I’m a few days late with this, but it’s time to announce my reading challenge for 2014. After successfully tackling non-fiction in 2013 (12 months=12 books), I’ve decided to continue expanding my reading horizons, so this year my challenge will focus on… poetry. I’ve read hardly any poetry since leaving university, and even then everything…
Category: Reading challenge
Reading challenge 2013 – the results
Success! After failing the challenge I set myself in 2012, this year turned out much better. Wanting to up the number of non-fiction books I read, I set out to read one every month. Although it didn’t quite work like that, I did manage 12 non-fiction tomes, covering everything from politics to business to the…
Book review: Dedicated to… compiled by W B Gooderham
I love secondhand books, and one of the reasons I love them is for the dedications you sometimes find inside. Who gifted the book? Who received it? Why has it now found its way into the hands of another owner? W B Gooderham is also a fan of secondhand books, and in Dedicated to… has…
Book review: Very British Problems by Rob Temple
You know how it is, you’re in a queue, and someone stands next to you, instead of behind you. Are they queuing or just loitering? Are they going to push in front? Are they just unaware of how queues work? This, my friend, is a very British problem. Rob Temple’s book Very British Problems came…
Book review: Front Row, Anna Wintour: The Cool Life and Hot Times of Vogue’s Editor in Chief
Even if you don’t follow fashion, you’ve probably heard of Anna Wintour, if only from the film or book The Devil Wears Prada. While that book, written by a former assistant of Wintour’s, is real life given a sheen of fiction, Jerry Oppenheimer’s unauthorised biography Front Row, Anna Wintour: The Cool Life and Hot Times…
Book review: How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis
From princesses to witches to Bridget Jones, the fictional women in our lives are numerous and different, and it’s impossible not to take something from our readings of them.The lessons we learnt from the literary heroines that have littered our lives are what Samantha Ellis examines in her brilliant book How To Be A Heroine:…
Book review: London Villages, Explore the City’s Best Local Neighbourhoods by Zena Alkayat
With its huge skyscrapers, constant traffic and jam-packed streets, it’s easy to forget that London does have its quieter, less manic areas. In London Villages, Zena Alkayat exposes some of the city’s hidden gems, selecting 30 neighbourhoods split into north, south, east, west and central, and recommending some of the best places to visit in…
Reading challenge 2013: How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Here’s what I expected before I started reading How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran – that it would be honest and opinionated and funny. What I didn’t expect was to learn quite so much about Moran, particularly regarding her masturbatory habits and her menstrual cycle, and definitely not within the first couple of…
Reading challenge 2013: Making History at London 2012, edited by Brendan Gallagher
The fifth book in my challenge to ready 12 non-fiction books in 2013 is Making History at London 2012, 25 Iconic Moments of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.This time a year ago I was in the middle of putting together a supplement about the Games, and preparing coverage of the Olympic Torch relay. It’s amazing…
Sarah Shaffi 