'Educated' is a memoir of Tara Westover's life growing up in a Mormon family. They are survivalists living on the edge of a mountain and working to become completely self reliant. Tara Westover has never been to school. She has never heard the word 'Holocaust' before. She tells her story of outgrowing her roots and…
"Your father has been killed in a car accident."Raymond did not know what to say. His first thought was: how should I react? He glanced at the floor to buy time. Then he sat on the bed. That was good... Burnet is fast becoming one of my favourite writers. His prequel to this, The Disappearance…
So there was always to be a day off from love, a day in every week when they were to live separate geographical lives. And there was to be no talking over those days - no questions.Day Off From Love (1935/6) I do love a good short story. But to read 16 of Fitzgerald's within…
I am living a vague, temporary life in the equivalent of a shed on the fringe of a village. What has stopped me building a two-storey house in the centre of the village? A fairly short book, Hot Milk tells the story of Sofia and her mother in Spain visiting a private doctor who might…
It is the look that gives it away: the steep tower, The still clock, (it, in fact, has four) The pointing roof: sharp angles. unfriendly barbs. Leaves a sting in the throat, those serrated edges. Mark ed ed ges - grass not green but a wussy yellow And the screams - It is an unpleasant…
It was only just at bedtime, when the boy would normally present himself for some talk or roughhousing, that Mr Lincoln seemed truly mindful of the irreversibility of the loss I was very confused for the first twenty pages of this book. It is written in a style that I initially hated. However, upon finishing…
There was a hole in Will's basilar artery, pumping out a fine jet of blood that scattered into a dance of death, a balletic cloud of little blood droplets - a death sentence, a catastrophic stroke at best. A few years ago I started getting into reading memoirs and so when I saw this one…
As I'm unoriginal and following everyone else, here are some of the best books I have read this year... I was going to make this a list of five, but I couldn't narrow it down that far. So here are my top ten books of 2019. I write this in hope that one person might…
I know we shouldn't judge a book by it's cover. But. This is a book I picked up because I liked the cover. The inside writing, however... Whilst this is not my least favourite book, it did feel like a manuscript a few drafts away from being finished. The story - for the most part…
Because apparently I'm too dumb for his 'Short History', I need the 'Really Short History'... After reading Bryson's 'Shakespeare: The World As Stage' and 'The Mother Tongue', I quickly became a fan of his work. About a year ago, I was given this 'A Really Short History of Nearly Everything' - it wasn't until I…
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