This novel tells what is probably one of the most iconic sci-fi stories of the twentieth century which is a good indicator of its quality – although the downside of this is the fact that I don’t imagine there are many people who will read this without knowing the final twist. While I saw the movie adaptation as a child many years ago (and several other times since) I won’t mention the final twist on the off-chance that there is anyone who doesn’t know what happens – and to be fair, the twist is slightly different for the novel anyway.

The story begins with a couple of space travellers finding a message in a bottle – that message makes up the entirety of the book. I did think to myself that it must be an abnormally large bottle in order to contain such a large manuscript, but I quite liked this faming device. Indeed, there was quite a charming level of whimsy to it, and it was not at all how I expected it to start. This framing device comes back in a really interesting way at the end too.

But as to the story itself, it’s about a man named Ulysse Mérou who goes on an interstellar journey with a couple of scientists and a chimpanzee. It takes many hundred years for them to make the journey and it is made with the understanding that they will never be able to return to the world as they know it. When they get to the planet of their destination, they find that the humans are essentially animals, living out in the forest and unable even to talk – meanwhile, apes are the dominant species and they hunt and use humans in much the same way that humans do to apes in reality.

I enjoy the moderately progressive way in which the treatment of apes (and indeed, all animals) is condemned here. Though generally speaking, Ulysse is an absolutely loathsome character. Not only is he arrogant without ever really being shown to have particularly noticeable qualities, but he’s an absolute creep too. Near the start he meets a woman who he names Nova (she doesn’t have a name as she and the other people of her tribe are unable to speak) and he immediately becomes infatuated with her. Though in his own words, she is “more a girl than a woman”, so, yeah, and the fact that she obviously is not mentally developed in the same way that he is creates a power imbalance. The stuff that happens between them is downright disgusting in my mind, and he’s super possessive of her too… I guess Pierre Boulle is not immune to the classic trope of fantasy and sci-fi writers being massive creeps (or at least, writing as if they were).

My favorite character was Zira, a female chimpanzee who is sympathetic towards Ulysse and completely accepts the fact that he is intelligent. She’s proof that Boulle can write a good female character too, as her character arc of over-coming the long-standing beliefs of her civilization is a really interesting one. Honestly, I’d say that she grows more than Ulysse himself. She is also, rightly, not approving of his relationship with Nova.

Overall, despite Ulysse being unbearable, I really enjoyed this novel. It’s got some really cool ideas in it, and I think the writing style is pretty engaging too. If you’re a fan of classic sci-fi, or of the Planet of the Apes movies, I strong recommend giving it a read. I think the twist is slightly improved in the movies, but I still really enjoyed how it was done here.

Rating: 8.3/10

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Winter’s Heart is a very appropriate title for the ninth Wheel of Time novel, as it’s a very wintery novel. I’ll admit, by this point, I’m feeling much less invested than I once was in the series, but I also feel like the setting and writing style is cosy and familiar, and this is further reinforced by the fact that winter has set in the Wheel of Time universe. Something about reading novels with that brisk, chilly, wintery feeling to them is very appealing, especially if I’m reading them as we move into autumn and winter in reality, so I applaud Robert Jordan for getting that atmosphere just right.

Besides that, it was another book where there’s aren’t all that many major events Perrin sets of to rescue Faile after she got kidnapped in the last book – but the plotline is still unresolved at the end. Perrin continues to be grumpy and angry all the time, while we’re told that he is a man who doesn’t usually get angry – and of course, he’s getting worse in that regard now that Faile has been kidnapped.

Mat’s storyline was probably the one that I found the most interesting, as he had to keep his head down while living among Seanchan. Generally, as much as he’s quite lecherous character, I also find him the most believable – he’s just trying to get by and doesn’t want to be caught up in the big, world-changing events. His relationship with Tylin is still horribly uncomfortable in a way that I hope was intentional (although knowing some of the weird stuff Robert Jordan writes, maybe not), but that actually makes me pity him and like him more.

Towards the end, things got quite interesting with Rand as Shadar Logoth returns after previously only making much of an appearance in the first book. What happens with that actually felt like it was moving the overall story forward in a way that hasn’t happened much in a while, so that was pretty cool. They also explore his growing relationship with Min, Elayne, and Aviendha – which is interesting, for sure, even if it is kind of eye-rollingly silly at times too.

It’s a shame to think about how enthusiastic I was about the series when I first started it. I still enjoy reading them and want to find out what’s going to happen, but now it’s just kind of like comfortable reading that keeps my occupied without really blowing my socks off. The wind is going out of my sails and I think the overall plot has been spread a little too thin. Having said that, I’m not actively bored or frustrated by the series, so I am happy to go on. It’s just a shame it didn’t turn out to be a series of pure classics like I ininitially thought.

Rating: 6.2/10

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How come some people are happy and others aren’t? That’s pretty much the question that Jonathan Haidt sets out to answer with this book. It explores the ideas of what exactly makes a person happy and looks at some commonly held beliefs about human wellbeing, and then assesses whether or not those perspectives really carry much weight.

Something I enjoyed about this book was the way that it draw from a wide range of sources when exploring what makes people happy, from The Bible and Greek philosophers, through to modern science and psychology. It’s interesting how often it seems that there was a nugget of truth in religious texts and so forth, but the book then goes on to show how they were just ever so slightly wrong, or how the right ideas lead to the wrong conclusions. It is very interesting to see how a lot of general ideas have essentially be right for a long time, and I liked the typically neutral and balanced way that it was all discussed.

But for me, the most interesting thing was what I learned. For instance, the person that most people are closest with and get the most out of confiding in is their mother and those who don’t know the feeling of unconditional love from a parental figure often have trouble forming significant bonds with people later in life, because they haven’t learned that unconditional love exists, and now probably never will.

My favourite parts were all about human relationships really, especially the bits about how having lots of friends can do a lot to help somebody feel generally happy in themselves. Though I was also surprised to learn that those who marry young and stay married are typically happier than those who don’t – I found that to be quite different to my experiences of life. Although funnily enough, the book also goes onto explain that when we read things that conform to our perceptions of life, we find them agreeable, but when we read things that contradict them, we find reasons to discredit them – which goes some way towards explaining the horrible state of politics in the world at the moment. It’s also kind of sad to thing about how we seem hardwired to avoid being logical in what we believe.

My ultimate takeaway from The Happiness Hypothesis was that happiness largely comes down to genes. Each person has a base level of happiness that is determined by their genes, and though there will be peaks and troughs connected to good news and tragedies, people will typically always return to that level. This felt very true to me, and it was interesting to learn about the ways in which people could raise their base level (by living well) or essentially lower it (by being toxic).

About the only real critique I have (which is a side effect of it being about twenty years old) is the lack of intersectionality – but other than that, I think anyone who loves learning about relationships and the human mind will enjoy reading this.

Rating: 8.9/10

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I love stories that see the lives of well-developed characters intersecting and that’s exactly what I hoped this novel would be based on the title. I was not disappointed. Nine people arrive at a health spa in the middle of nowhere in order to go through a ten-day transformative process – each carries a certain level of angst or trauma about them, and each responds differently to the rather bizarre processes at Tranquillum House.

A woman named Frances is (kind of) the main character. She’s a novelist who is worried about being washed up after her latest novel fails to attract any interest from publishers. She’s also just recently found out that her long distance partner was a scam artist. She’s a likeable and personable character and having her as the point-of-view character you see most often works well, because you get a bit of levity between the heavier chapters. Later on, her being a novelist leads to some extremely meta chapters, and I enjoyed that quite a bit too.

However, the most interesting guests in Tranquillum House are the Marconi family. Perfectly happy and healthy on the surface, but dealing with a terrible loss underneath. Their story is a terribly sad one. I won’t spoil the details, as they’re slowly revealed throughout the course of the novel, but these were the characters that I felt the most invested and I felt that they were all incredibly well written.

The other most notable character is Masha – she’s the founder of Tranquillum House and rather mysterious, vaguely sinister person. I actually found myself getting caught up in the things she was saying, which I thought was a pretty good way of showing how everyone there would as well. The developments with her towards the end were very unexpected, and made the latter portion of the book much more tense than I anticipated. It was perhaps slightly too over the top for me, but it did make for captivating reading – and there were various clever twist about everything not quite being what it seemed.

Not all of the characters were quite so captivating – such as Jessica and Ben, a young couple whose marriage is falling apart since winning the lottery. They still felt very real, and their presence still added to the story, but I was usually more interested to get back to a chapter from the perspective of one of the other characters whenever it was one of their POVs. I suppose that will inevitably happen whenever you have quite a big cast in a novel.

Altogether, if you like realistic, relatable human drama (with just a hint of the sensational) then this is a book is one that you will probably enjoy. I didn’t like it quite as much as the other Liane Moriarty book I’ve read (Big Little Lies) as that one felt like it had a little more to say, but nonethless, Nine Perfect Strangers shows that Moriarty is capable of creating a large range of different and believable characters and tying them together with a decent storyline.

Rating: 8.4/10

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For whatever reason, this volume is harder to come by than the others, so I didn’t read it for a long time – but fortunately, my housefriend secured a copy for me. I’m very pleased that she did too, as this is definitely one of the stronger volumes overall.

There are two main storylines in this one – the first concludes Principle Asano’s challenge to Koro-sensei. This is a great plot that makes Asano a much more interesting character, with a shockingly bleak flashback sequence that does a lot to explain his personality and motivation. I had started to like him more as soon as this arc started, but by the end of it, I thought he was a really cool character.

I’m going to sound quite repetitive here, but the same thing also happens with Kayano. Until this volume, though she has been a prominent character, she’s never been that interesting. She had her assassination attempt with the cake, which was kind of funny, but otherwise she was just there – and usually just getting unreasonably mad about boobs. As usual, I can’t say anything without spoiling it, but her appearance in this volume recontextualises a lot of her earlier behaviour, and it also reveals that she is much more important to the overall storyline than I ever would have guessed.

This is one of the few volumes that doesn’t really have any filler at all. It’s all giving important backstory and moving the plot along in meaningful ways. I loved every second, frankly, and the feeling of ominousness, as time runs out for the class, runs throughout the whole piece. The final cliffhanger has Koro-sensei promising to finally share his backstory – and I can’t wait to read it.

Rating: 9.7/10

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It is very common to hear people say that men and women are just ‘wired differently’ in terms of how their brains work. But how scientifically accurate is that? That’s the question that Gina Rippon tries to answer in this book, and in case you can’t guess – the answer is that it is not significantly backed up by science, despite popular belief.

People like to believe what they’ve been raised to believe, and for years the popular consensus has been that brains work differently – but that’s just born out of the patriarchy. The majority of media outlets then want to reinforce these older ideas, so will latch onto and report on any study that seems to confirm this worldview. The author looks at the studies that are most commonly pointed to as evidence of this difference, and highlights how they’ve either had severe issues with their methodology, or have had their findings enormously exaggerated or distorted to make clickable headlines.

Though it is undeniable that, as a whole, you can see certain behaviours more or less commonly found among men or women, but Rippon argues that these can be attributed to socialisation and the ‘plasticity’ of the human brain. I learned from this book that if we believe that we are supposed to be a certain way, our brain can and will change to become that way – a side effect of us being such a social species. She goes on to highlight how extremely widespread the social influences that reinforce gender roles are and how babies are effected by things we may not even realise. Their sponge-like brains absorb absolutely everything they see and this all plays a part in moulding the people they become. Sadly, the reinforcement of gender roles is so prevalent, that they will never not be exposed to it.

I’ve always felt that the idea that men and women’s brains are inherently different was a silly one. All of my experiences of relationships with men and women, to me, highlight that these differences do not really exist and I would argue that those who think they do probably don’t have close bonds with many people of both sexes. I also think that if it were as simple as that, there would be no examples of people defying traditional gender roles. With this in mind, I was always going to find this book agreeable, and as I am not a neurologist, it is essentially impossible for me to identify any inaccuracies in the way things are presented here. Having said that, it all seems very logical, fair and well argued. It’s a book that’s well worth reading for anyone with an interest in feminism or the way that the human mind works.

Rating: 8.1/10

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This is often described as being the first “lesbian novel” and while you could certainly question whether that’s true (and even what it means for something to be a “lesbian novel”) I think it’s probably true that this is the earliest novel that unambiguously shows same sex attraction between two women in an ordinary real world setting.

Although, to be fair, through a modern eye, you could question whether the story is really about a woman at all. The main character, named Stephen by her father who hoped for a boy, goes through their life wishing that they had been born a boy, and describes themselves as existing in the “no man’s land between the sexes” while dressing in traditionally masculine outfits. Though it is unlikely (though not impossible) to have been intended by the author, it’s very easy to read Stephen as somebody who would identify as trans or non-binary.

Nonetheless, interesting gender angle aside, the story of a gay character growing up in a world that is almost completely ignorant of the existence of gay people is both fascinating and heart-breaking. Stephen is a perpetual outcast, and one who is kind of awkward, but I found myself feeling quite strongly endeared to her, and felt for her even at the times when she made decisions that I didn’t think were so great.

This is one of those novels that spans years, starting when Stephen is just a baby, and continuing on into adulthood. There’s a great sense of scale that helped it feel very real. We later see her living in London, working as a nurse during the First World War, and living in Paris too. Though I wish that the war got a little more focus (that portion seems a bit too short), this is exactly the kind of structure I like for a novel. I always appreciate the opportunity to get a deeper look at the trajectory of a character’s whole life.

From difficult covert romances, to problems with an abusive parent, and a general feeling of isolation and “otherness”, Stephen’s story is often a very sad one. I really appreciate the way that the author tackled these problems – but, I didn’t quite like how it all came to an end. It was a bit melodramatic in a way that it didn’t need to be and I felt like the character deserved (and could have had) a better ending. Nonetheless, my overall impression is a very positive, and I admire this book for telling a very engaging, human story that was ahead of its time.

Rating: 8.5/10

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This autobiographical graphic novel describes the author’s life from childhood through to young adulthood and goes into detail about the journey e’s had in discovering eir gender identity and sexual orientation. Honestly, it’s one of the best and most beautiful books I’ve read in a while.

What I think is most appealing about this book, is Maia’s complete openness. To me, reading this feels like you’re having a heart-to-heart conversation with an old friend. Of course, I also love the fact that e’s sharing non-binary and asexual experiences too. So often, asexuals are shown to be cold emotionless Sherlock Holmes-type characters (not that I don’t love Sherlock Holmes) and often we’re only given a really surface level look at non-binary existence too. It’s so important for people to read about the experiences of ordinary people from these demographics, I’m glad this book offers an opportunity for people to learn.

Of course, it’s not all about gender and sexuality (though that is at the heart) and a big part of what I enjoyed about this book was Maia writing about fun times with eir friends. You don’t really find many books where authors write about being huge fans of different books, music, and TV show (or, I don’t, at least) and what I loved about this was how relatable it was. I particularly enjoyed Maia’s focus on books and reading – I guess as a hugely bookish person, I’ll always enjoy seeing that.

All things considered, when I was reading through this book, if something didn’t remind me of my own experiences, it reminded me of the experiences of those who are close to me. I think that it could be an incredibly valuable piece of work if it finds its way into the hands of young non-binary or asexual teenagers who are looking for a framework to understand themselves. The fact that its filled with hugely endearing illustrations just makes it even better. It’s sad that this is a book that’s so consistently banned (partly due to a few sexually explicit scenes), but most teenagers will have seen worse online anyway, and it’s really important that voices like this are not stifled, and that young people have access to books that document the experiences of those who are finding their sexuality for the first time.

Rating: 9.8/10

Buy it here.