Blog

Sometimes we all crave a comfort read just to temporarily get us through a challenging situation that is mentally draining. We may want to simply pass time or take a break from a tough day. Other times we need to find hope again and remove ourselves from the despair that clouds us. For me personally there has been a lot of change over the last couple of years with moving countries and having babies. To get me through stressful times and cope with the constant change I went in search for some literary escapism to reaffirm my faith that everything...

Travelling to the Big Apple? Here are 7 must-read books that capture the heart and soul of New York from its ever-evolving people-pie to its prized suburbs and shrewd personality. Read them whilst you are actually there — you’ll feel a part of this wonderful, bustling metropolis. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote Breakfast with Tiffanys by Truman Capote Set in 1940s New York, Breakfast at Tiffany’s is about party girl and socialite, Holly Golightly who ran away to escape a suffocating fate. Having been married and separated at the age of 14 she craves freedom yet needs something to quell her fear...

The royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle this Spring weekend is expected to attract audiences of millions. I wonder what might be going through Meghan Markle’s head as she transitions from Hollywood celebrity to a member of the British royal family. Combining film star status and public service, whilst trying to maintain a semi-private life away from the prying eyes of an internationally obsessed audience is not new for Markle and she has already done a fabulous job at managing the publicity well. However it’s different once you are married into the royal family and navigating life within...

I have been planning this post for months and am super excited to finally write it. Why? Virginia Woolf is one of my all-time favourite authors, whose literary ideas have shaped the work of thousands of authors, both male and female. As a modernist she experimented with different forms of writing, challenging the status quo, giving birth to techniques that we take for granted now, such as narrating from multiple perspectives reflecting human psychology, monologues and ‘stream of consciousness’. Woolf’s writing took place during the First World War, at a time when society was reasserting traditional values and her work...

This was the premise of Victor Frankl’s epic bestselling book and perhaps the most recommended book since the dawn of publishing, “Man’s search for meaning” . Frankl, a prominent psychiatrist and an Auschwitz Nazi death camp survivor, in his sobering yet enlightening memoir, conclusively makes that case that it is through suffering that we find meaning and the drive to keep us going. Our goal in life is not to attain pleasure (happiness) or power but to ‘discover meaning’. It is the pursuit of this meaning that provides the purpose of life. During his death camp experience, Frankl observed that those who...