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WELCOME TO MY BOOKSHELF

Spring by Ali Smith

It is May, still spring, I‘m sure, and I am ready to discuss the third instalment of Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet. This week, we have...

The Booker Prize 2022 #11: Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo

Unrest is spreading over Jidada. The Old Horse has fallen, the revolutionary government is replaced by a new self-proclaimed liberation...

The Echo Chamber by John Boyne

BBC talk show host George Beverly and his family live a comfortable life in their London home – until the trolls and woke people on...

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Our narrator first met Tracey when they were young girls nervously waiting for their first dance class to start. Their friendship did not...

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

It is a bitter cold winter in Ireland, 1985. We are in a small town, among good Christian citizens and meet Bill Furlong, the coal...

The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla

What does it mean to have to change your name for your classmates to be able to pronounce and remember it? How does it feel to be...

Our Bodies Their, Battlefields by Christina Lamb

Our Bodies, Their Battlefields is a brutal, shocking, devastating read. And it could not be any other way. Christina Lamb, co-author of I...

All That Is Worth Remembering

“We may be intolerant even in advocating the cause of Toleration, and so bent on making proselytes to free-thinking as to allow no one to...

Grand Union by Zadie Smith

Grand Union is Zadie Smith’s collection of short stories, comprising eleven completely new works as well as eight stories previously...

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Frank and April Wheeler’s life in the suburbs of Connecticut might look very typical to the untrained eye: two children and a charming...

Voices of the Lost by Hoda Barakat

Five letters that will never reach their destination, written by five unnamed people who come from an unnamed, war-torn country form the...

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

The Sellout is a work of biting satire, and you best be ready for it when you open this book. Our protagonist is a young man who grew up...

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Everyone who eats should read this book! What should we have for dinner? For omnivores like ourselves this question always causes...

5 Things I Loved about To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I have finally (!!) read To Kill a Mockingbird, after it had waited on top of my to-be-read list for years. Books with so much history...

Fiction and Non-Fiction by Chinua Achebe

Last week I read both an essay collection and a novel by the celebrated Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. Africa’s Tarnished Name is a...

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