Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales

As a journalist, Leigh Sales meets face to face the people we see only in the paper or on the news. Ordinary people thrust unwillingly into the media spotlight after experiencing unexpectedly the worst moments of their life.

In Any Ordinary Day, Sales looks honestly at the phenomenon of human behaviour, our morbid fascination with other people’s tragedies, and sets out to answer the questions these people spark in all of us: What are the odds of the unthinkable happening to me? And would I cope if it did?

We are taken on a conversational journey of discovery as Sales investigates current research into resilience. She reinterviews individuals years after their life-changing trauma to gain insight into the process of coping – what helped or hindered them.

We discover how politicians respond in times of national crisis or to the tragedies of individuals – in ways that bind people together, or push the nation and individuals apart. Mass media allows us to watch them respond to terror attacks, pandemics or natural disasters. While it is fascinating to think about these issues on a national scale, this book is also personally both confronting and ultimately reassuring.

In the last year I have been blindsided by a number of unrelated events, each of which, while not newsworthy to the general public, was large enough to rock my world on its axis and leave me questioning what really mattered, and how my life would look in the future. It’s why I picked this book off the shelf, and why it might be just the thing for you.

Reading Any Ordinary Day during lockdown has been an uplifting experience. It dug into the heart of horrific circumstances to expose human optimism, kindness, hope and courage.

The enduring message I was left with was what I most needed to hear. That while there are not always happy endings, ‘almost all of us are far more resilient than we could possibly imagine.’ Ordinary people can not only survive, but grow after disaster.

I recommend this honest, relatable book as an excellent read. I also recommend that we all take the author’s final advice. It may at first seem trite, but contains the culmination of her research and interviewing. The heart of resilience in the face of adversity.

“Always be grateful for the ordinary days and to savour every last moment of them. They’re not so ordinary, really. Hindsight makes them quite magical.’

Posted by Elizabeth

Catalogue link: Any Ordinary Day

Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

Rot & Ruin is a young adult zombie novel but it’s not your run of the mill battle to survive the apocolypse zombie novel.

Rot & Ruin is set about fifteen years after the first night; when people stopped dying for good and started rising from the dead. As expected, the first night sent the world into a whirlwind of panic and a battle for survival. A baby during the first night, Benny Imura was rescued by his older half-brother, Tom.

These days, most people won’t leave the secuity of the chain link fences which surround towns that have sprung up in the years since the first night. Within these fences life has been pieced back together. Towns have been built, families created, adults go to work and kids go to school, trading happens. In Mountainside, once you turn fifteen you need to find a job or else your rations will be halved. After a string of failed attempts, Tom offers to take Benny on as an apprentice; he is a zombie hunter out in the rot and ruin. Tom is a local hero. The police and mayor love him; all the women want to be with him and all the men want to be him. All except Benny and his heroes: bounty hunters Charlie Pink-eye and Motor City Hammer. They believe Tom is a coward, not worth the ground he stands on.

As Benny begins his training, Tom realises that Benny has no understanding of what life is like beyond the fences. Beyond the fence there are no laws or enforcers of the law. It is rough and dangerous and no one is there to save you. During his first trip beyond the walls, his life as he knows and his veiws about it rapidly change, as it starts to look like his life and the lives of all he cares about may be in danger.

Rot & Ruin is not my normal type of book but I had challenged myself to try new things this year. It is a great first book in a series and it can also be read as a stand alone. I sped through book one to four in the space of a week. The final book Bits & Pieces is more of a collection of stories woven through memories of our favourite characters, and some new characters, beginning at the first night right through to present day. Rot & Ruin is not only a zombie book, it is a coming of age story that just happens to be filled with zombies.

Reviewed by Kristen Clothier

Catalogue link:  Rot & Ruin