Blog tour: A Year in the Life

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Welcome to the blog tour for A Year in the Life by Lucy Leonelli!


More about the book…

In her late twenties and already a partner in her headhunting firm, Lucy Leonelli was seemingly on top of the world, but despite her success she couldn’t shake the feeling she was missing out on life out there.

So Lucy did the only reasonable thing she could do: she hung up her suit and set out on a yearlong journey to uncover her most authentic self.

Stepping outside her comfort zone, she turned to twenty-six little-understood subcultures of the UK – communities often heard about but very seldom seen. Fortwo weeks each, she lived with battle re-enactors, circus performers, hill baggers, Morris dancers, naturists, trainspotters, yogis, zeitgeist political activists and more, experiencing first-hand their social rituals and customs.

A Year in the Life charts Lucy’s adventure as she swam naked with lawyers and vets, cast spells with teachers and IT consultants, dressed in tight latex, drank with self-proclaimed vampires and fought the undead in an epic LARP battle. It tells of the importance of community in an increasingly isolating society; of the unquenchable human thirst for a sense of belonging; of how misguided our own prejudices can be; and of how when we open the door to others, we might just learn something about ourselves.

More about the author…

Lucy Leonelli is a self-proclaimed social tourist with an unquenchable thirst for exploring, experiencing and understanding the world's most colourful subcultures and communities. Born in Bristol, she now runs executive recruitment for a technology firm in Silicon Valley and lives in Berkeley, California.

My impressions…

Was it a page-turner? This is one of those books that you could dip and out of but I was so curious to find out which subcultures the author chose to associate with each letter of the alphabet that I couldn’t stop!

Did the book meet my expectations? Yes, I expected to learn something new, and I did. I must admit that I would have liked to learn more about all of these communities… but I also realise that the book would have turned into an encyclopaedia if I had it my way!

Three words to describe it. Amusing. Quirky. Eye-opening.

Do I like the cover? Yes, although I would have liked it to represent all 26 subcultures, which are here defined as ‘subdivisions of a national culture or enclaves within it with a distinct integrated network of behaviour, beliefs, and attitudes’.

Have I read any other books by the same author? No, I believe this is the author’s debut.

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