The latest book review is up on my YouTube channel, Life Lessons From Books. It’s by James Wood on How Fiction Works. I have some books “dropping” (as they say) over the next four weeks. (I read about 1-2 books per week) What to expect in the coming weeks:
Night: A Book Review
Book Reviews of The Dying Animal & Indignation by Philip Roth
What on earth did I read?! One of the most odious characters I’ve ever read was in this book. Here’s my new book review.. The second book, Indignation was a bit better.
Catch-22 for Organisations
In this post I write about the links of this book by Joseph Heller called Catch-22 to the working world.
The Lovers Book Review
Here’s my new book review. I recently won a book competition that included three books in the package. I decided to read The Lovers by Yumma Kassab, an Australian author.
Enough of the TikToks
What is it with all social media platforms and their incessant desire for shorts, or TikTok videos? As you know, I’m not using social media now but I’ve only kept YouTube and even that has Shorts! I hate them! Many of the YouTube channels I’m following lament that there’s been a change to their algorithms. […]
Book Review of The Gambler by Dostoyevsky
Here’s my book review of Dostoyevsky’s The Gambler. It wasn’t a bad read and my favourite character was the cranky old mother in the wheelchair who whacked people with her cane. Everyone was waiting for her to die to get their hands on her money but she knew exactly what they were doing – so […]
Life Lessons from Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
This one was a doozy. Lots of major life themes about primarily, making the choice to “choose life” and all that it entails – the good and the bad; the great people and the worst people who enter our lives and make it better – or turn it upside down. Ultimately, it’s how we choose […]
Life Lessons from War and Peace
Well finally, I’ve shared my thoughts on Tolstoy’s book War and Peace. Rather than do a review of it, I thought I’d share SOME of my life lessons with this book. I could have spoken for a lot more but I’m mindful that the video is long! I think I did this video more so […]
Russian Literature
I’ve been reading this brilliant book by Dostoyevsky and I’m chuckling through it. (If you’re interested, here is my book review on YouTube) We don’t know who the character is but the irony is that if Holden Caulfield (from JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye) had grown up, he would be the character in this […]
Klara and the Sun Book Review
Can bots be our friends? I’ve got a new book review up on YouTube. This one is by British novelist, Kazuo Ishiguro and it’s one that stays with you long after you put the book down. Themes of love, hope, loneliness, human-like bots made to be AFs (artificial friends) for children, genetic editing and uplifting, […]
The Natural History of Love
My new book review is now published on YouTube. How this book got into my hands was full of coincidences that I simply couldn’t explain and wrote about them in the blog post: Eerie Coincidences. In the video, I wander around the golf course showing where the site of the original Mayfields House was. I’m […]
Mute
Here’s my new book review of a book read in the course of one day (and the next morning). I couldn’t put it down mainly because the premise of going mute was something I had thought about in the past. The character in the book decides to not talk for 9 months and it’s a […]
Book Reviews for The Week
I’m a mad reader and currently onto about my 55th (?) book this year which has focussed on reading authors who come from a non-English speaking background. I’ve read some interesting ones which are all sitting on my YouTube channel. Here’s a few that have been uploaded in the last week or so. There are […]
New Book Review: The Latecomer
I started a Book Club Community on Yammer at work as one of the first communities to get people onto the platform. (Little success as I was the main one posting in it). However, at various times people told me that I should read certain authors from their own country. So I did that and […]
To The Lighthouse
I’m reading Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse written in 1927. If you had the cast of Downton Abbey around a dining table but not talking to each other, instead thinking about each other, “a stream of consciousness”, the thoughts flowing from one person to the next, you get an idea of how this book […]
Dare to Unlead: The Art of Leadership in a Fragmented World
Celine Schillinger wrote this wonderful book recently that I have recommended to everyone I know. It’s a book about a different style of leadership needed in today’s world. When I was reading the book, there were times when I was angry and had to put it down to reflect more. It wasn’t what was written, […]
Au Revoir Tristesse
I’ve recently finished reading Viv Groskop’s book Au Revoir Tristess: Lessons in Happiness from French Literature and loved it. It’s got me back into my reading mojo! Here’s my review of it and below it are direct quotes from the book that made an impact on me. Marcel Proust There is something very wise, almost […]
Book Review on The Bookseller’s Tale
A new book review is now on on my YouTube channel if you’re interested. This one was fabulous because it was written by a bookseller who collated and curated all sorts of different stories and facts about books, book collectors and book stores. A great read.
You Are Not A Gadget
A new book review is now up on YouTube and it’s Jaron Lanier’s, You Are Not a Gadget written in 2010. In the video I talk about how I read this book as at times it took a while to read due to its writing style and at times, grappling with some of the words […]