Category: Review (Page 18 of 132)

4 out of 5 stars

Covid disrupted life for millions of people around the world. Those that were in care homes were affected in particular, not only did they have greater restrictions, but to keep them safe family members were not permitted to visit at all. Reuben Coe was one of those in a home where they were supposedly providing specialist care for his Downs Syndrome. But they weren’t. For months he had been non-verbal and had become withdrawn from the other residents. He was at his lowest ebb when he decided to send his elder brother a text message:

brother. do. you. love. me.

As Manni read this message he knew that he had to be there for Reuben. He made the decision to leave his home and partner in Spain and travel back to the UK to withdraw his younger from the care home that he was in. It was then he realised just how much he had closed himself off from all social contact. He moved him into a cottage deep in the Dorset countryside.

The process of drawing Reuben out would be a long and painful one. But a routine of walking a short distance each day and allowing him the time that he needed to realise that he was in an environment where he was loved started to work. Every day Ruben would take his favourite felt tip pens and some paper and begin to draw pictures of things that still had meaning for him.

As the darker nights of winter ebb away, Reuben recovers in his own time. Him and Manni build their relationship as friends and brothers once again. But Manni has decisions to make that mean change once again for Reuben and he has to draw on the love and support of his partner, family and friends to help him make the right decision for Reuben.

Why are we always striving to make Reuben more normal? Shouldn’t we be encouraging him to be himself?

This is a genuinely heartwarming story of one brother doing everything in his capacity to look after another brother. He writes about how he brings his brother back from the self-consumed shell he had become and there is no tempering of his feelings or emotions. The bond that they once had takes time to rekindle, but it is there and it needs time to be strong once again. I liked this book because it shows what can be achieved should we want to build relationships and how that caring for someone is good for both. Even though this is a book that I think Manni wrote most of, he couldn’t have written it without Reuben and the inclusion of his bright and bold drawings adds to this. If you want a feel-good memoir then this is as good a place as any to start.

4 out of 5 stars

For those with FOMO, the thought of not having a presence in the new social network, The This, is too much for some people. But to sign up involves more than submitting an email address and a promise to read all the targeted advertising they will through at you. For this you need a small implant injected into the roof of your mouth.

The device will then grow into your brain and allow you to connect to everyone on the network instantaneously. It is marketed as hands-free, but it seems to be consuming those that have signed up for it. Adan has heard of it, but he is quite happy with his life and the erotic female companion that comes with his Elergy phone. He is asked to write an article about The This and after that, he keeps being approached by the company to join.

He is reluctant to join, but the attention that the company are paying him has been noticed by the government. They want him to sign up and take something with him into the network…

I liked almost all of this a lot. The premise was well thought through and the plot zipped along at a fair old pace. The characters didn’t really develop that much, they were there as the pieces on the frankly terrifying social media network that is The This. The one flaw that I felt it had was that the ending was not resolved as I thought and hoped that it might be.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Modern transport is amazing. I can climb in my car, drive to an airport, and board a plane that can take me halfway around the world. But there is very little pleasure in travelling this way, it is clinical and impersonal, you don’t connect with the places and people that you are passing by and you barely have time to think.

Ironically the original way that we had of travelling, walking, is still the best way of forging those connections with people and the inner recesses of my mind. Others find similar comfort in taking a walk, and in this book, Duncan Minshull has collected together 20 essays from a variety of different authors who each bring a perspective on the act of placing one foot in front of the other.

In his essay, Richard Ford contemplates the decision process he goes through when choosing to go for a walk for the sake of it rather than for a specific purpose. Ingrid Persaud writes about the act of pilgrimage on a walk to Santiago when she has not undertaken any training. She suffers, but in the end knows why she did it as she places her hands on the walls of the cathedral at the end.

Walking a route that Sally Bayley used to do many years ago as a child brings back countless memories both happy and sad. Taking a dog for a walk is something that many people do each day, and for Irenosen Okojie, this is a daily ritual. In her essay, her dog, Gogo slips the lead and vanishes in the distance causing her to panic.

I liked almost every essay in this book, apart from one, which while it was well written, didn’t really fit the brief in my eyes. The variety of authors and the specific subjects they write about just goes to show that each and every walk can present a moment to discover something new about the world around us. I’d recommend this, especially if you read a little then take a walk to think about it.

Favourite Essays:
Grain … Again – Will Self
Following Others – Tim Parks
Around Deer’s Slope – Pico Iyer
A Record (Rain) – Jessica J. Lee

3.5 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Almost everyone has been an outsider in their life at one point or another. Most people are then admitted into that particular inner circle, but there are some that never fit in and are always on the outside looking in. This collection of short stories from fifteen authors, both well-known and new is their take on this subject.

The theme of outsiders has been interpreted in many different ways by each of the authors. Because the authors have had free reign to write about whatever took their fancy we have stories that are fantasy, science fiction and even horror. Some of them take a gentle view of this subject and others have strong characters and storylines. Interestingly this is one of the first books that I have read that has trigger warnings for some of the subject matters covered in the stories.

I don’t think that there was a story that I didn’t like in this collection, though I did have some that I really liked, see below. Reading a story from the perspective of a group that you might not be familiar with encourages empathy and understanding. If you want a collection that seeks to redefine what it feels like to be an outsider then this is as good a place as any to start

Three Favourite Stories
To Peel An Orange
Francine
Wilgefortis

4 out of 5 stars

I have never been a fan of running, mostly because at school I couldn’t. The thought of doing the Marathon des Sables which is six, yes six days of running makes me shudder. Yet it was this daunting (insane?) event that brought Alice Morrison to Morocco. She didn’t think she would finish it. Nor did she expect to be still living there a few years later.

Pre-covid it was a popular place for tourists to visit, but they mostly stayed in resorts and carefully curated the experience of life there. Morrison didn’t want to do that, she wanted to meet the people of this country. It is the beginning of a series of adventures that will take her from being thigh-deep in poo, across the mighty Sahara desert, to the city of Fez and walking with a family as they take their flock to the summer pastures.

Whilst this wasn’t quite was I was expecting, I ended up liking it. Morrison has a knack for integrating herself with the people that she meets in her daily life and travels around the country. And I guess because she speaks the language she is able to understand and empathise with the numerous people that she meets on each of these adventures. If you want to read an insider’s view of Morocco seen from the perspective of an outsider who has made it her home, then this is a great book to read.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

When the cold war was taking place after World War II, the Allies and the Soviet Bloc were all vying for information and intelligence. The stories of the Cambridge spy ring and others are well known, but apart from the odd one or two Soviet spies, like, Oleg Tsarev not much is known about those that chose to betray their home nations. One of those who almost nothing is known about is Michal Goleniewski.

By those in the world of smoke and mirrors, he was considered to be one of the most important spies of the Cold War. He has been written out of the official histories of this time, but Tim Tate thought that there was a story in there that still needed to be told.

In this fascinating book, he has drawn on a ream of documents that until now had not been published. These documents show how this unknown individual began passing Soviet and Polish secrets to the west in 1958. The intelligence that he provided exposed hundreds of agents working in the West. He exposed the Portland Spy ring, and numerous others, including a NATO office and agents working in the States. His information was gold dust, As their agents were blown, the KGB was starting to follow the trail of secrets. He knew that he didn’t have long and made the decision to defect.

The plan to extract him was put into place but was complicated by him wanting to bring his mistress, but it worked and he was soon to set foot in America, but wouldn’t be a free man for a while yet. He brought with him vast quantities of documents that he had snaffled just before he left, and the CIA poured over these. He was given a new identity and effectively disappeared from the clutches of the KGB and their goons. But the Americans squandered their asset and his expert knowledge was overlooked in favour of another defector whose material was mostly fiction.

Tim Tate has written a fine book about Michal Goleniewski and this is a tribute to the work he did. The writing is good, it feels like the research has been painstakingly undertaken and he tries not to sensationalise the man, but rather looks at him with a considered view. He also shows just how misguided the CIA were that they would not trust this guy who had provided vast quantities of material that could be verified and yet trusted this other defector. If you want to learn about a spy who is very little known about then this is a great book to read.

4.5 out of 5 stars

I have come across Eric Ravilious in the past, but really for his beautiful artworks of the English countryside. It wasn’t until I saw this book on Twitter that I became aware that one of his many talents was woodcarvings.

And they are magnificent. I cannot believe the level of detail that he gets from the wood. All of the carvings that I have seen in the past tended to be binary in their colours, but his intricate art gives different shades to the pieces.

There is some background on how he came to create them and the other artists that influenced him. His loss in the Second World War was a tragedy, I would have loved to have seen what else he would have created from the landscapes that he saw around him Great book.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

The first Plantagenet king, Henry II seemed to have everything in control, by the age of 40 he controlled England, parts of Wales, some of Ireland and the western half of France. He was married to Eleanor of Aquitaine, and he had eight children, three daughters and five sons.

It was the tension between these brothers that would ruin the legacy that Henry hoped to have as they sought to carve out their own power bases with land and income. Brother fought against brother and sometimes joined forces with each other to push back against their father. Some of the changes that he made in the way that the law and administration of his lands were run during his reign are still in use today, but the thing he could not do was temper any of his son’s desire for power.

I thought that this was a fascinating journey through our history of the early 1200s beginning with Henry II. Generally, it was quite readable, and the narrative storyline works really well. Occasionally the detail would be a little overwhelming, trying to keep up with which cousin or other relative going back on a promise and betraying the monarch at the time was. This power play took play across Europe and the UK and each of the Kings struggled to hold onto their authority across their vast lands. They were quite a greedy bunch and in certain cases fairly incompetent too and their legacy still rumbles across the political landscape of the UK Europe and even the Middle East even today.

3 out of 5 stars

The last time I did any climbing was when I was in the scouts and that was a long time ago. I haven’t done anything like that for years now and whilst I am ok with heights, occasionally they get the better of me. In this memoir, Ann Fleming takes us from the first time she tried the sport to where she is now.

She has climbed all over the UK, from the slate mountains in Wales where there is almost no grip on the smooth stone, to the gritstone of the Peak District where the undulating surfaces are challenging to climb. She takes on some classic climbs in Scotland on Cullin and even ventures to Greece to climb the limestone of Kalymnos. There are brief sojourns back in history as she looks at how this once male activity is becoming far more evenly split now, but there is still some way to go with attitudes from some of the old school.

Generally, I thought that this was a reasonable book. However, there were parts of this book that I liked and other parts that really didn’t work for me. I found the technical parts of the books a touch tedious, I would have liked a little more explanation as to some of the techniques and methods that she uses when climbing as some of the jargon was mystifying. What I did like was her descriptions of the mountain landscapes across the UK the euphoria and emotions that she had on completing a particularly challenging climb

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Ian Carter has been an ornithologist for Natural England for 25 years and recently retired from The Fens to the Wilds of Dartmoor. Being retired means that he has got time to think about all manner of subjects, hence this book. The book is split into four sections, Home Turf, Venturing Out, Ways of Seeing and Connections. The number of essays varies per section, but they follow the theme.

In, Home Turf, he considers such questions as, should we feed birds at home or leave them to it. It is a subject that he is torn between as he likes seeing the variety of birds in his garden but knows that it can affect their ability to seek food from natural sources. He tells about leaving his lawn to go wild and the effect that it had on drawing in all manner of wildlife to his garden. It did make his landlord raise his eyebrows a little though.

Wild Browsing, in the second section, Venturing Out, is about the delights of finding your own food whilst walking. It is not extensive by any means, he points you in the direction of books that are specialised in this, rather it is about the simple joy of finding the first blackberry of the season and knowing where to get his favourite hazelnuts before the squirrels do.

I particularly like Ways of Seeing. In here he talks about discovering truly wild spaces and how to find them even in your mind as much as the place. Like Chris Yates, he thinks that to really see the wilderness in your local area head out in the gloaming. As the daylight fades and people head indoors you’ll be aware of much more wildlife. The final section is about ways that we can reconnect to the natural world. We are a part of it after all and the health benefits of doing this for us and our planet are profound.

This is another good book from Carter and complements his previous book, Human, Nature, really well. It is a similar format, too, so there are a series of short essays about a particular topic that has interested him. I like the way he writes, he comes across as knowledgeable and authoritative without feeling that you are being lectured too. He is not afraid to have a strong opinion on subject matters either which is good. We need people to speak out more on the things that are happening that need to stop.