Book Reviews

4.8

Published by Clarkson Potter in March 2022, Half Baked Harvest Every Day is the #1 New York Times bestselling cookbook from Tieghan Gerard — the blogger and author behind the Half Baked Harvest brand — collecting more than 120 all-new recipes built around wholesome decadence, minimally processed ingredients, and smart twists on comforting everyday favorites. Publishers Weekly awarded the collection a starred review, and it has earned a devoted following among Gerard's millions of blog readers and cookbook fans. This review assesses the book's content, organisation, and published reception — not a kitchen test.

The Wilder Way: A Memoir of Adventure, Freedom by Eva zu Beck

4.8

The Wilder Way is Eva zu Beck's debut memoir, published by Gallery Books in June 2026, tracing her seven-year transformation from a conventional London life into an existence defined by extreme adventure and self-interrogation — from solo horse-trekking in Mongolia to riding out COVID-19 alone on a remote Yemeni island. Critical coverage finds her "frustratingly impulsive and naïve at times" but ultimately "a captivating storyteller," and critical coverage notes that the narrative resists neat resolution by design, with zu Beck herself acknowledging she "failed to find myself" in her travels yet learned to live with uncertainty. It is a memoir for readers drawn to high-stakes adventure writing and honest accounts of lives deliberately unmapped.

1984 by George Orwell

4.7

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four — published in 1949 and widely considered one of the most consequential novels of the 20th century — is a dystopian speculative fiction work whose central concepts have entered the cultural mainstream in a way achieved by very few books, making it essential reading for anyone interested in the literature of political power and surveillance.

"Your Wish is Your Command; How to Manifest Your Desires" - The Missing Secrets - KEVIN TRUDEAU by KEVIN TRUDEAU

4.7

Kevin Trudeau's Your Wish is Your Command is a sprawling self-help manifesting guide published in a new hardcover edition by TruStar Publishing in 2025, promising readers a "missing key" to the Law of Attraction — and doing so with the full weight of Trudeau's controversial public persona in tow.

Great Thinkers: Simple tools from sixty great thinkers to improve by The School of Life

Great Thinkers: Simple Tools from Sixty Great Thinkers to Improve Your Life Today is a wide-ranging illustrated reference book that distils the intellectual canon of The School of Life — drawing on philosophy, political theory, sociology, psychotherapy, art, architecture, and literature — into accessible profiles designed to help readers navigate the dilemmas, joys, and griefs of everyday life.

The Testaments (TV Tie-in): A Novel by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, the Booker Prize-winning sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, returns to the theocratic republic of Gilead fifteen years on, delivering a thriller-paced narrative through three distinct female voices — Aunt Lydia, Agnes Jemima, and Daisy — whose converging stories expose the regime's internal rot. Now a Hulu Original series, this media tie-in edition from Vintage keeps one of contemporary fiction's most celebrated sequels firmly in the spotlight.

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman

Gino Wickman's Traction is a business how-to book built around the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), a framework designed to help small to mid-sized entrepreneurial companies achieve focus, accountability, and sustainable growth by strengthening six key organizational components.

Jun 22, 2026

The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (P.S.) by Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley's paired essays — The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell — remain essential documents in the literature of consciousness, philosophy of mind, and the cultural history of psychedelics, offering a uniquely erudite account of one writer's mescaline experience and its far-reaching implications.

Jun 22, 2026

The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends by Rachel Friedman

4.4

Rachel Friedman's memoir chronicles how a self-described "good girl" — a college graduate with no post-graduation plan and a lifelong habit of playing it safe — impulsively bought a ticket to Ireland and ended up on a two-year, three-continent journey that reshaped her understanding of herself and the world. Published by Bantam in 2011, the book traces her arc from Galway to Sydney to South America alongside her free-spirited Australian friend Carly, delivering an honest account of what it costs — and yields — to abandon the perfect plan.

WordPress Web Application Development - Second Edition by Rakhitha Nimesh Ratnayake

Published by Packt Publishing in May 2015, this second edition of WordPress Web Application Development is a practical, scenario-driven technical guide aimed squarely at WordPress developers and designers who want to build modular, scalable web applications efficiently. Ratnayake draws on his background as a freelance developer and plugin creator to walk readers through leveraging WordPress's core features — while honestly confronting the platform's limitations — to deliver applications on tight timelines and limited budgets. The book's premise-driven, real-world approach makes it a useful desk reference for practitioners already comfortable with basic web development, though its 2015 publication date means readers must weigh its coverage against the pace of WordPress's ongoing evolution.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Hardcover) Book by Mark Manson

Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is a nonfiction self-help book that rejects the culture of relentless positivity in favor of a candid argument: life's struggles give it meaning, and focusing on what truly matters is more valuable than chasing happiness as an end in itself. Published under HarperOne and now with over 20 million copies sold worldwide, it has earned the status of a generation-defining work in the self-help genre.

Mimesis and Make-Believe by Walton

Kendall Walton's Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts is a major work of analytic philosophy of art, originally published by Harvard University Press in 1990 and later issued in a reprint paperback edition. By grounding the theory of representation in the logic of children's make-believe, Walton constructs a unified framework that spans literature, painting, sculpture, theater, and film — making it essential reading for philosophers of art, aestheticians, and theorists of fiction.

Jun 22, 2026