Creator: Mahadev Desai
Publication date: 2007-06-28
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.99
Review An Autobiography: Or the Story of My Experiments with Truth / Penguin:
Publication date: 2008-04-03
RRP: £7.99
Price: £3.14
Review The Rabbi's Daughter: A True Story of Sex, Drugs and Orthodoxy / Hodder Paperbacks:
Publication date: 2006-03-06
RRP: £6.99
Price: £0.48
Review Ghost Girl: The True Story of a Child in Desperate Peril - And a Teacher Who Saved Her / Harper Element:
Publication date: 2008-08-07
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.86
Review Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss / Mainstream Publishing:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2000-02-17
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £6.99
Price: £2.24
Review Girl, Interrupted / Virago Press Ltd:Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted is the autobiographical story of the author's time in a psychiatric award in 1967. Sylvia Plath was a patient at the same hospital in the early 1950s so inevitably comparisons have been made between Plath's The Bell Jar and Kaysen's novel-both recounting a young woman's descent into insanity. This, however, is where the similarities end-The Bell Jar is a haunting and lyrical book; Girl, Interrupted is a more hard-edged, documentary-style narrative. It has none of the beauty and poetry of Plath's prose and is more akin to Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation , an up-to-date memoir of a young girl's struggle with depression and drugs. Both these books offer a brutal and stark image of a life of mental illness. Kaysen's account goes further and questions the standard notions of sanity and insanity. Her plausible voice allows the reader to accept a world where time is distorted, chaos reigns and questions are left unanswered, capturing perfectly the sense of helplessness and frustration felt by these women. The book's gritty realism is also heightened by copies of the author's original medical reports lodged between the chapters. However, it is her penetrating insights into those around her, from those cared for to the caretakers, that make "Girl, Interrupted" so potent. Lacing her narrative with a hard-edged, sardonic sting, she introduces us to a cast of characters from the outrageous Lisa to the chicken-hoarding Daisy to the Martian's girlfriend: Daisy was a seasonal event. [+]She came before Thanksgiving and stayed through Christmas every year. "Would anyone like to share?" the head nurse asked. "Me! Me! Somebody who was a Martian's girlfriend and also had a little penis of her own, which she was eager to show off, raised a hand; nobody wanted to share with her. "Girl, Interrupted" is a credible and creditable chronicle of the lives of women in the 1960s who, through the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of society, were contained and monitored for not fitting into the "norm", the mainstream. Nicola Perry.
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2006-05-03
RRP: £7.99
Price: £0.14
Review Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography / Time Warner Paperbacks:
Publication date: 2009-01-01
RRP: £8.99
Price: £6.99
Review Elizabeth, The Queen / Vintage:Elizabeth I survived to become queen by being very careful. The fact that she avoided being used or implicated by the various plots against her radically Protestant brother Henry VIII, and fanatically Catholic sister Mary I, was a triumph in itself, and she never forgot the lesson that survival needed to be her first goal. What many of her contemporaries took for irritating womanly indecision was a refusal to be hurried; some situations change and some go away, but you can never escape the consequences of your actions-she protected Mary, Queen of Scots for as long as she could. Alison Weir's new biography covers the facts well enough, but she understands Elizabeth's situation imaginatively, and that is what makes her book special. Elizabeth not only overcame the misogyny of the world she lived in-she exploited it; Weir's own feminism gives her insights into the canny role-playing that was so crucial to Elizabeth's chameleon nature. Everything had to be policy from wigs and fans to rack and gallows; this is a biography which understands not only what happened, but how it seemed and felt at the time. This is an excellent conclusion to Weir's series of Tudor biographies-popular history which brings good sense to bear on scholarly fact. -Roz Kaveney.
Publication date: 2008-04-01
Dewey code: 200
RRP: £12.99
Price: £9.99
Review The Vatican Pimpernel: The Wartime Exploits of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty / The Collins Press:
Publication date: 2008-11-07
RRP: £7.99
Price: £2.80
Review United We Fall: Boardroom Truths About the Beautiful Game / Pan Books:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2007-10-08
RRP: £7.99
Price: £3.78
Review A Wild Life on Exmoor / Corgi Books:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2006-07-03
RRP: £8.99
Price: £0.01
Review My Colourful Life: From Red to Amber / Headline:
Publication date: 2008-03-25
Dewey code: 133.9092
RRP: £12.20
Price: £37.64
Review Life Among the Dead / Simon Spotlight Entertainment:
Publication date: 2008-04-10
RRP: £25.00
Price: £14.98
Review In Sickness and in Power: Illness in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years / Methuen Publishing Ltd:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1996-03-01
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £8.00
Price: £3.18
Review Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America - A Memoir / Quartet Books:
Creator: Martin Sokolinsky
Edition: University of Chicago Press Ed
Publication date: 2001-08-11
Dewey code: 940.5318092
RRP: £10.50
Price: £6.30
Review A Bag of Marbles / University of Chicago Press:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2005-10-03
Dewey code: 796
RRP: £7.99
Price: £4.23
Review Paula: My Story So Far / Pocket Books:
Publication date: 2007-07-05
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.58
Review Making a Killing: The Explosive Story of a Hired Gun in Iraq / Virgin Books:
Publication date: 2008-10-13
Dewey code: 355
RRP: £35.00
Price: £19.62
Review Great Military Leaders and Their Campaigns / Thames & Hudson Ltd:
Edition: 10th Anniversary ed
Publication date: 2005-09-05
RRP: £7.99
Price: £2.20
Review Longitude / HarperPerennial:The thorniest scientific problem of the 18th century was how to determine longitude. Many thousands of lives had been lost at sea over the centuries due to the inability to determine an east-west position. This is the engrossing story of the clockmaker, John "Longitude" Harrison, who solved the problem that Newton and Galileo had failed to conquer, yet claimed only half the promised rich reward. -Amazon. com.
Publication date: 2008-09-22
RRP: £9.99
Price: £6.59
Review Please May I Have My Football Back: My Life at Manchester City / Know the Score Books:
| Models & Brands:
An Autobiography: Or the Story of My Experiments with Truth, The Rabbi's Daughter: A True Story of Sex, Drugs and Orthodoxy, Ghost Girl: The True Story of a Child in Desperate Peril - And a Teacher Who Saved Her, Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss, Girl, Interrupted, Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography, Elizabeth, The Queen, The Vatican Pimpernel: The Wartime Exploits of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, United We Fall: Boardroom Truths About the Beautiful Game, A Wild Life on Exmoor, My Colourful Life: From Red to Amber, Life Among the Dead, In Sickness and in Power: Illness in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years, Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America - A Memoir, A Bag of Marbles, Paula: My Story So Far, Making a Killing: The Explosive Story of a Hired Gun in Iraq, Great Military Leaders and Their Campaigns, Longitude, Please May I Have My Football Back: My Life at Manchester City |
