The Book Hub 📙🐻

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  A couple months ago, I finished reading the book, Dances and Dreams on Diamond Street by Craig Revel Howard that I got gifted for Christmas by my mum. If you don't know who Craig Revel Howard is, he is a renowned dancer and pantomime enthusiast, who is also one of the strictest judges on BBC Strictly Come Dancing. When I first picked up this book, I thought it was going to be about Craig's life but as I began reading it, I realised it was a work of fiction and I was very much intrigued. I had no idea whether or not this book was going to be great because I didn't know how good of a writer Craig would be, but to my delightful surprise, it turned out to be an amazing read. There's not really a set narrative to the book. It kind of just starts in this one place and develops as you read which is what I really liked. However, the basic synopsis of the book is that a group of people come to live in a rather rugged townho...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Recently, I finished reading Shirley Ballas's autobiography, Behind the Sequins, and it was a very good read. It was such a good read in fact that I even recommended the book to my mum and my sister, who were both eager to read it too. On Sunday, my mum finished the book and she was completely awe-struck by Shirley's story and so was I.  If you don't already know who Shirley Ballas is, she is a famous Latin dance champion who was popular in the 70s and 80s. She later replaced the head judge of Strictly Come Dancing, Len Goodman, in 2017. I wrote an entire blog post on her on my main blog and you can read that here .   However, despite her many successes in life, it was clear from reading her book that Shirley came from very humble beginnings and has dealt with many struggles in her life and her confidence to talk about these aspects of her life so openly and so unapologetically, is something that I really enjoyed abo...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  As you probably already know, if you've read the English essay that I published on here last week, I've been reading Purple Hibiscus by Chimanda Ngozi Adichie for my first half term of English at college. Since it was an amazing novel and one that I would highly recommend reading, I thought that it would be suitable to give you a review of it today! I hope you enjoy and if it sounds right up your alley, I hope you give it a read yourself!🙂💜 Purple Hibiscus is a story that is set in postcolonial Nigeria where there is a lot of political instability. This is really a metaphor for what the main protagonist, Kambili, experiences inside her violent family home. Kambili's father, Papa Eugene, has been overcome by colonial rule and has decided to leave his native Igbo culture behind for his strict version of Catholicism. Due to his temper and radical religious beliefs, Papa Eugene believes it to be right to punish his famil...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  As I'm sure many of you already know, I've been reading George Orwell's very influential book, Homage to Catalonia. Recently, I managed to finish reading it so today, I'll be doing a book review for you all! Enjoy!💜 At my school, the Spanish Civil War was never really part of our history course. All we ever really briefly touched upon, was the Nazi bombing of Geurnica but aside from that, our curriculum was primarily based on Germany, international relations, and many other things. Consequently, when I first started reading this book, it took me a while to realise what was going on. The writing style never really bothered me, it was mainly the information that I struggled to pick up at first. Why were the soldiers so badly equipped? Why was Orwell part of a communist-sympathising group? What was the difference between the POUM and the Communists? Who were all the Spanish people fighting against? These were questio...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Wow, this was a hefty book! 727 pages later and after a year of reading this after getting it in Berlin last year, I finally managed to finish reading If This Is A Woman, by Sarah Helm. I was questioning whether I would finish it because I was reading it for so long but I'm glad that I stuck with it because I now have a book review for you. All I can say about this book is that it's incredibly detailed. No wonder it won the Longman-History Today Prize and got so many praises from different newspapers. As the Independent on Sunday said, 'Compelling... (Helm) has painstakingly sought out many survivors and talked to them herself. The results are devastating... What one is left with at the end of this momentous book is a sense of power of human nature, both for good and evil.' Before reading this, I had no idea about Ravensbruck concentration camp for women; the most renouned camp that is always talked about in the hi...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I'm sure I've said it many times before. If I ever see a book about a politician or someone linked to a politician, I doubt that it would be my first pick. However, my mum encouraged me to give Becoming Michelle Obama a read because she found it quite interesting and thought that I would too. Yes, I'm an incredibly slow reader because I like to take in every word I read so sorry for the delay in this review. I now know why people say don't judge a book by its cover, because I guess I did that a lot here. Regardless of whether you like the Obamas or not, it doesn't take a brain scientist to realise that Michelle is an incredibly smart, determined, and resourceful woman, who's never given up on herself. This book was not just about her time a as First Lady, in fact, that comes at the end. It was about her life from the very beginning and despite what the media has said about her, she did not come from a pri...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I've been continuing reading Sarah Helm's book, If This Is A Woman, and the section I've been paying close attention to was this time not about Ravensbrück, but actually about Auschwitz Birkenau, in Poland. I was completely and utterly shocked by the way the women in the camp were treated. By this point, it was quite late into Hitler's reign as Fuhrer, and the Final Solution was already being implemented. I thought that Ravensbrück was bad, but Auschwitz was a hundred times worse. Women were being transported like cattle from Ravensbrück to Auschwitz. Before, the women didn't know of their fate, but when they hid notes in their clothes about where they were, the women back at the camp now knew that they were heading to another bigger camp. The women never returned, either because they remained at the camp or they were being gassed as groups, since many women prisoners had to make selections about who was sick ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Over the month of July, I've been trying to finish reading All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot and it was only a few days ago that I managed to finish it, after a full day of reading! Haha. Just like his previous book, I really enjoyed reading this memoir. In comparison to the last book, you can tell that James has gained more of a reputation as a Yorkshire country vet in the Dales. I felt like, as farmers got to know him a little bit better, you could tell what their final opinions were of him and whether or not they liked him because some of the farmers could be a bit rude sometimes. You could also figure out what James's final opinions were of the farmers and whether or not he liked them.  One time, James came back from a shift, all flustered and angry because a farmer was being quite ignorant of his work. Siegfried, his boss, told him to charge extra when the farmers are being mean. When him and James t...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Recently, I finished reading Professor Noel Fitzpatrick's book, Becoming The Supervet. Honestly, without a doubt, one of the most amazing books I think I've ever read in my life. That is a statement I don't say that often but in this case, it is generally true. When you look at who Noel's become now, without looking at the last fifty years of his life, you'd think that he's a very privileged person who's rich and has got a lot of practices across southern England. However, looking at his past, you'd actually realise that he's a person who's generally been through a lot. Without having read his book, I would have never realised that he was bullied for the whole of his 5 years in secondary school. He talks about being beaten up during school and also having his bike broken by his bullies on his way home from school. Without having read his book, I would have never realised that he actually st...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Today I'm going to review James Herriot's book All Creatures Great and Small which is basically a collection of his memoirs being a Yorkshire country vet. I really enjoyed this book and it gave me a new perspective on being a Yorkshire country vet which before I read this, I didn't consider it to be a particularly interesting occupation. Now I've found that it is a challenging job, especially since James had to parade around in a car with no brakes through S-bend roads in the Dales! He also had to deal with challenging clients at the beginning of his career, which due to the fact he was only just starting out, they thought he wouldn't be good at his job. Most of the time he managed to prove them wrong, but other times he embarrassed himself by doing the job completely wrong. He also had to deal with forgetful Siegfried Farnon who although he encouraged James to get married to Helen Alderson as soon as possible...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I've been meaning to do this review for a while now but for some weird reason I've been putting it off. So here it is, the long awaited review of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.  I read the French manga version of Tom Sawyer but the basic story is still there. I really enjoyed reading it, I thought it was light-hearted and funny. My favourite part of the book was when Tom and his friends escaped to an island and pretended to be pirates. Tom escaped because he thought that his aunt would want him out of her sight and he also just had enough of school. At first, they thought it was fun but then they started to miss their families and they ended up going back. Haha. I also really enjoyed all the really intense parts when they get stuck in the cave with Joe L'indien when he is looking for treasure! Have you read Tom Sawyer before? Let me know in the comments below and i'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing f...