Amstell the former presenter on T4 and Never Mind The Buzzcocks may have come to your attention on the last while for his vegan film Carnage or his memorable appearance on Adam Buxton's podcast. Some of the experiences he discussed on Buxton's podcast including his experience taking Ayahusca in Peru are recounted in this book, a mixture of diary entries excepts from his stand-up and writing from Amstell expanding on these.
The book is hilarious, thought provoking and honest. The brilliance of Amstell is that even after discussing spiritual enlightenment he still acknowledges how flawed and

** Small Spoilers Included

Upon publication back in 2005, “The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls was one of my go to recommendations for readers who enjoy biographies and memoirs, so I was intrigued to hear that it was being made in to a film. I was also happy to hear that it starred one of my favourite up and coming actors Brie Larson who I first spotted in “Trainwreck” and then in her break out and Oscar winning role in “Room”, another Book to Film adaption. The DVD arrived in to the library recently and it caught my eye so I borrowed it and watched it last weekend.
The book is a tough read due

All Bear wants is to be left alone, so when a family of rabbits move in next door he is not impressed! The rabbits start calling in every day, asking to borrow honey, or asking if Bear would like to swap books. Bear scares them away, but can kindness from the rabbits show Bear that its time for a change?

Gorgeous illustrations from Ciara Flood adorn each page of this picturebook and go hand in hand with this lovely story. It went down very well at a recent storytime here in the library, and I highly recommend it.

In 1979, German director Werner Herzog ensconced himself deep in the Peruvian jungle in order to begin filming "Fitzcarraldo" - his portrayal of would-be rubber baron and opera devotee, Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (an Irishman known in Peru as the eponymous ‘Fitzcarraldo’) who dreamt of building an opera house in Iquitos, a town nestled in the within the teeming depths of the Peruvian jungle. In order to achieve his dream, Fitzcarraldo is determined to transport a steamship over a steep hill in order to access a rich rubber territory in the Amazon basin. Herzog's uncompromising artistic vision

Lately I’ve been pushing this book on all and sundry, though when I explain what it’s about (a fictionalised account of AIDS activism and the East Village drug scene in the 1980s) people look at me as if I’m stone mad. My reaction to it being chosen by my book club in December (to read over Christmas!) was I’ll give the first few chapters a go and then quietly swap it for Marian Keyes’ latest and say I lost it or something. But, not sure why, I found I couldn’t quite tear myself away.

To be sure the story of the activists who fought to make the authorities take AIDS seriously, many of whom

Not working addresses that dilemma of graduates everywhere: Having studied for years in the hope of achieving fulfilment and satisfaction in your working life what do you do when you reach the end of your 20s to find it all just a bit so so? Is it churlish and ungrateful to expect a bit more and actually go looking for it? After all, Claire Flannery would appear to be on the pig’s back from many readers’ (including this one’s) point of view; she has a “good”, reasonably well-paid job in “creative communications” and a trainee brain surgeon boyfriend with a near-saintly disposition, with whom

These are the first 2 in this new(ish) crime series from ex-Guardian columnist, Susie Steiner. As is my wont I managed to read the second one first (I’d taken it on holidays so couldn’t get my hands on the first one to read them in sequence), but once I figured out who was who – it took a few chapters – I tore through Persons unknown and couldn’t wait to start Missing presumed the minute I got home.

Sorry, that introduction was as clear as mud – to clarify: The central character is DI Manon Bradshaw, whom we find at the beginning of the second book working cold cases for Cambridgeshire Police

I’m a bit at a loss how to describe this hugely entertaining book, a collection of biographies of 5 well-known personages of the Victorian era, filtered through various body parts. For example we have Lady Flora’s belly, George Eliot’s hand, Charles Darwin’s beard, and so on. Sounds bonkers but this, the book’s USP, allows Hughes to bring us closer than your average biographer to her subjects, much like celeb magazines do nowadays.

Hughes says she longs to know what people in the 19th century were actually “like”, that though we are told about their “battles, their big love affairs and their

I thought I’d review a non-fiction book this week and, as true crime is my guilty pleasure, I’ve chosen this account of a little-known murder trial that took place in 19th century Tipperary to see how it compares with the flood of books that have appeared in recent years on more sensational murder cases (Catherine Nevin, the ScissorsSisters, etc. - I’ve devoured them all). Well-written and informative, this shines a light on the lives and attitudes of gentrified society in famine-era Ireland while reading like a true gothic mystery (shades of Edgar Allan Poe in more ways than one, as the Poe

An atmospheric setting, a compelling plot and dark characters.