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{{Frontpage
|author=Claire Dederer
|title=Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?
|rating=3
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a ''biography of the audience'' in a deconstructed, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of the old aphorism of separating the art from the artist in the context of contemporary ''cancel culture''. Dederer's work is original and expressive. The reader gets the impression that the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. In particular, the prologue packs a punch: she simultaneously condemns and exalts the director Roman Polanski, an artist she personally admires for his art, and yet despises for his actions. This model of ''monstrous men'' as she calls them, is consistent for the first few chapters, interrogating the likes of Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picasso. Her critical voice is acutely present throughout, never slipping into anonymity and maintaining her own subjectivity, as she holds it so dearly, and a personal, rather than collective voice.
|isbn=1399715070
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Virginie Despentes
|title=King Kong Theory
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''King Kong Theory'' is a hard-hitting memoir and feminist manifesto, which can be seen as a call to arms for women in a phallocentric society broken at its core. Originally written in French, the book is a collection of essays in which Virginie Despentes explores her experiences as a woman through the complex prism of her varied life: from rape to sex work and pornography. Though these discussions are intertwined, their placement within the book can feel somewhat disjointed, a reflection of their original form as independent essays.
|isbn=191309734X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1009473085
|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024
|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alastair Humphreys
|title=Local
|rating=5
|genre=Travel
|summary= Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the world. And then written about it. For this book he walked and cycled very close to home and then wrote about it. As he says in his introduction, the book is an attempt ''to share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a small map. Nature loss, pollution, land use and access, agriculture, the food system, rewilding…'' One of the joys of the book for me was that the biggest thing he learned about all of these things was that there are no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong', that every upside is likely to have a downside for somebody and that there are some hard choices ahead.
|isbn=1785633678
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Edel Rodriguez
|title=Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey
|rating=4
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=We're in childhood, and we're in Cuba. The revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of as a saviour of the country, has proven himself a Communist, and not done nearly enough to create a level playing field for all. Well, those hours-long speeches of his were kind of taking his time away. Our narrator's family weren't in the happiest of places here, an uncle refusing to be the good soldier the country demanded (especially as he would probably be shipped off to some minor pro-Communism skirmish, such as Angola) and the father being watched and watched, and not liked for his successful photography business, success being frowned upon. The mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the heat, but in this sultry island country, it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen…
|isbn=1474616720
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Sarah Wilson
|title=This One Wild and Precious Life: the path back to connection in a fractured world
|rating=3.5
|genre= Lifestyle
|summary= My favourite Mary Oliver line is the one in which she asks ''What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?'' I get to love that line so much because my answer is ''This! Precisely this.'' I'm lucky enough to be living my one wild and precious life the way I want to. Sarah Wilson is equally lucky. In her book that takes Oliver's words as her title (though I can't see that she acknowledges the source) she pushes us to think about whether we really ''are'' living the life we want – the best life that we could be living. Her answer is an unequivocal ''no, we are not''. Don't care what you're doing, she thinks you (we, I) could be doing more…And she's effing furious about the fact that we are not.
|isbn=1785633848
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1785633457
|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car
|author=Clive Wilkinson
|rating=5
|genre=Travel
|summary=Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529153050
|title=Britain's Best Political Cartoons 2022
|author=Tim Benson
|rating=4
|genre=Humour
|summary=Seeking some light relief from the current political turmoil which is coming to seem more and more like an adrenaline sport, I was nudged towards ''Britain's Best Political Cartoons of 2022''. Sharp eyes will have noted that we're not yet through the year: the cartoons run from 4 September 2021 to 31 August 2022. Who can imagine what there will be to come in the 2023 edition?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0B7289HKQ
|title=Conversations Across America: A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America
|author=Kari Loya
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
|summary=Kari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, by the way) wanted to spend some time with his father and the period between two jobs seemed like a good time to do it. The decision was made to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon - all 4250 miles of it - in 2015. They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than the recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a challenge that it would be for most people who considered taking it on. Merv Loya was 75 years old and he was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1739593901
|title=22 Ideas About The Future
|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=''Our future will be more complex than we expected. Instead of flying cars, we got night-vision killer drones and automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to track grandma.''
I've got a couple of confessions to make. I'm not keen on short stories as I find it easy to read a few stories and then forget to return to the book. There's got to be a very compelling hook to keep me engaged. Then there's science fiction: far too often it's the technology which takes centre stage along with the world-building. It's human beings who fascinate me: the technology and the world scape are purely incidental. So, what did I think of a book of twenty-two science fiction short stories? Well, I loved it.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
|title=The Book of Hope
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary= The done thing is to read a book all the way through before you sit down to review it. I’m making an exception here, because I don’t want to lose any of the experience of reading this amazing book, I want to capture it as it hits me. And it is hitting me. This beautiful book has me in tears.
|isbn=024147857X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1788360737
|title= Artivism: The Battle for Museums in the Era of Postmodernism
|author=Alexander Adams
|rating=2
|genre= Politics and Society
|summary= Can art ever be apolitical? All art is political because art is not made in a vacuum. It is made by people. Antonio Gramsci stated that ‘’Every man… contributes to modifying the social environment in which he develops’’. Therefore, all art must be political, even implicitly. Alexander Adams in his new book ‘Artivism: The Battle for Museum in the Era of Postmodernism’ is adamant that art is freer when it is art for art’s sake. The recent trend of so-called artivism has caused artists to become more overtly political (read: left wing). Their seemingly grass roots movements have been astroturfed by large “left-wing” donors and media elites hoping to create a more globalist and progressive regime. Or at least that’s what Alexander Adams believes.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1398508632
|title=The Wilderness Cure
|author=Mo Wilde
|rating=5
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=It had been on the cards for a while but it was the week-long consumer binge which pushed Mo Wilde into beginning her year of eating only wild food. The end of November, particularly in Central Scotland was perhaps not the best time to start, in a world where the normal sores had been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and a pandemic. Wilde had a few advantages: the area around her was a known habitat with a variety of terrains. She had electricity which allowed her to run a fridge, freezer and dehydrator. She had a car - and fuel. Most importantly, she had shelter: this was not a plan to ''live'' wild just to live off its produce.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529149800
|title=Things You Can Do: How to Fight Climate Change and Reduce Waste
|author=Eduardo Garcia and Sara Boccaccini Meadows
|rating=4
|genre=Home and Family
|summary=We begin with a telling story. All the birds and animals fled when the forest fire took hold and most of them stood and watched, unable to think of anything they could do. The tiny hummingbird flew to the river and began taking tiny amounts of water and flying back to drop them into the fire. The animals laughed: what good was that doing. ''I'm doing the best I can'', said the hummingbird. And that, really, is the only way that we will solve the problem of climate change – by each of us doing what we can, however small that might be.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1638485216
|title=Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement
|author=Frederick Reynolds
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''Corruption is not department, gender or race specific. It has everything to do with character. Period.''
''One more body just wouldn't matter''.
The murder of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old black man, on 25 May 2020 by Derek Chauvin, a forty-four-year-old police officer, in the US city of Minneapolis sent shock waves around the world. We rarely see pictures of a murder taking place but Floyd's death was an exception. The image of Chauvin kneeling on George's neck is not one which I'll ever forget and the protests which followed cannot have been unexpected. There was a backlash against the police - and not just in Minneapolis: whatever their colour or creed they were ''all'' tarred by the Chauvin brush.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Matthieu Aikins
|title=The Naked Don't Fear the Water
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=It's easy to forget at times that The Naked Don't Fear the Water isn't actually fiction, because it reads very much like a well-paced thriller at times. This is not by any means a criticism, but rather a testament to how well Matthieu Aikins – a Canadian citizen who decided to accompany his friend as a refugee from Afghanistan through Europe – recounts a vast and at times painful journey. There are tense moments and gripping accounts of border crossings which had me on edge the whole way through. But it's written with a haunting and almost lyrical quality that allows the reader to perfectly envisage the environments and people described.
|isbn= B09N9157T6
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1785633074
|title=Staggering Hubris
|author=Josh Berry
|rating=4.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=Members of Parliament like us to believe that the country is run by politicians, headed by the Prime minister - the ''primus inter pares'' (that's for those of you who are Eton and Oxbridge educated) but the reality is that the ''prime'' movers are the special advisers - the SPADS - who are the driving force behind the government. We are in the privileged position of having access to the memoirs of Rafe Hubris, the man who was behind the skilful control of the Covid crisis which was completely contained by the end of 2020. You might not know the name now but he will certainly be the man to watch.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1846276772
|title=The End of Bias: How We Change Our Minds
|author=Jessica Nordell
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Anyone who is not an able, white man understands bias in that they may no longer even recognise the extent to which they suffer from it: it's simply a part of everyday life. White men will always come first. The able will come before the disabled. Jobs, promotions, higher salaries are the preserve of the white man. Even when those who wouldn't pass the medical become a part of an organisation it's rare that their views are heard, that their concerns are acknowledged. It's personally appalling and degrading for the individuals on the receiving end of the bias but it's not just the individuals who are negatively impacted.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529148251
|title=Misfits: A Personal Manifesto
|author=Michaela Coel
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''How am I able to be so transparent on paper about rape, malpractice and poverty, yet still compartmentalise? It's as though I were telling the truth whilst simultaneously running away from it.''
Before you start reading ''Misfits'' you need to be in a certain frame of mind. You're not going to read a book of essays or a self-help book. You're going to read writing which was inspired by Michaela Coel's 2018 MacTaggart Lecture to professionals within the television industry at the Edinburgh TV Festival. You might be ''reading'' the book but you need to ''listen'' to the words as though you're in the lecture theatre. The disjointedness will fade away and you'll be carried on a cloud of exquisite writing.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008350388
|title=We Need to Talk About Money
|author=Otegha Uwagba
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...'' ''We Need to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba
''0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a writer of colour while only 7% study a book by a woman.'' ''The Bookseller'' 29 June 2021
Otegha Uwagba came to the UK from Kenya when she was five years old. Her sisters were seven and nine. It was her mother who came first, with her father joining them later. The family was hard-working, principled and determined that their children would have the best education possible. There was always a painful awareness of money although this did not translate into a shortage of anything: it was simply carefully harvested. When Otegha was ten the family acquired a car. For Otegha, education meant a scholarship to a private school in London and then a place at New College, Oxford.
}}
{{Frontpage
This was what Louisa Pateman was brought up to believe. It wasn't unkind: it was simply the adults in her life advising her as to what they thought would be best for her. It was reinforced by all those fairy tales where the girl (she's usually fairly young) is rescued by the handsome prince who then marries her so that they can live happily ever after. Few girls are lucky enough to be brought up ''without'' the expectation that they will marry and have children. It was a belief and it would be many years before Louisa would conclude that ''a belief is a choice''.
}}
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