
Keith Moon Stole My Lipstick: The Swinging '60s, the Glam '70s and Me
Book
A star-struck, naive 17-year-old country bumpkin leaves her mum, her cat, her budgie and her 16ft...

Love from Boy: Roald Dahl's Letters to His Mother
Book
'Dear Mama, I am having a lovely time here. We play football every day here. The beds have no...

The French Genealogy of the Beat Generation: Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac's Appropriations of Modern Literature, from Rimbaud to Michaux
Book
The Francophilia of the Beat circle in the New York of the mid-1940s is well known, as is the...

Wine in Words: Some Notes for Better Drinking
Book
Delectably brief essays that tell you only what you need to know to enjoy wine. There are wine...

ClareR (5879 KP) rated Mother Mother in Books
May 4, 2021
I was sucked in to this books world, and became really emotionally invested in this story. Mary and her brother have such a hard upbringing, that what comes later seems inevitable. Regardless of this, Mary becomes a good mother. She does that thing that so many mother do, and gives up her sense of self, and her life revolves around her son, TJ. She has a job she enjoys, but she is a solitary figure. When she stops seeing her friend Louise after she finds out that she’s pregnant with TJ, there isn’t any mention of anyone else. I couldn’t help but feel that she must have been so lonely.
Mary clings on to her family, even though her father and brother probably don’t deserve her attention and love, and TJ takes advantage of her unquestioning love - like a typical teenager.
There are some pretty heavy, emotional parts in this, and I read the last few chapters through tears. I can’t believe that this is a debut - it’s so well written. It’s an easy book to recommend, and a tough book to read.

Exploding Kittens
Tabletop Game Watch
Exploding Kittens is a card game for people who are into kittens and explosions and laser beams and...
It was interesting that a book has been written about a video going viral on the internet that the person who’s in it is mortified and ashamed about and didn’t post it herself. It follows the fall out with her family and her own struggles to come to terms with what has happened whilst waiting it out abroad before returning home to Scotland.
Su-Jin was adopted from Korea by a family in Scotland, who then found out that they were pregnant after years of trying not long after. We find out that Su-Jin struggled to find her place a lot of the time and wished that she wasn’t different to her family, and tried to make her parents proud by following all of the rules set out for her.
It is definitely thought provoking, the topics dealt with are racism, revenge porn and the most relevant at the moment is spiking drinks. It points out exactly how easy it is to accept a drink from a stranger in a bar, even when you know you shouldn’t, and the implications it can have.
It was sometimes quite predictable and sometimes a bit confusing with the timelines jumping in some chapters without it being explained or obvious.
A very interesting read about something that could happen to any of us at any point.

Natasha Khan recommended Covers Record by Cat Power in Music (curated)

MisterK (8 KP) rated Nightbringers by The Black Dahlia Murder in Music
Nov 25, 2017
