Non-fiction

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The almost nearly perfect people: The truth about the nordic miracle

Well-researched, elegantly written and, at times, side-splittingly funny.

With the risk of insulting my Nordic compatriots or appearing defensive to everyone else, I have reviewed Michael Booth’s The Almost Nearly Perfect People: the Truth About the Nordic Miracle. Like Booth, I have been pleasantly surprised by all the recent media attention on the Nordic region, but I too have sometimes wondered about its universal praise. As we all know, nowhere or no one is perfect, and that, sadly, goes for the Nordic countries and their populations too. Michael Booth, a Copenhagen based Brit married to a Dane, had enough of the one-sided coverage and set out to discover the whole truth. With British humour at its best, Booth dissects the ‘Nordic Miracle’ and discovers that all’s not well. The Almost Nearly Perfect People is a well-researched book, enviably elegantly written, at times deadly serious, at others side-splittingly funny.

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The Examined Life: How we lose and find ourselves

Stories from the psychoanalyst's couch, captivating peek into the human mind

Stephen Grosz’s The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves, a collection of vignettes based on his 25 years as a psychoanalyst, is an unlikely bestseller. Even so, it has been steadily climbing bestseller lists, both in the U.K. and in America, since its publication. Remarkable for a short, non-fiction book on such a narrow topic. Why such a bestseller? There is something completely unpretentious, yet caring and sympathetic about Grosz, his patients and their conversations.

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Sum: Tales from the Afterlives

Mind-blowing and very funny, a must-read.

Ever wondered what afterlife might be like? Sum: Tales from the Afterlives by neuroscientist and writer David Eagleman offers forty different mind-blowing hypotheses, some of them nightmarish, some of them appealing, most of them hilarious and all of them thought provoking. Read full Review