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...

Studio 07 Chapter 1 - The revelation Jade stared blankly out of the train window. The trees and the hills of the surrounding countryside blurred into one long, continuous strip of dappled green, too hypnotising to peel her eyes away from. The sun moved further and further away until it was a faint crescent behind the trees; a little semicircle of fire that created shapes and shadows that danced rapidly in the distance.  Jade felt a sudden wave of exhaustion come over her. Perhaps if I just close my eyes for a little, everything will be alright , she thought solemnly to herself. She felt the weight of her head, followed quickly by her entire body, sink deeper into the palm of her hand until S-P-L-A-T! She felt her hand smack the table. The white noise and the bright light of the train, sang herself to sleep. * If it wasn't for Mr Heath, sitting adjacent to her, shaking her abruptly by the shoulder, Jade would have been asleep for the next 2 hours! She felt her eyelids peel open sli...

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, Just thought it would be nice to share the English essay I wrote recently about the novel of Purple Hibiscus; a book by Adichie that we read in English class. I will be posting a review on the novel next week since it was an amazing read but for now, I hope you enjoy reading this essay. There's a few things that I could improve on like making my thoughts a little bit more cohesive but I did enjoy writing this. Feel free to use this as inspiration or a nice read but please do not copy. This is my own work:) How does Adichie present the importance of culture in building identity?   Adichie shows that culture is important for the development  and formation  of a child’s identity . She  conveys  this  message  by highlighting Jaja’s  positive  change in character  when he is finally  given  the freedom  to explore the ways in which different people from different communiti...