Everything Is Better With Dragons
Book blogger, Autistic, Probably a Dragon
So, the delightful ladies and gent on this poster are doing a thing under the tag TakeTheMaskOff. I recommend following them on social media, they’re very interesting people.
Anyway, I thought I’d contribute in my own small way, with a blog post. I don’t know whether I’ll be doing one every week, it depends on what else I’ve got on.
Whatever happened in the past, the story wrote right over it. The story became the truth. What you see in Ricky killing Jeremy, I have come to believe , depends as much on who you are and the life you’ve had as on what he did. But the legal narrative erases that step. It erases where it came from.
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Published by: Pan Macmillan
Publication Date: 3rd May 2018
Format: ebook
I.S.B.N.: 9781509805648
Price: £8.99
Blurb
When law student Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is asked to work on a death-row hearing for convicted murderer and child molester Ricky Langley, she finds herself thrust into the tangled story of his childhood. As she digs deeper and deeper into the case she realizes that, despite their vastly different circumstances, something in his story is unsettlingly, uncannily familiar. The Fact of a Body is both an enthralling memoir and a groundbreaking, heart-stopping investigation into how the law is personal, composed of individual stories, and proof that arriving at the truth is more complicated, and powerful, than we could ever imagine.
Continue reading “Bonus Review #6: ‘The Fact of a Body’, by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich”
Hiiiiiii
After my last post on Wednesday, I thought (some of?) my readers would be interested to know the results of my trip to the ASC Diagnostic Team on Thursday afternoon.
Published by: Icon Books UK
Publication Date: 1st February 2011 (First published 1st February 2005)
I.S.B.N.: 9781848312203
Format: Paperback
Price: £8.99
Blurb
A vehement attack on the latest pseudo-scientific claims about the differences between the sexes. Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant memory. Yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles increasingly defend inequalities by citing immutable biological differences between the male and female brain. That’s the reason, we’re told, that there are so few women in science and engineering, so few men in the laundry room – different brains are just better suited to different things. Drawing on the latest research in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and social psychology, Delusions of Gender powerfully rebuts these claims, showing how old myths, dressed up in new scientific finery, are helping perpetuate the sexist status quo. Cordelia Fine, ‘a cognitive neuroscientist with a sharp sense of humour and an intelligent sense of reality’ (The Times) reveals the mind’s remarkable plasticity, shows how profoundly culture influences the way we think about ourselves and, ultimately, exposes just how much of what we consider ‘hardwired’ is actually malleable.
Hola peeps, it’s the end of April and this time for me to write the reviewing schedule for May. Except I’m starting my dissertation in a few days, so reviewing is taking a back seat. That doesn’t mean there won’t be reviews. Even I need a break from writing occasionally.
So, what have I got booked in for the next few months?
Edit: It’s npw mid-July and some significant progress has been made with the dissertation so I’ve added some reviews to the schedule.
May
June
July
August
September – Nothing booked in so far.
It’s a bit spartan, I know and mostly crime, but I need to focus on my writing for a few months. As I said, there will be other, unscheduled reviews, because I have a pile of books waiting to be read.
Published By: Independently published
Format: Kindle and paperback
Price: £7.00
I.S.B.N.: 9781527219410
Blurb
We all work in sales. If you work for somebody, you earn a living by selling their product or service.
If you are self-employed, you earn a living by selling your product or service.
When you buy from Amazon, they always recommended other products similar to the ones you are purchasing or have already purchased – that’s selling.
When you download a song, movie or TV show from iTunes, they always recommend more similar products. That’s selling.
When you register for most websites, they sell their products or services to you through a regular email.
When you attend an exhibition at the NEC, London ExCel, Olympia, Manchester or even a local market, everyone is trying to sell you their product.
We all work in sales, yet few people know how to sell. Until now.
Containing 27 valuable lessons, plus 17 interviews with experts, Everybody Works in Sales combines unique storytelling and personal development to ensure you have the tools you need to do better in your career.
Purchase from Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ET89nn
About Niraj Kapur
Award-winning executive, Niraj Kapur, has worked in corporate London for 23 years.
From small businesses to a national newspaper to FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies, he’s experienced it all and shares his insight, knowledge, big wins and horrible failures.
Containing 27 valuable lessons, plus 17 interviews with experts, Everybody Works in Sales combines unique storytelling and personal development to ensure you have the tools you need to do better in your career.
Niraj has also had several screenplays optioned, sitcoms commissioned, kids’ shows on Channel 5’s Milkshake and CBBC. His movie, Naachle London, was released in select cinemas across the UK.
He’s working on his next book while advising companies and coaching individuals on how to improve their sales.
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/nkapur
Continue reading “Review: ‘Everybody Works in Sales’, by Niraj Kapur”
It’s student loan day, and therefore it is also book shopping day for me. This term I took a visit to my favourite independent book shop, Lindum Books, of Bailgate, Lincoln.
I made the decision to just get two books. I could have bought all the ones I wanted, but I definitely have to be more restrained and financially responsible at the moment. I’ve got an historical crime novel and a Sci Fi novel to get my teeth into.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky is Lindum Books’ May ‘book of the month’ and I’m hoping to get to their evening book club, but it depends on finances, commitments and brain weasels. They also do a lot of author talks, which I can’t get to because of the train times. They all start at 7 pm and the last train is 20:02. Author of Beloved Poison, E. S. Thompson will be there in May, as will Joanne Harris, The gospel of Loki author, with her follow up novel. It’s so frustrating.
I had a ‘walking workshop’ this morning and my hip is terribly painful, so I’ve blown off the 4 – 6 pm seminar to get an early train home where I can rest. During the workshop we walked through the city centre and up to The Collection, a museum. I’ve been several times. It wasn’t the most challenging of days, except physically.
The most important thing I got out of it was a chance to sit and discuss the future with one of my course colleagues, who is interested in a PhD, as am I. First I need to get a distinction in my Masters degree, but still, it’s interesting to talk to someone else who has similar ambitions.
Next week is our symposium, I will be presenting my dissertation proposal. I have made some notes for it, so I’m as prepared as I get.
And it comes round once again, the day every English bigot loves, an excuse to wave flags and be openly racist. Although, to be fair to them, they’re usually openly racist anyway. I’m certain there are some people who ardently celebrate St. George’s Day who aren’t bigots, but they’re drowned out by the noisy, ignorant ones. Continue reading “St.George’s Day? I prefer Shakespeare’s Birthday.”
Published by: Profile Books
Publication Date: 28th June 2018
Format: Hardback
I.S.B.N.: 9781781253564
Price: £16.99
Received via Netgalley in return for an honest review
Blurb
Arthur and George meets The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: how the creator of Sherlock Holmes overturned one of the great miscarriages of justice.
Just before Christmas 1908, Marion Gilchrist, a wealthy 82-year-old spinster, was found bludgeoned to death in her Glasgow home. A valuable diamond brooch was missing, and police soon fastened on a suspect – Oscar Slater, a Jewish immigrant who was rumoured to have a disreputable character. Slater had an alibi, but was nonetheless convicted and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment in the notorious Peterhead Prison.
Seventeen years later, a convict called William Gordon was released from Peterhead. Concealed in a false tooth was a message, addressed to the only man Slater thought could help him – Arthur Conan Doyle. Always a champion of the downtrodden, Conan Doyle turned his formidable talents to freeing Slater, deploying a forensic mind worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
Drawing from original sources including Oscar Slater’s prison letters, this is Margalit Fox’s vivid and compelling account of one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in Scottish history.
Continue reading “Bonus Review #2: ‘Conan Doyle For The Defence’, by Margalit Fox”
Published By: Clink Street Publishing
Publication Date: 2nd March 2017
I.S.B.N.: 978-1911525271
Format: Paperback
Price: £9.99
Blurb
Twelve-year-old Charlie Watkins could have inherited his dad’s massive intellect.
He got his massive feet instead.Perhaps if Charlie had that intellect he might have been able to figure out why so many men in suits were suddenly following him or where his dad hid the Cubit – a mythical object that men have sworn to protect and even more have died trying to possess – before his so-called accident.
If starting yet another new school wasn’t bad enough, Charlie meets Mr Leopold, a disfigured, mind-reading lunatic and discovers that he alone must find the Cubit if he is to save his dad. The Brotherhood, however, have other ideas. Led by the ruthless Draganovic, they will stop at nothing to get their hands on it. With the help of Mr Leopold and fellow new boy Elvis, Charlie sets out on The Cubit Quest.
Hunting for the Cubit, playing football, lessons with the dreaded Funeral Face and unsuccessfully avoiding school bully Grimshaw by day, Charlie finds his nights no less complicated. Stalked in his dreams, he’s soon immersed in a world of power struggles, battling dragons and duels to the death. With the Brotherhood hot on his heels and as the bullets begin to fly, there are no guarantees that Charlie, or anyone else, will make it to the end in one piece.
Purchase from Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N12WKPG/
Continue reading “Review: ‘The Cubit Quest’, by Trevor Leck”
Everything Is Better With Dragons 