And so she returned...

Hello fellow readers. It's been a while. Over two months now, in fact. I have dearly missed blogging and reading some of the lovely feedback I get from my readers. Fear not, I am still lurking in the community and I am still reading, perhaps less ferociously than before, but reading nonetheless. A family of 5, life sometimes gets in the way!

I would like to share with you some of what I have read over the last few months, which, as you will notice, is mostly non-fiction, a genre I haven't really blogged about much before. Sometimes I think non-fiction requires a certain frame of mind, or headspace. I have read lots of non-fiction over the years, particularly in the self-help and business sections and I very rarely encounter a book that I don't like.

I cannot tell you how I came to read this first novel. I am a massive fan of Queen and grew up in the late eighties and early nineties so Freddie Mercury & Co. featured heavily in my childhood. I read a news piece a while back about the upcoming biopic of Freddie's life and came across Somebody To Love by Mark Langthorne and Matt Richards. I jumped in, expecting a standard look at the life of a famous rock star in the 70s and 80s but instead, what I found was a pretty in-depth history lesson on the AIDS epidemic, and it's devastating effect on one of the World's biggest stars.

It truly fascinated me and led me into many, many documentaries, books and articles on HIV and AIDS. It was bordering on obsession at times, this thirst for knowledge and understanding of something that has always been present for me but never really comprehended. If you have any understanding of the Myers-Briggs personality types you probably wouldn't have a hard time figuring out that I am an INTJ and when we stumble upon a topic, we have to pursue it to it's end. It's a dogged and unrelenting trait that I often loathe because, in the moment, all else is forsaken and forgotten. When you are a parent of three children, their needs have to come first and so it is often frustrating for an INTJ to have to put certain pursuits on the back-burner whilst tending to responsibilities.

It is this dogged research that has kept me busy the past few weeks, and only now that I feel I have exhausted the topic can I move on with my newly acquired knowledge and opinions. So, I am back to the real world, back to some of my favourite fictional genres and back to writing some views and reviews on what Rachael is reading next.

Until next time...

Rachael xo

Some of what I've been reading and watching...