Category Archives: Non-fiction

REVIEW: Cosima Wagner: The Lady of Bayreuth – Oliver Hilmes

Posted on December 3, 2011 by

(Yale University Press 2011) I picked this up at Blackwell’s music shop in Oxford (along with lots of CDs of twentieth century music) – something of a departure for me, since I don’t tend to read biography, and I’m not … Continue reading →

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REVIEW: Delusions of Gender – Cordelia Fine

Posted on August 23, 2011 by

(Icon Books 2010) I was first introduced to this book by Nymeth in her excellent review back in January this year: it sounded interesting enough to buy straight away, though it’s been several months since it was first put onto … Continue reading →

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Quirkology – Richard Wiseman

Posted on May 13, 2011 by

(Macmillan 2008) Wiseman’s book is very similar to Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics, in that he tries to explain the quirks of modern life through experimental psychology, in his case, rather than statistics as in Levitt and Dubner’s books. … Continue reading →

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To Miss with Love – Katharine Birbalsingh

Posted on April 30, 2011 by

(Penguin 2011) This book tells the story of a year in the life of a school in inner-city London, from the point of view of a committed teacher. It’s been put together from a blog where Birbalsingh called herself ‘Ms … Continue reading →

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Just My Type – Simon Garfield

Posted on March 28, 2011 by

(Profile Books 2010) subtitled: A Book about Fonts This is a very readable and interesting book about typefaces and their history, and how we have become much more aware of type in our daily lives with the advent of personal … Continue reading →

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Different for Girls – Joan Smith

Posted on March 6, 2011 by

(Chatto & Windus 1997) Joan Smith’s book about how the world treats women differently, is a little dated – one of the main women she considers as an icon of womenkind, Princess Diana, was to die not long after Smith’s … Continue reading →

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Hungry City – Carolyn Steel

Posted on October 16, 2010 by

(Chatto & Windus 2008) This book has been sitting in my to-read pile for quite some time, and it’s only now that I’ve got round to reading it and wishing I had done sooner. I should state upfront that Carolyn … Continue reading →

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Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism – Natasha Walter

Posted on October 7, 2010 by

(Virago 2010) Like Ariel Levy in her earlier book, Female Chauvinist Pigs: The Rise of Raunch Culture, Natasha Walter argues in this well-researched and quietly angry book that women* are themselves becoming complicit in a current “hypersexual” culture, particularly aimed … Continue reading →

Posted in 2010 New Reads, Non-fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

The Image of the City – Kevin A. Lynch

Posted on October 1, 2010 by

(MIT Press, 1960) This is an interesting (but slightly dated) little book which looks at how people who live and work in cities see them and navigate around them – in short, how their image of the city is constructed. … Continue reading →

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