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You must read this book. This is the best book I’ve read in a very long time. The Power by Naomi Alderman explores the nature and dynamics of power. Women have evolved the power to deliver excruciating and fatal pain through their hands, and men have not. Using four different characters whose lives eventually intersect,…
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I read the first scene of The Dig by Cynan Jones in a workshop on the Arvon course I did in August. The exercise was to look at how the author sets up the story, word choice, rhythm, mood, that sort of thing. I was intrigued by the subject matter and attracted by the visceral…
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This book was given to me by the author. This summer I went on an Arvon course on Science Fiction and Fantasy writing led by Emma Newman and Peter Newman. The week is mornings of workshops, afternoons of working on your project, and evenings of readings. On the first evening the tutors read from their…
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Skin by Ilka Tamke is the first in a fantasy trilogy set in Britain in the early 1st century AD. Ailia is a child without skin, which means she doesn’t know her place in the world. Rome is poised to invade and the Britons are divided between those who would fight and those who would…
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I was killing time in WH Smith in Kings Cross and in the mood to buy a book. As I was having a bad bout of insomnia at the time, a book about sleeping and how to do it better struck me as a good choice. I certainly wasn’t disappointed by Matthew Walker’s Why We…
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The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli is a collection of very short essays exploring the many mistakes humans are prone to making when we think about things. There’s not much new in this book, but I find however often I read about confirmation bias and the sunk cost fallacy I find myself slipping…
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I’ve read quite a few of Alison Weir’s historical biographies and am a big fan of her writing. Elizabeth the Queen has been on the shelf for a long time. Well, most of the books I reading have been; either they get read straight after being bought or they go in the pile only to…
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I forget how this book ended up in my library. Probably picked up while killing time at a train station or airport. That’s where I mostly seem to buy this kind of lightweight non-fiction. My brain is too tired for the imagination required of a novel or the attention required of more in-depth non-fiction. How…
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I read Fools and Mortals by Bernard Cornwall because it was my employer’s Book Club read. I was fairly excited as I like Cornwall’s books. Or at least, most of them. I loved the Winter King’s series, the Sharp series and the Last Kingdom series. Fools and Mortals is about William Shakespeare’s younger brother Richard,…
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The Sutton Hoo Helmet is the second of the British Museum Objects in Focus series that I’ve read. There’s seven of them in the series so far. It is an in-depth look at an iconic object in the Museum’s collection, and is another of my favourites. The Sutton Hoo helmet is a finely crafted helmet,…
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Boudica Marginalia 