23.03.2018- On My Bookshelf #4

With the end of another month in prospect, and a four day Easter weekend just peeking tantalisingly over the horizon, it seems high time for another reading round up. I’ve snapped up a hearty collection of new reads over the last month or so, and having started perusing the pages of these new volumes, I’m really looking forward to getting lost in them over the next couple of weeks- having next weekend bookended by two Bank Holidays offers the perfect opportunity to settle down with a selection of serious page turners:

Women & Power by Mary Beard is a volume which I’ve been wanting to peruse since it was released, and International Women’s Day earlier in the month seemed like the perfect motivation to treat myself. I’ve also been loving Civilisations on BBC2, and this is a great companion read. Charting the history of and discourses surrounding women and specifically focusing on their relationship to power, it’s a really accessible, well plotted piece of writing, drawing on insight from history to illuminate many of the conversations we’re still having today regarding the roles of women in a spectrum of different spheres. Similarly illuminating is Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, a book which has been recommended to me by more people than I can remember! Whilst I’ve not yet had a chance to get stuck into it properly, I’m really keen to get cracking and give my brain a little bit of a stretch.  

Exercise of a different kind- specifically an intense abdominal workout as a result of laughing so much- comes from reading Dolly Alderton’s much lauded Everything I Know About Love. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to stop myself from laughing out loud whilst getting lost in Alderton’s witty and utterly identifiable writing- you can’t get much better than that! Finally, Stacey Dooley’s debut book- On the Frontline with Women Who Fight Back. I’m a big fan of Dooley’s documentaries so this was a no brainer of a bookshop buy- and one which I’m really keen to get started on soon. 

Have you picked up any new books recently? 

(Image credit: Sarah Farrell, please do not reproduce without permission.)