Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
Abacus £9.99 rrp.
This is not a new title but having just read it, I have to mention it here. It's one of the best books I've read in a long time. Based on the author's real life experiences it tells the story of an escaped prisoner who reaches India in the early 1980s and there has a series of extraordinary, gripping, moving and at times disturbing and often illegal experiences. Despite the setting and subject matter the book manages to be surprisingly rich in human emotion and warmth and is utterly un-put-downable!
Darwin’s Garden - Michael Boulter
Constable and Robinson Pb £7.99 rrp
‘Five years after returning from his trip around the world on HMS Beagle, the young Charles Darwin became the owner of Down House in Kent where he lived for the rest of his life. It would become the place where he began work on his masterpiece "On the Origin of Species". For almost twenty years he used the garden around him as his laboratory. In the orchard he conducted experiments on pollination. On his daily walk along the sandbank he observed how plants competed for survival. In his heated greenhouse he conducted experiments on orchids and primulas. In solitude he was also able to struggle with the ideas of evolution that had haunted him since his voyage, and give him the courage to publish his revolutionary new ideas.’
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The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
Sort of books - £6.99
This really is one of my all time favourites and it just begs to be read in the shade of the garden with a long cool drink to hand. Tove Jansson is better known as the creator of the Moomin Children stories but this is her favourite too of the ten books she wrote for adults. Drawing from many of her own experiences she writes of one Summer on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland and the relationship that develops between an elderly artist and her six-year-old Grand-daughter. She manages to describe the scenery, the atmosphere and individual moments with such beauty that it really does deserve to be read and re-read.
The Dig - John Preston
Penguin Pb £7.99 rrp
In the long hot summer of 1939 Britain is preparing for war. But on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind: Mrs Petty, the widowed farmer, has had her hunch proved correct that the strange mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As the dig proceeds against a background of mounting national anxiety, it becomes clear though that this is no ordinary find ... And pretty soon the discovery leads to all kinds of jealousies and tensions.
John Preston's recreation of the Sutton Hoo dig - the greatest Anglo-Saxon discovery ever in Britain - brilliantly and comically dramatizes three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivaly flourished in equal measure.
The Cloudspotter’s Guide
- Gavin Pretor-Pinney
Sceptre Paperback £7.99
This book did exceptionally (and perhaps surprisingly) well in Hardback and has just been released in paperback. Gavin Pretor-Pinney is the chairman and founder member of the ‘Cloud Appreciation Society‘. He contends that we are ‘blessed in this country with a uniquely rich and varied cloudscape, which has hitherto been sadly undervalued‘.
His book teaches us to appreciate their different varieties – the cumulus, nimbostratus and Morning Glory to name only a few – and all their beauties and significances, both meteorological and cultural. We learn how Hindus believed the cumulus clouds were the spiritual cousins of elephants, how thermal air currents act on fair weather cumuli, and how to save a fortune in psychiatric bills by using the clouds as Rorschach images that reflect our state of mind as well as nature’s moods.
Looking up will never be the same again.
A Beginner's Guide to Changing the World - For Tibet with Love - Isabel Losada
‘Sometimes you just have to do something, don’t you? Sometimes an injustice comes along and you think "No, this cannot be", and rather than just turn off the TV, you know it’s time to act.’ So begins Isabel Losada’s extraordinary For Tibet, with Love in which she explores whether it’s possible for an ordinary person to change the world, just a little… Isabel demonstrates, falls for a monk in Nepal, gets sick in Tibet, upsets BP, faces some hard truths, starts a company, irritates the Chinese Ambassador, falls from a great height, keeps her bra on, breaks the law, and captures headlines worldwide. And then she meets the Dalai Lama....
The Secret life of Trees - Colin Tudge
Penguin £8.99
In Shropshire stands the Royal Oak, where it is alleged Charles II hid from Cromwell's men. There are kauri trees in New Zealand which were old before the Maoris arrived from Polynesia, and redwoods still standing in California which were ancient by the time Columbus first landed. It is often this sense of age that places us in awe of trees: we look up at them, we know they have stood for many years, and yet we know so little about them, or how they work.
While the stories of trees are as plentiful as leaves in a forest, they are rarely told. Here, Colin Tudge travels from his own back garden round the world to explore the beauty, variety and ingenuity of trees everywhere: from how they live so long to how they talk to each other and why they came to exist in the first place. Lyrical and evocative, this book will make everyone fall in love with the trees around them.
Old Filth - Jane Gardam
Chatto and Windus £6.99
Old Filth was a 'child of the raj'. His earliest memories are of his amah, a teenage Malay girl - not of his mother who is dead, nor his father who can't cope. But very soon he is torn away from the only person who loves him, and sent to be educated at 'Home', where he is boarded out with strangers...What is the terrible secret that the children shared? What exactly happened at the farmhouse in the Lake District from which Filth is rescued by 'Sir' whose 'outfit' is one of the oddest schools in England? Old Filth is funny and heart-breaking at the same time. A touch of surrealism combines with the subtle delicacy of a gifted novelist to make Old Filth a genuine masterpiece.
“An absolutely delightful, moving and nostalgic read, I couldn’t put it down” Landers Customer
The Highest Tide
- Jim Lynch
Bloomsbury £7.99
This is an atmospheric and gentle read that has a more than a touch of humour. I really enjoyed it.