Journey from Sexual Violence to Justice | Black Box – Shiori Ito

In Black Box, Shiori Ito shares her story as the victim of rape and her fight for justice within the legal system of Japan. For those of us who have read Chanel Miller’s popular memoir “Know my name” much of this book will be familiar territory - the shattering effect on the self as a …

Japan as seen from the Margins | Tokyo Ueno Station – Yu Miri

Yu Miri's Tokyo Ueno Station brings attention to a Japan rarely seen in the English-speaking world - the country as seen from the margins. The novel follows a homeless narrator chronicling his life from the early 1930s living in Fukushima, moving to Tokyo for work in the 1960s, moving back to the countryside and later …

The Great Passage over The Sea of Words

It is finally 2021. With that, Invisible Cities has officially commenced. If you haven't seen mine (or my fellow hosts) original announcement for this project, it's basically a reading project where we are going to explore the world through literature (and other forms of culture) three countries at a time. The aim is to promote …

Untold Stories of Disney’s Women Pioneers

Happy start to 2021! I closed off the year of much anxiety, uncertainty, and change with a book that hit close to home. Queens of Animation by Nathalia Holt is truly a remarkable book for its very existence. Holt attempts to give voice to the countless female pioneers and artists working in the Disney company …

The Earth is Brimming with Life | Entangled Life – Merlin Sheldrake

As soon as I started reading Entangled Life I found myself nodding along to the author's clear fascination, awe and passion for fungi. While fungi have long been overlooked in scientific circles, it's increasingly clear that they provide crucial clues to the ways of the natural world from the partnerships with plants to their abilities …

Seaming The Pieces of a Life | Patch Work by Claire Wilcox

The genre of memoir continues to surprise most recently for me with Claire Wilcox's Patch Work. The subtitle for the book is "A Life Amongst Clothes" which in a sense is accurate given how many years Wilcox has worked as a museum curator, handling aging pieces of clothing and dealing with fashion history on a …

The Stopping Places – Damian Le Bas

It's November which means we are finally in the swing of Nonfiction November - if you don't know what that is, it's a Booktube initiative started by Olive (abookolive) and it has now spread out all over the social media platforms. I'm in charge of the instagram challenge we have to go alongside the month's …

Magic Mushrooms | The Secret Life of Fungi – Aliya Whiteley

Aliya Whiteley brings us into a magical world, in her recent release The Secret Life of Fungi: Discoveries from a Hidden World. This book is a collection of various observations, musings, and wonders of the fungal life-forms we co-habit this earth with. At times fungi act like parasites, making use of other organisms to do …

Turning of the Seasons | Wintering – Stephen Rutt

Stephen Rutt's second book, Wintering, is largely a love-letter to geese of all its kinds but lands rather in rumination on the passing of time, the reflection of movement in nature and bird migration, the internal metamorphosis of the mind and body as the earth turns on its axis. Much like other books of its …

Seeking Answers in Science or Religion | Transcendent Kingdom – Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi's recent release, Transcendent Kingdom, explores the intersection of religion and science through its protagonist, Gifty - a woman doing her PhD in neuroscience, testing reward-seeking behaviour in a lab and dealing with family troubles at home. When Gifty's mother comes to visit from Alabama, she is deep into depression. Gifty tries to handle …