Educated is Tara Westover's memoir. She grew up in a super conservative Mormon family in Idaho in the United States. She details a very unusual upbringing. Her family had a deeply seeded distrust towards the government, they didn’t believe in modern medicine or the public school system. The book is essentially a story of her metamorphosis, how she …

Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail is Malika Oufkir's first memoir. It is a full account of her unlawful and unjust political incarceration at the age of 19, along with her mother and five siblings, in various squalid desert prisons across Morocco. For over two decades, they suffered from starvation and diseases in isolation as punishment …

The End of Eddy by Edouard Louis is a memoir that sheds light on a part of French society that are unseen by those in the political centre; people who have been actively excluded from art, film and literature. By revisiting his childhood, Edouard is also trying to unpack the socioeconomic context that he was brought up in. Edouard Louis on The Guar…

Man's Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor E. Frankl is one of the most famous accounts of The Holocaust, it also encompasses a basic exploration of the parameters of Logotherapy. Originally published in German in 1946, Dr. Frankl asks why those who have experienced great suffering don't commit suicide. He tries to answer this question through Nietzsch…

Revolutionary Road is a classic mid-twentieth century novel by Richard Yates. It's a critique of American suburban life in the 1950s and the lies we tell ourselves, and each other, in maintaining a picturesque family life. It raises questions about the nature of insanity, and what happens when our inner selves start to revolt against our forced con…

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga is a witty and deeply cynical narrative. Our first person narrator, Balram, is under no illusions of righteousness. He understands that he has been born into a broken system, where one needs to be ruthless in order to thrive and prosper. He has awoken from the fallacy of the master and servant dynamic, and takes his…

Join my wonderful friend Mary and I in an extended conversation about all the incredible books she’s read over the years. She talks about Irish writers, old and new; reading obsessions, past and present; the miracle of the written word; and so much more! Mary is one of my closest and dearest friends and I am so happy that you get to hear from her. …

On Beauty by Zadie Smith is an incredibly well crafted web of complexities. Its various sub plots tackle different conflicts of identity, such as race, gender, politics and socioeconomics. It's a philosophically thought-provoking narrative that is certainly worth the read.salmaintb tarafından oluşturuldu

In A Heart That Works, Rob Delaney recounts the short life of his son Henry, who died at the age of two after going in and out of hospital for a year with a brain tumour. In his narrative style, Delaney has an uncanny ability to balance between humour and heartbreak. He manages to weave in humour while describing the most gut wrenching events. The …

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka is a poetic narrative of the immigrant experience, written in first person plural from the perspective of Japanese picture brides in the early 20th century. Follow their journey to America, their false expectations of this new life, and the tragic mass incarceration of their community during WWII in the after…

Barbara Demick conducts extended interviews with six North Korean defectors. They describe their lives in North Korea before escaping, recounting the realities of a regime that puts its image at the cost of the lives and dignities of its own citizens. Book mentioned: In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park. Yeonmi Park interview with Joe Rogan: https://www…

A disturbing and eye opening novel by Lionel Shriver that raises difficult questions. What happens when a mother does not connect emotionally with her child? What if this child commits mass murder? Is the mother to blame? Has her lack of affection created a sociopathic killer? Sue Klebold's TED Talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXlnrFpCu0c&rco=1…

The Hay Festival is an annual literary festival in the town of books, Hay-on-Wye, in Wales. I spent 10 days at the festival this year taking in all the incredible energy. In total I attended about 20 events, each one packed with things to think about. Day 1 mentions: Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes For Ian Charleson by Ian McKellen Bibliomaniac by Ro…

This week I'm looking at the classic novel Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. A controversial tale of Humbert Humbert, a middle aged man who falls in love with a 12-year-old girl.salmaintb tarafından oluşturuldu

This week I'm reviewing a short story by Ghassan Kanafani. Men in the Sun follows three Palestinian refugees in the early 1960s who are being smuggled across the border from Iraq to Kuwait in search of a better life. A gripping tale as old as old as time about what happens when we are excluded from every form of nationhood.…

This week's book is A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman, winner of the 2017 Man Booker International prize. Watch as Dovaleh slowly descends into madness while giving a stand-up comedy show at a comedy club in Netanya. Dovaleh's breakdown is perhaps a physical and emotional manifestation of the damaged psyche of a nation trying to live a nor…

This week's book is Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara. Kara travels to the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the heart of the cobalt mining communities where unimaginable atrocities are happening on a daily-basis in the process of mining for cobalt, a vital element in the manufacturing of lithium-ion rechargeable batteries. He gives first hand accounts o…

Join me and my friend Jeni in a conversation about books we’ve read, loved and hated. We talk about motherhood and the social and neurological changes that come with it; audio books and why many of us think of it as cheating; the controversy surrounding support for non-offending pedophiles and so much more! Books mentioned in this episode: Each Pea…

This week's book is Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, another historical fiction novel. The story spans 300 years, alternating between Ghana and the United States in the midst of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and leading up to modern times. It's a tale of inherited trauma and its evolution across multiple generations of persecution. The Guardian Books Podca…

This week's book is The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. A historical fiction novel that reimagines the life of Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob. In The Bible, Dinah is very briefly mentioned in relation to the tragic loss of her husband at the hands of her brothers. In Diamant's novel, the Gods still have plans for Dinah who lives a long life beyond th…

This week's non-fiction book is Stolen Focus by Johan Hari. In my personal opinion, it is one of the most important books of the decade. We should all read this one. Hari explores our collective inability to pay attention, and why this has increased over the last ten years. He interviews a number of experts to find out how and why our phones have b…

This week's book is the 2023 Booker Prize winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. As Ireland slowly succumbs to a devastating civil war, Eilish refuses to leave. With her husband abducted by Ireland's secret police, she is on her own trying to keep her family together. As everything around her falls apart, she realises that the end of the world is not …

This week's book is the classic science fiction novel, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Charlie Gordon's life is changed by a group of scientists that develop a treatment that can help increase his IQ, but what happens once Charlie becomes aware enough to see things as they are? Is ignorance truly bliss?…

This week's book: A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo. Zhuang's life is forever changed after she spends a year abroad in England. She falls in love, travels around Europe, expands her cultural horizons, and learns what true loneliness means. Narrated as journal entries, we watch her struggle to navigate and make sense of …