Sports
I’m not a runner. At least not currently one so how a book about running could hook me in was pleasantly surprising. Our author, Mark Atkinson, takes us on his running journey from his first short run to joining the 100 Marathon Club. With tongue in cheek humour he is upfront about his not quite perfect health in the beginning and the humour stays with…
(more…)Military History
In this in-depth and well written history of Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany in 1941) we are taken not just through the key events and military movements that occurred at the front but also through the background leading up to Barbarossa and the political decision making behind the scenes. It would be so easy to make…
(more…)Historical
Hilary Mantel takes past events and places from the days of Henry VIII and tells them in the form of a story from the viewpoint of Thomas Cromwell, a man who would rise from the son of a blacksmith to be the chancellor of England. It’s a powerful and gripping story set predominantly during the turbulent days leading up to and after King Henry’s divorce from…
(more…)Humour / Time Travel
Now this is a curious one. I rarely see quite such a divisive book as this one but I must add myself onto the “liked it” side. Our low fantasy world for this novel: A main character who’s a pilot in WW2 is spirited away by a time travelling musician to various points in time in order to shake off certain pursuing individuals and rescue King Richard Coeur de Lion (yes, the Lionheart). The plot is as ridiculous as…
(more…)Non-fiction / Humour
What if for a period of time you said yes to every opportunity that came your way? In this uplifting social experiment Danny Wallace does exactly that. After a chance encounter with a man on a bus he embarks on a “yes” crusade, accepting all that comes his way leading to all kinds of new experiences from handing out leaflets for veganism to travelling to the north of England for a party to spending a holiday in the Netherlands. We’ve all seen…
(more…)Non-fiction / Military History
I like to read everything and anything that falls into my lap. So one day I found myself reading Agincourt by Juliet Barker. It’s a fascinating piece of history and details events leading up to, during, and after the famous battle. The writing style is good, and particular note must be given to the research which clearly had a lot of effort put into it. It is also refreshing to see that…
(more…)Thriller / Sci-fi
Fishermen disappear, tourists on the beaches are attacked, and whales start ramming cargo ships, overtaken by a strange “madness”. But why? We are greeted to two main characters. One, a whale specialist, works for a whale watching company in Alaska, and the other, a Norwegian scientist and marine expert. As the attacks and disappearances increase in number and severity the paths of these two characters…
(more…)Horror / Thriller
This is from an author I’d never read before so wasn’t sure what to expect. The cover design didn’t particularly scream quality to me (yes, judging a book by it’s cover etc). However, the quality of the writing cannot be denied, this is a supremely well written story.
It is advertised as a horror book but I would describe it as a horror backdrop for a slow-burn thriller…
Fiction / Slice of Life
Many of us know Len Deighton for some of his more famous books such as The Ipcress File or SS-GB. This one I’d say counts as one of his more obscure works and if ever there was a hard book to rate, it would be this one. The story is about a “fictional” famous actor and a writer who has the task of writing his biography. We see glimpses of the actor’s current life which appears to be at it’s peak, and him wondering where…
(more…)Non-fiction / Travel
A very well written book in which we are recounted the memories of Chris Broad who has travelled to Japan to teach English.
This is not a typical book of memoirs – while it follows Chris from his initial job interview at the Japanese Embassy in London and onwards to teaching in Japan and his further life there, the cultural insights we experience are…
Non-fiction / History
We’ve just finished this gem. It’s snarky, sarky, and full of wit. It doesn’t go into a huge amount of detail for each monarch (that would require several books all in itself) but gives a general overview of…
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