The letter no one would read by Andrew Penny is a very special book. This was written by a fellow volunteer, who is now working in Ukraine. He is volunteering at one of the places I go to and we talked many times. During my…
Sky Above Kharkiv by Serhiy Zhadan – Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front – is the second book I read by him, with the first one being The Orphanage. This is the second book by him I was recommended. Zhadan is one of Ukraine’s leading writer-activist…
Jeremy & Amy by Jeremy Keelings – The Extraordinary Story of One Man and His Orang-utan was an impulse purchase on my visit to Monkey World, while we were on holiday in Dorset. He was one of the co-founders of the sanctuary and Amy, the…
Freedom by Angela Merkel – Memoirs 1954 – 2021 – got a very well deserved 1 star! According to the blurb, this was “the long-awaited memoir by one of the most important political leaders of our time”. I didn’t wait for it, but she was…
Looking at Women Looking at War by Victoria Amelina was a book I wanted so much to read. It was published in UK in mid-February, just as I returned from Lviv. The author was born in Lviv and she was a crime researcher killed by…
Knife by Salman Rushdie is a short memoir on the attack he suffered in 2022 and the road to recovery. He was almost killed by a man who read only a few pages of The Satanic Verses and watched some clips on YouTube. Rushdie has…
Oath and honor by Liz Cheney is a memoir and also an account of the January 6th events. I was impressed by her stance during the 2024 election campaign in US. She put country over party to an extent that she endorsed and campaigned with…
The Language of War by Oleksandr Mykhed was the most difficult book I read. Mykhed is a man in his 30s who was busy living his life in Kyiv with his wife and dog. His parents lived nearby. On the 22 Feb 2022, russia attacked…
Lady Death by Lyudmila Pavlichenko – The Memoirs of Stalin’s Sniper – is a memoir of a Ukrainian-born soviet sniper. It is interesting to read and an important document of WW2. With that being said, the memoir needed strong notes to put the events in…
The Work I Did by Brunhilde Pomsel – A Memoir of the Secretary to Goebbels – is her memoir, complemented by an essay by Thore D. Hansen. Without the essay I wouldn’t have given the book 5 stars. I found the memoir fascinating. She made…
Modern slave by Gaia Cooper – A shocking true crime story of survival and resilience in the face of child criminal exploitation and sexual abuse – is about one of the girls abused by the Rochdale child sex abuse ring. For those who don’t know…
A Swiss Soldier In Ukraine by Jona Neidhart is a must-read. It is a £1 as an e-book on amazon and it’s not long either at around 100 pages. Neidhart wrote in the first few pages of his book: “As a believing Christian, I regard…
Ukraine 22 by Mark Andryczyk (editor) – Ukrainian Writers Respond to War – is a collection of short essays on everyday life written by various writers. Each chapter is an essay, some only 3 pages long, while others are a bit longer. As I imagined…
Night by Elie Wiesel is a book I wanted to read for a while. Now that my studies finished, I can read the books I postponed. Elie was born in what is today Romania. I’ve read a lot of books on the Holocaust, but this…
Chronicles of Wasted Time by Malcolm Muggeridge is a memoir published in 1972. This is volume 1, which is relevant to my studies. While I read the memoir for my studies, it is a funny account which is understandable why it was popular when it…
War and the Death of News by Martin Bell – Reflections of a Grade B Reporter – is a lovely book. Martin Bell had an impressive career, read at the end of the post the ‘about the author’ bits if you are not familiar with…