Zomorodi, Manoush (2017) Bored and Brilliant: How spacing out can unlock your most productive and creative self. St Martin's Press. Bored and Brilliant builds on a 2015 experiment where listeners of a popular podcast and radio show unplugged their devices to get bored and jump-start their creativity. Zomprodi explores the concept of boredom and original… Continue reading October Picks
Tag: Recommended Reading
September Picks
Meyer, Stephanie (2016) The Chemist. Sphere. As a fan of the Twilight saga I was keen to read Stephanie Meyer's little hyped latest offering. Interrogator and medic, Alex, tortured terrorists for a shadowy US government organisation before the agency turned on her. Now she is on the run carrying various chemical compounds to keep the assassins at… Continue reading September Picks
August Picks
Foster, Sara (2017) The Hidden Hours. Simon & Schuster. When publishing executive Arabella Lane is found dead in the Thames suspicion points to the new office temp, Eleanor, who had been partying with Arabella prior to her death. Eleanor has travelled to London to start a new life and escape the trauma of her youth.… Continue reading August Picks
July Picks
Hughes, Bettany (2017) Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Istanbul, the metropolis nestled on the banks of the Bosphorus, is the gateway between east and west. Hughes' epic is a biography of the city's three incarnations - Byzantium, Constantinople and Istanbul, taking us from prehistory to the modern day, and exploring the city's legends, magic… Continue reading July Picks
June Picks
Halson, Penrose (2016) Marriages are made in Bond Street: True stories from a 1940s Marriage Bureau. Macmillan. Before Tinder, and sex-before-marriage, there was marriage and match-making. Mary Oliver and Heather Jenner set up the Marriage Bureau in the late 1930s on London's Bond Street and clients from all walks of life soon started queuing. They devised their own esoteric formula… Continue reading June Picks
May Picks
Graham, Lauren (2016) Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between). Ballantine Books. As an intrepid fan of the Gilmore Girls I waited with great anticipation for the Netflix 2016 reboot Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (even got a Netflix subscription so I could view!). Lauren's (Lorelei) mémoire on growing up, her… Continue reading May Picks
April Picks
Hamilton, Alwyn (2017) Traitor to the Throne. Faber & Faber. In the second instalment of Hamilton's Rebel of the Sands saga Demdji-girl Amani is kidnapped and held prisoner in the Sultan's Palace. Here she is forced to return to her desert cunning in her attempt to bring the tyrant down. As the quest to liberate Miraji continues the complex… Continue reading April Picks
March Picks
Aveyard, Victoria (2017) King's Cage. Harper. In the third instalment of Aveyard's Red Queen series we find our heroine Mare Barrow a prisoner, without her lightening, living at the mercy of a king she once loved. As Mare bears the weight of the Silent Stone the rebellion continues, blood vs blood, ability vs ability, allegiances tested on every… Continue reading March Picks
Best Picks 2015
As an eclectic reader I read whatever takes my fancy. The following are my personal top 10 picks of 2015: 1. Wilder, Laura Ingalls (2014) Pioneer Girl: The annotated autobiography. South Dakota Historical Society Press. Pioneer Girl was the foundation for Wilder’s fictional world. This volume inclusive of primary sources provides new insights into Wilder’s life and times. Remarkable. March Picks 2015. 2. Tyler, Anne… Continue reading Best Picks 2015
November Picks
Xinran (2015) Buy me the Sky: The remarkable truth of China's one-child generation. Rider. The first generation of Chinese children raised under China's one-child policy has reached adulthood. In her interviews with young people Xinran found a generation adrift. Her observations paint a poignant portrait of one-and-onlies adjusting to independence and loneliness, cultural and political shift, western influence, and the dynamics of… Continue reading November Picks
7:30 Bookclub 