Category Archives: Non-fiction

#NovNov – You’ve Gotta Do What You’ve Gotta Do

Posted by Kate W in Fiction, Non-fiction and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Two novellas on Sunday, one nonfiction and one fiction – The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson (118pp) and The Standing Chandelier by Lionel Shriver (129pp).

I chose the title of this post based on the fact that both novellas deal with ‘unavoidable’ situations. In terms of Magnusson’s guide to ‘döstädning‘, also known as ‘death cleaning’, the unavoidable is death itself. It will find us all at some stage. In Shriver’s novella, the unavoidable is subtle – one of the key characters is forced to make a significant decision and regardless of what they choose, there is fallout (as I often say to my clients – “You don’t want any of this but of all of the choices available to you, which is the most tolerable?”). Continue reading →

Nonfiction November 2023 – Book Pairings

Posted by Kate W in Fiction, Non-fiction, Stuff and Nonsense and tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s Week 3 of Nonfiction November, this week hosted by Adventures in Reading, Running and Working From Home. The task? Pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. This is my absolute favourite #NFN exercise.

Women and ageing – A Question of Age by Jacinta Parsons and The Motion of the Body Through Space by Lionel Shriver Continue reading →

Taste by Stanley Tucci

Posted by Kate W in Non-fiction and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

A friend from many years ago was a caterer on movie sets. I thought she had an amazingly interesting and glamorous job – she said it was mostly just cooking in shitty and inadequate kitchens! Anyway, I thought of my friend when I read Stanley Tucci’s memoir, Taste, because there’s one chapter on what Tucci ate on movie sets (it was my favourite chapter).

Tucci subtitles the book ‘My Life Through Food’, and he weaves recipes through reminiscences about his childhood –

…in Italian families, nothing is discussed, ruminated on or joked about as much as food (except death, but I’ll save that subject for another book)… Continue reading →

My Latest Listens

Posted by Kate W in Fiction, Non-fiction and tagged with , , , , , , ,


The Albatross by Nina Wan

I know a little bit about golf. I don’t count myself as a golfer but much of my family is obsessed. Anyway, I do know what an ‘albatross‘ is and I understand why it is perhaps more prized than a hole-in-one. So I went into this novel expecting something rare to happen for the main character, Primrose. It didn’t. Instead, we have Primrose, who is under extreme stress (for a variety of reasons) acting fairly impulsively and perhaps a bit recklessly. It didn’t quite ring true for me, particularly as the actions did not line up with the emotions (no self-doubt, no guilt, no remorse). Continue reading →

German Literature Month 2023

Posted by Kate W in Fiction, Non-fiction and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November is fast approaching, which means time to start strategically planning my reading (because it’s German Literature Month, Novella November and maybe Nonfiction November – has there been an announcement about NFN yet?).

German Literature Month is hosted by Lizzy’s Literary Life (find the German Literature Month blog here – it’s a great source of inspiration if you’re looking for titles). Continue reading →

Heartbake by Charlotte Ree

Posted by Kate W in Non-fiction and tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

It was love at first sight when I spotted Heartbake by Charlotte Ree at my bookshop. The yellow cloth cover, the delightful-to-hold unconventional size (a bit smaller than A5), and the subtitle – ‘a bittersweet memoir’. If that wasn’t enough to convince me (it was), I opened the book to find a section containing recipes and lush food photography. All so lovely.

The book focuses on the period after Ree’s divorce – she learns to cook and at the same time, slowly begins putting her life back together.

Unfortunately, while the recipes were enticing, and I enjoyed her deliberate inclusions of what she ate at particular events or moments, Heartbake fell short. Continue reading →