The title of this book was intriguing, but when I chose to read it, I wasn’t expecting much. I had picked it up simply because, during my 1982-2022 book challenge, I was desperately looking for …

I had heard a lot about Steven Pinker, so when I saw one of his books, I didn’t think twice before buying it. He’s a professor of psychology at Harvard University and there’s a very …

You’re 37 years old and one morning, all of a sudden and without any prior warning, you notice that you cannot walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of your life. You’re a brain scientist…

Maria Montessori is more well-known and appreciated abroad than in Italy. There are many books about her biography written in English that seem to be very well read and reviewed. In fact, her teaching…

It’s amazing how such a simple concept can be so powerful, thought-provoking, and inspiring. The idea is that most successful leaders and organizations have one thing in common: they all start w…

The reason I chose to read this book is in its title: I was looking for something concise to read on the subject of philosophy. The author, a French philosopher, explores a variety of philosophical to…

Do you want to increase your productivity, achieve your goals, and stop procrastinating? If so, you may be interested in the practical tips offered in this book. First of all, you must realise that it…

As I was turning 40 this year, I decided to mark the occasion with a special reading challenge: to read a book published in each year of my life, between 1982 and 2022. As someone who loves to read an…

I kept having a smile on my face while I was reading this book. It made me feel calm and reminded me of “The wisdom of no escape” by Pema Chödrön. Thich Nhat Hanh was a Buddhist monk and p…

This is a story about a journey that conveys the message that if you really want something, the universe will help you to achieve it. The encouragement of following your dreams is very much in your fa…

This is a toughie. While I definitely loved the poetic title and the style of alternating fiction with non-fiction, I found the plot challenging to follow. It’s not a typical plotline, it’…

I made a mistake. I made a beginner’s mistake. I watched the Netflix series first and a few days later I read the book. I will never do this again. I’ll always read the book first and watc…

A few years ago, I watched the film that was the adaptation of this book. The film was inspiring and emotional – I expected the same from the book. Perhaps, I even expected more given that a boo…

I love to sleep. If I sleep, I can cope with (almost) everything, while if I don’t sleep well enough or for long enough, I can’t function properly. My brain slows down and hurts (I know th…

The main message delivered by the author of this book, who is a popular blogger, is that we don’t have to be positive at all times and that what we should instead do is choose what deserves our …

With this book, I took a glimpse at some private correspondence that was exchanged during the WW1. Lots of different strong emotions were given voice by these letters, so sometimes I felt like I was i…

I don’t belong to Buddhism, but I have the highest admiration for its maximum authority, Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama XIV and, specifically, for his intelligence and openness towards others, in…

This book is about the power of introverts, a super interesting and important topic. The author, Susan Cain, is the world’s best-known expert on this personality type. Her TED talk has had over 32 mil…

Sebastian Faulks is a British best-selling novelist here in the UK and this is the first book, written by him, that I read. It’s a powerful story of love and war. The part about love was very se…

Being passionate about the brain and how it works, I had heard a lot about the author of this book. Oliver Sacks was a British neurologist who moved to the United States, where he spent most of his ca…

This is one of those books that I kept finding cited in a number of others that I have been reading, so much so that I had already got the concept of “flow” long before I read it. The auth…

This book is special to me, just knowing that I was going to read it at the end of my day made my day happy. A classic of Hungarian literature (Utas és Holdvilág), it was written by Antal Szerb, one o…

I wish I had read the content warnings first: rape, homophobia (strong graphic content), child death, alcoholism, physical abuse and some other bad and heavy stuff that I don’t like to read. I w…

Until about 50 years ago, scientists believed that the brain didn’t change after childhood. Now we know instead that the brain can and does change throughout our life. It keeps adapting and reco…

What is art? The word art is used today to describe a wide variety of things from prehistoric cave paintings to those apparently nonsensical installations you find in modern galleries. Music and liter…

I was really looking forward to reading this book and I had high expectations given that there had been a lot of hype around it. Not only did it not disappoint, but it also even exceeded my expectatio…

This is an autobiographical and historical account of the terrible experiences that the author went through during the Second World War in Hungary. It’s narrated in retrospective which I particu…

This collection of stories was written between 1905 and 1912 and explores some of the darkest sides of human life. The author, Géza Csáth, was born in Hungary at the end of the 19th century. Amongst o…

This book was, for me, revolutionary and revelatory as it significantly contributed to helping my quest for something I had been keeping asking myself for a very long period of time – who are we…

I found this book in the bookshop of the British Museum. I read the first two lines and I was hooked. It’s about the history and the thoughts of the most well-known philosophers. It does this fo…

This book sets out to tell you how to relate to life’s adversities, especially to those little things that we let grow inside us until they become a big deal. For a good part of it, I was unsure…

While I was visiting the bookshop at the British Museum, I came across this book with such an intriguing and promising title. One of the things that makes me consider a book a good one is that it make…

As happens most of the time, I had some expectations when I started to read this book – I was expecting an engaging story to develop throughout the daily life of a bookseller. I don’t know…

What a journey I’ve been on! In less than 600 pages, I’ve fast-forwarded through the history of the world and of the human species, from the Big Bang to our recent days through most areas …

I feel uncomfortable writing a bad review as I don’t want to disrespect all of the effort the author put in, especially if it’s their debut novel. So, after reading the first few pages, when I was alr…

Do you think humans are selfish, untrustworthy and dangerous creatures? If so, do yourself a favour and read this book. The core message in this book is that most people, deep down, are good-hearted. …

The thing that I kept thinking when reading this book was “genial“. I loved it even more than the first one of the series. The characters were well revealed and their relationships felt re…

I was so unsettled and disturbed by an event that happened at the start of this book that I almost stopped reading it there and then. Unsure what to do, luckily, in the end, I decided to keep reading …

Peaceful and calm. This is what I felt while I was reading this book. It was easy to read and it came at just the right time. It’s a good reminder to compassionately accept who we are, that we a…

I loved this book even before I bought it. I fell in love with the cover, to start with. It’s so attractive I’m thinking of framing it and hanging it on the wall. It’s the choice of …

I confess. I judged this book by its cover. It was early on a rainy Sunday morning and I was wandering in an empty shop when I saw some books stacked on a table. I went closer and was attracted by thi…

I chose this book because it won the “Best Fiction of 2020” Goodreads award so my expectations were very high. Usually, I have a glance at some reviews before reading a book, just to get a…

I liked this book, but I didn’t like it that much. Sometimes I felt it was motivating, but other times I found it a bit “common sense” with what it was trying to teach. The author hi…

I’ve been wanting to read this classic for a number of years and I am so happy I finally got around to it. I found it helpful and engaging that at the beginning of every single chapter there was a pra…

Stop and think about two facts: To not let your emotions control you, you can learn how to identify and manage them. Emotional manipulation happens daily in our lives, both consciously and subconsciou…

Do you have a vegetable garden? If not, and if you want to live a long and happy life, you might consider having one. You’ve just learned one of the “secrets” of the longes…

The Dalai Lama believes that the purpose of life is to seek happiness. To achieve this you need to do only one thing: train your mind. Because that’s what happiness is, a mental state. The book …

The majority of self-help books out there repeat one thing like a broken record: that the problem is your ego, you need to let go of it. In the culture in which we live, which values self-sufficiency …

An impressive and smart novel, it made me feel like it was a memoir of a real person. Very easy to read, I couldn’t wait to finish the book but at the same time, I didn’t want it to finish…

The best non-fiction book I’ve read in 2021. I’ve often read reviews about books that changed readers’ lives and had always wondered whether one day that would happen to me. Well, I …