The Great Christmas Knit-Off - Alexandra Brown

Title: The Great Christmas Knit-Off
Author: Alexandra Brown
Genre: Chick-lit
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 400
Date read: December, 2015

Heartbroken after being jilted at the altar, Sybil has been saved from despair by her knitting obsession and now her home is filled to bursting with tea cosies, bobble hats, and jumpers. But, after discovering that she may have perpetrated the cock-up of the century at work, Sybil decides to make a hasty exit and, just weeks before Christmas, runs away to the picturesque village of Tindledale.

There, Sybil discovers Hettie’s House of Haberdashery, an emporium dedicated to the world of knitting and needle craft. But Hettie, the outspoken octogenarian owner, is struggling and now the shop is due for closure. And when Hettie decides that Sybil’s wonderfully wacky Christmas jumpers are just the thing to add a bit of excitement to her window display, something miraculous starts to happen.


Lovely read :) I was instantly charmed and found myself longing to go celebrate Christmas in a cozy English village like Tindledale where everybody knows everybody, everybody cares for their neighbour, and everybody wants to gather either at the pub, at the bookstore or to knit and natter!

Parts of it were perhaps a bit too perfect, but I tend to think that's allowed for Christmas stories :) It was a wonderfully cozy read and I never wanted to leave.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed - Jon Ronson

Title: So You've Been Publicly Shamed
Author: Jon Ronson
Genre: Non-fiction
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 306
Date read: December 2015

For the past three years, Jon Ronson has been immersing himself in the world of modern-day public shaming - meeting famous shamees, shamers, and bystanders who have been impacted. This is the perfect time for a modern-day Scarlet Letter - a radically empathetic book about public shaming, and about shaming as a form of social control. It has become such a big part of our lives it has begun to feel weird and empty when there isn't anyone to be furious about. Whole careers are being ruined by one mistake. A transgression is revealed. Our collective outrage at it has the force of a hurricane. Then we all quickly forget about it and move on to the next one, and it doesn't cross our minds to wonder if the shamed person is okay or in ruins. What's it doing to them? What's it doing to us?

Ronson's book is a powerful, funny, unique, and very humane dispatch from the frontline, in the escalating war on human nature and its flaws.


I read this in two sittings. It's ridiculously readable and impossible to put down. Jon Ronson focuses on a fascinating and troubling subject: the lynch-happy mob mentality that's so prevalant online. Fortunately I've never had it pointed towards me, but I've seen it often enough, and it's terrifying how evil some of the people calling others out for their mistakes can be.

I'm pretty sure that most of the people who make up the mob aren't usually trolls, nor do they really think much about the consequences of their actions - they're just caught up in a righteous thrill, and forget that even though their shaming/attacking is "just" online, there's still a very real person on the other side.

It's a book to make you lose just a bit of faith in humanity, and to remind you that the internet is forever.