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  I am sixty six so I guess you could say that I have already mastered this subject, but when I saw this in the library I thought I might see how someone else is handling it. It's not exactly a Haynes Maintenance Manual, more a re-telling of the events that led to Lyn Slater becoming known as 'The Accidental Icon', and you may have seen her blog or her posts on Instagram.  She's very stylish and when she became accidentally famous she was living in Manhatten and already had a keen interest in fashion.  I was only a few pages in when I decided that I probably wouldn't ever wear Japanese deconstructed clothes from high fashion brands, so I must confess I just skimmed through the rest of the book.  We don't need lessons in how to be old because it creeps over you like fog in the night and all you can do is stay healthy and don't get tempted to follow any light. I often hear people say that they don't feel any different inside than when they were teenagers, ...

  The Dark Island of the title is Orkney, which in reality is an archipelago of islands just off the northeast coast of Scotland.  Here in the UK we are familiar with TV detective series (based on the books written by Ann Cleaves) set on the Sheltland Islands in the North Sea to the north of Orkney, and in this book we have a similar backdrop but the main character is a journalist not a detective.   The author Daniel Aubrey wanted to write a book about autism, so the young reporter Freya Sinclair has autistic traits, although she doesn't have a firm diagnosis as she is waiting for the outcome of her assessment.   All through the story-line Freya's behaviour is very challenging for everyone around her as she is driven by her own issues and her colleagues see her as unreliable, unpredictable and self absorbed.  She doesn't follow instructions, she disappears without warning and she ignores her phone when everyone is worried sick about her.  The auth...

  This one was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, and although it's a fairly short read it still manages to capture the feelings of loss after a mother dies. It is written from the point of view of Gopi who is eleven years old and the youngest of three girls who are left to get through their teenage years without their Mother's guiding hand.  Their father is a quiet man who is struggling to cope with his own grief, and he decides that they will all cope better if they are physically occupied, so he begins to take them on regular trips to Western Lane where they all play squash. Gopi has a real aptitude for the sport, but although she enjoys the game, she often gets tired as her father is not working as much as he used to and there isn't always enough money to buy all the food they need. The writing style is quiet and considered with the girls usually keeping a respectful distance from their father's feelings,...

  This book didn't look like much when I picked it up but by the time I finished it I came to realise that I have met quite a few Gypsies over the years and hadn't cottoned on at the time. Gypsy surnames include Boswell, Lee, Penfold, Locke and Midgely and they are likely to deal in scrap metal, scaffolding, road surfaces burger vans as well as the traditional fairground rides.  When a group of workers came to do the block paving on our drive, I thought they had said they came from Romania but now I've read the book I realise they must have said they were Roma - Gypsies - and they were the hardest working men I have ever come across.  They were all related and their name was one from the book. Gypsies originally came from Egypt and spread upwards through Europe and on to the UK.  They have always preferred to keep to themselves and still use the Romani language, partly to keep up the tradition and partly because the rest of us don't know what they are talking about. ...

  If you are expecting your first baby then I would suggest you give this novel a good wide swerve as Claire Kilroy takes you right to the messy heart of motherhood with all the tears and sleepless nights that go with it. If you've already done the baby thing, it's the kind of book that brings it all back, and it's interesting to note that not much has changed over the years.  These days you might be able to tap in to Mum's Net at three in the morning, but the bottom line is that you will still be awake at three in the morning and you will never know tiredness like the kind you feel during the first year of your baby's life. Relationships are tested to breaking point, and never mind discovering the personality of the new life you have produced, you quickly find out a whole lot more about yourself.  When you are that tired the gloves are off, and it won't just be the baby that ends up crying.  Nothing can ever prepare you for the seismic shift into the world of m...

When author Martin J. Sherwin first signed a contract to write a biography of Robert Oppenheimer in 1979, he knew he was taking on a big project and thought it would take four to five years to complete.  In the end, his estimate was out by about twenty years, even after enlisting the help of Kai Bird to assist with the writing during the last five years. As he began to interview people who had known Oppenheimer, more and more information came to light, including over ten thousand pages of information taken from the FBI alone.  There were so many sources of information to consider that Sherwin quickly realised that the study was widening to take in far more than 'Oppie's' life story, and would have ramifications that shed light on the state of America during Oppie's time. As work on the book progressed, many other American institutions and foundations got involved and provided both financial and research assistance to help create a document that was to be a definative ac...