Tina Turner – My Love Story

And you know what I say to people who ask, “What to do when all the odds are against you?” I say, “You keep going, you just don’t stop. No matter if there is one slap to the face, turn the other cheek. And the hurt you are feeling? You can’t think about what’s being done to you now, or what has been done to you in the past. You just have to keep going.” — Tina Turner

Who doesn’t love Tina Turner — the long reigning queen of rock ‘n’ roll and living legend! We are all familiar with her story and the many songs that she has performed. But in My Love Story she sets the record straight about her illustrious career and complicated personal life in this eye-opening and compelling memoir. It traces her life from her early years in Nutbush, Tennessee, to her rise to fame alongside Ike Turner, to her extraordinary success in the 1980s to now. She also writes about meeting the love of her life, Erwin Bach unexpectedly in 1986 and marrying 27 years later.

It was the fist line that got me and I knew I would love this book… “Tina, will you marry me?” This was my first proposal from Erwin Bach, the love-at-first-sight love of my life, the man who made me feel dizzy the first time I saw him.”

Bob Woodard – Fear…Trump in the White House

The publication of Fear drew much media scrutiny; the contents of which were denied by White House personnel. It is arguably one of the most intimate portraits of a sitting president ever published during a president’s first term and year in office. With the use of hundreds of hours of interviews with first-hand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents, Fear focuses on the explosive debates and decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the residence in the White House. It also tracks key foreign policy issues from Afghanistan to Russia and all the other countries in between. It reports in depth on Trump’s key domestic issues, particularly trade and tariff disputes, immigration, tax legislation, etc., and of course, vivid details of the negotiations between Trump’s attorney and Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia investigation.

Brit Bennett — The Mothers

“We didn’t believe when we first heard because you know how church folk can gossip.”

The mid-teenage years of Nadia Turner started with a secret. She was 17 years old and in the last season of high school life. Grief-stricken and rebellious, as she had recently lost her mother, she engaged in a relationship with the local pastor’s son, Luke, who is 21 years old. She became pregnant, and this secret was covered up and had a lasting impact that went beyond their youth. Nadia hides the truth from everyone, including her best friend Aubrey. The story reveals the extent to which a community would protect those they care for and love, ambition, love and friendship, and living up to expectations in contemporary black America. Intimate and epic in scope, and still followed by the choices they made in their youth, the constant nagging question: What if they had chosen differently? The possibilities of the road not taken are a relentless haunt.

Holly Bourne – How Do You Like Me Now ?

I think everyone reaching a birthdate milestone, whether 20s, 30s or 40s, can relate to this book. In this case the main character, Tori Bailey, is turning 30; and as she aptly puts it, “Turning thirty is like playing musical chairs. The music stops, and everyone just marries whoever they happen to be sitting on.”

Laugh-out-loud funny, brutally honest and a moving exploration of love, friendship and navigating the emotional rollercoaster of her thirties; Tori, a best-selling author, who has inspired millions of women around the world with her self-help memoir and the perfect relationship, finds herself in a quandary. Everyone around her is getting married and having babies, including her best friend Dee (her plus one ride or die) and Tori’s long-term boyfriend won’t even talk about getting engaged.

Influenced by social media and the world at large, Tori realises that when the world tells you to be one thing and turning 30 brings with it a loud ticking clock, it takes courage to walk your own path. The question is, will she be brave enough to so do and practice what she preaches?

Gretchen Rubin – The Happiness Project

…or as the byline says, why I spent a year trying to sing in the morning, clean my closet, fight right, read Aristotle, and generally have more fun.

This book is a one-year journal about Rubin’s journey to happiness. It is an approach to changing one’s life. It outlines three stages; the first stage is the preparation stage, when you identify what brings you joy and also what brings you guilt, boredom, etc.; second is the making of resolutions, when you have identified the concrete actions that will boost your happiness and the final stage, keeping the resolution.

It is a lively, compelling and interactive account in which Rubin chronicles her life and adventures during the 12 months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happy.

You will find on the pages in this book, amongst other things that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that money can buy happiness, when spent wisely; that outer order contributes to inner calm; and that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference.

Tracy Bloom – I Will Marry George Clooney (…By Christmas)

This book is rip-roaringly funny. A light weekend/overnight read.

There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only answer is to marry George Clooney! Right! Well, for Michelle it is. At 36-years-old, Michelle had a life she had not planned for; working her ass off in a chicken factory whilst single-handedly bringing up a teenage daughter who hates her guts. Michelle believes that marrying the most eligible man on the planet by Christmas could change everything.

By the end you will realise that sometimes our only option is to dream the impossible – because you never know where it might take you…

Luc Huyse – All Things Pass, Except The Past

All Things Pass, Except The Past explores the unanswered questions and the sadness that civil wars, brutal repression and apartheid leave behind, but live on in the minds of those who experienced them. It describes how people from Argentina to Zimbabwe come to terms with pain that refuses to pass. It also raises the questions that lie at the heart of the problem: Why are the efforts of tribunals, the road to retribution for past suffering so full of risks? When do these efforts bring more healing than pain for the victims?

Very compelling and sometimes heartbreaking accounts of victims, but worth the read if only not to repeat the same mistakes.

Fredrik Backman – A Man Called Ove

If I had a say in the titling of this book, I would call it “A Man Called Love”.

The first introduction to Ove is that of one of the grumpiest men you will ever meet. A curmudgeon with staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse; you will think him bitter, but he thinks that he is surrounded by idiots. However, his well-ordered life and solitary world get a shake-up one “unpleasant” November morning with the grand appearance of new neighbours – a young couple and two boisterous daughters – who accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox with their U-Haul.

What unfolds though, is a heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unlikely friendships, and a community’s unexpected reassessment of the one person they all thought they had figured out.

Liz Nugent – Unravelling of Oliver

Oliver Ryan, the protagonist, has the perfect life. Or so it seemed. He is elegant, sophisticated and seductive. He is in need of nothing. He shares his life and beautiful home with his wife, Alice, an award-winning illustrator of children’s books that have brought them wealth and fame. But one evening, after eating a carefully prepared dinner by Alice, Oliver savagely assaulted her and left her for dead.

Much speculation ensued about the reasons for this brutal act and as they come to light, the layers of Oliver’s past are exposed and are as brutal as his singular act of violence. His decades of careful deception have masked a life irrevocably marked by abandonment, envy and shame – and as the details of that life are laid bare, Oliver discovers that outrunning the past and his demons are harder than it appears.

Andre Aciman – Call Me By Your Name

Call Me By Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parent’s cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. They are both unprepared for the consequences of their instant attraction, when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them.

O, The Oprah Magazine aptly describes it as “an extraordinary examination of longing and the complicated ways in which we negotiate the experience of attraction…Sensuous, precise and achingly observant.”