Tag: non-fiction

top ten tuesday · weekly wednesday blogging challenge · www wednesday

Classic Literature, Mythological Creatures and What I’m Reading Wednesday

Cassie5 Comments
So, yesterday’s Top Ten On Tuesday asked 21st Century Books I Think Will Become Classics and honestly, I don’t have an answer to this, mostly because the kinds of books I read aren’t ones that would be considered for that status. It did, however, inspire quite the conversation between me and the betrothed about what it takes for a work to be a classic, what makes a work a classic and what it means when something gets awarded that status

That makes two thinkythought posts brewing:
One about fantasy
One about the nature of classic works
Are you interested in reading these, and if so – which one would you like to hear first?

Now, moving on to today’s link-ups:
Weekly Wednesday Blogging Challenge asks What mythological animal you’d like to have as a pet and knee-jerk reaction is a unicorn. 
But then… there’s dragons and chimera and mermaids and sphinxes and griffins and phoenixes and cerberus etc etc and that doesn’t even begin to cover Pegasus! 
No, I’m totally not a mythology geek. No, I’m totally not studying Classical Studies because of my love of mythology… why do you ask? LOL

And last, but by no means least, we have WWW Wednesday asking:
What are you currently reading? I’m trying to focus on finishing three books right now: Dr Amanda Brown – The Prison Doctor; Bill Bryson – The Body; and Sarah J. Maas – A Court Of Thorns and Roses
What did you recently finish reading? I DNFed Rainbow Rowell – Eleanor & Park at the beginning of the week. I read the first 30 pages of it about 10 days ago, wasn’t really feeling and just couldn’t be bothered to pick it back up again. I think a mixture of not being the target audience and being very frustrated with how information was being drip-fed too slowly – I had no reason to care, and not enough interest to read enough to find out. 
What do you think you’ll read next? I think it’ll either be Matt Haig – Notes On A Nervous Planet and finishing two other in-progress books Rainbow Rowell – Fangirl and Liv Albert – Greek Mythology

book reviews

Drive-by Mini-Reviews

Cassie2 Comments
The only issue with reading multiple books at the same time, is that every now and again you manage to finish a whole collection of them all at the same time, which is what’s happened to me over the last few days. And, naturally, I was busy with school and work and real life and didn’t have time to write up a review for them.

I contemplated writing a full review for each one, queuing them up and letting them post over a couple of days but honestly… couldn’t be bothered. So you’re just going to get some mini reviews instead!

The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
4/5, historical-fiction, lgbtqia+, romance
Absolutely fucking loved it. I can definitely see why everyone has been raving about it and in my opinion, bery worth the hype! It took quite a bit of reading but the more I got into it, the less I could put it down. There were many excited phone calls to Li where I rambled about each husband and each era of Evelyn’s life. It was beautiful and heartbreaking and I defintely want to read more by this author

Life Support by Tess Gerritsen.
3/5, medical, mystery, suspense, thriller
My mum and I used to read the Rizzoli & Isles books as they came out in the 2000s, but I never read very much of Gerritsen’s works that aren’t in the series. This gives you an idea of how long it’s been on my TBR. I have the physical copy but ended up checking this out on Libby over Christmas when I was at Li’s/was exploring the app. I found it a little slow to start with, didn’t feel like I meshed with many of the characters and couldn’t quite see how the pregnant hooker storyline meshed with the CJD storyline… until the last quarter of the book when everything came crashing together and wow. Reminded me why I love Gerritsen (more of her books back on my TBR) and why I love medical thrillers!

The New Topping Book by Dossie Easton & Janet W. Hardy
3/5, bdsm, non-fiction, sexuality
I’ve read both The Topping and Bottoming Books by Easton & Hardy and, probably because I’m a sub, I definitely preferred the Bottoming Book. This one was interesting enough though, taught me more about the mindset of Dominants and what they can/do get out of BDSM relationships. I loved the scenes interspersed througout the book and the toys section was fun. But, admittedly, had me rolling my eyes a little at the ritual and spirituality chapters

Pilgrimage (Very Short Introduction) by Ian Reader
3/5, non-fiction, religion, travel
Remember how I said last year I was really struggling to read? Yeah, I started this in March 2021. Nothing against the book, it was very interesting. The concept of pilgrimages has always interested me, we touched on the subject in a religious studies unit of my course and since I have access to the Very Short Introductions library through my university library, I picked it up to read. Both religious and secular pilgrimages, as well as historical information were included and I enjoyed it at a lot

I am still trying to read far too much, because I’m me. 14 books right now. But I’m mostly focusing on just 5 – most of which are due back to the library next week. Then I’m going to focus on the rest of my currently reading and working on my physical TBR before checking any more out. Or, at least that’s the plan…
A Court Of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
The Comfort Book by Matt Haig
Beyond The Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menow

book reviews

Book Review: How To Sleep Tight Through The Night by Tzivia Gover & Lesléa Newman

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Title: How To Sleep Tight Through The Night
Author: Tzivia Gover & Lesléa Newman
Dates read: 15/02/22
Rating 4/5

Publisher: Storey Publishing
Number of pages: 64
Fiction or non-fiction: non-fiction
Subject or genre: health

Book blurb: Whether it’s bedtime or the wee hours of the night, this sweetly illustrated nighttime companion is filled with practical ways to help young insomniacs, ages 5 to 9, with reassuring nighttime routines, creative visualisations, and kid-friendly activities and techniques for addressing bedtime reluctance, managing fears and anxiety, easing nightmares, and inviting pleasant dreaming and positive associations with sleeptime. Whether it’s fear of the dark or worry about the day ahead that is interfering with a good night’s sleep, How to Sleep Tight through the Night offers creative solutions for soothing children’s bedtime anxieties and developing healthy sleep habits. This collection of 30 kid-friendly tricks and techniques by sleep and dreaming expert Tzivia Gover and award-winning children’s book author Lesléa Newman is complemented by the dreamy illustrations of Vivian Mineker. From playing an alphabet game to slipping a wish under a pillow, the book is filled with practical, engaging prompts that are accessible to all and easy to implement, using creative visualisation, mindfulness techniques, and playful, fun strategies for easing bedtime struggles and welcoming sound, restful sleep

How I discovered or acquired this book: I received an ARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a review

My thoughts I will preface this with say I don’t have kids. Now, you’re probably thinking ‘Cassie, why are you reading and reviewing a book about bedtime for kids?’ which is fair. But I have chronic insomnia and nothing else has worked so… I figure a different type of tip might help (It’s not going to hurt, right?).

I love the look of the book. The illustrations are bold, colourful and fun. The tone of the writing is straight-forward, informative, and easy to understand, but without feeling like it’s condescending or talking down to the reader. I love the mix of sleep ideas – both how to get to sleep and what to do when waking up from a bad dream. They were all very different ideas, much more practical and interesting than the insomnia advice you get for adults. I think my favourites are falling in love with my bed, listing things from ‘A to Zzzz’ and imagining myself walking down the street and everything I see. Will definitely be trying those to see if they help!

There were a few formatting errors which made a couple of the pages a little tricky to parse but overall it was a cute, fun, interesting, read

book reviews

DNF: Natural Causes: Life, Death and the Illusion of Control by Barbara Ehrenreich

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Title: Natural Causes: Life, Death and the Illusion of Control
Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
Dates read: 18/01/22 – 23/01/22
Rating DNF

Publisher: Granta Books
Number of pages: 256
Fiction or non-fiction: non-fiction
Subject or genre: health, science

Book blurb: Bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich explores how we are killing ourselves to live longer, not better.

A razor-sharp polemic which offers an entirely new understanding of our bodies, ourselves, and our place in the universe, Natural Causes describes how we over-prepare and worry way too much about what is inevitable. One by one, Ehrenreich topples the shibboleths that guide our attempts to live a long, healthy life — from the importance of preventive medical screenings to the concepts of wellness and mindfulness, from dietary fads to fitness culture.

But Natural Causes goes deeper — into the fundamental unreliability of our bodies and even our “mind-bodies,” to use the fashionable term. Starting with the mysterious and seldom-acknowledged tendency of our own immune cells to promote deadly cancers, Ehrenreich looks into the cellular basis of aging, and shows how little control we actually have over it. We tend to believe we have agency over our bodies, our minds, and even over the manner of our deaths. But the latest science shows that the microscopic subunits of our bodies make their own “decisions,” and not always in our favor.

We may buy expensive anti-aging products or cosmetic surgery, get preventive screenings and eat more kale, or throw ourselves into meditation and spirituality. But all these things offer only the illusion of control. How to live well, even joyously, while accepting our mortality — that is the vitally important philosophical challenge of this book.

Drawing on varied sources, from personal experience and sociological trends to pop culture and current scientific literature, Natural Causes examines the ways in which we obsess over death, our bodies, and our health. Both funny and caustic, Ehrenreich then tackles the seemingly unsolvable problem of how we might better prepare ourselves for the end — while still reveling in the lives that remain to us.

How I discovered or acquired this book: It was on the recently returned shelf in Wellington library, and the title and cover appealed to me. A quick read of the blurb and I was pretty interested in what the book had to say

My thoughts I DNFed it about 30 pages in. It takes A LOT for me to DNF a book (see The Autobiography for Mr Spock which I bitched about the whole time I was reading it). It was very hostile in tone, felt very preachy in an ‘my way is clearly the only way you should do things’ kind of manner and essentially harps on that the entire medical field is a hoax, everyone in it is a greedy sadist, we shouldn’t have medical testing because that’s why all the rates are going up and hey, you’re just going to die anyway. She did raise some good points about the corporate greed of the US medical system but I was so annoyed with the way she was talking at me that I actually slammed the book shut and went ‘nope’

book reviews

Book Review: Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern by Mary Beard

Cassie2 Comments
Title: Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern
Author: Mary Beard
Dates read: 27/12/2021 – 09/01/22
Rating 3/5

Publisher: Princeton University Press
Number of pages: 392
Fiction or non-fiction: non-fiction
Subject or genre: art history, history

Book Blurb From the bestselling author of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, the fascinating story of how images of Roman autocrats have influenced art, culture, and the representation of power for more than 2,000 years

What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book–against a background of today’s “sculpture wars”–Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors, especially the “twelve Caesars,” from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing Domitian. Twelve Caesars asks why these murderous autocrats have loomed so large in art from antiquity and the Renaissance to today, when hapless leaders are still caricatured as Neros fiddling while Rome burns.

Beginning with the importance of imperial portraits in Roman politics, this richly illustrated book offers a tour through 2,000 years of art and cultural history, presenting a fresh look at works by artists from Memling and Mantegna to the nineteenth-century African American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, as well as by generations of now-forgotten weavers, cabinetmakers, silversmiths, printers, and ceramicists. Rather than a story of a simple repetition of stable, blandly conservative images of imperial men and women, Twelve Caesars is an unexpected tale of changing identities, clueless or deliberate misidentifications, fakes, and often ambivalent representations of authority.

From Beard’s reconstruction of Titian’s extraordinary lost Room of the Emperors to her reinterpretation of Henry VIII’s famous Caesarian tapestries, Twelve Caesars includes some fascinating detective work and offers a gripping story of some of the most challenging and disturbing portraits of power ever created.

Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

How I discovered or acquired this book: I’ve been a fan of Mary Beard for a while and had just finished doing a classical studies unit in my Open University module. I’d also watched recently watched an online lecture Mary gave about Nero.

My thoughts: This wasn’t quite the book I was expecting it to be. Perhaps if I’d looked more into it before checking it out the library, past ‘ooh the library has the new Mary Beard, ooh the 12 Caesars’ I wouldn’t actually have read it. I was expecting it to be more of a history of the Twelve Caesars. I was expecting classical antiquity, the twelve Caesars, Roman politics, revolutions, and wars. I was not expecting a trip through art history. It started off pretty interestingly, looking at sculpture, paintings, engravings and coins but it got a little repetitive if I’m honest – a lot of telling us how much we don’t know about ancient art and discussions on different art historians thoughts on the authenticity of pieces. Which, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just not my thing and wasn’t what I was expecting to read.