In 2023, a Chinese man called Hu Anyan posted an essay online about working the night shift in a sweltering logistics warehouse — and it went viral across a country of a billion and a half people. He had worked nineteen jobs in roughly as many years, drifting between cities with little more than his copies of Chekhov and Carver for company.

Literary Sensation

What began as an essay has become a literary sensation in China, and when translated worldwide it made many ‘best of’ lists at the end of 2025. So what is it about a man describing 19 jobs in 19 years that has made this such a success?

Hu Anyan was born in Guangzhou in 1979, and as a young worker in a burgeoning economy he found himself working in a variety of positions across the country. During the covid lockdowns he began posting online of his experiences in a logistics warehouse where the nights were so hot, he could drink three litres of water - without being able to take a toilet break.

These online posts became popular, and though he had no intention of writing a book, in the short amount of time he had available he began to do so.

Beijing

One of the main sections of the book is Hu’s job delivering parcels in Beijing. He arrived there one morning in Spring 2018, uploaded his CV to a job site, and had a phone call before lunch. He was recruited through a headhunting service and went for an interview that same afternoon in Yizhuang. It begins almost comically fast —one day in Beijing, already working.

The conditions were relentless: twelve-hour shifts, unpaid trial periods, extreme heat, constant surveillance, and the economic pressure to complete a delivery every four minutes to remain profitable.

Riding an electric trike in summer, the metal was often scalding to the touch within moments of parking. He describes waiting over half an hour outside residential complexes for customers who kept saying "soon, soon" — then calling back an hour later to ask where he was.

Under constant pressure, it takes its toll and eventually the job comes to an end. Knowing this seems to give him renewed energy - there’s kindness and humanity in the way he no longer rushes his route, taking the time to talk to customers, going out of his way to help them when delivering.

Other Jobs

Selling bicycles, running a women's clothing store, working in a bakery, making 3D architectural renderings, doing night shifts at a logistics warehouse - there’s not much he doesn’t do, with a variety of bosses along the way.

What’s striking is that there’s no upward trajectory to these positions - he’s mostly moving between horizontal rungs, the workload and pay staying the same. Convenience store clerk, security guard, he just moves between them with little complaint.

China

Hu has called himself an ‘honest recorder’ rather than a critic of low paid labour. He is just one of the millions who has left rural China for the cities, many of whom are undocumented with no access to social services, subsidised housing, public schools or healthcare. I found it interesting to read about ‘the hukou system’ — which ties social entitlements to your place of birth registration — and means you can live and work in Beijing for years while remaining effectively invisible to the state.

China inhabits late-stage capitalism through its unique blend of market economy and state-owned business — there is no Amazon but instead the vast Alibaba ecosystem, WeChat instead of Facebook. The logistics network is incredibly efficient, with next day delivery within the same province — but this progress, as Hu says himself, comes at the expense of workers at the lower end of the industry.

You can understand why the book has resonated in his homeland.

Hu Anyan

I found myself admiring Hu Anyan because he doesn’t constantly complain about these jobs. There’s something very zen about the way he goes about his work. He doesn’t seem to have much in the way of need -it’s not that he’s supressed them, it’s just he had reduced them so he doesn’t need a lot to get by.

There’s no cynicism or bitterness in his writing - in fact, he comes across as humble. As a writer he’s blessed with a keen, sharp eye, and is an unflinching observer of the world he’s in.

But of course it does affect him. One bit that stood out for me was when he talked about how the delivery work was eroding him - he writes that there is a reason deep-sea fish are blind and animals in the desert tolerant of thirst — a big part of who he is is determined by his environment and not his nature.

There’s no drama or pity to his observations, and it often felt like an act of contemplation.

Audiobook

This is one of those occasions when I’m not going to recommend listening to the audiobook. It took me an absolute age to listen to this because I kept drifting off and constantly found myself having to rewind because I’d missed whole chapters. If you’re having sleep issues, like I am, perhaps it’s the book for you, but I wanted to pay attention to the book and found I couldn’t.

At times it’s just hypnotically boring - apt given the work being described. Winson Ting does an admirable job, but I found myself fighting a losing battle if I listened to this when I was tired.

Summary

What was most interesting to me was Hu’s role as observer. Even though he’s performing these roles whilst being trapped in an algorithm that governs his deliveries, the unpaid trial shifts, the wages that evaporate - he's simply watching. Watching the system, watching his colleagues, watching what the work does to him, watching himself react.

He finds freedom in his ability to remain aware of himself within his circumstances rather than being entirely consumed by them. He is present as the awareness watching it all. Non dual, I know.

Deliver Parcels in Beijing is not really a memoir, and it's not really social commentary either — though it contains both. It ends up being an act of sustained, honest attention to ordinary life, written by a man who had nothing to prove and no agenda beyond telling the truth of what he saw.

He wrote it all down without bitterness, without self-pity, and with a dry humour that keeps the darkness from becoming unbearable. Reading it, I kept thinking about presence — about what it means to remain yourself inside conditions designed to erase you. Hu never frames it in those terms. But the question is there on every page, quiet and insistent, whether he intended it or not.

Penguin Audio 2025

Translated by Jack Hargreaves

Read by Winson Ting - 10hrs 19 mins

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi arrived in San Francisco in 1959, a quiet Japanese Zen priest who ended up changing the spiritual landscape of the Western world. His new book — the first collection of his talks in over two decades — is called ‘Becoming Yourself,’ and it carries the same unhurried clarity that made ‘Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind’ a classic.

The point is to learn how to be yourself, how to be a person in the way that a stone is completely a stone.

Shunryū Suzuki

This is the second mention of Shunryū Suzuki in this blog. A few years ago I wrote a post about on my favourite books on Meditation and Mindfulness and ‘Zen Mind, Beginners Mind’ got a mention. There was something in the stripped back, simple style that for me made it such a wonderful introduction to Zen Buddhism.

Like that book, ‘Becoming Yourself’ is based on talks given by the famous Japanese Zen priest. As mentioned above, he is credited as being one of the most important figures in bringing Zen Buddhism to the West, and ‘Zen Mind..’ is considered a classic of it’s kind.

This first collection in over two decades was put together by Abbot Jiryu Rutschman-Byler and the late Sojun Mel Weitsman, who spent years working through recordings and rough transcripts.

‘Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm.’

Three Movements

‘Becoming Yourself’ is divided into three parts - The first is on sitting and being yourself, the second on bringing that spirit into your daily life, whilst the third is centered on the Buddhist precepts - guidelines for living with integrity.

I liked how this was structured - each part fed into the next one. Practice is nothing if you can’t bring it into your daily living. What’s the point otherwise? I found the last section on ethics interesting, and something I’d like to read more on, whilst the first two ‘movements’ will be revisted quite a few times.

Teacher

He was obviously an extraordinary teacher, and I honestly feel that his quiet wisdom really comes across in these pages. What he’s saying, what comes from Zen Buddhism, is ultimately is that there is another way to be. Not to stop and think, or stop and figure yourself out, but just to stop. To sit.

What surprised me reading this was how radical that actually feels — how much resistance arises, how much the mind wants to turn even stillness into a project. But underneath all that, Suzuki seems to be pointing at something that was never missing. The sitting isn't a technique for getting somewhere; it's more like coming home to a place you never really left.

It just happened that during my time of sitting with this book that I was also ‘practising’ natural meditation, or do nothing meditation as it’s sometimes called. It’s been interesting for me to notice how much grasping the mind engages in, looking for a technique in something as simple as meditation. To just sit, with no method, has been so liberating.

"Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don't serve them tea."

Summary

Whether you’re just exploring Zen Buddhism or a seasoned practictioner, I think you’ll find something that resonates in this volume. I’m not sure it has the immediacy of ‘Zen Mind, Beginners Mind’ but not many books do. It’s a quiet, generous book, that yo read slowly and return to. (I returned to the first page when I reached the end.)

For a teacher who died in 1971, he feels remarkably present on every page.

The best pointings are simple, true and straight:

Stop trying to get somewhere and notice what’s already here.

The 2025 Booker Prize Winner ‘Flesh’ by David Szalay is the story of István, a Hungarian who we follow over the course of his life both at home and abroad. It’s written in a sparse, unsentimental manner that can be unsettling but always compelling.

Unsettling

I’ve been struggling to read much in the way of fiction but I always try and make time for the Booker prize winner. As usual, I went in cold and haven’t read any Szalay’s other books. Anyone who has - are they along the same lines as this? Let me know below.

I found myself gripped by this from the start, though it’s unsettling from early on. There’s a sparseness about the prose, and there are long stretches where it’s just short clipped sentences between two characters. I had an uneasy feeling as I was reading it, but found I wanted to continue.

There’s an uncomfortable encounter between István and an older neighbour early on that sets the tone for the rest of the book. Szalay describes this incident without judgement, and it put me in mind of the films of Micheal Hanake. The unblinking gaze, cool and controlled.

Transactional

István leaves Hungary, and we find him first in Iraq and later London. I won’t spoil the storyline, not that there’s much in the way of plot. But the sense continues throughout the book that relationships and life are transactional in nature. I don’t think his physical attributes are ever described, but he proves himself useful in Iraq, and then later as a bodyguard in London. When he does rise up the social mobility ladder, I always got the feeling that he was just trading his physical ‘skills’ to do so.

There’s not much in the way of romance or intimacy. There’s often an imbalance of power in many of the relationships and a sense of people being used, but often the characters are complicit in it.

István

I wondered throughout the book about free will. István reacts, he drifts, and he often makes the most of his circumstances. You don’t get the sense that he has the words to describe his interior life, though he hurts like everyone else does but finds it hard to express it. It’s definitely a book with something to say about many modern men such as István who has been very much shaped by his experiences in this world, and his is a life unexamined. Not that I ever judged him or felt it was his fault, which I think is down to the skill of the author.

Of course he wants more from life, and he makes the most of his opportunity to advance through the social classes. Though at times I wondered how much he had to do with it - did he ever belong in a world that was never really his?

The book is called ‘Flesh’ so of course this is something central to the book. István trades his body as an asset, whether with older women, as a soldier, as a bodyguard. He is valued physically, though not emotionally.

Summary

Hard to say I enjoyed this, not that it matters. I found a lot if it unsettling and clinical (much like the Haneke films I mentioned) but always compelling. It made me think about exploitation, about the transactional nature of relationships, about mobility and the modern male. I liked the writing style, and there’s a sense as you read it of tension tightening, and at times I wanted to look away but couldn’t. I finished it with a mixture of admiration and unease, which I think is exactly what Szalay was aiming for.

Lonesome Dove is an epic novel about two retired Texas Rangers, Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae, who set out on a gruelling cattle drive from the Rio Grande to Montana. Along the way, they face brutal hardships, haunting memories, and the slow erosion of the world they once knew. It's a story of loyalty, loss, and the unglamorous grit of the American West.

Epic Western

Back in November I decided I want a long novel to sink into. I was dipping in and out of fiction, only half submerging myself. I had some sort of a notion that I wanted to lose myself in something epic, a world and stories that would sweep me away. I seem to have misplaced my reading mojo recently, more so for fiction, and it seemed as good as idea as any.

I really couldn’t have chosen better. At nearly 900 pages long, it took me the the best part of two months to make my way through this. It was the immersive work I needed to keep me reading. Who would have thought it would take an epic western to reignite the reading bug?

Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae

There’s a large cast of characters but it’s Call and McCrae whom we follow from start to finish, and who give the book a lot of it’s action and emotional heft. These two are former texas rangers now turned cattlemen, who we first meet in Lonesome Dove, a dusty, half-forgotten town on the Texas-Mexico line.

The two are in a sort of semi-retirement with their hat creek cattle company, Gus more interested in his jug of whiskey and his visits to the local dry bean saloon to enjoy the company of Lorie, a young prostitute. Gus is very much the soul of the book - very witty, stubborn but with a secret heartbreak. It’s a while since I found myself laughing at a book but it was almost always one of McCrae’s one liners or philosophical musings.

Woodrow Call on the other hand is very much his opposite - stoic and disciplined, rarely emotional and driven by a sense of responsibility. He’s the sort of old school Gary Cooper cowboy, very repressed and independent.

But these two are bound to each other by decades of trail life, war, women and friendship. Without each other, they’d probably not survive. It’s a beautiful, complicated relationship that is at the heart of the book.

Montana

The story really begins when an old comrade shows up with tales of rich, untouched land in Montana. That sparks a bold, fairly insane, cattle drive north — a journey filled with hardship, death, reunion, and reckonings. The novel becomes a sweeping, elegiac portrait of the dying West more than just a dying town, and it’s where the book becomes an epic.

The beginning of the book lulled me into a false sense of security - obviously we couldn’t lounge around with Gus and his pet pigs in Lonesome Dove for nearly 900 pages, but I couldn’t have foreseen what lay in the store when Woodrow Call determined that there was one last big journey in them. And a large part of Call’s desire to move is because of his inability to confront his deeper questions of life purpose and identity.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched a Western, but I can remember those that tend to romanticise it. This is a trip that features blood, loss and lots of sudden, brutal violence. Part of it shocked me, and it won’t be for the faint of heart at times.

Most of the Indians have been murdered or driven off the land, and buffalo have become a rare sight.

Characters

There are so many vivid characters throughout this. Deets was a favourite of mine, the only black character who was loyal and had a quiet dignity about him. A bit of my heart stayed with Lorena, and there was something incredibly tender in her relationship with Gus. Ah and little Newt, having to grow up fast, and the plodding deputy Roscoe. Oh, how could I forget Clara - easily a match for McCrae.

Honestly, too many to mention.

Writing

This is a masterpiece in storytelling. There is the plot of driving the cattle to Montana and all that entails. But there are also a number of subplots that run throughout, some eventually combining to reach an explosive climax. Life could be short and brutish in this land.

But it’s also driven as much by character - these feel like real nuanced people, sometimes doing the right thing, sometimes wrong. But always human, and my heart often broke for them. With Blue duck he also created a proper villain, though who is good and who is bad is complicated.

McMurty writes dialogue that rings so true, and oh to spend an hour in the company of Gus McCrae to listen to his philosophical ramblings. Some of the writing itself seems deceptively simple, it’s so easily read, but it often feels profound.

And some of the set pieces are completely enthralling, some built slowly whilst others come leaping off the page from nowhere.

Summary

I would say that you have to give the book a hundred pages before it gets going. It might seem like nothing is happening but before you know it you’ll be right in the mix. Glad I stayed with it.

You can think of a typical Western with cattle drives, Indian raids, stoic cowboys and all the usual but it doesn’t come close to capturing the heart and soul of this book, which is so much more than that. It also certainly does not romanticise this period of American History.

This is truly an epic, with some intense action sequences, violence, heartbreak and loss. But it’s the vivid characters that I’ll remember most. Sure fixed my reading mojo.

Pico Iyer’s ‘Aflame; Learning from Silence’ is based on three decades of retreats at a Benedictine hermitage high in the hills of Big Sur, California. Weaving personal experience alongside quiet revelations, as well as reflecting on life events such as forest fires, family illness and grappling with grief, this is a meditative book on his long friendship with the Benedictine Community.

Retreat

As has become my habit during the time after the holidays, I made my way to a hermitage in the Glendalough Valley in the Wicklow mountains for a five night stay. I packed a couple of books, Spiritual titles mostly, something to read in the evenings when I’d thrown a few logs into the wood burner. Apart from meditating and hiking, that’s all that was on my itinerary for my post Christmas retreat. It’s a beautiful place to see in the new year.

Apart from the five small, sparse stone cottages, there’s an old coach house where you can find a reception during the day and a few small rooms, one of which contains a library. Though I had enough reading material with me, I like to stick my head in and browse the shelves, just in case I see something that interests me.

Pico Iyer’s book immediately stood out, not just because I’ve read a couple of his books in the last year (A beginners guide to Japan and The Half known life, about finding paradise in a divided world) but also because of it’s bright orange colour, obviously to indicate the title. Hard to miss, so I signed it out for a few days.

Pico Iyer

I’d previously listened to his titles as audiobooks, and I’m really glad I got to read this. He’s got a lovely calm, lyrical style, and never overindulges - his reflections are in distilled paragraphs, and it’s like he’s talking quietly slowly beside you.

He comes across as a personable sort, finding it easy to talk to people and get to the spiritual heart of things quickly. He has a knack of finding the light within people, and that’s where the most interesting conversations come in the book. Even when the subjects are heavy, dealing with sorrow or uncertainty, his responses always feel warm and grounded.

I do think I prefer his written word to the spoken, mainly because there were a lot of times I wanted to reflect. Sometimes there were ten minute spells between sentences. That happens a lot with spiritual books, I find.

I liked the grounded, sparse writing style in this. As you’d expect, the tone is meditative, never rushed.

For over 30 years…I’ve never wanted to be part of any group of believers…But what silence ultimately opens for me is not absence but connection.

There’s also lots of literary and spiritual references sprinkled throughout:

Traditionally, the historian R. H. Tawney reminds us, humans were spiritual beings who took care of their material needs for prudence sake. Nowadays, most of us are material beings who, for the sake of prudence, take care of their spiritual needs.

Characters

It’s a book full of interesting characters, little vignettes of those he meets along the way, often imparting some wisdom. Hindu nuns, close friends who are dying, other retreatants and the resident monks - there’s a mixture of folk here.

Lovely to see Leonard Cohen in there, someone Pico gets close to in his later years as a Zen monk, before and after he’d had to come down the mountain and go back on the road again. There’s something poignant about their meetings, Leonard imparting some gnomic insights.

Themes

Fire is a big theme, the constant threat from the surrounding hills. The hermitage is often in danger, and Pico’s mother loses her own home. Obviously this reinforces the idea of impermanence, as nothing lasts forever. But there’s also renewal, in that you have to start afresh, and it clears the ground for new roots to grow.

And obviously it’s about stillness, and what comes forward when we go into that sacred space.

Such a simple revolution: Yesterday I thought myself at the center of the world. Now the world seems to sit at the center of me.

Summary

It feels more like a collection of ideas and notes, sometimes like a diary, rather than a chronological spiritual memoir, but it didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the book. What is time anyway (that’s for another post). I’d say I mostly absorbed this, rather than read it, if you get my meaning.

Pico Iyer was a good companion on those nights between christmas into new years in front of the fire. It’s a cliche, but it’s not just about the journey, but those you meet along the way, and I really enjoyed details of his encounters with people, especially the monks. It was the perfect book in the ideal place for me, quietly profound and never preachy.

240 pages, Paperback

Published August 13, 2025

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

Happiness beyond thought: A practical guide to awakening by Gary Weber is a deeply practical, nuts and bolts book to guide practitioners on the path to enlightenment. Or more simply, an end to compulsive thinking, as the title so clearly says. Using realisations from his own life, along with meditation, breathing exercises, yoga postures and chanting, and drawing from Advaita Vedanta and Zen Buddhism, Weber clearly points the way.

Gary Weber

Gary Weber has lead a full life, and has been a husband, father, scientist, military officer, and senior executive in industry and academia (at one stage he was a vice president in a company with over 1000 employees). But throughout his life, he felt a dissatisfaction with being trapped in the world of thought, the compulsive thinking that plagues many of us. Or all of us, but not everyone realises they are under the spell of the voice in their head. (It is believed the average person has 60,000 thoughts a day).

Coming from a Christian background, he always had a sense that everyone could reach the consciousness that Christ talked about. He spent his life searching, reading spiritual books, attending meditation retreats, doing yoga. One day, in the middle of an asana (a yoga pose) that he had done thousands of times over the years - pop - his ‘I’ thought fell away. No angels blowing horns, no internal fireworks in the mind - his seeking just stopped and it was permanent.

This radical shift in consciounsess meant that thoughts still arose - but he is no longer guided by them. There’s an awareness there, that remains untouched by mental chatter.

‘There was no one to experience anything anymore. There was only awareness. It had always been this way, but now the clouds were gone.’

Practical

What I enjoyed about this book most was how grounded it was in step-by-step methods to loosen the sense of a separate self. Using Self-enquiry, breath exercises and mantras, yoga postures and recommending a daily routine, Weber has come up with something that feels like a field manual for spiritual transformation.

Obviously he has a scientific and military background, and you can tell that by the way he approaches the whole process with clarity and precision. I mean, he backs it all with neuroscience, showing how obsessive thoughts are tied to the brains default network.

There is deep insight here, but there’s also a lot of real world application. It reminded me of another book I read by a similar minded fellow - Pouring concrete; A Zen path to the Kingdom of god by Robert Harwood.

There’s something wonderfully unpretentious about the way he writes about non-duality, like he’s been collecting data on the subject. It’s like an experiment and he’s asking - why not try it out for yourself? I’ve been doing one of the yoga sequences he describes, and have found it an interesting way to incorporate self enquiry.

Spiritual Books

I’m not as voracious reader of spirituality books as I used to be, but I still like to have one on the go. I’ve read plenty of them, but I still continue to find them both fascinating and fulfulling, especially when they resonate. And I enjoy reading about the various paths people take - everyones is differnt, we all have our own.

This isn’t so much about his journey, but more about what Weber has learnt and how it can be of use to others. I certainly found plenty of practical advice in ‘Happiness beyond thought’, a no-frills guide to finally dropping the nagging voice we all live with.

A grounded, comforting book.

172 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2007

Mickey Haller, aka The Lincoln Lawyer is back in the courtroom in ‘The Proving Ground’, this time filing a civil lawsuit against an Artificial Intelligence company implicated in a murder case.

The book tackles themes very much of-the‑moment: corporate tech power, responsibility for AI tools, ethical consequences of unregulated algorithms, and what justice looks like in an age of “smart” machines, in another tightly plotted legal thriller.

Crime

Haller’s case hinges on a lawsuit against a powerful AI company called Tidalwave, whose chatbot allegedly influenced a teenage boy to murder his ex‑girlfriend. His clients are both the victim’s mother and the perpetrators parents, seeking to hold the company accountable.

There’s also a parallel case, involving an old client trying to clear her father’s name and free him from prison. Mickey is haunted by this case, and is keen to get justice. Whilst the AI trial is current, the Snow case is more an old school human tragedy, and provides some counterbalance to the main story, asking two questions - whether justice is ever truly achieved, and has Mickey really changed that much.

Mickey Haller

We last saw Mickey Haller (and Harry) in ‘Resurrection Walk’ where he was working as a defence attorney, and by the end of the that he was burnt out and looking for a change. Which is why we now find him working as a civil litigation attorney, representing the interests of victims.

You can tell early on that Mickey has got his mojo back - he’s now turning his attention towards systems of power - such as technology companies, and he wants to hold them accountable. He’s not so much the slick courtroom operator - the Lincoln is in storage - becoming something of a moral advocate.

Jack McEvoy

I do love how Connelly brings his characters together, and investigative reporter Jack McEvoy features in ‘The Proving Ground’. We last met Jack when he was on the trail of a serial killer in ‘Fair Warning’, another book which was incredibly up to date, that time looking at the genetics analysis industry, as well as featuring misogynistic men and incels. These make an appearane this time too.

McEvoy is a handy man to have around, and his research skills make a big contribution to the trial, especially with the mountain of printed discovery materials that need sorting. It’s a reminder, if we needed it, that investigative journalism is more important as it’s ever been, as these corporations do their best to avoid scrutiny.

LA and Maggie McFierce

LA is not just a backdrop to the legal drama - Mickey is back with Maggie ‘McFierce’ McPherson, whose house has burnt down in the wildfires. This puts pressure on their relationship after she moves in, whilst the natural disaster is a reminder that everything is just sandcastles facing the incoming tide that feels like our world now.

Cisco Wojciechowski also proves his worth, as does Lorna.

Harry Watch - Only a brief mention of Harry Bosch in the book - too sick it seems to play any part in the case. He’s still alive, so I remain hopeful we’ll get one more book about Harry. Even as a sidekick, one last case to go out on.

Courtroom

But of course, Haller is as charismatic and wily as ever, using all the tricks of his trade to gain whatever advantage he can. I was totally immersed in all parts of the process, from selecting jurors to persuading witnesses to come to testify.

There’s a wonderful back and forth in the courtroom drama, with the scales tipping between the two sides - Mickey and the Mason twins defending. When there’s a witness on the stand, with one side asking questions and the other constantly raising objections, appeals made to the judge with sidebars and visits back to her office, it honestly feels like a ring side seat in a boxing match. Nobody does this better than Connelly and it’s honestly as engrossing as any courtroom scene I think he’s ever done.

The stakes are high in this one and it shows. And what is the proving ground?

‘To some it’s a stage. A place where carefully choreographed drama takes place. To others, a chess match with moves designed and practiced weeks and sometimes months in advance. Where nothing is left to chance. Where the wrong moves have grave consequences and finality. Where the recruited audience sits in silent judgment with their hidden biases and contempt.’

Summary

This is such a superb pivot by Connelly - Haller has always been a great character, but this switch gives him even more depth, allowing us to see his maturation as a person.

Connelly taps into a deep, troubling anxiety in this book - the dizzying speed at which Artificial Intelligence has taken root in so much our daily lives. Whether it’s in work, or as daily companions to converse with and seek advice, it seems to be everywhere. We seem to have given ourselves over to it without much of a thought.

There’s also the sense that these corporations are becoming stronger than countries, and operate above the law. In fact, it seems that governments are in thrall to these multi billionaires, and it is they who pull the strings. And many of us feel powerless to do anything about it.

Each Connelly book is an absolute pleasure for me to read or listen to. I get a deep satisfaction from his storytelling, and find his characters so compelling. They have a proper depth to them, and none more so than Mickey Haller.

Considering the rate at which he publishes his books, I’m always impressed by the quality, which never seems to dip. Long may he run.

I listed to the audiobook, published by Hachette UK on 21st October 2025

10 Hrs 49 minutes

I have listed Micheal Connellys books chronologically and it can be found here

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org 

Choosing a name

It’s 1987, and in the aftermath of a storm, Cora, pushing a pram, make their way through debris strewn streets with her daugher Maia, to register the name of her son. Her domineering GP husband has demanded she name him Gordon after him.

But she hesitates. Maia wants to call him Bear, a nicknames she has given him. Cora likes the wildness of it, and dares herself to go with it. She herself likes Julian, meaning Sky Father. She believes she can placate her husband with it.

Choosing each of these names has consequences, so we follow three alternate times over thirty five years, catching up with the characters every seven years.

‘Tomorrow - if morning comes, if the storm stops raging - she'll register the name of her son. Or perhaps, and this is her real concern, she'll formalise who he will become.’

Identity

Each version of Gordon/Bear/Julian grows up in differing circumstances, taking slightly different paths as a result of his name. He’s affected by parenting, by loss, by socialisation, his own choices.

But for me, the book is not so much about how a persons name defines them, rather how the abusive husbands reactions to the choices shaped the lives of Cora and her children. It’s a heavier book perhaps than I’ve perhaps described so far, featuring domestic abuse, often graphically depicted.

Writing

Part of the authors skill is in making these characters the same but different in each of the timelines. It’s difficult to describe without giving too much away, but I was generally able to tune into each of their lives. Towards the end I was beginning to get a little confused as to ‘which’ of the minor characters, such as Maia, that I was reading about, but I eventually worked it out.

It’s pacey without being a page turner, and the structure, as I’ve said, works well. It’s definately an inpressive debut. There’s an undercurrent of sadness throughout, sometimes of opportunties missed, of grief. But the heaviness mostly comes from the domestic abuse, often graphic.

Some of the Irish scenes didn’t quite ring true to me - it sometimes felt like the writers ‘idea’ of Ireland but it didn’t overly bother me. They just felt like a convenient backdrop. There wasn’t really much of a sense of a place to the book - it occupies an emotional space, not so much physical.

Is it wrong of me to want to have read more about the abuser? His appearances were fleeting and he seemed a bit one dimensional. It’s not his story, I know, but in the timelines I had a curiosity as to what became of him.

What’s in a name?

I’ve also been reading ‘Happiness beyond thought’ by Gary Weber, and as is sometimes the case these days, there was a synchronicity between the two books, though both totally different. Weber talks about using your name for meditation, by repeating it silently or aloud, and looking for where it arises. Apparently this was a favourite of the English poet, Wordsworth.

What sound do you respond to when your hear your name? Where does your name go when it passes from consciousness? What energies are generated when you hear your name, and can you sit with them?

Summary

I liked this well enough and thought the premise was a good one. It had a good pace and I found myself generally happy to lift the book again to begin with. However, I felt it sort of petered out. Did it completly grab me? Nope - I did like the concept and the author worked it well, especially with such a difficult subject matter, but the book never swept me away. Sometimes you can’t give yourself over to a book completely and you never quite understand why, but there it is.

328 pages, Hardcover

Published

May 6, 2025 by Pamela Dorman Books

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org 

Suzanne Segal is standing at a bus stop in Paris, when her sense of personal self vanishes. ‘Collision with the infinite’ charts the terror, the confusion, the years of therapy and spiritual wandering that followed, until she realised she was living as the “vastness” that underlies all experience.

No-Self

Imagine standing at a bus stop, when all of a sudden your self disappears. This is what happens to Suzanne Segal, and the book recounts her attempt to continue living ‘her’ life, despite ‘her’ not existing.

Although it happens suddenly, she does have a history of some spirtual background. The early sections describe how even as a child, she had used her name as a mantra. Later in her teens in the US she develops an interest in Transcendental meditation (TM), going on long retreats and even meet the Maharishi. She eventually becomes disillusioned with this, and her spiritual practice has largely stopped before she disappears at the bus stop.

Spiritual Wintertime

Suzanne is on her way back from a trip to the doctor to check on her pregnancy when the incident occurs at the bus stop. This adds to the sense of terror, the feeling of depersonalisation.

“Life went on. The body functioned. Speech happened, eating happened, parenting happened, but there was no one doing it.”

What follows is ten years in a sort of limbo, her previous relationship and life falling apart, as she moves back to the states to try and work out what has happened to her, what particular psychological problem she is suffering.

It’s a long fourteen years, with relationships coming and going, but she does manage to achieve a psychology doctorate in this period. What’s most frustrating for her is the conveyor belt of therapists that she meets with, the years and years of therapy .

She’s desperate to find out what has happened to her, but is continually frustrated as therapists try to force her into various models, none of which answer her questions. A couple of times she feels that is understood, entering into a relationship with one psychologist, only to discover that they have completely misunderstood her.

Zen Buddhism and Advaita

Eventually, Suzanne begins to meet with spiritual teachers, most importantly with those who practice Zen Buddhism and Advaita. It’s only then that she begins to finally understand her experience in a spiritual context. This brings great relief, and she begins to offer her own weekly meetings and dialogues, even training therapists to help them understand what she had gone through. Sadly, she passes from cancer in 1997

“The idea that we have a self that controls, arbitrates, or is the doer behind our actions is absurd. The individual self is nothing but an idea of who we are.”

Books on Spiritual Awakening

I have compiled a list elsewhere of books on spiritual awakening, and there’s no doubt I’ll add this to it, a classic non-duality memoir. I’m continually picking up more books on spirituality, and this has been one of the most startling books on the subject I’ve read.

Saying that, the state of no-self is indescribable - it’s beyond mere words. Suzanne Segal makes this clear throughout the book, but her recounting of her experiences is probably as close as it’s possible to get. All the time she describes her life lucidly and with a straightforwardness that prevents it from ever feeling opaque. During the early stages you really get her sense of terror at what’s happening.

This isn’t just a book about awakening, it’s about what happens after the burst of insight: the thawing, the integration, the living in a body that no longer houses the same self‑image. How do you continue to live when your identity shifts?

“The experience of living without a personal identity, without an experience of being somebody … is exceedingly difficult to describe, but it is absolutely unmistakable.”

Non Duality

A number of the spiritual teachers she meets along the way remark that what has happened to her is something that many seekers spend their lives searching for. For the casual reader, that may seem strange given the existential terror that Suzanne Segal experiences, but her shift is so sudden and she is unprepared for it. There are accounts where it has fell away just as quickly, such as that of Ramana Maharshi, but many are more gradual or take place in an enviroment where it is understood.

Segal challenges just how fragile our sense of self is. We spend our lives building and maintaining this character: likes and dislikes, opinions, roles, traumas, memories. Suddenly that whole scaffolding can vanish, and what are we left with?

That which is always there, what we are.

Awareness — spacious, watching, not personal. Reading the book was a reminder of how much of what I call “me” is just habit and narrative, a looping thread I’ve mistaken for something solid.

Summary

I’m obviously a reader of books on this subject but I think the general reader with an interest in spirituality will find this as fascinating as I did.

I can see why this has been hailed as a spiritual classic - it’s certainly not a self help book, but rather a compelling account of what happens when the self disintegrates. There’s terror, disorientation, therapy, and years of trying to make sense of what had happened, before an understanding is reached.

“When asked Who I Am, the only answer possible is: I am the infinite, the vastness that is the substance of all things. I am no one and everyone, nothing and everything — just as you are.”

I got this book second hand after an online search.

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

I recently found myself in Birmingham airport, suffering a hangover and trying to pass a couple of hours before my flight. Turning on my kindle I looked for something that to read that would suit my mood. As soon as I came across the new novel by Irvine Welsh, I knew I’d be in good hands.

I have a habit of downloading Welsh books but not reading them until I know I’ll be up for it. Brain all buzzy, tired, looking a pacy distraction for a few hours - Welsh is your only man. I’ve read a fair few of his books during a few early morning awakenings, and those grimy, wired hours between three and five are the perfect time for me to enjoy his books.

I tend to enjoy the pace to his books, and he’s one of those authors who’ll give me a few laughs, sometimes whilst grimacing at the same time. If you’re easily offended it won’t be for you, and there’s always the chance of a couple of scenes that will sear themselves into your brain for the wrong reasons.

I’ve a friend who’s refused to read him since ‘Maribou Stork nightmares’ and I can get that - that book read like a fever dream. But I’ve kept coming back to him over the years, as I know at the very least I’ll be entertained. Don’t think he’s ever let me down on that score.

So I went into ‘Men in Love’ hoping it would be more of the same.

Trainspotting Sequel

Though he has returned to the crew in recent years, most notably in ‘Porno’, this takes place in the immediate aftermath of the book so it’s a proper trainspotting sequel. It starts with Renton doing a runner with the money to Amsterdam, with Begbie and Spud returning to Edinburgh, whilst Simon ‘Sick boy’ Williamson has his own plans in London.

The book largely moves between each of the characters per chapter, with a couple of other narrators making an appearance.

Where are the trainspotting characters now?

Mark Renton

Mark Renton is in Amsterdam, coming off the skag and then establishing a life for himself. He establishes a new group of friends, is involved with the dance scene, whilst he’s with a dutch girl who refuses to confine herself to one lover.

All the time though, he’s looking over his shoulder. He’s betrayed his friends, and he wonders can he ever truly escape the past he’s left behind.

Francis Begbie

I found Franco’s sections the hardest to read, written as they are in the trademark Welsh style Leith vernacular. After a few pages, it becomes easier to tune into but there was a bit of deciphering to be done, and at times you wish you hadn’t understood him.

We catch up with Franco in a couple of differing situations - in HMP Saughton, in local leith hostelries, with various unfortunate women and in the middle of a street brawl. He remains truly terrifying and you can almost feel the other characters flinch when he’s in their company.

His anger reaches another level when the subject of Renton comes up. This betrayal runs deep to the loyal Begbie, and he’s constantly on the prowl for the wee ginger F*cker.

In many ways, Franco is the most pitiable of the characters. Whilst the others are trying to move on in some way, Francis is forever stuck in a vortex, always ready to lash out with extreme violence for little reason, go to prison, rinse and repeat.

God forbid you get on the wrong side of him.

Spud Murphy

Poor spud. We find him in love at the beginning of the book, and you feel that maybe things are changing for the better for him. But alas, he hasn’t quite escaped the skag habit and still does the odd bit of ‘choryin’.

But he is trying, and even enrols in higher education for a bit. He does want to improve his lot, but he remains plagued by self doubt and still has a tendency to return to old habits. Angry at Renton, but maybe a bit more understanding than the rest of this crew.

I found his sections easier to read than Begbies - still in the Leith vernacular, but with a more soothing patter. Apart from when he’s referring to a certain….

Simon ‘Sick boy’ Williamson

As despicable and as readable as ever, Sick Boy has remained in London, determined to climb the social ladder with all the deviousness of a Becky Sharp and a lot more wickedness. He’s involved in porn industry, consorting with some thoroughly unsavoury characters, giving the book some of it’s more explicit scenes, if that’s the right phrase.

But he’s got his eyes on loftier heights than the backrooms of Soho sex shops. Hanging around Narcotics anonymous, using them as hunting grounds, looking for easy prey - he has previous form as a pimp, remember - he makes the acquaintance of Amanda Coningsby, a recovering addict.

Amanda is also from the upper class, the home place a ‘Tasteful Thameside mansion’ and her father is old money elite. A relationship ensues - and offers Sick boy the chance to escape the shackles of his social class, his Bannanay flats background, once and for all.

But can he truly escape his past? And more importantly - can he escape his self, his old ways? Class tension, the loyalty of his old mates - this is where his past and identity are on a collision course. There’s a desperation to his ambition, and a sense of disbelief when he visits the Coningsby mansion - ‘Could I have a life like this?’ he wonders,

Sickboy gets the bulk of the chapters, and even though he’s as degenerate as ever, I couldn’t help but look forward to returning to his story. He still seethes with anger for his old friend Renton, but the possibility of genuine change is within his grasp. He can see the future he’s dreamt of - can he take it?

Writing

The worst scene for me involved Sick boy and a porn shoot, and genuinely turned my stomach. Obviously there are sex scenes as well, described in varying degrees of details, but listen, if you’ve read and enjoyed Welsh before you won’t be that surprised.

I got the sense that Welsh enjoyed being with these characters, and you can sense the relish with which he describes some scenes. There’s a real energy to the book, and once I got stuck in I found it hard to put it down again. Just one more chapter I’d say to myself at 4:43 in the morning.

There’s sex, drugs, violence and the expected Leith Mayhem but there’s much more to the book than that. It’s very much about betrayal and loyalty, something especially personified by Begbie.

Sickboy surprises Coningbsy with his familiarity of Kant’s ‘critique of reason’, showing his class snobbery. Each of the characters is seeking change in some way, though Franco remains stuck in his doomed cycles.

Men in love?

Well, Franco is still in love with violence, especially those that ‘deserve’ it, and a good ‘peeve’. He also loves Rod Stewart (the music, mind) and his maw, even though she does get on his nerves.

Spud feels his heart is too weak for love, and it makes him too soft. As he says himeself, ‘it’s the easiest drug to kick, because it gives you up, whether you’re done with it or not. If only skag was like love.’

Sickboy loves himself most of all, obviously. He tells us that when he starts to feel these emotions for for someone else, he distrusts them immensely. He’ll never compromise on his ambitions, and that his time will come.

Renton is the one who has the most mature approach to love. He has loved deeply and lost deeply, and knows he will go through it all again. He believes the ‘one’ is out there.

Summary

Thoroughly enjoyed this trainspotting sequel, and a reminder to self to always keep an Irvine Welsh book on the kindle. It’s irreverent and offensive at times, and some scenes I wish I hadn’t read.

But it’s got a propulsive narrative, mostly driven by the narcissistic Sickboy but ably supported by the other Leith lads. And there’s an emotional depth that perhaps hasn’t been there before.

528 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 24, 2025

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org 

I’d previously read and enjoyed ‘A beginners guide to Japan’ by Pico Iyer, listening to it on audiobook whilst on my trip through that country. He also contributes a series on the Waking up App, on how travel can be a practice of stillness, focus and self-discovery.

So this immediately appealed to me - a journey through places such as Iran and North Korea, India and Kashmir, the Australian outback and Belfast. He’s chosen these particular locations because they have claimed or imagined to be paradise, but have also been scarred by conflict.

Belfast

I was particularly eager to hear what he had to say about Belfast, a city I have lived and spent a fair bit of time in. I know enough about it’s history, so it didn’t bother me that he only gave a brief mention to the recent past, with reference to peace walls and black taxi tours.

He was on his own personal quest here - as a student who’d loved Van Morrison, he was on the trail of the Belfast cowboy and the places that inspired ‘Astral Weeks’. (By sheer coincidence, as I write this ‘And the healing has begun’ plays on Lyric FM - the always excellent ‘Mystery Train’ with John Kelly).

He views the city as a paradise transformed by Morrisons lyrics. East Belfast is grey and industrial, but when he stumbles onto Cypress Avenue something awakens within, and ‘He’d made of the unpromising landscape a world as magically illuminated as Avalon'.’

Kashmir and Iran

I found these sections interesting - in Iran he often finds himself under surveillance, and relies on a couple of local guides. What becomes apparent is that the deep piety of the people coexists with modern fashions and secular desires. There’s a poetic quality to his meetings with people, especially when he goes to Shiraz, and you get the sense that the inner life can flourish despite the external constraints.

There’s something haunting about Kashmir- a beautiful paradise, but deeply troubled. His mother was born there, so there’s a personal element to his journey there which added depth to his experience. This becomes a sort of ancestral pilgrimage, and I got the sense that it’s difficult to trust the stillness of this particular Eden when it’s so volatile.

Japan, North Korea and Sri Lanka

I enjoyed his thoughts on Kyoto, where the traditional and the modern collide - on my recent visit I did see the incongruence with visiting some beautiful shrines with hordes of other tourists. A stunning city, but you have to work hard to find stillness and silence there.

His visit to North Korea allows him to look beyond the propaganda and see the portrayal of the people as not accurate - but this particular paradise on earth seems far from that description.

Sri Lanka is a natural paradise ‘soaked in blood’ and torn asunder by conflict. Looking for peace here is more difficult, and the ‘calmest place in the land was a city of the dead’. 

Audiobook

I really wish I had read rather than listened to this book. Pico is a lovely narrator, with a natural warmth to his voice, but too often I wanted to slow down and take in some of his observations. I just find that hard to do with audiobooks, so that’s my fault rather than an issue with the format.

Summary

Pico Iyer doesn’t go to the picture postcard places to find paradise - instead he asks what it means to find peace and stillness in a fractured world. Scattered amongst his travels he weaves in personal and philosophical insights from Zen, Sufism and Christian mysticism, to name a few. He’s a perfect travel companion.

By the end of the book, it seemed to me that the greatest journey of all that we undertake is that which goes inward. Someone else once said that the Kingdom of God is within us, and I’m happy to go along with that.

"I would just let life come to me in all its happy confusion and find the holiness in that. I sat where I was, along the river, and watched the carnival play out."

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org 

First published in 1956 before being translated for the first time in 2025, this is a collection of thirty first person accounts of Kensho (awakening) from nuns and laywomen who trained under Sozen Nagasawa Roshi at Kannonji temple in Tokyo.

This was a turbulent time in Japan - it was in the aftermath of World War 2 , and some of them had suffered terrible losses. It was a time of post war austerity, turmoil and food shortages, so these spiritual awakenings took place against a background of suffering and daily struggle. It’s not just this fact that makes them remarkable, but also that we are hearing from these women in their own words.

Spiritual Awakening

I’ve written about books about spiritual awakening before, so when I heard this was available I was eager to read it. Looking at my list I realise there are no female voices, so I thought it was high time to rectify that. What’s interesting about this book is that we aren’t hearing these stories second hand - these are personal accounts, told in their own voices.

These thirty chapters are short, but they are startling. They are very much rooted in the time - you get a real sense of the struggle involved, the suffering and the many hours of practice put in. The kyosaku makes plenty of appearances, a wooden stick used to help practitioners stay focused, alert, and to relieve physical stiffness. Not so much used for punishment, but to keep you from falling asleep or slouching. Something I could probably do with myself as I nod off during my morning sits.

What they all have in common is their longing to experience kensho - the first awakening. They burn with desire and dedication, determined to end their suffering once and for all.

Sozen Nagasawa Roshi

Sozen Nagasawa Roshi herself is a central figure in this book. Born in 1888, she became a pioneer among women in Japanese monastic Zen. She was one of the very few independent female Zen teachers in her era, and she worked for institutional change — for example, pushing for women’s Dharma transmission and forming support systems for nuns and lay female practitioners.

In the book she comes across as both compassionate and fierce, and her commitment to her students is unwavering. From some of their accounts, you can tell that she just commands presence, and she patiently guides generations of nuns and laywomen to an awakening. She encouraged the women to write down their experiences, which forms the basis of the book.

Personal Accounts

What I liked most about these personal accounts was how much they were rooted in the real - the awakening arises in real suffering. Momoyo Nakayama in the chapter ‘Remembering My Child’ writes,

“I lost in the war my beloved only son, … I cannot express the grief and anguish I felt … Only other mothers who have experienced this can know the feeling.”

She goes on describing her life in grief, how she held a small wooden box with her son’s remains, and how the pain crushed her world: “From a world of light, I was thrown into a world of darkness...I lost all desire to live.”

She meets Roshi, and is drawn to her ‘untouchable intensity’ and starts to attend short sesshins then one retreat after another. She talks about the pain of sitting for hours, and the anger she feels when she’s hit by the kyosaku - she’s never been hit by anyone in her life.

Through this pain and exhaustion she relies on Roshi for guidance, and continues to push through and practice. Eventually, she reaches buddha mind and:

“heaven and earth are one; myself and the universe are one body. Buddha is what I am; there is only unity….here living and working together with my dead son is a joy that cannot be expressed in words.”

There are many accounts like this, as these inspiring women try to end their suffering once and for all.

Zen Saying

There is a Zen saying I thought about when I was reading this book:

‘If you seek it with all your heart, even if you’re a fool, you cannot fail.

If you seek it half-heartedly, even if you’re a genius, you will not find it.’

These women, with all the pain and hardship in their lives, at a time when their country was recovering from a devastating war, were able to find the determination to sit and end their suffering.

They stayed, they bowed, they showed up - again and again and again.

It made me think of my own attempts, and how laziness and restlessness sometimes make it difficult for me to even sit for twenty minutes in the morning. Too often I skip an evening sit because of the usual; tough day at work, just too tired, something on the TV, stuff to do etc etc

Any excuse not to sit.

How much do I want this? Am I prepared to go deep into my own enquiry and meditiation?

Sometimes I think modern living has softened me to the point where I can barely sit with any discomfort. The slightest twinge of unhappiness or dissatisfaction has me reaching for the phone, the remote, the cupboard.

Anything to ignore this suffering. Flitting between teachings. Watching another youtube.

If I had a smidgeon of the grit of these women. But at the same time, my path is my path. I have to follow it. And it’s important to not apply too much effort.

Summary

Obviously if you’re a frequent reader of this blog you’ll know that I have an interest in spirituality, especially buddhism. This book appealed to me because it’s not about some lofty mysticism, achieving enlightenment whilst sitting cross legged listening to a teacher on the side of a mountain. This is hard won awakening, from people living ordinary lives, often painful.

Within these personal stories there is insight to be found, and I often found myself moved by these accounts. And theres’s something inspiring about women carving out their own path in what is often a male dominated tradition.

(A word of praise to the editor Esho Sudan, and Kogen Czarnik who translated ‘In the body, in this lifetime’ - the book feels intimate and accessible, and I felt that the womens voices had been preserved with care - there’s a lovely rhythm to their accounts and they always felt authentic and honest).

I think this is a book that will be of interest to anyone on the path, especially to those who want to read more about real life zen awakening experiences and women in Buddhism.

232 pages, Paperback

Published June 17, 2025

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org 

If you're not from Ireland, you might’ve missed this: in December 2004, on the cusp of Christmas, £26.5 million was stolen from the Northern Bank headquarters in Belfast city centre. Not through tunnels or balaclava-clad shootouts — no, this was a lot less dramatic.

Two bank employees were held hostage in their homes while their families were threatened, and the next day they were forced to help move bags of cash out of the bank like it was just another Monday. It was, and still is, one of the biggest and most chilling heists in UK and Irish history — and no one has ever been convicted.

Glenn Patterson

In The Northern Bank Job: The Heist and How They Got Away With It, based on his hit BBC podcast ‘Assume Nothing’, the novelist and essayist Patterson investigates not just what happened, but what it means that it happened. And what it means that no one has ever paid for it.

What I liked — and didn’t quite expect — is that this isn’t your typical true crime book. Yes, Patterson walks us through the operation: the logistics, the timeline, the bagloads of cash simply wheeled out the front door. This is the most enjoyable part of the book, with it’s cinematic fast pace.

But this is also less Ocean’s Eleven and more post-conflict ghost story. Patterson is interested in the shadow that this heist casts across the fragile peace of the North of Ireland. This isn't just a robbery.

He’s also a sharp and humane writer — he has a journalist’s instinct for clarity and a novelist’s feel for mood. He captures the eeriness of the event, the strange silence that followed, and the many complexities of the fragile peace process.

Strengths and Weaknesses

There’s a lot to admire here. The research is meticulous, using lots of notes from court cases during the time, and Patterson avoids the trap of sensationalism. He’s especially good on the psychology of the victims — not just the financial angle, but the human one: the fear, the trauma, the awkward silence that follows you back to work after your house has been turned into a hostage scene.

There are also reflections on the Peace Process, the blurred lines between political and criminal violence, and how a post-conflict society tries to heal — or sometimes just forget. Twenty years have passed, and I’d forgotten some of the events detailed here, including the absolute shambles of a trial and the occasional sightings of northern bank notes in the wild.

That said, the book does meander a bit. At times, it strays from the core narrative into adjacent histories and political side streets. While these are interesting in their own right (maybe not if you aren’t from here), they do dilute the pacing. As someone from the north, a lot of the events and players were familiar to me.

It does remind me how utterly dysfunctional this state is, as we lumber on with our with our toothless assembly, never far from a crisis that threatens to blow the whole thing down.

And if you're looking for a big reveal — a smoking gun or a final twist — you won’t find it here. But that’s in keeping with the North itself; some things just aren’t resolved and you wonder if they ever will be.

Verdict

I listened to the audiobook, read by Aidan O’Neill and it worked well, definitely benefitting from having a local voice.

I didn’t know I wanted to listen to a book about a robbery I already half-remembered, but I’m glad I did. The Northern Bank Job isn’t just about money disappearing — it’s about the silences that remain. It’s both a reflective and compelling read that leaves you thinking less about who did it and more about what happens when truth is always just out of reach.

If you’re into true crime that nudges against history, politics, and collective memory, or if you just enjoy writing that’s smart and subtle, give it a go. This isn’t a thriller — it’s something stranger and sadder than that.

Audiobook Seven Hours 45 minutes

Publication Date: May 8, 2025 by Apollo

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org 

It’s over ten years since I read ‘The Spinning Heart’ by Donal Ryan and I can still remember it. For me, it was a few pages in and already I felt like I’d wandered into a quiet room full of ordinary people whispering truths. Over a decade later, the author returns to that same small village, its wounds still humming beneath the surface, with ‘Heart, Be At Peace’ — a follow-up not in the traditional sense, but in tone, spirit, and shared breath. It’s a gentle, lyrical novel that doesn’t shout for your attention, but earns it in the spaces between the lines.

Returning to Familiar Ground

Set in the same rural community as The Spinning Heart, Ryan’s new novel picks up with the next generation, but the ghosts of the past linger. That earlier novel gave us a chorus of voices in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, each one raw with loss and longing. Here, time has moved on, but not everything has healed. The rhythms of the language are still unmistakably Ryan — sparse, musical, never a word wasted.

It feels like sitting at a kitchen table in rural Tipperary, mug of tea in hand, and hearing someone slowly tell you what they can’t quite say out loud. There’s something sacred in the restraint.

Style and Substance

Anyone familiar wit the man’s work will know there’s a deceptive simplicity to Ryan’s prose. He writes like someone who trusts the reader. There are no fireworks, no posturing. He doesn’t push the emotional weight onto you; instead, it slips under your skin when you’re not looking.

Heart, Be At Peace isn’t so much a sequel as a return to a world we were never finished with. The characters carry secrets, regrets, and tenderness with them, and as always with Ryan, there’s a deep humanity in every paragraph. He writes about people you feel you might pass on a country road, or sit beside at mass.

The structure is the same as the previous novel - each character has a chapter, 21 in all. There are stories that run through the book, and we hear snippets from each of the characters that help to piece things together. This chronological structure works well, and he weaves everything together beautifully so you barely notice the seams.

There were times in the book when a name was mentioned and I had to cast my mind back. It was usually about a character from earlier in the book, and it made me think, but it worked because it kept me engaged with the work.

It’s like living in a small town, and you’ll hear a snippers of information at the shop, on the street, in the pub, at the chapel.

You have to put it all together yourself.

Lyricism and Awareness

One line, in particular, rang in my ears long after I put the book down: “The heart remembers even what the head forgets.” It’s not just a beautiful line; it’s like a thesis for the whole novel. This for me is very a story about memory, legacy, and the quiet ache of trying to do right by the past.

I kept thinking, too, about how the book echoed a kind of non-dual awareness. The moments of presence, of being with grief without trying to fix it, of noticing the land, the silence, the spaces between words. It’s a deeply Irish kind of mysticism — unspoken but always felt.

Familiar Faces

It’s a quiet joy to be reunited with a few familiar faces, not least Bobby Mahon — the broken-hearted soul at the centre of The Spinning Heart. There’s something profoundly moving about meeting him again all these years later, his pain no longer raw but folded into the shape of a life still being lived. Donal Ryan doesn’t dramatise these returns; he lets them breathe, and we’re invited simply to witness where time and tenderness have carried them.

Bobby is deeply troubled. He’s still in the building trade, but he’s worried about the appearance of an incriminating photo of him doing the rounds on whatsapp. But there’s a deeper rage rumbling inside him, this time caused not by his father or unscrupulous property developers, but by a scourge that will be familiar to parents of teenagers the country wide - drugs. Bobby has his eye on a couple of local lads dealing outside the school, and can’t understand why no one is doing anything about it. Maybe it’ll be left to him.

Other characters reappear too — some steadied by the passing years, others still quietly aching with the weight of old griefs or small joys not yet spoken aloud. There’s a lovely sense of accumulation, of a community still weathering the same winds, but with slightly different postures now. It’s not nostalgia — it’s grace. And it reminds you that no one’s story ever really ends, they just keep unfolding in the hearts of those who care enough to listen.

Themes

Looking through my blog, I’m surprised there’s only one Donal Ryan book review here - The Queen of Dirt Island. It surprises me because looking at his previous releases, I’ve read the majority of them. Odd, but the majority must predate this blog.

Anyway, I’m a huge fan of his work because his books always feel so reflective of Irish life. Grief, loneliness, mental illness, intergenerational trauma, economic collapse - he’ll go there. But the one thing that probably stands out in his work is the compassion that he has for his characters.

If I have one little qualm, it’s that the resolution to one of the main storylines was maybe a bit too tidy for my liking. It certainly didn’t impact my enjoyment of the novel, and others may feel differently.

Summary

If you loved The Spinning Heart, you owe it to yourself to read this. But even if you haven’t, Heart, Be At Peace stands on its own. It’s a slow-burning, richly human story that reflects the quiet, moral complexity of rural life.

This isn’t a book that hands you revelations. It nudges you. And in a world that seems increasingly full of noise and certainty, that nudge feels like grace.

208 pages, Paperback

Published

August 8, 2024 by Penguin

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org 

Eimear Ryan’s The Grass Ceiling is a powerful blend of memoir, sports writing, and cultural commentary that asks what it means to be a woman in Irish sport. With sharp insight and lyrical prose, Ryan explores her life as a camogie player navigating male-dominated fields—both literal and metaphorical. Whether you’ve a grá for the GAA or just enjoy good Irish sportswriting, this is an honest, moving, and timely read that challenges the stories we tell about women, competition, and belonging.

GAA Books

I’ve read a couple of good GAA biographys and Irish sport memoirs over the years. Being from Ard Mhacha, Oisin McConville’s ‘The Gambler’ was as honest as it gets about addiction. I’ve always admired Darragh Ó’Sé as a player, and his column in the Irish times made for good reading. There’s a few others over the years I’ve read and enjoyed.

But I’d say ‘The club’ by Christy O’Connor is probably my favourite. It’s a fly-on-the-wall chronicle of the 2009 season at St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield GAA club in County Clare, where O’Connor was the Cúl Báire, when tragedy strikes.

I remember it as such an authentic read, pulling no punches on player tensions, club politics, grief, and the emotional pull of community. It gets across the importance of the GAA club as the heart of the parish, and the strong pull of identity.

I’d say Eimear Ryan’s book is in the same bracket of quality Irish sportswriting

Camogie

I wasn’t alone in thinking that the Camogie final between Cork and Galway was the pick of the games across the codes this year. Galway won the O’Duffy cup by a point from Carrie Dolan in the dying momments, to deny Cork a three in the row. Plenty of tension, skill and drama throughout - good to get a final that lived up to the hype.

For my regular international readers, there isn’t much of a difference between Hurling and Camogie these days, though both have their own traditions and identities. Both are physical and skillful games, use the same pitches and scoring systems, and are the fastest field sports in the world. Both sports are deeply rooted in Irish identity.

Unfortunately, and as addressed by Eimear in the book, Camogie players have long faced inequalities in funding, media coverage, and recognition, despite putting in the same effort and commitment as the hurlers and footballers.

Journey

The emotional heart of the book is Eimears journey as a camogie player - from her roots in Moneygall, representing Tipp at intercounty level, before moving to her adopted club of St Finbarrs in Cork.

I enjoyed reading about the club stuff with Moneygall, and her roots in the GAA (her Grandfather Séamus Ó Rian was president of the GAA from 1967 to 1970). How the GAA field was central to the parish, and everything revolved around the hurling.

We get the highs and lows of the club career, and always, always, the dedication and the commitment. Ryan is a fine writer, and she really gets across the pull of the club loyalty and the weight of county expectation.

Eimear’s skill as a writer means she can take you into personal anecdotes and the thick of the action of a tight club quarter final against a nearby parish, whilst also weaving in the wider commentary about Irish society and sporting structures.

You really get a sense of the club player - the tradition of playing for your parish with the girls you grew up with, not winning much but keeping at it, and the tough decision to leave your club because you’d moved away and wanted to play somewhere closer. And the toll that injuries and age take on you.

What also resonated with me was how our interests change, and I recongised how Eimear was discovering different things, especially music. I never had the illustrious career that Eimear had, and quit playing club at a young age, partly due to a recurring knee injury but more so due to a widening of interests. I began to stray from sport and the white lines of the local pitch, so important growing up, to finding solace in lyrics and music, discovering new bands, books and friends who weren’t into sport. I wish I had played for longer, to have continued playing with my mates and pushed myself to be part of something bigger, but I went in a different direction.

Ryan asks the deep questions: What do we carry from our local clubs and school teams into our adult selves? What do sports teach us—about body image, confidence, failure? Her reflections on team dynamics, community pride, and the fear of ambition are deeply Irish and very resonant.

The Skort Rebellion

‘The Grass ceiling’ was written in 2023, but I couldn’t write this review without mention of ‘The Skort Rebellion’ of 2025, when Camogie players across the country finally snapped and said: “We’re not wearing skorts anymore.” The skort—one of those skirt-with-buried-shorts hybrids—felt more like a sartorial relic than sporting kit. Most players found it uncomfortable and outdated .

With 83% of players saying they wanted shorts and 70% reporting discomfort, the Camogie Association was cornered into calling a special congress. The result? A landslide vote—98% of delegates agreed: from now on, players get to choose shorts or skorts.

In the book, Eimear writes that ‘the skort feels like nothing more than an attempt to keep us in our box.’ These are small steps, but hopefully they are significant.

This wasn’t just about fabric—it was about autonomy, gender norms, and finally having the players' voices heard. If I learned anything in The Grass Ceiling, it’s how small things can carry the emotional weight of centuries.

Summary

Obviously camogie is central in The Grass Ceiling. But it will also resonate with anyone who’s ever felt on the edge of belonging—in sport, school, gender roles, or social expectations. It’s a book about being told (explicitly or otherwise): "Don’t be too ambitious." It’s also about pushing back.

I’m a huge fan of Gaelic games, but I’ve never really considered the treatment of camogie players before. They give the same commitment, but aren’t respected near as well as their football and hurling counterparts (Even the word camogie feels outdated to me now).

This is a beautifully written, honest, and thought-provoking read. If you’re into modern GAA books, feminism, or Irish sport memoirs that reflect the culture we grew up in and the stories we were never quite told, then this is worthy of your time.

First published May 4, 2023 by Sandycove

208 Pages, paperback

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org 

Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone is part memoir, part art criticism, and part meditation on what it means to be lonely in a world built for connection. Set against the backdrop of New York City, Laing weaves her own solitude with the lives of artists like Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, and David Wojnarowicz, showing how isolation can spark creativity

Loneliness

I’ve read and reviewed a number of non-fiction books about loneliness - I am an Island by Tamsin Calidas was a tough but inspiring memoir, whilst The Lonely Century by Noreen Hertz was a well researched and readable book about the epidemic of loneliness we are currently experiencing. Lost Connections by Johann Hari also looked at how disconnected our lives have become.

So it’s a subject I’ve returned to a number of times on this blog. I have an interest in reading about longing, about presence, about the gaps between people. Also about what lies behind it - silence, stillness and presence. There’s no doubting loneliness can be devastating physically and emotionally, but if we can learn to sit with solitude, it can become something else entirely.

‘The lonely city’ takes a different approach. After a painful breakup which results in a move to New York, Laing uses artists lives to reflect on isolation. These artists include such as Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Henry Darger, David Wojnarowicz, Klaus Nomi, Josh Harris, and Vivian Maier. What we end up with is a book that mixes personal memoir with cultural commentary about introspection, and how solitude can be creative rather than just painful.

Edward Hopper

I was familar with some of the paintings of Edward Hopper, not so much about his life. Unsurprisingly, he cuts an isolated figure, living an inward, self contained existence.

‘Hopper painted solitude because he knew it intimately; the stillness in his rooms and diners came from the stillness within him.’

I enjoyed the insights from Laing about Hoppers most famous painting, ‘Nighthawks’. As she points out, there’s no visible door to the outside in the diner, a detail that I dwelled on for a bit. Those inside are trapped, whilst we are always on the outside, looking in. Maybe that’s what modern living is like for many of us - urban loneliness means that connection feels inaccessible. It also added a sense of unease to the painting.

‘Automat’ is another one I sat with for a while, along with ‘Early Sunday Morning’ and ‘Office in a small city’. These empty streets, glassed in diners and isolated figures aren’t just scenes - they represent states of being, the emotional architecture of loneliness.

Andy Warhol

The other artist whose work I was slightly familar with was Andy Warhol. I learnt a different side of him here - not the cultish, cool, detached pop idol but rather as someone deeply lonely, and vulnerable, despite being constantly surrounded by hangers on.

Laing tells us how Warhols troubled, sickly childhood gave him conflicting feelings towards intimacy; he often feared it whilst simultaneously craving it. His methods of working, his tape recorder, polaroids and video cameras, keep a barrier between him and his relationships.

“If you keep the lens between yourself and the world, nothing can really touch you.”

His methods of working become shields against vulnerability, and made me think a lot about how he was ahead of the game. Look at us now, with these carefully curated online personas.

This was one of my favourite sections, talking as it does about how modern life highlights our contradictions around intimacy, about visibility, and longing. Cities amplify these tensions, how we want to be seen but at the same time we want to protect ourselves. We crave intimacy, but worry about becoming too exposed. And ultimately we choose to surround ourselves with people, but feel even more isolated.

Was it Bukowski who said “You can be in a crowd full of people and still feel utterly alone?” Satre said something similar in ‘nausea’ - “I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these people… they don’t know I exist.”

David Wojnarowicz, Klaus Nomi, Henry Darger, Nan Goldin

Although I wasn’t familiar with the work of the other artists that Olivia Laing writes about, I did find their backgrounds and modes of expression to be interesting. I found myself scouring the interweb for their works, and have watched some youtubes as well. Always enjoy discovering new artists, and the New York scene was rife with them, especially during the 80’s.

David Wojnarowicz felt very much like the emotional heart of the book, a queer artist and activist who uses his art to rage against political, personal and social silence during the AIDS crisis. There’s a raw energy to both his writing and mixed media works, a real kicking back against the pricks, which explores abandonment, shame, and connection when time is of the essence.

Klaus Nomi was a German countertenor who was a fixture of the 1980’s New York counterculture scene. No surprise that he collaborated with Bowie, and there’s something otherworldly about him. I’ve watched a few performances on Youtube, but there’s something about this one that just stops me. It’s ‘The cold song’ from Henry Purcells' ‘King Arthur’ where this haunted, white faced figure sings about being woken from eternal sleep, shivering and pleading to be allowed to return to cold and silence.

The poignancy comes from the fact that Nomi is gravely ill with AIDS; he’s dead a year later, at the age of 39. This is one of the strengths of the book - Laing doesn’t just describe loneliness, but finds it embodied in art.

Other artists include Henry Darger, a reclusive hotel janitor who is experiencing extreme solitude and building a fantastical inner world - he creates an epic, 15000 word fantasy manuscript with hundreds of illustrations only discovered after his death.

Nan Goldin is covered more briefly, and offers a contrast to Warhols cold distance - there’s a vulnerability in her messy yet beautiuful pictures of intimacy, relationships and the families we choose.

Summary

Took me an absolute age to get through this book as I was forever diving into youtube and internet searches of the many works mentioned. The artists stories together illuminate the many different aspects of loneliness that people feel, and sometimes use as the inspiration for their art.

I liked how Laing weaves her own story of dislocation and longing with that of the artists who knew loneliness inside out. From Hoppers quiet diners, Warhols mirrored distances to Wojnarowicz’s fury and Goldins raw intimacy - each tells us what it is to be human and separate.

Like I said in the opening paragraph, this is part memoir, part art criticism, part meditation on loneliness, and not at all what I was expecting and all the better for it. I felt I came away knowing something deeper about solitude, connection, and the strange, tender ways we try to make sense of ourselves. Unusual book that I took my sweet time with and enjoyed.

326 pages First published March 2016

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org 

Butter by Asako Yuzuki is a slow-burning, quietly intense novel that blends true crime, food, and social commentary in a way that got under my skin. It follows a journalist digging into the story of a woman accused of seducing and murdering men with rich, indulgent home-cooked meals — but what starts as a crime story becomes something much deeper and more unsettling.

Best Japanese novels translated to English

Back to reading about Japan again Adrian, seriously? I know, but I couldn’t resist this one. It’s featured in the bestsellers list and was Waterstones book of the year in 2024 (it’s great to see translated literature winning a prize like that and doing so well). There’s been a bit of a buzz around it, I really liked the blurb, it’s got lots of talking points - it felt ripe for a read and a review.

I’ve read a other Japanese fiction recently, Murakami obviously, but this has more in common with Convenience Store Woman in that it’s a social critique as it looks at women who don’t conform to Japanese societal standards, with feminist tones, whilst the writing is also understated and minimal - an early shout out to the excellent work here of the translator, Polly Barton. Definitely one of the best Japanese novels translated to English that I’ve read.

Japanese Crime Novel

I would say early on that it’s certainly not your typical Japanese crime novel, if that’s what you’re after. I’d consider it more a slow burn literary thriller that mixtures true crime, food writing, all with a sharp feminist edge, as mentioned earlier. It sounds unusual, and not the type of book I’d normally go for - but I’m glad I did.

Butter by Asako Yuzuki is set in modern-day Tokyo, where a reserved journalist begins investigating a woman imprisoned for allegedly seducing and murdering wealthy men — all through the power of exquisite home cooking. But the deeper she digs, the lines become between fact and fabrication, guilt and projection, nourishment and manipulation become more blurred.

What begins as a true crime assignment turns into a strange, intimate correspondence between two women, and slowly becomes a study of appetite — for food, freedom, power, and something harder to name.

When we first meet Rika Machida she is hardworking and committed to her job, but when she visits Manako Kajii in prison to interview, she slowly starts to find herself pulled into a correspondence that causes her to question her own worldview - about societal expectations around women and food, about beauty and power in Japanese culture. Slowly, something begins to awaken in herself.

Slow-burn literary fiction

I took this book with me on a recent short break down the country to enjoy some peace and solitude, and I really connected with it. I found there to be something measured and introspective in the writing that suited my contemplative mood. I never felt like rushing it, and when I walked away from it I found it would linger with me.

I enjoyed the long monologues, and the dialogue felt realistic - characters were evasive with each other, and you could sense the subtext to the conversations. Oftentimes there was something unsettling to the story, like the truth was just hidden out of sight.

Food in Fiction

And the descriptions of food. It very much put in mind of another book I read recently that nearly had me ditching the veganism, also very much rooted in the cuisine of East Asia - Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner. Some of the descriptions of food became almost visceral -

The cool butter clashed against her teeth, and she felt its soft texture right down into their roots. […] It was a taste that could only be described as golden. A shining golden wave, with an astounding depth of flavor and a faint yet full and rounded aroma, wrapped itself around the rice and washed Rika’s body far away.

I found myself looking at my dairy free vitalite with disdain. Buttered noodles, rice cakes, even a Turkey at one stage, all sounding mouthwateringly delicious.

But there’s more to the food than just descriptions. What’s nourishing can become forbidden, and whilst meals can be shared, their meaning is something deeply personal. It becomes a way of exploring power dynamics, identity and resistance to societal expectations in Japan. Naturally, reading about this only deepened my interest in Nihon so thanks for that Asako Yuzuki.

Summary

I found this to be a totally unique, very Japanese novel that lingered with me after each reading. As a crime novel, it simmers rather than boils (excuse the pun) but if you like your novels introspective and a bit unsettling, I think you’ll enjoy this. There’s a lot about shame, about craving, and ultimately about connection in this book. Just be sure to have some food nearby when you read it - I must have consumed my own body weight in Garlic & Chilli Edamame before I was finished.

464 pages, Paperback

February 29, 2024 by Fourth Estate

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org 

Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of who he is or why he’s there. All he knows is that humanity’s survival may depend on him — and he’s millions of miles from Earth. As his memory returns, he uncovers a daring interstellar mission, a dying Sun, and an unexpected friendship that changes everything.

The Martian

I read and enjoyed The Martian by Andy Weir back when it came out in 2011 (wow, that long ago?). It had an enterprising and resourceful protagonist — engaging and witty — with high stakes and plenty of drama. I do remember thinking Mark was a bit snarky at times, but I liked the mix of physics, chemistry, and good old space engineering.

I’d say Project Hail Mary is a natural progression from that, just on a much bigger scale. You don’t get higher stakes than having to save humanity, not just yourself. It also touches on those big questions like: is there anyone else out there? And if so, what would we say if we met them? I’d say it has as much in common with Interstellar (loved that movie) as it does with The Martian — but it’s still grounded in good old-fashioned storytelling with a likeable lead.

Amnesia and Science

Part of the mystery is how Grace ends up millions of miles from home. He wakes up on a spaceship with no idea how he got there. So both he and the reader are discovering the backstory together — a clever device that slowly reveals his identity and mission.

I really struggle with science — start talking physics or chemistry to me, and if you listen closely, you can hear the fan in my brain start to whirr as it starts to shut down. I was awful at it in school and always leaned more towards the arts, and it’s a real blind spot for me. I worried a bit before starting whether I’d hate the science-y parts, but I remembered The Martian being pretty accessible.

(Side note: I’m fascinated by space and planets. I can easily lose an hour listening to Brian Cox or some random YouTuber. The scale of it all is mind-bending, and I often fall into a kind of awareness reverie — awed by the universe and the idea of ever-expanding consciousness. I’ve been thinking a lot recently, especially with my interest in non-duality, about time as a concept. A recent favourite: “What existed before the Big Bang?”)

Anyway — it turned out fine. There were moments when the formulae went over my head or it got a bit too technical, but most of it is easy to follow. It’s explained simply, often with humour, and Weir really excels at that. You get the sense of what’s at stake without needing to understand every equation. It’s like enjoying a good meal without knowing every ingredient.

And the science — though important — isn’t the heart of the book. I’d argue this is just as much about relationships, mystery, and (definitely) problem-solving.

Emotional Heart

Jeez, it’s hard to talk about this book without giving something away about the plot. One of the things that maybe surprised me most was how much of an emotional heart it had. There I was, keeping up with the various puzzles being solved, enjoying the space banter and whack — along comes a final section that hits you right over the head.

There’s plenty in here about cooperation, sacrifice, and ultimately, connection.

I liked that it had an emotional punch to it — it blindsided me completely. Sometimes I sit down with expectations of a book, and it’s brilliant when those get completely upturned. There was something in those last sections that gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling mixed with a bit of awe. And we’ll leave it there.

(I should also add that it’s quite a long book - 480 pages hardback alone. I actually didn’t realise that until I was doing this review, as I read it on Ebook, but it’s a sign of just how easily it zipped along).

Summary

If you’re anything like me and not fussed on anything that contains too much science, don’t fret — you’ll still get a sense of the stakes without having to understand every detail. It’s all explained in a fun and accessible way. At times, it felt like science class taught by a stand-up comedian.

What you’ll enjoy more is a character who’s all too human, lashings of humour, and a book with a real emotional arc. I wasn’t expecting it to be so tender and moving.

Who says science ain’t got a heart?

First published May 4th 2021

Paperback 677 pages Random House

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org 

Awareness by Anthony de Mello is a modern spiritual classic that invites readers to wake up from the illusions of ego, conditioning, and control. With a blend of sharp humour, deep insight, and grounded practicality, de Mello delivers a powerful guide to inner freedom and present-moment living. Perfect for fans of Eckhart Tolle or Ram Dass, this book continues to resonate with those seeking clarity, peace, and spiritual awakening.

Solitude and Solace

Like most booklovers, I take my sweet time thinking about which books to accompany me on holiday. During a recent trip to Glendalough in County Wicklow, when I was packing I was looking for something that would suit the mood; reflective, maybe a bit restless, looking for something deep and clear.

I spent a lot of time on the bench outside, chillin at the cillín, and this was the perfect companion. Very often I’d read just a few paragraphs or a chapter, and find myself having to put it down for a bit, just to let it resonate. That’s what I’m looking for when I’m reading books about awakening and non-duality - to help me just rest in awareness, to bring me home again.

De Mello peels back the layers of identification gently but relentlessly — using stories, humour, and a kind of warm detachment that cuts through illusion without preaching. He invites you to look directly at what’s here, now, before the mind grabs hold of it.

What you are aware of, you are in control of; what you are not aware of, is in control of you

And in the best way possible, he invites you to look at your beliefs. I’m not interested in another teacher with more advice on what I should be doing to ‘wake’ up. De Mello ain’t no guru, that’s for sure.

“The only way someone can be of help to you is by challenging your ideas.”

Anthony De Mello

Anthony de Mello was a Jesuit priest, psychotherapist, and spiritual teacher born in Bombay, India, in 1931. He’s best known for blending Christian mysticism, Eastern philosophy, and psychological insight into a powerful, no-nonsense approach to awakening.

Though trained in the Catholic tradition, de Mello’s teachings transcended religious boundaries, drawing deeply from Buddhism, Advaita (non-duality), and Sufism. ‘Awareness’ is his most well known book, and is based on his spiritual retreats and talks.

De Mello died in 1987, and it seems that some of his work was controversially criticized by the Vatican for not aligning with Catholic doctrine — which, ironically, only deepened his appeal to spiritual seekers who sensed in him a rare authenticity. De Mello’s voice continues to resonate today because he wasn’t offering dogma — he was offering direct experience.

Catholicism

One of the reasons the book resonated with me so deeply was that it was written in a language familiar to me from my youth - rooted in the gospels, Jesus, and prayer. What he then does I found interesting - he encourages you to look through that spiritual, emotional and cultural conditioning.

When I look back now at all of the time spent in pews listening to priests, the feeling I most remember is one of fear, based around obedience, sin and suffering. Very often I’d remember leaving the chapel or confessional feeling full of guilt and shame, even though I wasn’t sure what I’d done. A feeling familiar to many catholics I’d say, lapsed or otherwise.

What De Mello does is turn this inside out; he doesn't deny that people suffer or cause harm — but he sees the root not in sinfulness, but in unconsciousness. In his eyes, guilt is not redemptive. Awareness is.

“Guilt never sanctifies. It only wounds. It causes neurosis and anxiety. It does nothing for you.”

“What you call sin is a symptom. You are asleep. When you wake up, sin disappears.”

Spiritual Growth

What De Mello is saying, is that real spiritual growth isn’t about guilt and penance — it’s about awakening to your true nature: aware, alive, and already whole. In this book, he’s encouraging you to look past the fear based interpretations we have around religious teachings - these are just lots of words and belief systems. And what lies beneath them?

Stillness, presence, aliveness, grace.

“Suffering arises when you cling to what you should let go of, or resist what is.”

During my mid to late teens, I spent a lot of time immersing myself in my faith, attending services and reading the bible and investigating the power of prayer. I can look back now and see that I’ve always been a seeker - whether it’s music, literature or art, I’ve constantly been looking for meaning. That period of intense seeking within catholicism was another part of the journey.

Thing is, during this current period of spiritual seeking, I can look now and find more resonance than ever in the teachings.

The kingdom of god is within?

Be still and know.

And before Abraham was?

I am.

But those are words, quotes, koans - pointers as such. The truth isn’t in the words. As the Zen saying goes,

Don’t mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself.

What De Mello as a priest and this book taps into powerfully, is to say - Look behind the doctrine. Forget about the institution, strip it away and what remains?

That deeper essence, returning us to what we already knew as a child, before we were taught to feel wrong about ourselves.

Summary

As this book is based on De Mello’s spoken talks and spiritual retreats, it reads in a lovely conversational style with simple language. It’s direct, laced with humour and anecdotes, and at times he’s wonderfully blunt. It’s also divided into short chapters, and thankfully devoid of jargon. I can see why it’s seen as a spiritual classic.

I felt like De Mello was sitting on that bench beside me. And funny, on a couple of evenings I decided to join some of the local nuns for their evening reflection. We read from the psalms and choose our favourite passage. After all these years, and I find more deeper resonance than I ever did - not based on guilt, or fear, but now intimacy, stillness and direct experience. Always here, not judging, holding everything in quiet awareness.

“You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.”
— Psalm 139:1–3

First published January 1, 1990

190 Pages Paperback

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org 

Michael Connelly’s Nightshade is the first entry in a new crime thriller series set on California’s remote Catalina Island. When a body is discovered in the island’s idyllic harbor, a seasoned sheriff’s detective begins to uncover secrets in the small coastal community. Tense, atmospheric, and razor-sharp, Nightshade blends Connelly’s trademark investigative suspense with a fresh setting and a compelling new lead.

Stilwell and the Catalina Series

Although I’m on Connelly’s mailing list, I clearly missed the email announcing this one. For a second in the supermarket’s tiny book section, I thought we’d somehow landed another Bosch (don’t think there’s much mileage left there, sadly) or maybe a new Ballard. But wait — Stillwell? Catalina?

LA County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell — known mostly as “Stil” — has been reassigned to Catalina Island after accusing a former partner of botching a mainland murder case. (No first name yet. Thaddeus? Ignatius? Zebediah?) Catalina’s main mode of transport is a golf cart, and Stillwell’s new post is meant to be quiet. Low key. A career dead end.

But then a severed buffalo head shows up.

And then a body surfaces in the harbor.

Suddenly, the quiet post isn’t so quiet. With its parallel plot lines and steady pace, I was pulled into the story quickly. And that’s all the plot you’ll get from me.

Stilwell

Stilwell is cut from familiar Connelly cloth — principled, introspective, and quietly relentless. He might have been shoved aside by his department, but he’s not going to sit on his arse while something’s off. If there's a lead, he’ll follow it. Justice matters.

That might sound typical for a crime investigator, but this is Connelly — there's nuance. Stilwell isn’t flashy or tortured. He’s thoughtful, guided by intuition and experience, with just enough hints of backstory to keep you curious. Nothing dramatic yet — but it's only his first outing.

It often takes a couple of books for a character to settle in, and I’d rather not be overloaded with past trauma right off the bat. He’s no Harry Bosch — who is? — but I like the cut of his jib and I’m happy to stick with him.

Black Marlin and Nightshade

I did wonder if Connelly toyed with calling the book The Black Marlin, after the jade statue that features in the story. Maybe not — too many echoes of The Black Echo, The Black Ice, The Black Box.

Nightshade is a stronger choice anyway. The nightshade plant is actually native to Catalina Island, and with its links to beauty, toxicity, and enchantment, it’s a meaningful nod. Plus, it turns out nightshade is also a shade of purple hair dye — who knew?

Catalina

I really liked Catalina as a setting. Being an island, it has that closed-box mystery feel I love. It’s physically cut off from the mainland — reachable only by ferry or helicopter — so if you commit a crime late at night, you’re not getting far unless you’ve got a private yacht.

Everyone knows everyone. There are grudges, secrets, and social layers that make for simmering tension. There are only a few main locations — the sheriff’s office, the yacht club, the harbor — which adds to the sense of containment. If the proverbial hits the fan, there’s no cavalry charging in.

And while the island has its own ecosystem, I liked how the broader justice system still creeps in — with all the corruption and political intrigue you'd expect from Connelly. There’s always something rotten in the state of Denmark, and it usually spreads from the top down.

Summary

I really enjoyed this — solid rather than spectacular, but that’s to be expected when kicking off a new series. It takes time for a lead character and setting to find their feet. But a new Connelly mystery is always something to welcome.

I went with the audiobook, which runs just over nine hours. Connelly is one of my favourite authors to listen to — his writing is lean and clear, with a rhythm that flows beautifully. There’s no fluff, and the pacing keeps you locked in.

Tightly plotted, richly atmospheric, and driven by a quietly compelling lead, Nightshade weaves together small-island secrets with a wider criminal conspiracy. I’d love to see a crossover one day — maybe a cold case lands on Ballard’s desk, and a certain grizzled veteran has to track a witness to Catalina.

Here’s hoping.

Published 20 May 2025

Audiobook nine hours and three minutes. - narrated by Will Damron

345 Pages Hardback

Published by Hatchette UK

I no longer include Amazon links in my reviews. Please support your local library and bookshops. Libby is also great.

If you do wish to purchase online, feel free to support independent bookshops and contribute to the hosting of this website by purchasing via Bookshop.org