The Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort
As if we didn't have enough excuses to appreciate the 'Masters of the Universe' of the financial sector. After the tax dodging, the bonus scamming, price fixing and the valiant attempt to bring down the entire world economy comes Jordan Belfort aka the Wolf of Wall Street. To be fair to Belfort, he plied his trade long before the most recent financial meltdown. Still, he's managed to piggy back the latest crash via a best selling book which has been re-released to coincide with a film adaptation starring Leonardo Dicaprio. Full review...
Play It Again: An Amateur Against The Impossible by Alan Rusbridger
I’ve maintained for a long time that I’ll read anything, if it’s well-enough written. So it was with this fascinating memoir, even though it’s a year in the life of an amateur pianist, and I don’t play the piano – or indeed a note of music. I couldn’t even have placed the name Alan Rusbridger in his professional role before I read the book. A quick browse through the first couple of pages on Amazon revealed that the author could indeed tell a clear story: it is his stock-in-trade as Editor of the Guardian. And the book duly held me through a messy, interrupted week of bedtime reading. Full review...
Born in Siberia by Tamara Astafieva, Michael Darlow and Debbie Slater
I tend to shy away from reviewing book titles, but this time it seems appropriate – here it's a title that doesn't tell you the half of the story. As much as Tamara Astafieva was born in Siberia, and returned there several times, for many different reasons and with many very different outcomes, this is much more of a picture of the Soviet Union as we in Britain think of it – Moscow, a bit of Saint Petersburg, and little else. That's not a fault – and again it's not half of the story. The story here is so complex, so rich with detail and incident, and itself came about in such an unusual way, that any summary of the book has its work cut out in defining its many qualities. Full review...
The Dog Nobody Loved by Jon Katz
When we first meet Jon Katz he's not in a good place: his marriage of thirty-five years was breaking up and he was close to a nervous breakdown. He didn't need any more problems. He particularly didn't need a young rescue dog, a Rottweiler/Shepherd mix, who'd been living wild, to contend with and to upset the fragile equilibrium of the life he lived with his animals on Bedlam Farm. Frieda was near feral but devoted to her rescuer, Maria Wulf and it was Maria who was at the centre of this conundrum. Katz was spectacularly disconnected from the world - and Maria was the only person to whom he seemed able to talk, but to connect with Maria he had to connect with Frieda too. Full review...
Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence and Emperor Penguins by Gavin Francis
I know two books don't make a genre, but twice in recent years I have read autobiographical travelogues of men who felt too much was going on in their lives and their surroundings, and took themselves off to remote, isolated, extremely cold and inhospitable places. One went to the shores of Lake Baikal, and shared his days hunting, fishing, drinking and reading with only a few very distant neighbours. Gavin Francis took himself south, to the edge of the Antarctic ice, to spend a year as a scientific doctor. He wasn't able to be completely as alone as some have been in the past – even if he hid himself away in isolation before the week-long annual changeover of staff was through. Francis ends up with a baker's dozen of companions, in a place where – apart from the ice, sealing things up – only two lockable doors exist. You might think this was a large group of people for someone wanting to be alone, but the very tenuous and isolated feel of the place in the huge emptiness of the landscape is the main point of this book – that, and communing with emperor penguins… Full review...
Harry: My Autobiography by Harry Redknapp
Everybody with an interest in football knows who Harry is. The cover of his book won't tell you who he is, but if you're not in the know it's Harry Redknapp - football manager and for many of us, something of a national treasure. He's the manager who's seen it all, having started at rock bottom - a 70s Portakabin at Oxford City - and risen to the heights of managing Tottenham Hotspur in the Premiership. At the same time he was the popular choice for the England Manager's job when Capello threw in the towel. It's fair to say that Harry has lived his football life to the full and anyone buying this book will get their money's worth. Full review...
Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe
When I began reading this book I wasn't entirely sure that I liked it. I didn't quite know how to take the Nina from the title. She's a twenty year old Nanny, employed by the editor of the London Review of Books and living near Regent's Park in North London. The book contains her letters to her sister, Victoria living at home in Leicestershire, and tell of the events and happenings in her life as a Nanny and then, going on, in her life as a student at Thames Polytechnic. Initially it felt like she was name dropping - Alan Bennett lives over the road and drops in for dinner most days; the father of Will and Sam, the two boys she is nannying, is Stephen Frears; down the road lives Claire Tomalin and her partner Michael Frayn...and yet, given chance, you begin to see that she isn't awed by the notoriety of these people (indeed, she tells her sister that Alan Bennett was in Coronation Street!) and actually they are just the neighbours and so it is less important that Alan Bennett (AB as he's referred to in the book) comes around for dinner every night since he isn't there for fame value but rather for his own unique place in this rather crazy family life memoir! Full review...
Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time by Penelope Lively
Now aged 80, Penelope Lively, the Booker Prize-winning author of twenty works of fiction including Moon Tiger (1987) and How It All Began (2011), is increasingly conscious of death approaching. It may be true that, as concluded in Nothing to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes, 'we cannot truly savour life without a regular awareness of extinction', but this memoir is less a memento mori than an agreeably scattered tour through Lively's life and times. Full review...
The Last Diaries: A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine by Tony Benn
Throughout my life I've found that whilst I might not always agree with Tony Benn's politics, whatever he had to say would give me food for thought - and frequently changed the way that I viewed a situation. He's a wonderful mixture of supreme intelligence and humanity which is so rarely found - particularly in modern-day politics and it was with some misgivings that I opened this volume of his diaries, given that the slipcover speaks of the compensations and challenges of old age and the disadvantages of growing older, the loneliness of widowhood, the upheaval of moving from the family home of sixty years and the problems of failing health. I've always been relieved that Benn has never quite achieved the status of national treasure, but surely he couldn't be in decline? Full review...
Canton Elegy: A Father's Letter of Sacrifice, Survival and Love by Stephen Jin-Nom Lee and Howard Webster
Stephen Jin-Nom Lee, known in his childhood as Ah Nom, was born early in the twentieth century in the village of Dai Waan in rural China. His father died when he was young and he lived with his grandmother, mother and 'Little Uncle', who was only a matter of months older than Ah Nom. They'd become friends as they grew older, but when his Grandfather returned after a long absence in America there as a distinct rivalry between the two. Then Grandfather revealed his reason for returning home - he intended to take the boys to America to be educated. It was a wonderful opportunity and Ah Nom left the village and his mother not knowing when he would see either again. Full review...
My Life by David Jason
Born in North London in February 1940 during the early years of the Second World War, David John White once had a brief career as an electrician. Fortunately for the world of entertainment and the public, he soon forsook the world of fuses and wires for that of the stage and small screen. When he joined Equity, they already had a David White on their records, and after a little quick thinking on the phone, he became David Jason. Full review...
A Piece of Danish Happiness by Sharmi Albrechtsen
Sharmi Albrechtsen was a true Hindu-American princess. Obsessed with shoes and handbags and designer labels, she saw status and wealth as the only route to happiness. But she wasn't happy enough, no matter how much designer gear she owned. And it wasn't until 1997, when she married her second husband, a Dane, and relocated to Denmark, that she began to wonder if it was something lacking in herself, rather than her possessions, that was at the root of her problems. Full review...
The True German: The Diary of a World War II Military Judge by Werner Otto Muller-Hill and Benjamin Carter Hett
We've had diaries of teenagers, opium addicts, drug smugglers, and a lot more. Some of them have been optimistic, happy things, and many not. Clearly World War II was not a place for a terribly cheerful outlook, whatever the diarist. However sometimes it was not the done thing to be pessimistic, for example when you were in the huge German military and were publicly denigrating the dreamt-of Nazi success. Such corrosion of morale would mean you being put in front of a three-man military tribunal, and most probably sentenced for such treacherous behaviour. The startling thing about this book, however, is that it contains much that would certainly have been deemed corrosion of morale, yet it was written by one of the very military judges who served on those panels. Full review...
Hospice Voices: Lessons for Living at the End of Life by Eric Lindner
Hospice Voices tells the stories of the last days of some fascinating people while it follows author Eric Lindner through his journey as a hospice volunteer and a crisis in his own daughter's health. Full review...
Lucky Me: My Life With - And Without - My Mom, Shirley MacLaine by Sachi Parker with Frederick Stroppel
Born in Los Angeles, raised in Tokyo, and schooled across Europe, Sachi Parker had already lead an eventful life before she turned 18. Add to the mix a secretive father with an explosive temper and a Hollywood icon for a mother and you have enough stories to fill a book.
And that's exactly what she's done. Full review...
Monkeys in my Garden: Unbelievable but true stories of my life in Mozambique by Valerie Pixley
Valerie Pixley and her husband O'D live in Mozambique, amidst its rapidly disappearing forests. Monkeys in my Garden tells the story of what life is like in the Nhamacoa Forest and how they came to be there. It opens with a terrifying scene: armed bandits in their bedroom in the middle of the night. Full review...
The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson
This is the memoir of one of the youngest people on Oskar Schindler's famous list of Jews saved from the Nazis during World War II. It opens between the wars, with Leon's family living in the small Polish town of Narewka. There wasn't much money but everyone was happy. Leon's father moved to Krakow in the hopes of making a better life and when Leon and his siblings eventually join him, you can feel the wonder of a little boy new to the big city. Full review...
Wicked Games by Kelly Lawrence
Sometimes you read a book that is supposed to be fiction, and immediately question whether it isn’t a true story loosely fictionalised and with a few character names changed, so the author doesn’t lose face if it’s not well received. Wicked Games is no such book, because you’re told from the outset that it’s a real life erotic memoir. And, while the author still has some discretion regarding how much or how little she shares, you genuinely come away feeling like you’ve just read a startlingly intimate description of a real person’s private life. Full review...
The Wolf Pit by Will Cohu
Up on the north Yorkshire Moors there’s a feature of the landscape known as the Wolf Pit. It’s thought to be a medieval trap into which wolves were driven, but as you get close to it, it’s difficult to locate, marked only by a change in the light, a slope of the ground. Will Cohu doesn’t concentrate on the pit but rather on nearby Bramble Carr, the remote moorland cottage to which his grandparents moved in 1966, almost on a whim and certainly with insufficient thought. George Brook was a manager at ICI in Billingham and Dorothy was an artist and musician. They’d been brought together by a shared love of the arts but once installed at Bramble Carr and with little more than each other for company the marriage deteriorated into dark silence. Full review...
Judith Kerr's Creatures: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Judith Kerr by Judith Kerr
In children's literature there are some authors whom you know are not just reliable, but always impressive. One of those names is Judith Kerr. For decades she's been delighting our children (and grandchildren) but it still came as something of a surprise to discover that she would be ninety in June 2013. To celebrate this, Harper Collins have published Creatures in which Judith tells not just her own story but that of the creatures - the characters in her books and her family - who have contributed to her inspirational life. It is, though, far more than just an autobiography with a marvellous collection of paintings, drawings and memorabilia. Full review...
Life on a Plate: The Autobiography by Gregg Wallace
I remember the early days of Masterchef when members of the public practiced certain dishes until they couldn't get them wrong and then presented them to be judged. Once it got past the point where you could be reasonably certain that there wouldn't be a major disaster with no food on the table it all got rather boring and finally faded. It had a reincarnation though, largely fronted by chef John Torode and greengrocer Gregg Wallace. Gone are the days when people said Greengrocer? as though they were referring to some lower life form and it's generally acknowledged that Wallace is a good anchor (and better as he's grown in confidence) and that he has a great palate. But where did he come from? Full review...
Kurt Vonnegut: Letters by Kurt Vonnegut and Dan Wakefield
Kurt Vonnegut: Letters is a fascinating tome of personal correspondences between one of the greats in American literature and the several individuals and institutions whose paths he’d crossed. Written from the early forties up until 2007, the year of Vonnegut's untimely death, these letters enable readers to understand the workings of the mind behind classics such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle. Full review...
Deer Island by Neil Ansell
Neil Ansell volunteered in the 1980s to work for an organization that provided support for the homeless. These homeless were the people other shelters would reject for various reasons (drink, drugs, etc.) but the group Neil worked for were a little different to most similar charities. Due to this Neil experienced some of the worst case scenarios of being down and out in London, and along the way befriended many interesting but ultimately ill-fated people. To escape and recover from a life full of brief friendships, poverty and untimely death Neil travelled to the Isle of Jura off the West coast of Scotland. Jura came to be a special place for him and of all places in the world it was the one most in his heart. Deer Island is Neil’s account of his life in the 1980s and his discovery of Jura; it is, in effect, his love song to the island that has been his sanctuary. Full review...
The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius by Kristine Barnett
The tutor stands at the front of the university class, frantically scribbling equations on the large whiteboard in front of him. He is well respected by his students; an expert in several fields, including general relativity, string theory, quantum field theory and biophysics. In fact, he recently unveiled a brand new theory that may put him in line for a Nobel Prize.
Oh, and did I forget to mention that he is just 14 years old? Full review...
Pigs in Clover: Or How I Accidentally Fell in Love with the Good Life by Simon Dawson
Simon Dawson really had no intention of leading a life of self-sufficiency - he accidentally fell into the beginnings of it at a New Year's Eve party which was a little too noisy for him to be completely certain what it was he was agreeing to. But even then there was no need for it to go too far. After all, this man's heart was in London and he was an estate agent - a member of the profession whose place at the top of the opprobrium ladder was only made wobbly after a serious PR campaign on behalf of journalists and politicians. But his wife was determined that she couldn't stand being a property solicitor any longer and so they sold their flat in London and rented a property on Exmoor and Simon began a weekly commute - weekends in Devon and most of the week in London. Full review...
The Woman who Changed Her Brain: How We Can Shape our Minds and Other Tales of Cognitive Transformation by Barbara Arrowsmith-Young
Imagine feeling like a stranger in your own body, unable to comprehend the world around you. Symbols, words and numbers swirl in an unintelligible mix on the page and make no sense at all. Activities that others perform with ease are a struggle for you, leading to deep feelings of frustration. This was the challenge that Barbara-Arrowsmith-Young faced daily as a result of her complex learning disabilities. Her intense feelings of despair even caused her to attempt suicide. Full review...
Bageye at the Wheel: A 1970s Childhood in Suburbia by Colin Grant
Growing up as one of the few black children in Luton in the 1970s, Colin Grant was in awe of his father, always known as Bageye. In this memoir of his childhood, he looks back at his own early years and the impact his feckless dad - and his friends, or spars, such as Summer Wear, Tidy Boots, Anxious and Pioneer - had on him. Full review...
Jobsworth: Confessions of the Man from the Council by Malcolm Philips
Local government isn’t what it used to be. People say this with regret, but reading Malcolm Philips’ memoir you will probably be left with the impression that this is a Very Good Thing. Because fun as it may have been to be working in the council in the 60s and 70s, if this entertaining account is anything to go by, it was also an awful shambles. Full review...
Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen
I first encountered Anna Quindlen when I read Life with Beau: A Tale of a Dog and His Family. I'm a sucker for non-fiction books about dogs but what struck me was that the book could have been trite. Instead it was elegant, witty and with a real eye for detail and social nuance. It was genuinely about life with Beau and what the family learned from him rather than - as so many such books are - what the family had done for the dog. The book struck a particular chord with me as our older dog was, we knew, on borrowed time (although her innate stubbornness kept her going for another two years) and Quindlen helped me to think about what Rosie had given us. Full review...
The Vagaries Of Swing (Footprints on the Margate Sands of Time) by Mac Carty
Mac Carty tells us that the catalyst for 'The Vagaries of Swing' was the BBC television series 'True Love' which portrayed a series of romantic encounters all set by the sea in his home town of Margate. But Carty has taken the original idea - about relationships between people - and run with it, extending love into passion, say for cricket, or (at the other end of the scale) as a human encounter which ends in violence. Whilst the television series might have been the catalyst for the book there was another and probably more compelling reason. When his friend Mike died he realised that he had no one with whom to share his fund of stories about growing up in Margate, all of which had been revisited on a regular basis and usually over a pint. I've just read the result. Full review...