Archives by Tag 'Non-Fiction'
Review: ‘The Sack of Bath’ by Adam Fergusson
I really enjoy being a member of the various online book communities that I’m a part of, much as they are largely responsible for my enormous TBR pile and wishlist. I know I can find opinions on everything from the latest popular bestseller to obscure novels which I’d never have discovered on my own on [...]
Review: ‘Wild Swans’ by Jung Chang
When I was at secondary school we had a lovely chemistry teacher who would cunningly arrange school trips to places that she really wanted to visit herself. She organised skiing trips to Canada and America which I happily ignored, but then when I was fourteen a letter went home about a proposed trip to China. My [...]
Review: ‘Dawn Chorus’ by Joan Wyndham
Reading Perfume from Provence reminded me that reading non-fiction is nowhere near as hard or as serious as I think it’s going to be when it comes in the form of an engaging memoir. I decided to carry on the theme by reading another thoroughly English memoir which I picked up, this time one of [...]
Review: ‘Perfume from Provence’ by Lady Winifred Fortescue
You might remember my mentioning by Lady Winifred Fortescue back in my March Review when I confessed to having broken my Lent book buying ban due to an unexpected train delay. Whilst I felt a little bit guilty at the time (not least because I also picked up the two companion books by the same [...]
‘Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies’ by Hallie Rubenhold
When I was reading Michael Faber’s novel The Crimson Petal and the White recently, I was struck by the frequent references to the infamous More Sprees in London, a little book detailing the different prostitutes available around the town, where to find them, what they charged and to which particular specialties each one would cater. [...]
‘Through England on a Side-Saddle’ by Celia Fiennes
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m attempting to read more non-fiction this year, and so far I seem to be accomplishing most of that in the form of travelogues. There’s something endlessly fascinating about seeing a place through the eyes of someone else, whether it’s somewhere I’ve been before, somewhere I know like the back of [...]
‘Dark Star Safari’ by Paul Theroux
When I started out at university, the people I met instantly divided themselves into two groups: those who started conversations with the immortal phrase, “On my gap year…” and those who didn’t. The gap year people had inevitably spent at a goodly proportion of this year out of education travelling in Africa/South America/Asia, had quite [...]
‘Try Anything Twice’ by Jan Struther
Jan Struther is best known as the author of the short novel, . However, during Virago Reading Week I posted about a fascinating notethat I had found taped inside a copy of Jan Struther’s which I acquired from a second hand book stall, and consequently I had to read this one first. I actually finished this [...]
’84, Charing Cross Road’ and ‘The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street’ by Helene Hanff
I’m not sure why I’m so biased against non-fiction books, as I always seem to enjoy them whenever I can finally bring myself to read one. Whatever the reason, I don’t tend to pick one up unless I actively decide to do so, and so one of my bookish resolutions this year is to read [...]
‘False Friends Faux Amis’ by Ellie Malet Spradbery
Language is something that I find absolutely fascinating: I love reading about how different languages developed, their particular foibles, the origins of words and the meanings of obscure idioms. I was therefore ever so pleased to be sent a free copy of by Ellie Malet Spradbery to review through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers programme. I’ve [...]