Category: Books
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Ta-Nehisi Coates – Between the World and Me
About halfway through reading this book, I wrote this note: “I cannot relate to this, through privilege, but it is raw and honest and powerful.” I’ve not read a book that has moved me like this for a long time. I was right, I cannot relate to this book at all, my life has been
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Leigh Bardugo – Ruin and Rising
Given the explosive end to the second book in the series, I couldn’t wait to get started on this one. But unlike the first two which I devoured in days, this book took me weeks to get through. I just didn’t find the pace as quick as the first two and I wasn’t gripped like
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Hannah Fry – Hello World
I’m not going to lie, I put this book off for a while because my kindle told me it was a 5 1/2 hour read. That shouldn’t have put me off because I really thought it looked like an interesting book, and it turns out I was mistaken anyway! The book finished at 66% through
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She Reads Truth – Colossians & Philemon
I’ve been looking forward to this book since it was announced and it did not disappoint. As much as I love She Reads Truth studies that are in familiar areas, I am always more excited to be spending time in a book of the Bible that isn’t so familiar to me – and this was
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Leigh Bardugo – Siege and Storm
It will be impossible to write this review without spoilers, so don’t read if you don’t want to risk it! After the ending of the first book in the series, I don’t think I even waited before picking up this one, I was so eager to know what happened to Alina and Mal. What I
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Leigh Bardugo – Shadow and Bone
Leigh Bardugo has been on my Waterstones wish list for ages, but has been one of those authors where I’ve always thought ‘maybe next time’…. That is, until I watched the first episode of the new Shadow and Bone series on Netflix and I immediately knew I was going to need to read them first
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Jojo Moyes – The Giver of Stars
You know a book is good when you just completely forget that you’re reading. And I read this entire book in a single day because I was so enthralled by the story and the world created within. Set in the 1930s, Alice is a young British woman who has just married a gorgeous American man
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Simon Reynolds – Lighten Our Darkness
This book was requested from NetGalley in exchange for a review. This short but packed book is a guide to Choral Evensong, giving insight into the structure and elements of the service, along with detailed history of each of those parts. I think I’ve only been to one Choral Evensong service before when I was
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Stephen Cottrell – Dear England
The author introduces this book by recounting a story of a conversation he had in Paddington Station (Caffe Nero to be precise), when the barista asked him what sounds like an innocuous question: “What made you become a priest?”. Obviously when buying a coffee in a busy train station, there’s not much time to answer
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Tim Hughes & Nick Drake – Why Worship?
I was given this book on NetGalley in exchange for a review. I’ve been following Tim Hughes’ music since I bought one of his CDs in a Wesley Owen shop (remember them?) in Leeds in 2003, and when I saw this book start to be mentioned on Twitter, I knew I needed to read it
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Dr Joshua Wolrich – Food Isn’t Medicine
“Would you rather be healthy and fat or unhealthy and thin?” Wolrich poses that the fact that you hesitate when you’re faced with that question is part of the problem which has lead to such huge problems of weight stigma in the western world. Fat is somehow seen as a problem not just a descriptive
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Robert Jordan – The Eye of the World
So…I started reading this book in January…2019. I made it around 100 pages in, but it felt like a struggle and I just couldn’t find that compulsion to keep reading. With 700 pages left to go, I simply gave up. But I hate leaving books half finished, so I finally came back to it again
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Rachel Morgan – The Memory Thief
I downloaded this book at the beginning of the year when apple books were giving away a lot of free audio-books, and I didn’t really know what to expect. I hadn’t read any blurbs or anything, just that it was a cinderella re-telling. I was a bit surprised when I realised it was Fae and
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Anne Lamott – Dusk, Night, Dawn
I had a copy of this book as an ARC from NetGalley, the cover drew me right in, and the blurb seemed like it could be a very well timed book for me: ” How do we get through dark times when we feel like giving in to fear and despair, and when existential dread
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Laura Jane Williams – The Love Square
I’m not going to lie, I only really bought this book because it’s narrated by Carrie Hope Fletcher, who I really love. She has such an emotive voice and a way of bringing stories to life, so I would probably buy any book that she narrates (there’s nothing worse than a great story ruined by
Louise Douglas 