Best for: People not that familiar with architecture who are interested in learning about it in a philosophical way. In a nutshell: Author de Botton takes the reader through a lovely journey exploring how the buildings we inhabit can help fill missing pieces in our lives, and impact how we feel. Line that sticks with me: “The buildings we admire are ultimately those which, in a variety of ways, extol values we think worthwhile.” (p 98) Why I chose it: I bought this long ago. […]
God bless busybody community matriarchs, and all that sail in them.
More, please. More, more, more. I just love me some Peter Grant. And fair warning to the reader who may be interested in this series: this book, Broken Homes, which is Book 4 of the “Rivers of London” series, isn’t the strongest of the bunch. But it’s still a delight and a treat, and I will fight anyone who isn’t a fan. Listen, I have five more “Dark Tower” books to read in the next five weeks, but I still just checked out Foxglove Summer […]
In which I am outraged by a book’s audacity to be poorly written, edited, and titled
This book made me unreasonably angry, so here I am, entering the world of the Cannonball Read as an outraged reader. I really wanted to love this book, because it’s about something about which I know nothing. But I wasn’t able to learn much. The narrative is completely scattered, and there are an astonishing number of tangents that are distracting and irritating. I mean, total non-sequitors. An example, “The story [of a prank pulled by Filippo Brunelleschi], known as “The Tale of the Fat Carpenter,” […]