Latte, Life, and Lore

She/Her. ADHD-C 💙 Historian and marine biologist at heart. Currently 📖 How to be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman

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I thought I was reading about a Spanish queen. Then Christopher Columbus appeared, the Spanish Inquisition began, Catherine of Aragon headed for Tudor England, and I realised just how much history overlapped during Isabella’s lifetime. Kirstin Downey’s book is a biography of a formidable ruler whose legacy is as impressive as it is uncomfortable. #books #reviews #spain #history #queenisabella

Book Review: Kirstin Downey Brings a Formidable Queen to Life in Isabella: The Warrior Queen

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The Plantagenets ruled England for nearly two and a half centuries, and apparently none of them believed in keeping family problems private. Dan Jones turns rebellions, betrayals, disastrous favourites, and spectacularly poor succession planning into a history book that reads like a royal drama. #books #reviews #theplantagenets #danjones #britishhistory #medievalhistory

Book Review: Dan Jones Makes Royal Dysfunction Irresistible in The Plantagenets

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Imperial Twilight is a gripping story of ambition, misunderstanding, and the slow drift toward conflict between Britain and China. Stephen R. Platt brings the past to life with vivid detail and complex characters, making it hard to stay neutral as the story unfolds. #BookReview #ImperialTwilight #StephenRPlatt #HistoryBooks #OpiumWar #NonFictionReads

Book Review: Stephen R. Platt Reconsiders the Road to Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age

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The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy was one of the most unexpectedly personal books I've read this year. Meloy's mind moves the way mine does — wandering, connecting seemingly unrelated ideas, chasing curiosity wherever it leads. What began as a book about a colour became a reflection on what it's like for me to live with combined ADHD. #books #reviews #nature #adhd #geology #ecology

Book Review: Ellen Meloy Wanders Through the Mind in The Anthropology of Turquoise

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Stephen Rutt took me across Britain and Ireland in search of puffins, gannets, kittiwakes, fulmars, and many more species that spend much of their lives at sea. It's an engaging and passionate piece of nature writing. Though, I often wished he included photos or sketches as many of the birds started blending together in my imagination. #books #reviews #seabirds #nature #travel #britain #ireland

Book Review: Stephen Rutt Takes Flight Through The Seafarers

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Finished Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder and I have complicated feelings about this one. I admire the ambition, but I didn't feel emotionally connected. Also, Sophie being 14 years old and casually meeting an older mysterious man alone in the woods with almost zero parental alarm bells? Absolutely not. #books #reviews #philosophy #life #humanbehaviour #opinions

Book Review: Jostein Gaarder Questions Reality in Sophie’s World

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On the surface, it's a memoir about preserving Judeo-Iraqi Arabic and cultural memory. But it also made me think about the private languages we carry inside ourselves — trauma, neurodivergence, emotional intensity, and the parts of us people often misread. #books #reviews #history #languages #mentalhealth #adhd #trauma

Book Review: Samantha Ellis Preserves the Ache in Always Carry Salt

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Finished Outlandish by Nick Hunt and it feels less like I read a book and more like I walked through one. Slow, immersive, and quietly magical—it makes the world feel softer, stranger, and a lot more worth noticing. Definitely one to read at your own pace. #books #reviews #worldhistory #travel #europe #life #people

Book Review: Nick Hunt Goes Gallivanting Around Europe

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Empires crossed oceans, faced mutiny, starvation, and death… all for nutmeg and cloves. Spice is basically the 16th-century version of a space race, except that it's messier, bloodier, and a lot more absurd. #books #reviews #colonisation #history #maritime #spain #portugal #spices

Book Review: Roger Crowley Recreates the High-Stakes Race in Spice

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This book made me realise that seahorses are basically tiny, dancing, colour-changing, baby-producing oddballs. Definitely one of the most fascinating creatures I’ve read about lately. #books #reviews #seahorses #marinebiology #oceanwildlife

Book Review: Till Hein Unpacks the Curious Life of Seahorses

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Just finished Fentanyl, Inc. by Ben Westhoff, and I don’t think I can look at the word “system” the same way again. This isn’t just about drugs. It’s about how everything is connected and how easily something dangerous can slip through the cracks of things we trust every day. No clear villains. No clean solutions. Just a reality that feels a little too close to home. #books #reviews #drugs #politics #fentanyl #opinions

Book Review: Ben Westhoff Goes Undercover in Fentanyl, Inc.

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Henry V follows the rise of a young king who transforms from an uncertain heir into a ruthless, strategic ruler, leading England through one of its most famous victories at Agincourt. It’s about triumph, the cost of ambition, the pressure to prove yourself, and how far someone is willing to go to secure their legacy. Was he a brilliant king or someone who pushed too far just to prove a point? #books #reviews #history #henryv #danjones

Book Review: Dan Jones Reimagines Power and Legacy in Henry V

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I picked this up for the question—who eats an oyster for the first time and thinks it’s a good idea? Somewhere along the way, it stopped being about oysters and became about curiosity, risk, and the quiet moments that shaped everything we know today. Not every chapter landed for me, but the idea stayed. Someone, at some point, simply decided to try. #books #reviews #history #anthropology #archaeology #humanity

Book Review: Cody Cassidy Explores the Curiosity Behind Humanity’s Firsts

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Not every book I start is one I finish, and that’s okay. This post breaks down how I choose what to read, what makes me put a book down, and why DNF-ing is sometimes the most honest decision a reader can make. Plus, a look at three books that didn’t make the cut for me. #didnotfinish #DNF #opinions #reviews #books

How I Choose My Books to Read and Why Some I Did Not Finish

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I didn’t pick this book up because I was dealing with a breakup. I picked it up because I felt disconnected from myself, and didn’t quite know how to come back. Single. On Purpose. turned out to be less about being single and more about learning how to be whole on your own. This one hit closer than expected.

Book Review: John Kim Talks About Self-Connection and Finding Yourself

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Framing the History of Rome One Coin at a Time

Most authors use dates, dynasties, and military campaigns to retell history. Gareth Harney used coins. Those round metal things that passed through countless hands while quietly carrying messages of power, legitimacy, and identity.

And in many ways, the book is genuinely enjoyable.

I enjoyed learning about the different coins minted across Rome’s long timeline, from its early foundations through successive emperors to the empire’s eventual collapse.

Gareth Harney is a confident storyteller, and his descriptions are vivid and easy to follow. The prose flows smoothly, making a sprawling subject feel approachable rather than overwhelming. Even without prior knowledge of numismatics, the book never feels exclusionary.

That said, I found myself increasingly aware of a quiet imbalance. Despite the title and structure, the book felt more like a broad history of the Roman Empire than a deep exploration of how coins shaped, reflected, or influenced that history. The coins open each chapter, but once the narrative gets going, they recede into the background while the familiar sweep of Roman political and military history takes over.

This isn’t a flaw, but it did leave me wanting more sustained attention on the coins as objects. I’m not a historian or a numismatic expert, but if the book positions coins as storytellers, I expected them to stay closer to the centre of the story.

Still, the book remains an enjoyable read. Its accessibility is one of its strengths, and for readers interested in both Roman history and coins, it does feel like getting two books for the price of one. It may not fully commit to the analytical depth its premise suggests, but it succeeds as a readable, engaging entry point into Rome’s long and complicated past.

In the end, this is a book I appreciated but didn't fully love. It’s neither daring nor disappointing — simply a clear, well-written work that invites curiosity, even if it doesn’t always follow that curiosity as far as it could have.

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According to Junger, Humans Don’t Mind Hardship

But they mind not feeling necessary. Imagine being surrounded by people and still feeling lonely!

So, I picked up Tribe because people had good things to say about it — the kind that clarified something they’d been feeling for a while. I was already thinking about community and belonging when I started reading, which made the book feel uncomfortably timely.

Junger opens with a deceptively simple idea:

Humans don’t mind hardship; what they mind is not feeling necessary.

Modern society, he argues, has become very good at making people feel unnecessary. We are safer, more independent, more materially secure, and increasingly disconnected.

The appeal of tribal life isn’t nostalgia for suffering, but dissatisfaction with modern isolation. As societies grow more affluent, people gain autonomy but lose interdependence. Personal property and individual choice allow us to live without needing one another. You can be surrounded by people and still feel profoundly alone.

Junger links this to psychology and biology. Humans need to feel competent, authentic, and connected. Modern life supports the first two well enough. The third is where things thin out. Community shrinks as authority expands. Responsibility is replaced by rules. Moral decisions are absorbed by systems rather than lived through relationships.

Where Tribe is most persuasive is in its discussion of hardship and solidarity. Drawing from disaster psychology and war, Junger shows how shared adversity can dissolve hierarchy and create intense cohesion. Helping others is hormonally rewarding. In those moments, people feel purposeful, alive, necessary.

Junger is particularly strong when writing about trauma. One of the book’s most sobering insights is that lack of social support predicts PTSD more reliably than the severity of trauma itself. People don’t recover in isolation; they recover when they return to places where they are still needed. Modern societies tend to individualise suffering while stripping away the communal structures that once absorbed it.

Later, Tribe turns toward power and exclusion. Junger defines community simply: the people you would help feed and defend. Any group that doesn’t allow its members to act selflessly in these ways, he argues, isn’t a tribe in any meaningful sense. Contempt, rather than criticism, is what corrodes groups most, especially when directed at those already excluded. The ultimate betrayal of a tribe is using power to quietly excommunicate others.

Many modern communities operate on unspoken expectations — consistency, emotional regulation, social fluency — that are not neutral. Belonging becomes conditional. When performance drops, so does visibility. Junger captures the longing for tribe accurately; access to it is not evenly distributed.

I don’t reject Junger’s argument. Tribe matters because it gives language to a quiet loss many people feel but can’t easily explain. It doesn’t offer solutions so much as clarity. The question it leaves behind isn’t whether we belong. It’s whether we are necessary to one another and what it means when we aren’t.