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Poor Economics: Barefoot Hedge-fund Managers, DIY Doctors and the Surprising Truth About Life on Less Than $1 a Day

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

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Winner of the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2011 Why would a man in Morocco who...

The Drowned City

K. J. Maitland

9.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

Book

Gunpowder and treason changed England forever. But the tides are turning and revenge runs deep in...

Historical fiction Jacobean England Gunpowder Plot

Mayhawke (97 KP) rated The Christmas Miracle of Jonathon Toomey in Books

Feb 9, 2018

A good Christmas story without the mawkishness

I have nine children. I bought this book for the oldest two - over twenty years ago It is a beautiful book, wonderfully illustrated, with a great Christmas story: Jonathon Toomey - a cold and unfriendly man, since the loss of his wife and child takes in a homeless woman and her son in the middle of winter, with - for grown ups - a predictable outcome.

This story is not especially original, but it is the way in which it is told rather than the story itself that makes it stand out. I dislike sugary sentimentalism and one of the problems I have buying childrens books (particularly Xmas ones) is that the market is so over-loaded with 'sugar' that it's verging on a serious case of diabetes. This book is not sugary, nor even particularly sentimental. It tells a fine story, calmly and with dignity.

It has been a popular story with all the varied personalities in the family, which has to say something about breadth of appeal, and as it was re-issued in 2015 It seems to be weathering social change as well.

Kudos

Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World

Trevor Burnard

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Eighteenth-century Jamaica, Britain's largest and most valuable slave-owning colony, relied on a...

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of Our Insatiable Appetite

David Kessler

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Uncover the truth behind our food addiction - and learn how to break the cycle Many of us find...

Sam (74 KP) rated One Hundred Names in Books

Mar 27, 2019

I was in an awful reading slump and I finally started reading this, knowing Cecelia Ahern always makes me love reading again, and I wasn’t wrong.

I loved Kitty so, so much. She’s a character whose life has been ruined by her mistakes but she still won’t let it completely take over her life. True, what she did wasn’t right when she didn’t collect all of the facts before outing a man. However, this sort of mistake could have ruined her career. But she uses the death of her best friend to fuel her to succeed and move on from her past. Her ability to eventually laugh with others over what happened is admirable, and what makes her such a brilliant character.

I also love the realism here. Kitty has her flaws and has made her mistakes, but so has every single other character in the novel. Everyone has their flaws and nothing is sugar-coated, giving a really strong realistic image.

There were a few moments when Kitty’s decisions annoyed me slightly, mainly later on in the novel where there is one occasion where she is quite spiteful, but in the end it all turns around and her spiteful decision actually helps the person she has a grudge against. I love that this spreads the message of sharing kindness instead of hatred.