It's been a long time since I picked up a book that hit me so hard as this one. It took me a while to really get hooked, but by the end I literally could not put it down.

And so we come the the final push. Part 4 of The Wheel of Time. The Final Battle, Tarmon Gai’don approaches. And, along with everything else, a new author to take up the mantle of the fallen.

A beautifully written book that gives little away at the start yet lays the perfect amount of breadcrumbs to keep you reading. But depending on your taste for literary fiction, I can’t say it would be everyone’s cup of tea.

As someone building a new freelance career, it's next to impossible to turn down any work I get offered. And so, there have been times when I've worked for clients with very different viewpoints to my own.

But this afternoon, I found a line I would not cross.

With “Knife of Dreams” not only do we wrap up Part 3 of The Wheel of Time, we find a welcome return for form for Robert Jordan’s final novel.

As a straight, white man, nothing is quite as useful as finding the perfect resource to open my eyes to things outside my own experience. “Bi: The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality” is a book everyone should read, no matter their sexuality.

Sometimes a “classic” is only a classic because uptight literary snobs have decreed it so. Other times, a novel becomes a classic because it tells a universal story that manages to be both readable and universally relatable. “The Remains of the Day” is the latter.

As I said in my review of Winter's Heart, I was ready for Crossroads of Twilight to be one of the worst entries in the series. But I have to admit that it's not nearly as bad as I remembered.

I've been on antidepressants for a year and a half, and it's time to bring this period of my life to a close. I've decided it's time for me to come off antidepressants.

I was recommended Will Storr's The Science of Storytelling as a book on writing. And while it did indeed leave me with a better understanding of storytelling, I wasn't expecting it to be accompanied by an existential crisis.

This was a book with a lot going for it. But where we were promised a dark, inverted twist on Cinderella, we're left with a story that ends on a flat, disappointing note.

For the last year and a half, I have been taking a daily 50mg dose of Sertraline, a common antidepressant. But why? How did I get to a point where I believed I needed chemicals to alter my brain in order to be happy?

In my last post, I talked about the series entering The Slump, the section of The Wheel of Time where everything drags for a few books. But then, of course, Winter's Heart comes along and perks things right back up again.

I made a Key Kiwi Pie.

Did I mean to make a Key Lime Pie? Yes, I did. But my brain had other ideas.

You can always trust that any collection of stories by Junji Ito will be a wonderfully creepy and creative experience. And with this collection of some of his earlier works, The Deserter does not disappoint.

The Path of Daggers isn't the worst entry in The Wheel of Time series, but it lacks the drive and excitement of the ones we've had up to now. Instead, it feels like Jordan is getting the characters in place for what is coming next. 

I absolutely loved My Best Friend's Exorcism. But I went into it thinking I wouldn't. As much as the author clearly loves the '80s horror aesthetic, the B-movie vibe of this book's packaging really undersells it.

The Bees is a well written and fascinating read, with compelling characters and clearly painstaking research. But while it pulled me in from the first page, I finished the book a little disappointed that it wasn't a little more powerful.