Lovely Bill Turnball wrote this in 2010, giving some insight into his hobby of beekeeping, with a few stories from his life along the way - his time on Strictly Come Dancing, a visit to New Orleans after the hurricane, and time spent in Northern Ireland. But the point of the book is to give an insight into what it is to be a beekeeper, good or bad. What it takes, whether you should do it, and what an important role it can be. A lovely book.

After wrapping up the Apple TV+ series based on this work, I sought out the original but it wasn’t available as a digital read, only an audiobook. So I quickly raced through that on Audible Plus - it’s well written and read, detailing the important moments of the journey, but if I’m honest, if I hadn’t have watched the show, I don’t know that it would have grabbed me all that much. Still, good to have the background behind the piece.

I whipped through this book, it was quite a light and fluffy read. It felt a bit weird that the first half was setting up the scene of a love life for a fifteen turning sixteen year old - it all felt a bit sincere for such a young age. And then, of course, when we pop forward into the future, it’s quite obvious what’s going to happen. But I still quite enjoyed the process of reading and getting to that happy ending.

A super short read from David Baldacci and I loved it. Effectively, the great thriller writing you expect from Baldacci with just a touch of time travel thrown on top. I guess it was a bit weird how quickly our assassin protagonist adapted to his situation, but equally, the payoff was worth it. I saw it coming only moments before it happened, and it left quite an impression on me!

I sort of had to split this book into two things as I was reading - one was the memoir of what Mark did, and one was the manifesto of freeconomic living. The two elements worked very differently. As a memoir, it’s brilliant. Mark is open and honest, upfront about the challenges of living like this, about his thoughts and doubts, and experiences along the way. It’s an interesting idea and one that is worth thinking about, so raising the profile of the problems money causes is great.

I remember reading this before, and I actually blogged about it at the time. This book was released as an app, and it was one of the first reading experiences I had on a phone. As a book, I said it was fine, a bit predictable, a super quick and easy read (obviously, being part of the excellent Quick Reads initiative), not challenging but doing the job well. I pretty much agree with that although I think I enjoyed it more this time round as I was just reading the book rather than thinking about the whole app concept as well.

We all know by now that Nora Ephron writes wonderfully with wit and nostalgia, hope and horror in equal measure. This is a short but sweet collection of essays that take a look at Nora’s early work in journalism, dealing with trying to remember people’s names, and how divorce can affect you in very different ways.

I’d previously read half of this, which is annoying, because I’d never quite got to the bit where the mother and son duo escape from the room they are being held in. This book staggers me, partly because it’s such a well told story based on such an horrific crime, but also because it’s completely engaging despite being the scatty and unformed mind of a sheltered five-year-old.

Split into two parts, the first covers the story in detail - in this case, from the appearance of Stalin to the introduction of Yeltsin, via the Vietnam war, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the rise and fall of multiple presidents and prime ministers. The second half is the appendix, with a quick overview of the main characters involved in the subject, and then a great timeline for just the key facts in the order they happened.