I was intrigued by this, written by the brilliant mind behind Line of Duty. It’s an odd little book, chronicalling the life of a Russian from a troubled boyhood to a long stint flying planes in the military and then joining the space race against the US. It’s a good read and I thought the ending very impactful, but it does feel like it’s missing something. There’s not a lot of personality given to any of the characters, so it’s hard to get fully engaged. And some of the flying adventures are like reading Top Gun which I wasn’t so bothered about. But overall worth the read.

I always think I like Harlan Coben books but then I’m quite often not as keen once I get in it. This was another one of those, it was fine, a decent enough mystery, although it required quite a lot of exposition to start with. There was so much back story required to get to the unravelling of everything in the current timeframe it really took a while to get into it. But it was a satisfying mystery that came to a good ending - although I would have liked to know how the conversation that must have immediately followed The End went.

This book has been around for a while and been revised a few times, but fundamentally the story doesn’t change - Mary tells her story of being the victim of a bigamist who defrauded her of hundreds of thousands of pounds. It’s well written and highlights just how easy it would be to be manipulated by a smooth-talking guy who did what Will did, but I do wonder about how deep into debt one might go for their other half. You don’t know until you’re in the situation, of course, and having read this, it’s a good warning about staying aware of the signs of manipulation.

Yep, ticking along nicely through this Twilight books but have to admit this was the worst one by far. Very, very little happened until right at the end when a medium level battle took place - albeit far away from where we were waiting with our golden couple. Most of the book was waiting and planning and torturing each other with this love triangle… even though Jacob was an actual dickhead at several points, barely respecting Bella at all.

I’ve read a few medical memoirs, and they tend to follow a similar pattern - heart-warming stories offset by the frustrations of a sprawling mess of a national health service. This has that at its core but I think focuses more on the problems than the patients, although apologetically so. Edwards admits it himself that as he’s keeping this as something of a diary, it tends to be the bad days that draw more attention, the rants he needs to release, that hit the page. But there are some upsides to the down, some days that keep the spirits up, so that overall it’s a good and enlightening read.

Having watched the film on Netflix, I was interested in how the book would stack up. It’s very similar, just a few tweaks in the film to give it that extra edge. But I loved the book, it’s equisitely written, super simple, laying out the facts, following these few characters as they go about their business and change our understanding of history. It’s just wonderful, I was always disappointed when I had to put it down.

This is a great little collection of war effort leaflets relating to food, rationing, exercise and generally trying to be healthy. It was eye-opening, because you sort of think of the war and rationing as a time of being hungry and unhealthy, but actually, whilst there may have been a shortness of certain foods, everything else looked super healthy. It made me quite sad to see how we have completely lost the basic building blocks of nutrition. This needs to be hammered into kids from an early age, by parents, schools, shops, governments, whoever. Make it easy and second nature.

Like many others, I saw the film adaptation of this non-fiction book without knowing anything of the subject matter beforehand. It was a moving story, of course, heroic bravery in the face of almost insurmountable odds and in the end, a victory for mankind against Mother Nature. But when you come to read the book, although still feeling dramatic and, honestly, quite horrific, there’s a steadfast nature about the writing that at first unsteadied me.

I’ve put off reading this for a while because it felt like a personal story that wasn’t really any of my business. But then I saw that Hammond was remembering the ten year anniversary of his crash and thanking everyone that helped him, and I realised it probably is a story that is worth reading, if only to realise how thankful we should all be for the amazing medical profession.

So, when you pick up a romance novel, you know exactly what you’re getting and they are not my kind of book. It being set in the beautiful motorsport paddocks made no difference to this whatsoever. Romance novels are silly, this we know. They are nothing like real life, people don’t ever talk to each other like that, and things like this don’t happen to regular people. Even so, to bring motorsport into the mix is interesting to me, so I read it. Oh dear.