"Even just to see the cover of this book is to fall in love with it. The pictures and the story they tell with just a small amount of added text are touchingly tender and thoughtful. A gentle lion finds a wounded bird who cannot fly off with its flock and makes it a bed in a slipper, nursing it back to health as they become close friends through the winter. Spring comes and the flock returns. Will the bird leave the lion to rejoin them? The story is full of subtle observations about attachment and freedom, about seasons in the year and also in relationships, about being true to your nature and about the strength of friendship, but these are not shouted and the reader is entirely involved in the characters’ immediate feelings. This might well become your favourite picture book". - Thomas
Nell Zink has burst on the scene with a couple of totally nuts, totally wired, totally irrepressible assaults on narrative restraint and good sense: Mislaid and this high-spirited explosion of the possibilities of marriage, drugs, eco-terrorism and birding.
"Heady and rambunctious. Wake up, this book says: in its plot lines, in its humour, in its philosophical underpinnings and political agenda. I'll pay it the highest compliment it knows - this book is a wild thing." - New York Times
"To read this book is to be drawn into a kaleidophone of voices, first-person narrative fragments, tiny stories bearing the impress of larger, untold stories; wry observations unknowingly made by unobservant people, anecdotes with perfectly deflating punch-lines, almost-jokes that meticulously leave off at being almost-jokes without aspiring to be jokes; gauche quips, mundane miseries treated with both sympathy and humour; small lives writ small and at once satirised and celebrated for their smallness; an encyclopedic accumulation of human experiences of the kind that usually evanesce without being recorded even in the experiencers’ memories let alone on paper. All these thousands of voices are captured pitch-perfectly by Eaves, who, with a cold eye and a warm heart, and with an unbelievably sensitive ear for what all sorts of people say and how they say it (or, what they think and how they think it), has written a very enjoyable book that manages to be both sharp and blunt at the same time to the extent that the distinction between sharp and blunt has been removed." - Thomas
The Secret of the Blue Glass by Tomiko Inui $19.99
In a dusty library, in the quietest corner of a house in a Tokyo suburb, live the Little People: Fern and Balbo, Robin and Iris. Just a few inches high, sleeping in cigarette boxes and crafting shoes from old book jackets, they need only one thing from their Humans - a nightly glass of milk, served in a sparkling Blue Glass goblet, by a trusted young member of the Human family. But when the Second World War comes to Japan, bringing a dangerous new kind of patriotism, both Humans and their beloved Little People face a world they could never before have imagined. It will take great love, bravery, and a rather loyal pigeon, to bring their unique families back together once more. This is a wonderful book.
Stanton's wonderful street photography blog is an attempt to create an exhaustive catalogue of New York's inhabitants. As his project has progressed he has become increasingly interested in the lives of the people he photographs. This book contains a wonderfully affirming array of people and their stories.
Now in her late 80s, Selfe has been a fashion supermodel for 20 years. She wore clothes before that, too. Daphne grew up in an age when dresses were lovingly run up for you by your mother, when needlework for even the most basic outfit was an art form, and when a new Simplicity Pattern was about the most exciting thing there was. This book is her account of her love affair with the clothes she wore, taking readers from the organdie party frocks of a 1930s childhood to the pages of Vogue.
>> Her profile both ways.
Travelling the circumference of the truly gigantic Pacific, Simon Winchester tells the story of the world's largest body of water, and - in matters economic, political and military - the ocean of the future. The Pacific is a world of tsunamis and Magellan, of the Bounty mutiny and the Boeing Company. It is the stuff of the towering Captain Cook and his wide-ranging network of exploring voyages, Robert Louis Stevenson and Admiral Halsey. It is the place of Paul Gauguin and the explosion of the largest-ever American atomic bomb, on Bikini atoll, in 1951. It has an astonishing recent past, an uncertain present and a hugely important future.
In the past, culture was a kind of vital consciousness that constantly rejuvenated and revivified everyday reality. Now it is largely a mechanism of distraction and entertainment. Notes on the Death of Culture is an examination and indictment of this transformation. Vargas Llosa mourns, in particular, the figure of the intellectual: for most of the twentieth century, men and women of letters drove political, aesthetic, and moral conversations; today they have all but disappeared from public debate. Signing a petition won't help.
A long and literate account of Costello's long and literate career, from listening to the Beatles with his grandfather, to the punk-inflected pop of The Attractions, to his encounters with hip-hop and symphony orchestras and his collaborations with just about everybody. Every page is bursting with Costello's signature style and viewpoint.
>> Watch his feet.
"Modiano, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize for literature, recounts, in laconic, clear-eyed prose, his youth and coming of age in post-WWII Paris. Modiano, the son of a cold, hard actress mother and a shady black marketeer father, did not enjoy an idyllic childhood. Modiano provides as many questions as explications in this slim but potent volume, as he grapples with the ghosts of the past and the events that shaped the man and writer he would become." - Publishers Weekly
A very lovely edition of this perennially wonderful book. When spring comes, Moomintroll wakes from his winter hibernation and awaits the arrival of his friend Snufkin. On the top of the mountain they find a tall black hat - little do they suspect the magic and mischief that will follow (it is the Hobgoblin's hat!). The Moomin books are deeply satisfying reading for imaginative children and adults alike.
"The books seem to grow in wisdom and delight every time I read them." - Philip Pullman
In this philosophical biography, Liel Leibovitz looks at what it is that makes Leonard Cohen an enduring international figure in the cultural imagination.
>> Helsinki, 2008.
Azizi lives in a country governed by greedy rulers, who capture all blue birds and lock them up in a big cage in the courtyard of their palace. The people suffer and live in fear, until one day a little blue bird escapes from the cage. Together with Azizi it sets out on a long journey to free the people of their cruel and relentless rulers.
This story is based on the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution. The 2015 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the National Dialogue Quartet "for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011".
From early memories of her relatives to remembrances of a particularly poignant friendship with a red hen, from her first friendships to her first experiences with death, The Lost Landscape is an arresting account of the ways in which Oates's life (and her life as a writer) was shaped by early childhood and how her later work was influenced by a hard-scrabble rural upbringing!
Bring the outdoors in! Beautiful floral arrangements have long been a hallmark of Veranda, and this lavish collection offers a selection of the most exquisite flowers featured in the magazine.
Facsimile reproductions of the intensely personal writings of the most personally intense songwriter of the 1980s. With an introduction by Deborah Curtis.
>> Torn apart?
Simon Snow just wants to relax and savour his last year at the Watford School of Magicks, but no one will let him. His girlfriend broke up with him, his best friend is a pest and his mentor keeps trying to hide him away in the mountains where maybe he'll be safe. Simon can't even enjoy the fact that his roommate and long-time nemesis is missing, because he can't stop worrying about the evil git. Plus there are ghosts. And vampires. And actual evil things trying to shut Simon down. When you're the most powerful magician the world has ever known, you never get to relax and savour anything. Harry Potter fan-fic that took on a life of its own!
It doesn't take much to tip the world into chaos. You don't even have to mean to do it. You might be an honest family man; a police chief in a small town in Central Vietnam, say, with no desire whatsoever to unleash catastrophe.
The growing popularity of Peruvian cuisine throughout the world has made Lima, the capital of Peru, a destination city for food lovers. Virgilio Martinez is the most famous young chef in Peru. His restaurant Central, in Lima, is among the best in the world and he has opened two LIMA restaurants in the heart of London. With this collection of more than 100 of Virgilio's fuss-free, contemporary recipes you can cook this fresh, vibrant, healthy food at home using your local fish, meat and vegetables - plus the superfoods for which Peruvian food is renowned.
Architects and designers the world over have started to reinvent the prefabricated house, using new materials and construction techniques such as shipping containers which are easy to transport and construct, and can be installed in often surprising locations. Prefabricated houses also offer new ecological solutions and improved sustainability compared with traditional building systems, since they represent a more effective use of resources and a reduction in construction time. This book is packed full of good ideas.
>> Containers and their drivers (not suitable for romantics).
Artificial intelligence is already well on its way to making 'good jobs' obsolete: many paralegals, doctors, and ironically even computer programmers are poised to be replaced by robots. As technology continues to accelerate and machines begin taking care of themselves, fewer jobs will be necessary. In terms of societal and economic upheaval, this is most important technological shift since the industrial revolution. And, unless we radically reassess the fundamentals of how our economy and politics work, we risk a future of massive unemployment and inequality as well as the implosion of the economy itself.
>> How will the threat present itself?
"Twenty years ago, Bryson documented the UK as a foreigner, in Notes from a Small Island. Now, as he prepares to become a citizen, he once again takes stock, wandering from Bognor Regis in the south to Cape Wrath on the northern Scottish coast. As usual he is diverting, enlightening and very funny. A wonderfully comfy read." - Lucy
When ten-year-old Liam moves house to be closer to his dementia-suffering grandma, he's thrown into an unfamiliar place, with a family that seems to be falling apart. Liam doesn't remember what his grandma was like before she became ill. He only knows the witch-like old woman who snaps and snarls and eats her birthday cards. He wants to fix it, but he can't. Walking his dog one day, Liam discovers an old stone gargoyle in a rundown church, and his life changes in impossible ways. The gargoyle is alive. It moves unseen in the night, acting out Liam's stories. And stories can be dangerous things...
In 1879 the Jeannette set sail from San Francisco to cheering crowds and amid a frenzy of publicity. The ship and its crew were destined for the uncharted waters of the Arctic. But it wasn't long before the Jeannette was trapped in crushing pack ice. Amid the rush of water and the shrieks of breaking wooden boards, the crew found themselves marooned a thousand miles north of Siberia with only the barest supplies, facing a seemingly impossible trek across endless ice.
175 leading scientists, philosophers, and artists have their say on artificial intelligence.
"You voluntarily assume the risk of serious injury or death by attending". 100 miles from the gambling town of Reno, in the wilderness of northern Nevada, lies a vast, hostile plain known as the Black Rock Desert. The region has been an empty and windswept dry lake bed for most of the past 10.000 years. Except, that is, for one brief week at the end of the summer, when a temporary city rises out of the barren clay. This is the Burning Man festival, one of the most remarkable gatherings on the planet. Baked by the sun, and blinded by dust, the event acquires different meanings for different people: temporary community, spiritual adventure, performance stage, desert rave, social experiment. It's also the incubator of some of the most pure site-specific outdoor art ever made. A mechanized fire-breathing octopus. A towering wooden temple 15 meters tall. And the eponymous Man himself-a skeletal sculpture set ablaze at the festival's conclusion.
>> 2015!
For a brief moment on 27 December 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country's former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi - Bhutto's birthplace and Pakistan's other great metropolis - Rafia Zakaria's family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her Uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death. In that moment these twin catastrophes - one political and public, the other secret and intensely personal - briefly converged. Zakaria uses that moment to begin her intimate exploration of the country of her birth.
"Revealing the extraordinary backstories behind architectures both every day and spectacular, Bricks & Mortals is consistently informed, polemical and surprising." - Owen Hatherley
"Lively and quirky. It's hard to imagine a history of buildings design being such good fun. You don't have to be a lover of architecture to enjoy this stimulating book with its mix of social and cultural history." - The Times
The stunning conclusion to the trilogy that began with the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke award-winning Ancillary Justice. For just a moment, things seem to be under control for the soldier known as Breq. Then a search of Atheok Station's slums turns up someone who shouldn't exist - someone who might be a refugee from a ship that's been hiding beyond the empire's reach for three thousand years. In the meantime a messenger from the alien and mysterious Presger empire arrives, as does Breq's enemy, the divided and quite possibly insane Anaander Mianaai - ruler of an empire that's at war with itself. Anaander is heavily armed and extremely unhappy with Breq. She could take her ship and crew and flee, but that would leave everyone at Athoek in terrible danger. Breq has a desperate plan. The odds aren't good, but that's never stopped her before.
Actually, with this book you'll end up not being a fake and having some rather good wine experiences (and impressing people along the way). Useful.
The sequel to the hugely popular Shantaram. "A breath of Bombay hope, in the first glimpse of the sea, on Marine Drive, filled my heart, if not my head. I turned away from the red shadow. I stopped thinking of that pyramid of killers, and Sanjay's recklessness. I stopped thinking about my own part in the madness. And I rode, with my friends, into the end of everything." The end of the eighties was the beginning of everything. The Berlin wall fell on a ruined empire, and the Taliban took Afghanistan. Lin, on the run after escaping from prison in Australia, working as a passport forger for a Bombay mafia gang, finds himself standing on a tattered corner of a bloody carpet that would soon cover most of the world. But he can't leave the Island City: not without Karla. Two years after the events in Shantaram, Bombay is a different world, playing by different rules.
Ten talented and diverse illustrators from around the world. You need to look at this.
Haunted houses, mysterious counts, weeping widows and restless souls. Includes stories by Pliny the Younger, Kate Atkinson, Henry James, Kazuo Ishiguro, Mary Shelley, Franz Kafka, Don DeLillo, Ruth Rendell, Edgar Allan Poe, William Trevor, Helen Simpson, Haruki Murakami, Dylan Thomas and Bram Stoker.
While on a run one day, Maise gets into a terrible accident. A hot-burning electrical fire consumes her, destroying her face. Where her nose, cheeks, and chin used to be, now there is . . . nothing. She is lucky enough to qualify for a face transplant. But with someone else's features staring back at her in the mirror, Maise looks and feels like a stranger. The doctors promised that the transplant was her chance to live a normal life again, but nothing feels normal anymore. Before, she knew who she was: a regular girl who ran track and got good grades, who loved her boyfriend and her best friend. Now, she can't even recognize herself.
Ever wanted to know the difference between your flamme rouge and your lanterne rouge? This is the book for you.
