a run of non-fiction reviews posted at Shiny New Books, so for those who’ve not seen them, here’s a capsule paragraph on each with links to my full reviews. The Future of Energy by Richard Black One of the latest additions to Melville House’s ‘Futures’ series is Richard Black’s book on The Future Read More
Shiny Linkiness
Just popping up to say I’ve had two reviews at Shiny New Books over the last week, so do pop over if you’d like to find out more. The Future of Trust by Ros Taylor The Futures Series from indie publisher Melville House UK recently launched with four titles that couldn’t be more different from Read More
Nonfiction November: My Year in NF
November is a busy themed month – I’m starting with Nonfiction (I’m never sure with it should be Non Fiction, Nonfiction or Non-Fiction!), but I shall go with all one word or NF… Week 1 (30th Oct – 3rd Nov) Your Year in Nonfiction: Celebrate your year of nonfiction. What books have you read? What were Read More
#NonFicNov – Week 1: My Year in Non Fiction
I love joining in with Non Fiction November – over the years I have tried to increase the amount of non fiction I read, and this annual feature is a great spur towards doing more of that. Week one of the month is hosted by Rennie at What’s NonFiction and simply asks us to review Read More
Enough. by Dr Cassandra Coburn
‘How Your Food Choices Will Save the Planet’ The blog tour stops here today for a book that turned out to be not what I expected at all really. When offered Enough. (with a full stop.) for review, I didn’t really look beyond the upside-down cow on the cover. From that, I was expecting a Read More
We are What We Watch? The Age of Static by Phil Harrison
I’ve found my TV consumption creeping back up a little during lockdown, but it’s nowhere near my peak viewing years which were probably from the 1990s into the 2000s (when kids’ programmes came back into the mix). As I started reading more and blogging, my watching declined, I even dropped Eastenders for a couple of Read More
Nonfiction November – Book Pairings
Week 2 of #NonfictionNov is hosted by Julz Reads with the prompt: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to get Read More
Year End Review 4: Non-Fiction
I managed to increase the amount of non-fiction I read this year once again – I seem to be going up by one or two NF books per year! So in 2019 I read 33 non-fiction books (up to 25 December), making 25.3% of the total this year. Thanks to taking part in the Wellcome Read More
Book Group report: theme – ‘a recommendation’
East West Street by Philippe Sands Unusually, for a group that picks the books we read by theme – for October’s discussion, we went with a recommendation from another book group of a book that most of us would normally never have picked up. East West Street is a combination of family history during the Read More
Wellcome Reading 2019 #2 Trauma
The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein When I picked this book to read from the Wellcome Book Prize longlist for 2019, I had no idea what an amazing person we would meet within its pages. I just knew that it was the story of a woman who runs a trauma cleaning business in Australia, where Read More
Review Catch-up #3 from 2018
Yet another pair of shorter reviews of books I read at the tail-end of 2018. Where Shall We Run To? by Alan Garner I shall be reviewing this book at length for Shiny but it warrants a short write-up here too. I am a big Alan Garner fan (see here), and I can think of Read More
Review Catch-up #1 from 2018
I’ve got a pile of books I finished reading in 2018 that I haven’t reviewed yet. Some deserve their own posts, but here’s a pair of shorter write-ups. The Atlas of Disease by Sandra Hempel This is a curious book – ostensibly an ‘atlas’ produced using the latest data available, in which the author charts Read More
Year End Review #4: Non-Fiction
This isn’t going to be a long post, as I’ve talked about a lot of my non-fiction reading this year recently during Non Fiction November (see here), but since that post, I’ve added several more books to that list, making my non-fiction total 31 in 2018 as of today. That’s just about 22% which is Read More
Nonfiction November: Book Pairings
Nonfiction November is being hosted by Sarah (Sarah’s Book Shelves), Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness), Sarah (Sarah’s Book Shelves), Julie (JulzReads), and Katie (Doing Dewey). through the site What’s Nonfiction? They have a wonderful programme mapped out for November here. The topic for the second week is “book pairings” – matching a nonfiction book with a fiction one, which Read More
Nonfiction November – My Year in Non-fiction
Nonfiction November is being hosted by Sarah (Sarah’s Book Shelves), Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness), Sarah (Sarah’s Book Shelves), Julie (JulzReads), and Katie (Doing Dewey). through the site What’s Nonfiction? They have a wonderful programme mapped out for November here. The topic for the first week is “Your Year in Nonfiction ” in which we’re encouraged to Read More
The Ultimate Toilet Book for Christmas?
Dear Mr Pop Star by Derek and Dave Philpott I wish I’d thought of the central idea in this book – it’s a classic of pedantry that had me guffawing so many times. Devised by a dad and son combo, it’s aimed firmly at others like them, especially those who grew up from the 1970s Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: The Tipping Point
Hosted each month by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps.Our starting book this month is the non-Fiction bestseller… The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell This book, first published in 2000, (which I reviewed here in 2009) was one of Read More
Wellcome shortlist #1
To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell The second book in my shadow reading from the Wellcome Book Prize shortlist, (the first was The Vaccine Race which I’ll be reviewing for the official blog tour in a couple of week’s time). I loved this book from the front cover to the back, starting with its Read More
The new look Shiny is here!
The new style Shiny New Books is back with new reviews for you We have a new site design and a new way of sharing our content with our readers. We’re changing from our former ‘magazine’ format, in which we published lots of new pages in big batches every couple of months (and giving you Read More
‘Carrison’ and ‘A New Hope’
The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher Like the whole world, I was totally shocked to hear of Carrie Fisher’s heart-attack, then death over Christmas, followed by her mother Debbie Reynolds just one day later. I’d bought this volume the week it came out, and had just started to read it when I heard of her Read More
Two shorter reviews…
Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey This account of a woman becoming afflicted by, and then having to live with extreme photosensitivity is completely harrowing, but suffused with dark humour. The author was enjoying life and had met the love of her life when she started to get burning sensations on her skin after Read More
Two shorter non-fic reviews
I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction lately – including some absolute crackers that deserve a whole post to themselves – and I don’t mind saving them to write about for the new year. Meanwhile, today I have two shorter non-fic reviews for you… Set Phasers to Stun by Marcus Berkmann If you’ve read this Read More
All that remains… in the charnel house.
A Tour of Bones by Denise Inge Denise Inge was an American who married an English clergyman. When he became Bishop of Worcester they moved there, and Denise found that they would have to share their new home with a ‘charnel house’. Wikipedia defines it thus: “A charnel house is a vault or building where Read More
What a Life in Design…
My Life in Design – Sir Terence Conran Terence Conran is 84 years young and still working. He’s one of the UK’s most iconic designers – a quote on the back cover of this book declares him: “Britain’s Taste-Maker in Chief” Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph. With the upcoming reopening of London’s Design Museum (which he Read More
We’re doomed! Or are we?
A Farewell To Ice by Peter Wadhams One theme that has emerged in much of my reading of late is that of icy and mostly northern climes. From Beryl Bainbridge’s Titanic novel Every Man for Himself to Midge Raymond’s Antarctic penguins in My Last Continent to Eowyn Ivey’s Alaska in To The Bright Edge of the World, then Stef Read More
Book Group Report: Travel
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby In an effort to get more variety into our reading, we’ve started a subject cycle. We pick a topic to research, then next month everyone comes with a suggestion or two on that subject and we whittle them down to a handful to draw a Read More
Reviving his thirst for reading…
The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller What do you do when you seriously lose your reading mojo? I tend to retreat into trashy fiction, but I have always managed to recover it after a short hiatus. This wasn’t the case for Andy Miller. He has a great job in publishing, a happy marriage Read More
Christmas Shiny Linkiness …
Today, I’d like to direct you over to my reviews in the Shiny New Books Christmas Inbetweeny. By the way, have you tried our Shiny Advent Quiz yet? Ideal as a post-prandial competition… But back to my reviews as these books are all too good to leave off mentioning here too: The Islanders by Pascal Read More
