Behavioural Sociologist and Mass Communication Scholar. ILM-certified coach. Environmentalist. Ecofeminist. Vegetarian. Animal Lover. Former Journalist. PR Academic and Convert. Young scholar mentor. Championing research-led teaching. Empowering disempowered and always advocating.
Author: Bella Osborne The Girls is a book by Bella Osborne, an author of The Library: A Novel (see my blog here). The Girls is a story of four women: one famous actress, now single and three times divorced; a divorced former solicitor; a widowed secretary, and a carer who never married. The four women…
Author: Daniella Brodsky Princess of Park Avenue is the second book in a series by Daniella Brodsky. The first one was the Diary of a Working Class Girl (read here). I am reading these books as part of my research into fashion and find them very valuable because characters in the book live fashion in…
Author: Barbara O’Neal When We Believed in Mermaids is a story of two sisters. I purchased the book because I thought it would have something to do with fantasy, which I felt like reading, but I was wrong and found myself in a surprise, reading about a search for a lost sister. The book is…
Author: Sara Nisha Adams The Reading List is the first and most absolutely beautiful book by British author Sara Nisha Adams. The book was one of those Amazon algorithm recommendations, and once again, the algorithm did not betray me because I absolutely loved this book. The Reading List centres on books, their transformative and healing…
Author: Judy Leigh The Vintage Village Bake Off is a novel by Judy Leigh, an author of the Golden Oldies’ Book Club and The Golden Gals’ French Adventure, two of the books I read before (out of many she wrote, which are on my reading list). As with the previous two books, I also enjoyed…
Author: Margaret Atwood The Blind Assassin is a very interesting book written mainly from the perspective of Iris Chase, later Griffin, who narrates her life. However, the book also has elements of social history, which were cleverly written, thus, there are various fictional newspaper articles, obituaries, etc. I thought this was very interesting because while…
Author: Judy Leigh The Golden Gals’ French Adventure is another story by Judy Leigh. I previously read her The Golden Oldies’ Book Club and enjoyed it. I also enjoyed this book because, once again, Judy Leigh sends a message of anti-ageism and shows that it is never too late to change your life and make…
Author: Janis Wildy The English Bookshop is a story of an American woman from Seattle who had a British father who left her and her mum when she was a little girl. Her mother remarried an American guy who became her dad. After her stepdad’s death, she left college and started to run his family…
Author: Judy Leigh The Golden Oldies’ Book Club is a lovely story of friendships among women based in Somerset, England. The story revolves around Jeannie Sharrock, an owner of a cider farm, and Aurora, her school friend who works in the farm shop. We also meet other neighbours and friends such as Ruth who moved…
Author: Patric Gagne Sociopath: A Memoir is a book by Patric (Patricia) Gagne, allegedly a diagnosed sociopath who wrote a memoir about her struggle of being a sociopath and trying to find a place in society that appreciates empathy, emotions and being like everyone else. While reading, I kept thinking of a book I read…
Author: Amanda James The Garden of Memories is a beautiful homage to friendships, communities and nature. The book is about the power of a garden and plants in bringing people together, forming friendships and being able to open up about themselves and their life stories even when they have just met. I could never properly…
Author: K.A. Riley Reign is the final book in the Cure series. I wrote about previous parts on my blog, see book 1, book 2, part 3, and part 4. Reign is perhaps the most dynamic book in the series, and it was a good way to end it. After escaping from Behemoth in New…
Author: K.A.Riley Fallen is the book 4 in the Cure book series. When blogging about book 3, I said it was slow and soppy and that I hope that book 4 picks up the story again (read the blog here). The book 4 delivered on this expectation with an entirely different story than in the…
Author: K.A. Riley Ascend is the third book in The Cure book series by K. A. Riley. In the first two parts (part 1, and part 2), we learnt of the Directorate that locked people who could afford it into a luxurious world called the Arc. The reason was the disease called the Blight, which…
Author: K.A. Riley Awaken is the second book in the Cure Chronicles by K.A. Riley. The story continues from the first book (The Cure, see blog here) when Ashen Spencer, the daughter of the founder of the Consortium, who fights the Directorate, escapes the Arc – a structure built after biological warfare that houses millions…
Author: K.A. Riley The Cure is the first book in the book series of the same name. It is a dystopian story of deadly biochemical warfare where a disease called the Blight kills adults. Thus, whilst children before the Blight looked forward to coming out of age, in this story this means a certain death…
Author: Esme Carpenter The Man on Fire is not the type of book I normally read because it is a detective book, and whilst I enjoy detective TV series, I never actually read detective books. Well, it seemed the Man on Fire was a detective book because it started with a story of two detectives,…
Author: Daniella Brodsky Diary of a Working Girl is formally labelled as chic-lit, which is not something I normally read. However, as part of my fashion teaching and research, I am revising my personal literature list to read novels that tackle working in the fashion industry and living fashion in everyday life. That is also…
In 2024, I struggled with reading some books and barely managed to finish them. But I also read some great ones I truly enjoyed either because they moved me, or they made me re-think the meaning of life or simply because of their sociological and/or historical value of portraying life at the time the author…
Author: Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence is a 1920 book by Edith Wharton, the first woman to ever win a Pulitzer Prize in 1921. It is truly no surprise this book won a Pulitzer award in 1921. This book could win a Pulitzer award in any year due to its compelling writing and sociological…
Author: Helen Gurley Brown I ordered Having It All a long time ago because it appeared in searches as a book about office culture. In some ways, it is, but it is actually a manual on how to navigate office relationships. At first, this sounds good, and you might think, well, what is wrong with…