It isn’t so much about making do with less, as about how best to use what you’ve got and driving your spending by a well thought through process of planned expenditure. Don’t expect any new age claptrap here though. Instead, Lippey and Gower have created a very practical, fun, cartoon rich book that will appeal to just about anyone and will add value to any household whether it’s used as an occasional tool to save up for something or as the start to a major life-change.
Category: Non fiction reviews
A review of The Element by Ken Robinson
If this book makes even a small chip in the notion that a standardized test score is the best indicator of intelligence, it will have been worth Robinson and Aronica’s investment of time. For those of us reading it, it could do much more. It could open our eyes about the great diversity of unique capability that we all have and help us to think in much broader terms about ourselves, our children, our colleagues, and indeed our world.
A review of Fast Ed’s Dinner in 10 by Ed Halmagyi
The principle that has made him famous is basically, that you don’t have to spend a lot of time cooking to create a good meal. Fast food doesn’t have to mean bad, unhealthy food. Fast Ed’s second cookbook Dinner in 10 is an elegant offering, and despite it’s casual paperback feel, it’s nicely stylised, with fresh looking line drawings, and large, attractive images of most of the recipes.
A review of Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes
That the book remains elegant, moving, upbeat, erudite, lucid, and calm throughout the morass is due to Barnes’ great skill as a writer. Nothing To Be Frightened Of is, as one would expect from Julian Barnes, a tightly written, and ultimately affirmative piece of work that takes the reader on a journey that ends in exactly the place you’d expect. Black humour notwithstanding, it’s one of those books that will enrich your life, at least while you’ve still got it.
A review of Science as a Spiritual Practice by Imants Baruss
So there is little account of the ethical dimensions of a spiritual life, nor of the fact that spiritual yearning can arise out of a dissatisfaction with contemporary modes of living, despair or indeed grief, ‘so often the source of our spirit’s growth’ (Rilke). Rather than, say, through a sense that science’s materialist world-view is inadequate.
A review of by Résistance by Agnes Humbert
All in all, despite any questions about her methodology, Humbert ‘s account of her wartime experience is a remarkable book, a testament to at least one woman’s ability to maintain her humanity when inhumanity is all around her.
A review of The Greatest Moving Abroad Tips in the world by Lorraine Mace
It’s small enough to fit in your handbag, and a good solid construction that should take the reader through the early stage trips, to the final move, and beyond to settling in. This is a fun, easy to use, and inexpensive guide which could save you lots of costly and painful errors and mistakes. If you’re planning a trip abroad, it would certainly pay to take advantage of the considerable knowledge of the ‘moving abroad queen’ Lorraine Mace.
A review of Why Evolution Is True by Jerry A. Coyne
The marsupials trekked from the tip of South America (when South America formed a part of the unified continent Gondwana) to the connected landmass that became Australia. There they became the dominant form of animal life in country that had drifted away from their original home. This is a beautiful example of “We have the fossils – you lose.”
A review of Charles Darwin: Voyaging and Charles Darwin: The Power of Place by Janet Browne
Janet Browne shows him to be not only great but huggable. She also as a side benefit gives us an extraordinarily vivid picture of England in the nineteenth century. This is a book of wide appeal and reaches easily across boundaries to celebrate a man of genius who made a major change in our lives and was modest and unassuming in ways that are touching and memorable.
A review of Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman
Besides the obvious obstacles—an extreme communication barrier, a culture so completely opposite of Western values and practices, and hoping to not get on your traveling companion’s nerves—these two innocent, naïve college girls were walking in utterly unknown territory. But in the end, mental anguish turns out to be the biggest danger of the trip.