Sunday, 30 March 2025
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
Monday, 17 March 2025
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
100 Things We've Lost To The Internet by Pamela Paul
About the book: Remember all those ingrained habits, cherished ideas, beloved objects, and stubborn preferences from the pre-Internet age? They are gone.
To some of those things we can say good riddance. But many we miss terribly. Whatever our emotional response to this departed realm, we are faced with the fact that nearly every aspect of modern life now takes place in filtered, isolated corners of cyberspace - a space that has slowly subsumed our physical habitats, replacing or transforming the office, our local library, a favourite bar, the movie theater, and the coffee shop where people met one another’s gaze from across the room. Even as we have gained the ability to gather without leaving our house, many of the fundamentally human experiences that have sustained us have disappeared.
In one hundred glimpses of that pre-Internet world, Pamela Paul, editor of The New York Times Book Review, presents a captivating record, enlivened with illustrations, of the world before cyberspace - from voicemails to blind dates to punctuation to civility. There are the small postcards, the blessings of an adolescence largely spared of documentation, the Rolodex, and the genuine surprises at high school reunions. But there are larger repercussions, weaker memories, the inability to entertain oneself, and the utter demolition of privacy.
100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet (2021) is at once an evocative swan song for a disappearing era and, perhaps, a guide to reclaiming just a little bit more of the world IRL.
100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet is named one of the ten best books of the year by Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News.
About the author: Pamela Paul is the editor of The New York Times Book Review and oversees books coverage at The Times. She also hosts the weekly Book Review podcast. She is the author of seven books, How to Raise a Reader, co-authored with Maria Russo, My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues, By the Book, Parenting, Inc., Pornified, The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony and Rectangle Time. Prior to joining the Times, Paul was a contributor to Time magazine and The Economist, and her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Vogue. She and her family live in New York.
Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Old And New Testaments
About the Bible: The whole of Scripture, Old Testament and New, is being published in a single volume, featuring the beautiful Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition (RSV2CE) translation along with introductions, outlines, and explanatory notes for each biblical book, extensive cross references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and an array of visual and educational aids to bring the message of Scripture into clear focus for Catholic readers.
More than any other study edition of the Bible on the market, the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible (2024) is "like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old" (Matthew 13:52). It draws insights from the best of modern scholarship as well as the best of the Catholic tradition of interpretation through the ages.
It explains the historical, cultural, literary, and archaeological background of Scripture, while at the same time looking to the Fathers, Doctors, and Councils of the Church for insight into its theological and spiritual teachings. The result is a veritable library of Bible study resources, all under one cover, designed to help readers understand the written Word of God and apply its lessons to their lives today. It is simply the most ambitious undertaking of its kind in our generation.
1) Key Features:
Introductions and Outlines for every book of the Bible
17,500+ explanatory footnotes for every chapter of the Bible
20+ topical essays on major topics in the Bible
140+ word studies on the most important vocabulary in the Bible
25+ charts on the chronology, kings, parables, and other features of the Bible
50+ maps on the geography of the Bible
1,700+ cross-references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church
9 point type size, 7 point type for footnotes
2) The Ignatius Press Study Bible has been developed by leading Scripture scholars:
Scott Hahn, Ph.D., General Editor, St. Paul Center
Curtis J Mitch, M.A., Co-Editor
3) Contributing Authors:
Kelly Anderson, S.S.L., Ph.D., Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary
Michael Barber, Ph.D., Augustine Institute
John Bergsma, Ph.D, Franciscan University and St. Paul Center
Mark Giszczak, S.S.L., Ph.D., Augustine Institute
John A Kincaid, Ph.D., University of Mary
Jeffrey L Morrow, Ph.D., St. Paul Center
James B Prothro, Ph.D., Augustine Institute
Andrew Swafford, S.T.D., Benedictine College
Leeanne Thomas, M.A.
Matthew J Thomas, D.Phil., Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology
David Twellman, Ph.D., Sacred Heart Major Seminary
André Villeneuve, Ph.D., Sacred Heart Major Seminary & Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies
Monday, 10 March 2025
Never Say Never by Danielle Steel
About the book: Never Say Never (2025), the story of a woman who finds her life turned upside down while living temporarily in the French countryside, is an enthralling testament to new beginnings from billion-copy bestselling author Danielle Steel.
Oona Kelly Webster is an editor at a prestigious New York publishing house. Married with two children, her twenty-five-year relationship falls apart when she books a silver wedding anniversary getaway at a luxurious château in France and her husband Charles suddenly drops a bombshell which will shatter her carefully built world.
Although devastated, Oona decides to travel to France without Charles, but soon after her arrival in the charming village of Milly-la-Forêt, the world comes to a standstill due to a terrifying pandemic and all travel is forbidden. Isolated and fearful, Oona then receives another shock when she discovers her job has been made redundant. The only thing which helps her to face the tragedy taking place across the world is that she can remain in France, where the beautiful surroundings and slower pace of life will slowly begin to heal her.
And when a chance encounter with her new neighbour, a well-known Hollywood actor who is also stranded far from home, blossoms into something deeper than friendship, Oona wrestles with the risks of opening her heart again - especially to a younger, very famous man who has two young children grieving for their mother.
With a second chance at happiness before her, Oona must be brave enough to stay open to even greater life changes at a time when the world is experiencing great fear and turmoil.
About the author: Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world's most popular authors, with a billion copies of her novels sold. Her many and recent international bestsellers include Property of a Noblewoman, Blue, Precious Gifts, Undercover, Country, Prodigal Son, Pegasus, A Perfect Life, Trial by Fire, Triangle, Joy and other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina's life and death; A Gift of Hope, a memoir of her work with the homeless; and the children's books Pretty Minnie in Paris and Pretty Minnie in Hollywood. Danielle divides her time between Paris and her home in northern California.
Rating: 3/5
Cult Trip: Inside The World Of Coercion & Control by Anke Richter
About the book: At a new age festival in Byron Bay, journalist Anke Richter is finding her awakening when she meets a woman – a survivor of the New Zealand sex cult Centrepoint – who will change the course of her life and career.
Over the next ten years, Anke pursues a labyrinthine investigation into how and why cults seduce, entrap and destroy otherwise ordinary people, asking what the line is between tribe and cult, participant and perpetrator, seduction and sexual abuse.
Her view on her own explorations starts to change.
From the emotional and criminal carnage of Auckland’s Centrepoint to an anti-cult conference in Manchester, the infamous Osho’s ashram in India, the tantric Agama Yoga school in remote Thailand, and culminating in a visit to the fundamentalist Christian enclave Gloriavale on the West Coast of the South Island, Anke uncovers a disturbing pattern of violence and many untold stories of suffering.
Cult Trip (2022, 2023) is a powerful exploration of what really goes on inside the spiritual groups we call cults, and how to reckon with their aftermath.
About the author: Anke Richter is a columnist and reporter. Before she immigrated with her family to New Zealand, she worked in newsrooms and TV productions in Hamburg and Cologne. Her investigative and personal features are published in Die Zeit, Spiegel, FAZ, taz, New Zealand Geographic, North & South, The Spinoff, Canvas and others. She has written three previous books that were published in Germany.
www.ankerichter.net
Friday, 7 March 2025
Thursday, 6 March 2025
Monday, 3 March 2025
Cleavage by Cleo Watson
About the book: As Tory drawers are caught down yet again, the Opposition takes the chance to pull up its socks.
Prime Minister Eric Courtenay, fresh from another scandal, realises he has his work cut out when the Labour offensive kicks off with the charismatic Vicky Tennyson and handsome Christian Eccles at the helm, both dead set on an end to Conservative rule.
The desperate Tories resort to hiring maverick strategist Callum Gallagher to get them out of a fix. Gallagher’s methods are unusual in the extreme and kept from his employers. As he and his data geeks sieve through the red-hot web searches of the unsuspecting electorate, it becomes clear that sex sells. Everyone’s at it, but the question is whose fantasy will win the big role play?
To top it all, the Houses of Parliament are in desperate need of repair, but everyone’s too busy thinking about ballot boxes and throbbing majorities to care. If Whips (2023) got you hot under the collar, Cleavage (2024) will have you begging for more.
Cleavage is a Sunday Times Best Book of 2024 and a Daily Mail Top 10 Best Fiction Book of 2024.
About the author: Cleo Watson is a British author of Whips (Corsair) and the presenter of the Radio 4 series, How to Win a Campaign. She worked in politics and campaigning for over a decade, including President Barack Obama's re-election in 2012, the 2017 and 2019 UK general elections and the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 EU referendum. In government, she served in 10 Downing Street as Theresa May's political adviser, then Boris Johnson's co-deputy chief of staff. She is the author of two books.
Rating: 2/5
Sunday, 2 March 2025
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
About the book: The Enchanted April (1922), Elizabeth von Arnim's brilliant, irrepressible novella, tells the tale of four very different women who, on answering an advertisement in The Times, find themselves far away from the drizzle of London and instead in the warmth of an Italian sun. There, alongside the lapping of the Mediterranean, the women's spirits begin to shift, and quite unexpected changes take place.
First published in 1922, this delightful novel is imbued with the descriptive power and light-hearted irreverence for which Elizabeth von Arnin is renowned.
About the author: Elizabeth von Arnim was born on 31 August 1866 in Australia. She was cousin to the writer Katherine Mansfield. In 1890, she married her first husband, Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, a Prussian aristocrat, with whom she had five children.
Elizabeth and her German Garden, published anonymously in 1898, was a barely fictionalised account of Elizabeth’s life and the creation of her garden at the family home of Nassenheide in Pomerania, where Hugh Walpole and E M Forster were tutors to her children. Its instant success was followed by many more novels, including Vera (1921) and The Enchanted April (1922), and another almost-autobiography, All the Dogs of My Life (1936). She separated from Count von Arnim in 1908, and after his death two years later, she built a house in Switzerland, marrying John Francis Stanley Russell in 1916. This marriage also ended in separation in 1919 when Elizabeth moved to America, where she died on 9 February 1941, aged 74.
Rating: 5/5
Saturday, 1 March 2025
Cloudless by Rupert Dastur
About the book: It is autumn 2004 and in a farmhouse on the hills outside Llandudno, a family endures the agonizing wait for their son to return from Iraq. His decision to join up has left them reeling, yet there are other pressing concerns to be met at home: the working of the farmland that has been theirs for generations and what to do with their troubled younger son.
Catrin’s childhood sweetheart comes back to their small town, giving the boys’ doting mother a glimpse into the life she could have had.
And John, their father, falls once more into his gambling habit, even as the farm sits on the brink of bankruptcy.
As each member of the family grasps at their own tenuous lifeline, they drift further from one another – until, on a cold winter evening, there is a fateful knock at the door.
Written in luminous, exquisitely calibrated prose, Cloudless (2025) is a masterful portrayal of the fragility and resilience of human connection.
About the author: Rupert Dastur is a writer, editor and publisher. His writing has been shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award and the Fish Short Story Prize, and won the Federation of Scottish Writers Award in 2018. He is the founder of TSS Publishing and director of The Cambridge Prizes for Short Fiction, and he runs writing workshops across the UK and abroad. He read English at Cambridge University and lives in London. Cloudless is his debut novel.
Rating: 5/5
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