Did you know the president of the USA and his family aren’t ever allowed to open the windows in the White House residence to get a breath of fresh air, for security reasons? Michelle Obama’s autobiography is worth a read for so many reasons – that’s just one. Usually when I’m writing a review I […]
Biography/Autobiography
Exit Wounds by John Cantwell
This is a fascinating book. Cantwell was a Major General in the Australian army. His experiences of the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan left him a psychological mess. For someone so senior in the Australian Army to be so honest and open about his psychological wounds is extraordinary, and it makes compelling reading. […]
Bridge Burning and Other Hobbies by Kitty Flanagan
Flanagan, a comedian, seems like the kind of woman you would want to sit down and have a glass of prosseco with. She’s fun, she tells a fine story and she doesn’t talk about her sex life or her vagina (pause here to silently contrast with Amy Schumer’s book, The Girl With The Lower Back Tattoo, while […]
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Paul Kalanithi was thirty six years old when he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. How ridiculously unfair that someone who had worked so hard to become a neurosurgeon and could have helped so many people was destined to die so young. But he doesn’t whine about it: instead he writes this beautiful, sparse book […]
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
How much of Anne’s diary resonates with you will probably depend on how old you were when you first read it. I was 13, the same age Anne is when she begins to write in her diary. It was the first time I had heard anything substantial about the Holocaust, and it cut deep. I’ve […]
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Strayed’s memoir about a long hike undertaken after completely messing up her life following the death of her mother resonates with many of us, especially perhaps those of us who have lost mothers. It is partly about carrying a huge stinking bucket of grief around with you wherever you go, and not knowing quite how […]
A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold
We sometimes speak about the murder of a child as ‘every parent’s worst nightmare’, but how much worse would it be if your child was the murderer, and then killed himself? Sue Klebold knows. Her son Dylan was one of the perpetrators of the original high school shooting, Columbine, in 1999, and in this blazingly […]
The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman
This is not so much a book as a trip around Kalman’s mind, and what a beautiful place to be that is. Maira Kalman is an American artist but she’s anything but pretentious. She’s more like the eccentric great aunt you see at someone’s funeral and wish you knew better, ‘cause she seems like a […]