Everything to do with books! Mostly book reviews, but occasionally, I have the non-review bookish post too.
“I am a man,” answered Father Brown gravely; “and therefore have all devils in my heart.” The Hammer of God by G.K. Chesterton It occurs to me that I’ve not properly reviewed this book on the blog before! And yet it’s a collection that I enjoy returning to because I really like Chesterton’s language (although… Read More Book Review: Father Brown – The Essential Tales by G.K. Chesterton
I am, as you know, oddly fascinated with the Internet and Social Media (see: last year when I decided to binge read a bunch of books on social media). So when a friend shared a long-form article about how internet algorithms were leading to oddly homogenous coffee shops, I knew that I had to read… Read More Book Review: Filterworld by Kyle Chayka
Going to Choco Story in Belgium made me realise that I’ve not reread this fascinating book about chocolate for quite some time! I think The True History of Chocolate was one of the first serious history books about food that I read and it definitely left an impression on me! Broken into 8 chapters, The… Read More Book Review: The True History of Chocolate by Sophie D. Coe & Michael D. Coe
I’m pretty sure I heard about Lore when I was in the spooky podcasting phase, though I don’t remember ever listening to the podcast. But oh well, it never hurts to check out a book that’s already on my TBR list. Lore is a collection of stories about supernatural creatures and phenomena, with the book… Read More Book Review: The World of Lore – Monstrous Creatures by Aaron Mahnke
When it comes to books on the history of Okinawa, I haven’t been able to find much in English. Most of the books I can see cover the battle of Okinawa, or they talk about Okinawa’s diet or karate traditions. So in this way, The Ryukyu Kingdom fills an important void because who doesn’t want… Read More Book Review: The Ryukyu Kingdom by Mamoru Akamine
I stumbled across this book in the library and was very intrigued the subtitle: Searching for the Image of God in the Digital Age. Since selfies and more broadly, social media, is something that we are all affected by, I was curious about what a Christian response would look like. Drawing on art and art… Read More Book Review: Selfies by Craig Detweiler
A while back, I spent some time looking at “Princess” Der Ling, a fascinating figure who lived during the end of the Qing dynasty. Now, I went back a bit further in time to the Taiping rebellion, or as Platt characterises it, “the Taiping civil war”. Although he started this research with the opinion that… Read More Book Review: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen Platt
This book is technically for children but I could not resist keeping it for myself – after all, it’s a collection of 52 folktales and legends from around the world! Beautifully illustrated, A Year of Stories contains one story for every week of the year. At first, I wasn’t sure if it would truly be… Read More Book Review: A Year of Stories by Angela McAllister
It has been a while since I dug into a tea-related book, so when I saw this in the library’s online shelves, I thought it was too interesting to pass over! As it happens, the book is a little dry but no matter, the subject matter of the history of Japanese green tea in America… Read More Tea Book Review: Green With Milk And Sugar by Robert Hellyer
Hi, after writing this review, I found out that I have already read it way back in 2017! But apparently, my experience reading this the second time around is the same and I made many of the same points but in a different way. Still, I’ve not posted a review on this blog specifically so… Read More Book Review: Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling translated by Herbert A. Giles