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Kiley Reid – Such a Fun Age
I’ve had this book on my radar for a long time, and decided to pick it up with my latest Audible credit. Let’s just say that some of my dog walks went on for longer than usual because I didn’t want to stop listening!
Fast paced in terms of plot, but also full of characterisation, I was gripped from the very first chapter when Emira is at the grocery store and racially profiled by the security guard. As a white woman, I’ve never experienced anything like that but the author was great at capturing the emotion of the scene and really putting you in Emira’s shoes.
I found Alix to be a really infuriating character – obsessed with Emira but doesn’t seem to care about her own child, who Emira truly cares for. And don’t even get me started on Kelley. To start with I thought he was a good guy, but it just seems to turn into a battle between Kelley and Alix about who is the least racist and neither of them come out of it looking good.
I don’t want to go into too much more detail on the plot because it would be really easy to give away huge spoilers, but I really appreciated that this book wasn’t just an intense look at racism, but also issues of class, motherhood and social issues.
I’d love to actually read this book now instead of having it read to me, as even though the narrator was fabulous, I feel like there were probably things I missed just from being distracted and it seems like the kind of book that would give you something more every time you read it.
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Muthuraj Swamy – Reconciliation
I feel like I can’t really give this book a fair review (and it’s all my fault).
The book was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lent book for 2019, and as it’s currently October 2021, you can probably see I wasn’t very timely with reading it.
The book is designed to be read daily over the course of lent, and I did find the content really interesting for the first half of lent but then I got out of the habit of reading and it took me another two years to finally finish it (my bad!).
I think I found the middle section a bit slow and hard to relate to and so I wasn’t gripped to continue reading it. I know some books I’ve had that are designed to be read daily and I’ve been so intrigued by them that I’ve devoured them much more quickly, but that wasn’t the case here.
The structure was great with discussion questions at the end of each daily reading which would make it perfect for reading in a group setting or at least in a time of reflection.
The book is aimed towards making you think about the ‘other’ (which is all explained in the introduction to the book), and I think it achieves that very well. Opening your eyes to different approaches to reconciliation in the Bible and how they can be applied to our lives and our world, I think it was a valuable read, just maybe not 100% for me at the time I read it.
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James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes
I listened to this book in audio format and I’m so pleased I did because I don’t know if it would have been quite so laugh-out-loud funny if I wasn’t hearing the tales of all these ‘classic scrapes’ in James’ own voice.
When we talk about scrapes, we talk about silly situations that James has got himself in which sound completely absurd and like they must have to be made up, except they’re not.
We start the book with James as a primary school child. The first scrape being him forgetting to take his hand towel to school (I know,weird, right?) and every decision the 5-year-old-James made just made the situation worse.
We follow James through childhood and teenage years, where he ended up composing a rather huge hit (at his school at least) called La La La Humpty – yes, that’s a version of Humpty Dumpty remixed to the tune of La Bamba. This is where the audio book came into its own, as the full effect was revealed by James’ rendition of the song.
Following from school into adulthood, there are more than 30 scrapes in the book, including ‘sleeping in a bush wearing a womans dress with a plastic bag over his head’, or the classic ‘letting yourself into someone else’s house for a poo and walking round pantsless’.
I don’t think there’s really much else I can say in review other than go and get this book and get it in audio format because it made my dog walks so entertaining – I think half of Pudsey probably think I’m a loon now for walking around laughing to myself.
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Sarah Turner – Stepping Up
Disclaimer – I received this book in exchange for a review from NetGalley.
I had no idea what to expect from this book other than I have read some of Sarah Turner’s other books as The Unmumsy Mum. The cover looked intriguing but I went in completely blind as to the plot.
So by page 7 my heart was in my mouth waiting for confirmation of the awful news that Beth is waiting for too. All I can say is that the author did such a great job of making me feel connected to Beth in such a short space of time and when I got the news with Beth, it literally took my breath away.
It’s definitely not usual for me to be so emotionally invested in a book that I am empathetically crying along with the character before I’ve even hit double digits on the page count, and I immediately knew this book was going to be gripping.
There will be potential spoilers from here on out so stop reading this and get yourself pre-ordering this if you’re interested!
The awful news that Beth has just been given is that her sister Emmy and her husband have been in a horrific car accident. Doug has died and Emmy is now in a coma.
Beth has not had the most stable of lives – flitting from one job to another and never finding a steady partner to settle down with – her parents think she is a complete flake and a perennial quitter. So it’s a surprise to everyone when they find out that she is named as guardian of her niece Polly and nephew Ted.
What follows is a very steep learning curve as Beth learns how to look after a teenager and a toddler, both of whom are devastated by the loss of both their parents and the wondering of whether their mum will come back to them. Both are acting out in ways that Beth has no idea how to deal with, but she’s now responsible and has to figure it out.
As I mentioned before, I felt an immediate connection to Beth and felt like I was on this journey with their family. The emotion was pouring out of every single page.
I loved how we see the relationships grow as time goes on, with Beth and her niece and nephew, Beth and her parents, Beth and her best friend Jory, Beth and the lovely elderly neighbour Albert.
Along with the relationships, the best part of the book to me was the characterisation. Every character felt well rounded and real, not an easy task when you have such a wide range of characters, from toddlers to teenagers to elderly men and everything in between.
Beth as a character has all her flaws front and center. You can really see her growing as the time goes on and I felt both disappointed and proud of her at different moments. She felt like a real human being, not a stereotype like is common for lead female characters. I actually felt like I could be best friends with Beth and I wanted to be her cheerleader, urging her to believe in herself before she realised she did.
I loved the ending of the book, although I feel like there were some strands left open. Whether that’s so we can come to our own endings, or there is a potential sequel in the works, I don’t know, but I would be happy either way (although overjoyed to come back to Beth, Polly and Ted again).
I’d recommend this book to anyone who looks for their fiction to have a bit of depth to it – just make sure you have the tissues ready!
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Robert Webb – How Not To Be a Boy
I’ve come to the realisation that auto-biographies are perfect for audio format, especially when they’re read by the author, and this one was no exception.
I’ve been a fan of Robert Webb for many years, back to Peep Show and Mitchell and Webb, and I think it’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that someone that makes a living out of making people laugh must have had a good or easy life.
But Webb’s autobiography makes it blatantly clear that isn’t the case. I found much of the early parts of this book heart breaking. We find out that his dad was a domestic abuser, and then although his mum ended up re-married, things weren’t rosy (his step-dad was addicted to gambling) and then his mum passed away. Hearing these chapters read by the author made me cry, they were so raw and honest.
And although Webb didn’t hold back when it came to describing shortcomings and failings in other people, he was also not shy of being honest about times in his life when he’d completely messed up or done things that he wasn’t proud of.
The chapter titles were all around common myths to do with sterotypes of what it means to be a boy/man, and so the chapters do jump around a bit in the timeline of Robert’s life, but I think grouping them in this way made them more impactful.
The audiobook came with a little added extra which was kind of like a podcast episode format, and I kind of wished I hadn’t listened to that bit as I felt a bit like it was contradicting some of the points he’d made earlier in the book and it didn’t feel like it fit into the same message, but I wouldn’t let that detract too much from the book.
I am glad I read this as audio instead of a physical book though, because of the way it jumped around it felt more like a conversation that went off on tangents, which I think would have been harder to handle if I was just reading.
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Rachael Newham – And Yet
Disclaimer; I was given this book in exchange for a review on NetGalley.
From the blurb:
“In a life full of highs and lows, choice and challenges, the words ‘and yet’ can change everything. We are surrounded by darkness and yet there is light. We feel we are lacking and yet God provides. We are broken and bruised and yet there is hope.”
The topic of lament feels particularly appropriate right now, it’s been a very hard few years and I think the world is now crying out. Lament is needed. But lament and joy are not opposites, they come together, and in this book Newham explores biblical lament and how we can use it in our lives.
The book is intended as a Lent book for 2022, but it was not split in a way that made it necessary to read it over an extended period of time, in fact I devoured it in a few days.
”Particularly in the west, we use joy and happiness interchangeably and so we’ve come to expect ease and comfort in life as a sign of our faith.”
The book was filled with the author’s personal experiences of lamenting through grief and mental illness, but it’s also filled with links back to the Bible and how different people in the Bible experienced times of lament, from Jacob wrestling with God, to Mary waiting and accepting her fate as the mother of Jesus.
The book is split into 6 sections based around the liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, Easter and Ordinary Time again. Each section ends with some questions for reflection which would be great as part of a group study.
Newham talks with real experience about how we shouldn’t avoid hard times but lean into them, saying “Real joy doesn’t seek to eliminate discomfort or pain, but faces it with honesty. ”. I’d never really thought about how joy is different to happiness, but I feel like this book really dived into that in a way that completely opened my eyes.
I think the author wrote with such warmth and honesty about how we can experience joy even in the difficult times, and that really felt reassuring to me – I think this is the book that I’ve been needing for over 3 years. Ironically the author started writing this book before the first lockdown, and it feels like the timing was ordained as it feels more relevant than ever before.
I’ll finish off with one final quote which really stuck in my head and quite accurately sums up the book:
“Yet is the language of hoping against hope. It is believing that the new life of spring is hiding amongst what seems dead. It is the Creator of the world coming to save his world through a baby. It is that same Creator sending his beloved Son to die so that we may live.”
I would recommend this book to everyone after the last 18 months we’ve had, I think it will be a really useful resource for helping us to recover from the struggles and move forward with joy while bringing the pain to God and acknowledging it with lament.
It’s definitely a book I will be buying it so I can come back to it again and again.
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Ruby Wax’s No Brainer
This was my latest Audible purchase – a book I chose because Ruby Wax came and gave a lunchtime talk to our company in July around the topic of mental health awareness and I found her both passionate and incredibly knowledgeable, along with just being very easy to listen to.
This ‘book’ was all about the brain, covering topics like ‘The Early Years’, ‘Nature vs Nurture’, ‘Pathology and ‘Compassion’, among many others.
I say ‘book’ in quotation marks, because this is an Audible original book so is only available in audio format. And with multiple interviews with subject matter experts and chats with her friends, it felt a lot more like a podcast than a book, with each chapter just a podcast episode.
This was my only real complaint about the book though, I found it incredibly insightful and a great accompaniment to my morning walks with the dog. As Ruby talked to so many experts throughout the book, it felt like very well researched and trust-worthy, but Ruby’s personality made it feel approachable and fun to listen to.
I’d recommend this to anyone wanting to learn more about how our brains tick. While not specifically targeted at mental health like some of Ruby’s other books, it does touch on that too along with a wide variety of other topics. I genuinely feel like I understand my brain a bit better now than I did before.
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Josh Widdicombe – Watching Neighbours Twice a Day…
Now this is more like what I wanted to get from my Audible subscription. After the last two books were not really suited to audio format (at least for me), this book was perfect. I’ve been a fan of Josh for a long time (I think it was about 9/10 years ago I first went to see him live), and I knew as soon as this was released that I wanted to read it.
Read by Josh, the audio format was perfect, like having a chat with a mate, or like listening to one of Josh’s gigs, it was familiar and comforting and made me openly laugh out loud many times on my morning dog walks.
The book is part auto-biography and part history of the 90’s through the TV that we watched (some popular, some not so much). It felt like a hefty dose of nostalgia for a different time, when TV was what we did rather than phones and social media and Netflix etc.
Particular favourite chapters for me included Gladiators, Live and Kicking, Beadle’s About and Ceefax. If any of those chapter titles bring about a heady wave of nostalgia, this is the book for you.
I’m a few years younger than Josh so some of the programs were before I was old enough to really watch them, but there was enough that I knew about and enough explanation of the rest that I loved the whole book.
I also loved the audiobook-only extras that included special interviews at the end of certain chapters (e.g. an interview with an actual Gladiator!), and the interview with James Acaster at the end which felt like a wonderful conversation between two friends.
I just loved the potential for reminiscing in the 9 hours of listening and definitely recommend this to anyone who grew up in the 90’s.
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Rachel Held Evans – Inspired
I bought this book with my audible subscription after it had been on my Waterstones wish list for absolutely ages, but I slightly regret that decision now.
Not because the book was disappointing, in fact quite the opposite. The book was so good and there were so many times that the author said something that I wished I could have highlighted or noted but with an audiobook that’s impossible (especially if you’re reading while walking the dog). I wish I’d waited and bought this as a physical book so I could read and re-read the bits that spoke to me.
The book starts with Rachel asking the question ‘What does it mean that the Bible is inspired?’.
Each chapter starts with a re-telling of a story in the Bible which really brought it to life (and here actually is where the audio book came into its own, read by the author it really made the stories shine). I particularly liked the re-telling of Job as a live action role play, it really brought the story to life in human terms.
Evans fills the book with stories of her own personal doubts and wrestles with the way the Bible is interpreted in different churches and denominations and those personal stories really help to bring the book to life, just as the way she re-tells the Bible stories bring them to life too.
I really want to buy this book as a physical copy now so that I can highlight to my heart’s content, this was so enlightening.
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James Bailey – The Flip Side
Although I absolutely love this genre, this was a little unusual for me in that the main character was a man not a woman. I worried that this might make it less relatable, but Josh is such a likeable character that you can’t help but root for him the whole way through.
And boy does he need someone to root for him. We begin the book with Josh and his girlfriend on the London Eye on New Year’s Eve. What a perfectly romantic setting for a proposal, at least that’s what Josh thinks.
What Josh does not expect is that his girlfriend will say no, then reveal she’s actually been cheating on him. Needless to say, the rest of the ride round the wheel is painful.
So instead of gaining a fiancé and celebrating the happiest night of his life, he loses his fiancé, his job and his home all in one fell swoop.
Shortly after, Josh makes a decision that he will no longer make any major decisions himself. Instead, he will leave it up to the flip of a coin.
We then follow Josh through many ups and downs as he leaves his fate to the coin. He takes it a lot more seriously than I would have been able to, which leads him into some awkward situations – eating fish and chips in your parents house, with your parents, with a girl you’ve just met on tinder is probably not the most auspicious start to a relationship…
Things start to look up for Josh when he meets the girl of his dreams while watching his friend running the London Marathon. The only problem is he loses track of her without even getting her name, and what follows is a charming chase around Europe to track her down.
I read this book in one sitting, it was like being lost in a movie – a gripping plot, extremely loveable characters and just generally well written, it was a fabulous way to spend a morning.
Louise Douglas
(I've got no) Shelf Control…
Louise Douglas 