Book of the Month
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul – the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbour who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter’s dreams. Together with Walter – environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, family man – she was doing her small part to build a better world.
But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz – outré rocker and Walter’s old college friend and rival – still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to poor Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become “a very different kind of neighbour,” an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street’s attentive eyes?
In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of too much liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom’s intensely realized characters, as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.
“A lavishly entertaining account of a family at war with itself, and a brilliant dissection of the dissatisfactions and disappointments of contemporary American life…It is the first Great American Novel of the post-Obama era.” Daily Telegraph
“Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, Freedom, like his previous one, The Corrections, is a masterpiece of American fiction…Freedom is a still richer and deeper work – less glittering on its surface but more confident in its method. Like all great novels, Freedom does not just tell an engrossing story. It illuminates, through the steady radiance of its author’s profound moral intelligence, the world we thought we knew.” New York Times
“A literary genius for our time…An extraordinary work…This is simply on a different plane from other contemporary fiction…Demands comparison rather with Saul Bellow’s Herzog. A modern classic, Freedom is the novel of the year, and the century.” Guardian
Book Lounge Giveaway
Encounter: Essays by Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera’s new collection of essays is a passionate defence of art in an era that, he argues, no longer values art or beauty. With the same dazzling mix of emotion and idea that characterises his novels he illuminates the art and artists who remain important to him and whose work helps us better understand the world. An astute and brilliant reader of fiction, Kundera applies these same gifts to the reading of Francis Bacon’s paintings, Leos Janácek’s music, the films of Federico Fellini, as well as to the novels of Philip Roth, Dostoyevsky, and García Márquez, among others. He also takes up the challenge of restoring to their rightful place the work of major writers like Anatole France and Curzio Malaparte who have fallen into obscurity. Milan Kundera’s signature themes of memory and forgetting, the experience of exile, and his spirited championing of modernist art mark these essays. Art, he argues, is what we have to cleave to in the face of evil, against the expression of the darker side of human nature. Elegant, startlingly original and provocative, Encounter follows Kundera’s essay collections, The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed and The Curtain.
Every Subject Under the Sun
Scribble, Scribble, Scribble: The Selected Writings of Simon Schama: Writing on Ice Cream, Obama, Churchill and My Mother by Simon Schama
“Wednesday brought a pungent sheepy smell emanating from the greyish lamb and barley soup my mother optimistically called ‘Taste of the Garden of Eden’. Expel me, please. Haddock in the air? That would be Thursday. The faintest whiff of roasting garlic? That would be what my sister and I uncharitably dubbed ‘Friday Night Memorial Chicken’; a venerable object smeared on the breasts with a dab of marmite meant to cheer the bird up as it emerged defeated from the oven. Rattling inside the brittle cavity was that one solitary clove of garlic; the exotic knobble that my mother conceded as a romantic touch amid the iron regimen of her unvarying weekly routine”. Cookery is not necessarily a subject one immediately associates with Simon Schama – one of Britain’s most distinguished historians. But this selection of his occasional writings is a treasure trove of surprises. Passionate, provocative, entertaining and informative, Scribble, Scribble, Scribble ranges far and wide: from cookery and family to Barack Obama, from preaching and Shakespeare to Victorian sages, from Charlotte Rampling and Hurricane Katrina to ‘The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of The Osbournes’. Never predictable, always stimulating, Scribble, Scribble, Scribble allows us to view the world, in all its diversity, through the eyes of one of its more original inhabitants.
“Wilfully miscellaneous…addictively readable…[Schama] is clever, versatile and extremely likeable.” Financial Times
“This sparkling, effervescent collection bridges the gap between scholarly and popular writing…It is excellent holiday reading.” Spectator
“His eloquence is on magnificent display in this new book: a delightful collection of journalistic essays…” Independent on Sunday
What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic Edited by Anton Harber, Kristin Palitza, Natalie Ridgard and Helen Struthers
This new investigation into HIV reporting in South Africa combines journalism with research to present an analysis that is at once broad in its scope and focused on the important issues.
As good journalism should, it shines a light on one of the world’s most pressing concerns and gives a voice to those whose own voices are often not heard against the din of political controversy that surrounds HIV. At the same time, the book also provides a wide range of research and analysis on HIV reporting and the role of the media in the HIV epidemic.
What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic is a collection of work produced by the fellows of the HIV/AIDS & the Media Project, started by Helen Struthers and Anton Harber in 2003. It contains a selection of the best journalism and research produced by the Media Project Fellows, which gives an important insight into the history and key issues of South African health politics and media reporting on HIV in the last decade. The texts range from in-depth quantitative and qualitative research documents to radio and television transcripts and candid interviews.
Saturday is for Funerals by Unity Dow and Max Essex
A decade ago, the AIDS epidemic in Botswana was so bad that leaders feared its people were in danger of extinction; the World Health Organization estimated that 85 percent of 15 year olds would eventually die of the disease. Today, Botswana is the pride of Africa. The country’s remarkable journey is detailed in Saturday Is for Funerals, a new book by renowned AIDS activist Unity Dow and researcher Max Essex. Weaving together personal anecdotes and medical history, the authors reveal how a combination of proactive government intervention, education, research, and foreign aid have achieved the near impossible. The narratives provide a human touch and convincingly illustrate the tremendous impact of AIDS on women, children, infants, friends, family, and culture. While Botswana was hard-hit by the AIDS epidemic, it has provided a successful model for other countries by taking a proactive approach to dealing with the disease.
“The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Botswana is explored with sensitivity and scientific rigor in this heartening book…This richly informative book dispels much of the mystery still surrounding HIV/AIDS, revealing how life goes on for those infected. Readers overwhelmed by (and even numbed to) the images of desolation that accompany coverage of the epidemic will find a realistic but optimistic assessment of a society successfully tackling the problem and a model for other afflicted nations.” Publishers Weekly
“Bringing Saturday Is for Funerals to life–and distinguishing it from other books about AIDS in Africa–are its first-hand, often heart-wrenching stories of the epidemic’s victims…[Dow] shares evocative stories of marriages torn apart by the disease, and saved through drug therapy, of tribal leaders encouraging circumcision to reduce infection, and of AIDS orphans.” Daily Beast
“The epidemic of HIV and AIDS marching across Africa is threatening to crush entire countries under its weight. Saturday Is for Funerals tells the story of how one country, Botswana, is stemming the epidemic with bold political leadership, a strategic and scientific approach, and more than a little grit.” New Scientist
The Truth is a Strange Fruit by David Beresford
Twice voted Britain’s top foreign correspondent, David Beresford has produced a ‘word picture’ of South Africa’s apartheid war. Borrowing from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and plundering his own journalism to give his ‘truth’ of the apartheid years, he has woven through the book the love letters of John Harris – the ‘station bomber’, awaiting execution on Pretoria’s death row. In combination, they paint an often harrowing and heart-breaking, but brilliant picture of South Africa. David Beresford was born in South Africa and moved to the UK in 1974. Joining The Guardian newspaper, he covered the conflicts in Ireland, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and the first Gulf War. In 1984, with the outbreak of South Africa’s township rebellions, The Guardian posted him to South Africa. In 1986, his book on the Irish hunger strike, 10 Men Dead, was published.
Philosophy Bites by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton
What does Simon Blackburn have to say about morality? What does Anthony Grayling think about atheism? Alain de Botton about the aesthetics of architecture? Adrian Moore about infinity? Will Kymlicka about minority rights?
For their hugely successful Philosophy Bites podcast, David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton challenged some of the world’s leading philosophers to hold forth on their favourite topics. Now 25 of these entertaining, personal and illuminating conversations are presented in print for the first time. The result is a book that is a taster for the whole enterprise of philosophy, and gives unexpected insights into hot topics spanning ethics, politics, metaphysics, aesthetics and that old chestnut – the meaning of life.
It Could Be Worse You Could Be Me by Ariel Leve
Hypochondriac, neurotic, and a habitual worrier, Ariel Leve has always looked on the blighted side of life. She counts it a good day if she manages to get out of bed. If someone should ask: what’s the worst that can happen? She has a ready-made list and lives in permanent fear of what’s to come. But at least, as a pessimist, she’s fully prepared for any eventuality: people who see the glass half full are only a spill away from disappointment. Whether you’ve been dumped by the love of your life, lost your job, said the wrong thing at a party, or forgotten to have children, Ariel is there to remind you that it could be worse – you could be her.
“Ariel Leve is brilliant and funny. Buy this book and keep it close.” Bill Nighy
“A funny, smart, delightfully cranky book about everything from Facebook to dating to Angelina Jolie’s dinner conversation.” A.J. Jacobs
“Packed full of laugh-out-loud one-liners and thoughtful observations on everyday life…forthright, funny and extremely honest.” The List
City of Sin: London and Its Vices by Catharine Arnold
If Paris is the city of love, then London is the city of lust. For over a thousand years, England’s capital has been associated with desire, avarice and the sins of the flesh. Richard of Devises, a monk writing in 1180, warned that “every quarter [of the city] abounds in great obscenities”. As early as the second century AD, London was notorious for its raucous festivities and disorderly houses, and throughout the centuries the bawdy side of life has taken easy root and flourished. In the third book of her fascinating London trilogy, award-winning popular historian Catharine Arnold turns her gaze to the city’s relationship with vice through the ages. From the bath houses and brothels of Roman Londinium, to the stews and Molly houses of the 17th and 18th centuries, London has always traded in the currency of sex. Whether pornographic publishers on Fleet Street, or fancy courtesans parading in Haymarket, its streets have long been witness to colourful sexual behaviour. In her usual accessible and entertaining style, Arnold takes us on a journey through the fleshpots of London – here are buxom strumpets, louche aristocrats, popinjay politicians and Victorian flagellants – all vying for their place in London’s league of licentiousness. From sexual exuberance to moral panic, the city has seen the pendulum swing from Puritanism to hedonism and back again. With latter chapters looking at Victorian London and the sexual underground of the 20th century and beyond, this is a fascinating and vibrant chronicle of London at its most raw and ribald.
Teach Us to Sit Still: A Sceptic’s Search for Health and Healing by Tim Parks
“Just when the medical profession had given up on me and I on it, just when I seemed to be walled up in a life sentence of chronic pain, someone proposed a bizarre way out: sit still, they said, and breathe…”
Teach Us to Sit Still is the visceral, thought-provoking and improbably entertaining story of Tim Parks’ quest to overcome ill health. Bedevilled by a crippling condition which nobody could explain or relieve, he confronts hard truths about the relationship between the mind and the body, the hectic modern world and his life as a writer. Following a fruitless journey through the conventional medical system he finds solace in an improbable prescription of breathing exercises that eventually leads him to take up meditation. This was the very last place Parks expected or wanted to find answers; anything New Age simply wasn’t his scene. Meanwhile he is drawn to consider the effects of illness on the work of other writers, the role of religions in shaping our sense of self, and the influence of sport and art in our attitudes to health and well-being. Most of us will fall ill at some point; few will describe that journey with the same verve, insight and intelligence as Tim Parks. Captivating and inspiring, Teach Us to Sit Still is an intensely personal – and brutally honest – story for our times.
“A cool, sceptical observer of the human condition…Teach Us to Sit Still deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness.” J. M. Coetzee
“A searingly honest, viscerally vivid, darkly comic self-examination of the connections between writing, personality and health. Once I started reading it, I didn’t want to stop.” David Lodge
“[It] made me laugh; it made me cry; and it made me seriously think about taking up Vispassana meditation.” The Times
“A lovely, well-told story…Parks is a conscientious and expert companion whom it is hard not to like.” Observer
“[a] wonderful, paradoxical book.” Guardian
Smart Swarm: Using Animal Behaviour to Organise Our World by Peter Miller
The modern world may be obsessed with speed and productivity, but twenty-first century humans actually have much to learn from the ancient instincts of swarms. A fascinating new take on the concept of collective intelligence and its colourful manifestations in some of our most complex problems, Smart Swarm introduces a compelling new understanding of the real experts on solving our own complex problems relating to such topics as business, politics, and technology.
Based on extensive globe-trotting research, this lively tour from National Geographic reporter Peter Miller introduces thriving throngs of ant colonies, which have inspired computer programs for streamlining factory processes, telephone networks, and truck routes; termites, used in recent studies for climate-control solutions; schools of fish, on which the U.S. military modelled a team of robots; and many other examples of the wisdom to be gleaned about the behaviour of crowds-among critters and corporations alike.
“Smart Swarm blends zoology, entertaining anecdotes and conceptual discussion in an approachable and insightful way.” New Scientist
“There have been other recent books about swarm intelligence, and the wisdom of crowds, but Miller’s book is the sharpest, most readably intelligent guided tour of current thinking and research about collective intelligence and nature’s basic collaborations.” The Times
“[Peter Miller] has proven that there is intelligent life on earth, but it is not necessarily us. What a delightful, eye-opening book.” Martin Cruz Smith, author of Gorky Park and Stalin’s Ghost
I Never Knew There Was A Word For It by Adam Jacot de Boinod
From ‘shotclog’, a Yorkshire term for a companion only tolerated because he is paying for the drinks, to Albanian having 29 words to describe different kinds of eyebrows – the languages of the world are full of amazing, amusing and illuminating words and expressions that will improve absolutely everybody’s quality of life. All they need is this book. This bumper volume gathers all three of Adam Jacot de Boinod’s acclaimed books about language – The Wonder of Whiffling, The Meaning of Tingo and Toujours Tingo (their fans include everyone from Stephen Fry to Michael Palin) – into one highly entertaining, keenly priced compendium. As Mariella Frostup said “You’ll never be lost for words again!”
Immortal Last Words: History’s Most Memorable Dying Remarks, Death Bed Statements and Final Farewells by Terry Breverton
Immortal Last Words is a fascinating, diverse collection of history’s most uplifting, entertaining and thought-provoking dying remarks and final farewells. The 370 entries in this book have been drawn from some of history’s greatest statesmen, poets, scientists, novelists and warriors the eminent men and women who have shaped events over the last four and a half millennia and whose final recorded words have often inspired great deeds or shed light on the nature of the human condition. Arranged chronologically from antiquity to the present day, each entry is accompanied by contextual information giving a brief biography of the author. Some of the sentiments expressed are unbelievably sad while others are optimistic but all reflect the follies and greatness of mankind its heroes and villains, war and peace and the absolute power of language to change our feelings and challenge our minds.
Buddha: “Strive for your own liberation with diligence”
Vespasian: “Dear me, I believe I am becoming a god”
Robespierre: “Death is the commencement of immortality!”
John Maynard Keynes: “I should have drunk more champagne”
Salvador Dali “I do not believe in my death”
Keith Floyd: “I’ve not felt this well for ages”
A Good Novel To Curl Up With
The Elephant’s Journey by José Saramago
Solomon the elephant’s life is about to be upturned. For two years he has been in Lisbon, brought from the Portuguese colonies in India. Now King Dom Joao III wishes to make him a wedding gift for the Hapsburg archduke, Maximilian. It’s a nice idea, since it avoids the Portuguese king offending his Lutheran cousin with an overtly Catholic present. But it means the poor pachyderm must travel from Lisbon to Vienna on foot – the only option when transporting a large animal such a long way. So begins a journey that will take the stalwart Solomon across the dusty plains of Castile, over the sea to Genoa and up to northern Italy where, like Hannibal’s elephants before him, he must cross the snowy Alps. Accompanying him is his quiet keeper, Subhro, who watches while – at every place they stop – people try to turn Solomon into something he is not. From worker of holy miracles to umbrella stand, the unassuming elephant suffers the many attempts of humans to impose meaning on what they don’t understand. Saramago’s latest novel is an enchanting mix of fact (an Indian elephant really did make this journey in 1551), fable and fantasy. Filled with wonderful landscapes and local colour, peppered with witty reflection on human failings and achievements, it is, in the end, about the journey of life itself.
“The novel has a charming fairy-tale quality…this is among the most charming of Saramago’s works.” TLS
“It is extremely funny. Old Saramago writes with a masterfully light hand, and the humour is tender… quiet laughter rising out of a profound, resigned, affectionate wisdom.” Guardian
The Radleys by Matt Haig
Meet the Radleys: Peter, Helen and their teenage kids Clara and Rowan. An everyday family who live in a pretty English village and juggle dysfunctional lives. So far, so normal. Except, as Peter and Helen know (but the kids have yet to find out), the Radleys happen to be a family of abstaining vampires. When one night Clara finds herself driven to commit a bloodthirsty act of violence, her parents need to explain a few things: why is their skin is so sensitive to light, why do they all find garlic so repulsive, and why has Clara’s recent decision to go vegan had quite such an effect on her behaviour…? But when mysterious Uncle Will swoops into the village, he unleashes a host of shadowy truths and dark secrets that threaten to destroy the Radleys and the world around them…
A sharp-toothed page-turner from the author of The Last Family in England, for all fans of urban gothic and vampire-lit.
The Appointment by Herta Müller
“I’ve been summoned, Thursday, ten sharp”. So begins one day in the life of a young clothing-factory worker during Ceaucescu’s totalitarian regime. She has been questioned before; but this time she knows it will be worse. Her crime? Sewing notes into the linings of men’s suits bound for Italy. ‘Marry me’, the notes say, with her name and address. Anything to get out of the country. As she rides the tram to her interrogation, her thoughts stray to her friend Lilli, shot while trying to flee to Hungary; to her grandparents, deported after her first husband informed on them; to Major Albu, her interrogator, who begins each session with a wet kiss on her fingers; and, to Paul, her lover and the one person she can trust. In her distraction, she misses her stop and finds herself on an unfamiliar street. And what she discovers there suddenly puts her fear of the appointment into chilling perspective. Bone-spare and intense, The Appointment is a pitiless rendering of the terrors of a crushing regime.
“A brooding, fog-shrouded allegory of life under the long oppression of the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.” The New York Times
“A slim, masterfully written tale.” Newsweek
Wall of Days by Alastair Bruce
In a world all but drowned, a man called Bran has been living on an island for ten years. He was sent there in exile by those whose leader he was, and he tallies on the wall of his cave the days as they pass. Until the day when something happens that kindles in Bran such memories and longing that he persuades himself to return, even if it means execution. His reception is so unexpected, so mystifying that he casts about unsure of what is real and what imaginary. Only the friendship of a child consoles him as he retraces the terrible deeds for which he is answerable, and as he tries to reach back, over his biggest betrayal, to the one he loved. Wall of Days is a moving parable about guilt, loss and remembering.
“Brilliant! Wall of Days will rank among my all-time most memorable books.” Karina Magdalena Szczurek
A Fine Madness by Mashingaidze Gomo
A Fine Madness
is a brilliant work of great poignancy and a powerful narrative shedding fresh light on the struggle for Zimbabwean independence and the effects of colonialism on the progress of postcolonial Zimbabwe as a metaphor for African progress. Gomo’s language has the urgency of an ex-soldier, deploying a combination of powerful prose and evocative poetry to create a novel of great beauty that will appeal to enquiring minds probing the fate of African identities in a 21st century globalized world. The novel’s unique style and thematic concerns has been compared to classics in the African literary canon including Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, Aime Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism and Okot p’Bitek’s Son of Lawino and Song of Ocol. This novel has the makings of a modern classic.
The Good Angel of Death by Andrey Kurkov
The latest book from the author of the wonderful Death and the Penguin. When Kolya moves into a new flat in Kiev, he finds a book hidden within a volume of War and Peace. Intrigued by the annotations that appear on every page, Kolya sets out to discover more about the scribbler. His investigations take him to a graveyard, and more specifically to the coffin of a Ukrainian nationalist who died in mysterious circumstances and was buried with a sealed letter and a manuscript. An exhumation under cover of darkness reveals that an item of great national importance is buried near a fort in Kazakhstan. As nightwatchman at a baby-milk factory, Kolya exposes himself to the attentions of a criminal gang, and so he decides to leave Kiev for a while. Armed with only three cases of baby milk, which have unexpected hallucinogenic properties, he sets off on a very bizarre journey: crossing the Caspian Sea and traversing the deserts of Kazakhstan. He meets a host of unlikely characters on the way, including Bedouins, ex-KGB officers and a spirit-like companion in the form of a chameleon…The Good Angel of Death is a first-rate Kurkov yarn which is sure to delight old and new fans alike.
Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett
Doug Fanning lives an apparently gilded existence. A Gulf war veteran turned banker at the vast investment bank Union Atlantic, he is wealthy, handsome and powerful – the epitome of Wall Street success. Charlotte Graves lives in self-imposed exile deep in the forests of rural Massachusetts, stubbornly refusing to engage with a country she feels to be in morally bankrupt. When Fanning decides to build himself a sprawling mansion adjacent to her home, her isolation is threatened and she determines to evict him from his land and, if she can, his kind from her country. Union Atlantic is a deeply involving novel of the modern world – a world in crisis, where individual humanity is pitted against the global marketplace, and we must decide what, in the end, we value most highly.
Adam Haslett is the author of the short story collection, You Are Not A Stranger Here, was a New York Times bestseller. It was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and the US National Book Award, and has been translated into fifteen languages. His essays and fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Best American Short Stories, among others.
Farundell by L. R. Fredericks
Farundell is a story of magical awakening as a young man searches for meaning in the aftermath of the First World War, a young girl comes of age and an old man journeys through memory to death. There’s an enigmatic book, an erotic obsession, magic both black and white, a ghost who’s not a ghost, a murder that’s not a murder, and a treasure that’s not a treasure. It’s about love, loss and longing; language, imagination and the nature of reality.
In the golden summer of 1924 Paul Asher, still shattered by the trauma of the Western Front, comes to Farundell, an idyllic country house set deep in the Oxfordshire countryside. There, he falls under the spell of the rich and eccentric Damory family: the celebrated Amazon explorer Perceval, Lord Damory, now blind and dying, whose story echoes Paul’s own strange dreams, brilliant thirteen-year-old Alice, on the cusp of adulthood and, like Paul, a seeker of knowledge and, most fatefully, the wild and beautiful Sylvie, with whom he falls passionately in love. Before summer’s end, there will be tragedy, comedy, resolution and, for Paul, a revelation that will change his life forever. A very original debut novel, Farundell is literary fiction with a metaphysical twist.
Things We Didn’t See Coming by Stephen Amsterdam
Richly imagined, dark, and darkly comic, Things We Didn’t See Coming follows a man over three decades as he tries to survive – and to retain his humanity – in a world savaged by successive cataclysmic events. Opening on the eve of the millennium, when the world as we know it is still recognisable, we meet the then nine-year-old narrator fleeing the city with his parents, just ahead of a Y2K breakdown of the grid which signals the world’s transformation and decline. In the wake of this develop strange, sometimes horrific, sometimes unexpectedly funny circumstances as he goes about the no longer simple act of survival: trying to protect squatters against floods in a place where the rains never stop; harrassed (and possibly infected) by a man wracked with plague; functioning as a salaried embezzler of ‘the state’; and escorting the gravely ill on adventure trips. Yet despite the violence and brutality of these days, we learn that even as the world is spinning out of control essential human impulses still hold sway – that we never entirely escape our parents, envy the success of those around us and, chiefly, that we crave love. Things We Didn’t See Coming is haunting, vividly imagined and a beautifully crafted debut.
Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman
This is a novel for people with breeding.“A rambunctious, deftly-plotted delight of a debut.” Observer
“Astonishingly assured…Beauman writes with real flair and invention…Many first novels are judged promising. Boxer, Beetle arrives fully formed: original, exhilarating and hugely enjoyable.” Sunday Times
“Frighteningly assured.” Independent on Sunday
“There are politics, black comedy, experimentation and wild originality – and I haven’t even got to the beetles. Terrific.” The Times
Food for Thought
Recipes from an Italian Summer
Most cuisines have delicious ways of using summer’s bounty, but Italian food, as the editors of this pretty and expansive recipe collection assert, is ideally eaten in the warmest season. The authors of the bestselling compendium of Italian cookery The Silver Spoon have returned with a collection of warm weather dishes that emphasize simple flavors and minimal ingredients. In addition to recipes, the book covers the vacation regions of Italy, the hundreds of food festivals held every summer around the country, and a calendar of seasonal ingredients. Chapters reflect the way people tend to eat in summer: Picnics; Salads; Barbecues; Light Lunches; and Suppers. The provisions are both appealing and richly varied: rustic vegetable pies or potatoes in aluminum foil with assorted fillings are certain to dress up anyone’s summer repertoire. Dishes like mozzarella caprese and peaches with zabaglione will seem familiar to readers while others, such as casatiello, a bread ring stuffed with salami and cheese, or lettuce with skate and walnuts, have a hint of the exotic. As with its predecessor, the editors keep the directions short and sweet, and a certain degree of kitchen familiarity is assumed. Interspersed throughout are beautifully evocative photos that might tempt some readers to put down the spoon and head for the airport.
What the Great Ate: A Curious History of Food and Fame by Matthew and Mark Jacob
What was eating them? And vice versa.
In What the Great Ate, Matthew and Mark Jacob have cooked up a bountiful sampling of the peculiar culinary likes, dislikes, habits, and attitudes of famous — and often notorious — figures throughout history. Here is food:
• As code: Benito Mussolini used the phrase “we’re making spaghetti” to inform his wife if he’d be (illegally) dueling later that day.
• As superstition: Baseball star Wade Boggs credited his on-field success to eating chicken before nearly every game.
• In service to country: President Thomas Jefferson, America’s original foodie, introduced eggplant to the United States and wrote down the nation’s first recipe for ice cream.
From Emperor Nero to Bette Davis, Babe Ruth to Barack Obama, the bite-size titbits in What the Great Ate will whet your appetite for tantalising trivia.
The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book with a foreword by M.K. Fisher
Long before Julia Child discovered French cooking, Alice B. Toklas was sampling local dishes, collecting recipes, and cooking for the writers, artists and expats who lived in Paris between the wars. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wilder, Matisse, and Picasso shared meals at the home she kept with Gertrude Stein, who famously memorialised her in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, however, is her true memoir: a collection of traditional French recipes that predates Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Toklas supplies familiar recipes such as coq au vin, bouillabaisse, and boeuf bourguignon, along with what is perhaps the earliest instructions for haschich fudge (“which anyone could whip up on a rainy day”), and she entertains with fascinating memories of Paris -Toklas’ home for most of her life-and of rural France, Spain, and America.
Something Beautiful
The Art of McSweeney’s
McSweeney’s is an award-winning American publishing house, known for its innovative design and use of illustration and its belief in the book as a desirable object. Founded by Dave Eggers, whose books include A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the novelisation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, McSweeney’s publishes books, a quarterly journal, a magazine (The Believer), DVD’s and a website, all of which have evolved their own distinctive visual aesthetic. This book showcases the extraordinary visual appeal of productions across the range of their activities. Hundreds of images – from napkin sketches to final objects – give insights into the creative process, and interviews with participating designers, artists and illustrators explore the incidental, accidental and even deliberate ways McSweeney’s has transformed the experience of reading. Contributors include Michael Chabon, Rick Moody, Jonathan Lethem, Charles Burns, Dave Eggers, David Byrne, Nick Hornby, Joyce Carol Oates, Jordan Crane, William T. Vollmann, Lawrence Weschler, Sean Wilsey, Marcel Dzama and many more.
The Book of Shells by Dr Jerry Harasewych and Dr Fabio Moretzsohn
Co-authored by two of the world’s pre-eminent scholars, The Book of Shells illustrates a life-sized collection of 600 of the world’s most significant shells. Each entry is accompanied by a miniature line-drawing and beautiful life-size photograph enabling rapid identification, whilst magnified details reveal the diversity of pattern. The result is a beautiful book that is both a significant resource for enthusiasts and scholars, and the most visually stimulating guide to shells you could wish to find.
Dr Jerry Harasewych is Curator of the Department of Invertebrate Zoology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. He has discovered several new species of mollusc and writes regularly for various journals and periodicals. Dr Fabio Moretzsohn is a researcher for the Harte Research Institute in Texas where he works on the biodiversity and conservation of marine invertebrates.
For the Young At Heart
S is for South Africa by Beverley Naidoo and Das Prodeepta
“S is for South Africa where two oceans meet, cold Atlantic from the west and warm Indian from the east.
Our country stretches wide over Africa’s southern shores from golden beach to misty mountain, desert sand to grassy plain in a land of contrasts where we praise the sun – yet pray for rain!”
From Cricket to Madiba, from Bunny Chow to Kubu, this photographic alphabet celebrates everything we South Africans love best about our country. Set at the southern end of the African continent, our beautiful land with its many different plants, animals, people and languages was once made ugly by racism. But now our rainbow nation is striving to make the country a fairer place for everyone.
Willy Wonka’s Whipplescrumtious Annual 2011
Bursting with fantabulous fun, including story extracts, games, puzzles, ideas to make, colour and draw and crammed with squiffingly-good stickers. Perfect to keep little hands busy!
Other 2011 Annuals also available for keeping little hands busy this holiday season – Princess, Tinkerbell, Beast Quest, Rainbow Magic, Lego, Little Miss Naughty, Horrid Henry and Thomas and Friends.