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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Non Fiction

Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation by Emily van Duyne

Written by Victoria Best There’s a lot going on in Emily van Duyne’s intriguingly hybrid work on Sylvia Plath, a book that has its feet in scholarship and its head…

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Shiny New Books September 19, 2024
3 1441 2
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History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology Non Fiction

The King’s Loot: The Greatest Royal Jewellery Heist in History by Richard Wallace

Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long   It is always misleading to read the serialisation of a book in the newspapers. The paper in question will always focus on the more sensational aspects…

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Shiny New Books August 22, 2024
3 1422 2
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Art & Design, Craft & Photography Non Fiction

All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art by Orlando Whitfield

Reviewed by Harriet This is the second book about fraud I’ve reviewed this year, the first being Joseph Hone’s impressive The Book Forger. Obviously, as you can tell from the…

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Shiny New Books August 20, 2024
3 1639 1
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Ecology & Environment, Natural World History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology Non Fiction Travel & the World

Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain by Corinne Fowler

In expanding and resourcing public understandings of the countryside’s colonial past, we can tell our islands’ stories and address colonial legacies from a position of knowledge rather than fear. Corinne…

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Shiny New Books August 13, 2024
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History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology Non Fiction Travel & the World

Airplane Mode: Travels in the Ruins of Tourism by Shahnaz Habib

Review by Liz Dexter How intrepid you are as a traveler depends, at least partly, on how entitled you feel to travel. On whether there’s an army base nearby with…

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Shiny New Books August 8, 2024
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Ecology & Environment, Natural World Essays Non Fiction

Cairn by Kathleen Jamie 

Review by Peter Reason I am sitting under the old apple tree in our Orchard on a sunny summer afternoon, looking over the meadow grass swaying in the light breeze,…

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Shiny New Books July 25, 2024
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Entertainment, Media Non Fiction

The Blues Brothers by Daniel De Visé

An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv and the Making of an American Film Classic Review by Annabel Full disclosure: I saw The Blues Brothers on the first day of…

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Shiny New Books July 23, 2024
3 1726 2
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History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology Non Fiction Travel & the World

A Ride Across America by Simon Parker

Review by Liz Dexter Fascinatingly, many of the small towns I found along the way seemed to be stuck in a time warp. I cycled past rusted 1940s Studebakers and…

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Shiny New Books July 18, 2024
3 1313 1
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Non Fiction Science & Technology

It’s a Gas by Mark Miodownik

Review by Annabel Ever since his first two books, Stuff Matters (2012) and Liquid (2018), I’ve been waiting for Miodownik to complete his states of matter trilogy with a book…

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Shiny New Books July 16, 2024
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Non Fiction Science & Technology

The Future of Energy by Richard Black

Review by Annabel Back in March, Shiny took part in the blogtour for Melville House’s initial books in its ‘Futures’ series. The first books in the series of small format…

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Shiny New Books July 8, 2024
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Non Fiction

All Before Me: A Search for Belonging in Wordsworth’s Lake District by Esther Rutter

Review by Simon Thomas In the past decade, a trend has developed where the lines between biography and autobiography, between non-fiction and memoir, have collapsed in on themselves. The author…

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Shiny New Books July 4, 2024
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology Non Fiction

Parallel Lives by Maryam Diener

Review by Karen Langley When most people think of the high profile spies of the 20th century, names like Burgess, McLean and of course Kim Philby are probably the first…

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Shiny New Books June 27, 2024
2 1441 2
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Non Fiction

Completely Kafka by Nicolas Mahler

Translated by Alexander Booth Review by Karen Langley 2024 is the centenary of the death of author Franz Kafka and the year has seen a flurry of interest focusing on…

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Shiny New Books June 20, 2024
3 2350 4
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History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology Non Fiction

Queen Victoria and her Prime Ministers – a personal history, by Anne Somerset

Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long Queen Elizabeth II had fifteen prime ministers during her reign. Queen Victoria had fourteen. The weekly meetings between Queen Elizabeth and her prime minister were one…

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Shiny New Books June 13, 2024
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Ecology & Environment, Natural World Non Fiction

Deep Water: The World in the Ocean, by James Bradley

Review by Peter Reason James Bradley, the Australian novelist and essayist, chooses an apt epigraph from Arthur C. Clarke for his book: ‘How inappropriate to call this planet “Earth”, when…

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Shiny New Books June 11, 2024
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Books About Books, Publishing Non Fiction

The Book Forger by Joseph Hone

Reviewed by Harriet ‘Thomas James Wise (1859-1937) was a bibliophile and thief’, says Wikipedia. He was indeed. As Joseph Hone puts it in this fascinating exploration of  ‘the most sensational…

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Shiny New Books June 6, 2024
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

You Don’t Have to be Mad to Work Here by Benji Waterhouse

Reviewed by Liz Dexter This book is also about me and about why anyone in the right mind would choose to be a psychiatrist. I hope that it serves as…

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Shiny New Books June 4, 2024
3 1736 3
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History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology Non Fiction

An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Civilisation to Independence by Zeinab Badawi

Reviewed by Liz Dexter I would like to say to the non-African reader of this book that I hope I have demonstrated that Africa has a history, that it is…

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Shiny New Books May 30, 2024
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Non Fiction

One Man in his Time: A Memoir, by N.M. Borodin

Review by Karen Langley Nicholas Borodin (as he is billed here) is something of a man of mystery, at least for the English speaking reader. Apart from his memoir, One…

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Shiny New Books May 23, 2024
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Art & Design, Craft & Photography Biography & Memoir, Diaries Non Fiction

Thunderclap: A memoir of art and life & sudden death, by Laura Cumming

I am a very critical reader; there are not many books that I unreservedly admire. So it is notable that when I finished reading Thunderclap, I closed the covers, turned…

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Shiny New Books May 21, 2024
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Essays Non Fiction Translated

And Time Was No More: Essential Stories and Memories, by Teffi

Edited and annotated by Robert Chandler Review by Karen Langley The last decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in Russian émigré writing with a host of forgotten…

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Shiny New Books May 16, 2024
2 3340 4
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Non Fiction

Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliff

Reviewed by Harriet Who remembers reading The Eagle of the Ninth? First published in 1954, when Sutcliff was 34, it is set in Roman Britain and tells the story of…

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Shiny New Books May 7, 2024
4 1575 1
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Non Fiction

Rural Hours – The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann by Harriet Baker

Reviewed by Gill Davies In the summer of 1917 Virginia Woolf was living at Asheham, a house near Lewes in Sussex. She was 35 and hadn’t written anything for two…

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Shiny New Books April 30, 2024
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Lit Crit Music Non Fiction

Anthony Burgess, The Devil Prefers Mozart: On Music and Musicians  1962 – 1993, edited by Paul Phillips

Review by Rob Spence Anthony Burgess was, of course, one of the most significant novelists of the second half of the twentieth century, publishing over thirty novels, (a centenary reading…

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Shiny New Books April 25, 2024
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