Illustrations by Grace McKenna Since last May, I’ve started keeping a reading journal. I’ve always been a keen user of book tracking apps (StoryGraph over Goodreads any day, by the way), but I didn’t use these to write reviews, rather just to track what I had read. Starting my reading journal, I vowed to write a review for every book I read from then on, and I’m pleased to report that I’ve stuck to that promise. This process has changed the way I engage with many books; it ha

Jeanette Winterson, One Aladdin Two Lamps (Penguin Books, 2025) Jeanette Winterson’s new novel is a bold frenzy of interconnected narratives, embracing the  power of imagination and of storytelling amid the age of AI I am not a religious person, but attending Jeanette Winterson’s recent book launch   was perhaps the closest I’ve come to a religious experience. Gathering in St George’s Church on a stormy mid-November evening, I felt once again inspired by the narrative geniu

Illustrations by Grace McKenna We’ve all heard the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover.” In many theoretical or philosophical situations this may be true, but what about with actual books?  Nowadays, this phrase is used more in its metaphorical than literal sense, but some of its earliest recorded uses were in reference to real books. In George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss  (1860), the character Mr Tulliver says “But it seems one mustn’t judge by the outside”  in relati

Rating: ** I didn’t enjoy reading A Crime in the Land Of 7000 Islands, although I did get the point of it. More of a fantastical mystery...

Illustrations by Megan Le Brocq Poisonous, corruptive, and bewitching novels. Portals to worlds beyond our grasp, and therefore places of...

No Ordinary Bookshop is an independent, online bookstore that specialises in inclusive representation in the products they sell,...