Book Recommendations Archives

What follows is an exploration of fatherhood, of self, of loyalty, of obligation, of identity and perhaps, of the limits of unconditional love. There are wonderful insights into family, into connection and disconnection, and what it is like to watch someone decide to simply slip away from their moorings. Read more

March is For Dummies month. This year For Dummies wants to remind us that we can DO ANYTHING we want to do, with just a little help from a FOR DUMMIES title. Thankfully, there is a For Dummies title ready to help us accomplish just about anything. With For Dummies we can learn the Guitar or French. We can finally understand how to use Excel or Photoshop. We can get the best out of our iPad or W... Read more

Let me add a few more books to your “I Must One Day Get Around To Reading Those Books Everyone Keeps Telling Me I Must One Day Get Around To Reading’ list. I just can’t help myself. I love to encourage people to read the classics. And the Vintage Classics range is so beautiful and now so affordable I find I return again and again to this wonderful, all encompassing range. But ... Read more

What you post on a blog or tweet to your followers can get you arrested or cost you a lot of money in legal battles. This practical guide shows you how to stay out of trouble when you write online. Every time you blog or tweet you may be subject to the laws of more than 200 jurisdictions. As more than a few bloggers or tweeters have discovered, you can be sued in your own country, or arrested i... Read more

In her fourth novel, Various Pets Alive & Dead, Marina Lewycka employs her customary brand of keen wit and farcical comedy to explore the ever-present, ever widening gap that separates one generation from the next. Switching scenes between Doncaster and London, this is a refreshingly original and absurdly funny commentary on modern values told with a delicious combination of irony and dark ... Read more

The Booktopia Book Guru asks Cathy Kelly bestselling author of The House on Willow Street, Homecoming, Once in a Lifetime, Lessons in Heartbreak and many more… Six Sharp Questions ———————————– 1. Congratulations, you have a new book. What is it about and what does it mean to you? The House on Willow Street is about how the ... Read more

Sweet Old World is a stunning, unputdownable novel, with an interesting twist: its protagonist, David, is a middle-aged man and a little lost: he longs for a child. He meets Tania under unusual circumstances, in a remote part of Ireland, and their intense affair kindles a new hope in him that he will, now, some day be a father. The novel is about their affair and its endpoint, which is one of t... Read more

The co-founder of LinkedIn offers a revolutionary new blueprint for thriving in today’s fractured world of work… From the co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn and author Ben Casnocha comes a revolutionary new book on how to apply the strategies of successful entrepreneurship to your career: in other words, how to run the ‘start-up of you’. In a world where wages are virtu... Read more

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU9-8muvjtU&rel=0] I was surprised and saddened to hear that Marian Keyes, the woman dubbed ‘the queen of chick-lit’, the funny and brilliant author of such enduring classics as Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Rachel’s Holiday, and Anybody Out There, had stopped writing because she was crippled by depression. ‘I c... Read more

Kate Cuthbert, Editor of Booktopia’s Monthly Romance BUZZ has asked me to read the five romance novels featured below. She knows that I don’t read romance novels. I’ve read 19th century romances but I have never finished a Fabio-covered romance. She ardently (I can use ‘ardently’ in this context) believes I haven’t fallen in love with the romance genre becaus... Read more