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Top Five Books of 2022

In no particular oder, here are my top five reads from this past year, books that have stayed with me and I know will do for some time. I have three fiction here, one non-fiction and a travelogue. I'm not normally into anything vaguely…
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A Year Of Reading Outside My Ethnicity - Results + Reflections

Towards the end of 2020, I decided to spend the following year reading outside my ethnic group. If you'd like to see my original blog post and the intention I set, click here. The vast majority of books published globally are written by authors…

July - September reading Authors of Colour

Looking back at my reads from April - June, it appears I read a whole lot more then than the July - September months. I'm not entirely sure why; I would have thought I'd had more time for reading over the summer holidays. Perhaps it was because…

April-June Reading BAME authors

So how do I decide which books I'm going to read in this journey of only reading BAME authors during 2021? I have several pages in a big notebook where I have two lists of books that I 'must' read this year and books that I will 'maybe' read.…

A Year of Reading Authors of Colour

I decided towards the end of 2020 that in 2021 I would read books only by authors of colour / BAME authors. I made this decision after realising that only a tiny proportion of my shortlisted favourite books from 2020 fell into the BAME category.…
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Poems of a Teenage Girl

Last year, I spied a book in the window of my local bookshop, How to Grown your own Poem by Kate Clanchy. I loved the cover and the title and often use poetry to help my students with creative literacy, so decided to treat myself to…

📚Top Ten Books of 2020📚

I read quite a lot of books, so it wasn't at all easy to narrow this list down to ten. I have also discovered the joys of audiobooks this year which has significantly bumped up my book intake. I spent some time writing out my long list, crossing…

Top Reads of 2019

As the end of 2019 is fast approaching, I thought I'd write a list of my top ten books of this year. If you like the sound of any of them, you've still time to pop down to your local bookshop before Christmas. The following books are not in…
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The Healing Power of Story

I am nocturnally challenged. Many years ago, upon sharing this information with someone I met, he looked me in the eye and said 'Get your beloved to read to you.' I wasn't sure what my beloved would think of that, but I asked him, and he did.…
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The Children's Choice: What are the best books out there?

‘I can promise reading will change your life for the better,’ writes beloved children’s and YA author Judy Blume. ‘You’ll be smarter, savvier, you’ll have a way to connect with people of all ages, and you’ll never be bored. What…