Category: Books
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Eliyahu M. Goldratt – The Goal
I’ve been meaning to read this book for ages after reading The Phoenix Project last year, and I finally got around to it after spotting it on the shelf at my local library (sidenote: libraries are awesome). I think the thing I appreciated the most about this book was that it felt so easy to
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Kent Beck – Test Driven Development By Example
As my first real dive into test driven development, this book was a great introduction into the practices and the habits that are involved. The one thing that I wish I had done when I started reading is actually trying to implement the examples that are in the book, as I think the practical side
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Charlie N. Holmberg – The Fifth Doll
Having read the Paper Magician series by this author, I was enticed to buy the rest of Holmberg’s books on a train journey home from London when an offer popped up on my Instagram feed saying that they were all 50% off on Amazon until the end of the night. It may have been train-based
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Claire Harman: Jane’s Fame
I want to start this review by saying that although I was slightly disappointed with this book, that’s more due to me thinking it was going to be something different based on the blurb I read on Goodreads, so don’t necessarily be swayed by the fact that I only gave the book 3 out of
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Nick Page – A Nearly Infallible History of the Reformation
I started reading two books about the reformation at a similar time, and they are very very different books. The other (which I’m still reading) is very dry and serious and hard to get into, but Nick Page manages to take a topic (like Church history) which could be quite boring or unexciting and make it a
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Adrian Plass – Blind Spots in the Bible
Please don’t judge this book by how long it took me to read it! It lends itself really well to being read in small chunks so I’ve been reading it a small part at a time while waiting for the shower to get hot, which means it’s take a long time, but it’s also prolonged
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Timothy Keller – The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
“The Church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints” I was persuaded into buying this book when someone posted it on Facebook as it’s currently only 99p on Kindle. A couple of days before, I’d had a really awkward 30 minute train journey sat next to an ardent (and argumentative) atheist who
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Joanna Hickson – Red Rose, White Rose
I’m torn with my opinion on this book, I really am. For huge parts of the book the plot was fast paced and kept me engrossed, but then there were times when it felt like a huge slog to keep turning the pages, and in the end it took me over a month to finish
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Roald Dahl – Matilda
One of my ‘Book Bingo’ challenges this year is to re-read a childhood favourite, and how could it be anything other than Matilda? I read this book so many times as a child that my copy is falling to pieces (as you can probably tell from the picture), and I’ve watched the film more times
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Anthony Horowitz – Stormbreaker
It’s been a while since I listened to an audio-book, but since I’ve been spending so long going out walking or on public transport, I thought that getting back into audio-books would be a good way of getting through more books this year. I saw the Stormbreaker film when it was released ages ago, but
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Robert C. Martin – The Clean Coder
A book about how to be a ‘professional programmer’. I was a bit worried that this book would be a bit ‘dry’ like other techy books I’ve read, but it was written in a way that kept me really engaged. The author added lots of personal anecdotes in his writing which made it easy to
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Angie Thomas – The Hate U Give
Beautifully written, raw, passionate and hard-hitting, and heart-breaking that this book is inspired by real experiences, far too many real experiences. “Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared, Starr. It means you go on even though you’re scared.” I don’t even know how to go about reviewing this book, as I’m so far removed from the
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Milly Johnson – The Birds and The Bees
I read a blog post that Milly wrote this week about how so-called ‘chick-lit’ is always overlooked by celebrity book clubs, in favour of ‘proper literature’. And I really don’t know why. I love Milly Johnson for the fact that you can completely lose yourself in the story and it becomes a movie in your
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Liz Flanagan – Eden Summer
So first of all, Eden Summer was maybe not the best name to choose for a book – I just searched on Waterstones website to get a link to the book and it turns out Eden Summer is the name of an erotic fiction writer – so if you tell people you’re reading Eden Summer
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Milly Johnson – A Summer Fling
Ah Milly Johnson, I could read you forever. As usual, this book was brilliant from start to end. The kind of book that I start reading and it turns into a lovely film inside my head, and I don’t realise how long I’ve been reading until I’m 200 pages in and my back is hurting
Louise Douglas 