The King and the Sea by Heinz Janisch and Wolf Erlbruch $19.99“I am the king!" said the king. The sea answered with a whoosh.
The little king wants to control his world: the sea, the cloud, the rain, a bee, a trumpet, a pencil, but his world has other ideas and the king learns to soften his relationship with it and accept the way it governs itself. A thoughtful, subtle picture book with illustrations by Erlbruch (Duck, Death and the Tulip). As soon as you have finished you will want to start reading it again.
Unexpectedly released after many years of ill-treatment, an aging prisoner finds refuge at a museum which is exhibiting a replica of the Marshlands, in which the prisoner had spent some time as a doctor among the despised and feared Marshmen. Suddenly the novel turns inside out and begins to run backwards. What is the crime that was committed, and why has the doctor been imprisoned?
"Olshan's prose, so spare and unsentimental, and the book's fraught political atmosphere, so coolly rendered, are remarkably reminiscent of J.M. Coetzee's work, as is the strange, almost fairy-tale quality of a story at once so specific in its details and so general in its detachment from any particular time or place." - The Minneapolis Star Tribune
Morgan decided to spend a year reading a book from each country of the world. How did she get on? Why are some countries better represented in English translation than others? What concepts of culture or identity were challenged by her reading? How many different countries have you read books from? (You might be surprised how few).
>> She blogged.
Devon, 1349. The villagers of Brauntone are awaiting a sign. As they haul a stinking creature from the nets, new priest Father Thomas thinks it has finally come. In the hands of his young housekeeper, Anne, this creature is revealed as just a girl, but in the mind of Father Thomas she is to be so much more than that. And he will stake all but his own life on that as the Plague rages towards Brauntone and its people turn to him to save them.
"Poetic, surprising, sexy and ultimately deeply moving, Vixen will have you hooked... it will stay with you long after you've reached the final page." - Diva
Ticha fled Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Russian invasion and settled in New Zealand. She returned on the first day of the Velvet Revolution in 1989, and since then she has had 18 books published in Czech while continuing to live in New Zealand. In this thoughtful book, her first novel written in English, she tells of a woman who returns to Prague to nurse her dying mother, having fled Czechoslovakia and settling in New Zealand following the 1968 Russian Invasion. How has exile changed the way she thinks? What reverberations alter the patterns of a life and the relationships that comprise it?
In 1659, a vast and unusual map of China arrived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was bequeathed by John Selden, a London business lawyer, political activist, former convict, MP and the city's first Orientalist scholar. Largely ignored, it remained in the bowels of the library, until called up by an inquisitive reader. When Timothy Brook saw it in 2009, he realised that the Selden Map was 'a puzzle that had to be solved': an exceptional artefact, so unsettlingly modern-looking it could almost be a forgery. But it was genuine, and what it has to tell us is astonishing.
On December 13, 1868, Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, Professor of Botany at the University of Munich and director of the Royal Botanic Garden, was carried to his grave in a coffin covered with fresh palm leaves. The fronds were a reference to his groundbreaking Natural History of Palms (1823–1853). This book reproduces all 240 stunning chromolithographs from the original three volumes, including the South American scenes.
Shame is one of the most underappreciated societal and historical forces. Ronson travelled the world to meet people who have been publicly shamed. How did shame affect them? How much are we motivated (or curtailed) by the fear of shame?
"Superb and terrifying." - Guardian
Grossman's genre-defying drama - part play, part prose, pure poetry - tells the story of bereaved parents setting out to reach their lost children. Written following the death of his own son, this book is an expression of the depth of human feeling - grief, tenderness, anger - that overwhelms and re-orders ordinary concerns following the death of a loved one.
"A harrowing testimony to grief. It's a measure of Grossman's clarity of thought and his theatrical timing that one reaches its end and feels, in some small way, glad to have been in his characters' company however grim the road they travel." - Glasgow Sunday Herald
Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? To answer these questions, anthropologist David Graeber author of the excellent Debt: The first 5000 years, takes a journey through ancient and modern history to trace the peculiar and fascinating evolution of bureaucracy over the ages.
A lovely inspirational picture book produced by Amnesty International to promulgate the importance of different kinds of freedom. Short texts by Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Anne Frank, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi and Malala Yousafzai (and others) have been illustrated by Alexis Deacon, Chris Riddell, Jackie Morris, Birgitta Sif, Oliver Jeffers (and others).
A fascinating account of the author's lengthy search for the boy who made his life hell at school.
An illustrated journey back to Mexico's past, tracing the life of Daniella Germain's Abuelo (grandfather) and his love affair with food. Beautifully illustrated throughout with hand-drawn watercolour illustrations, this book is full of very authentic and very appealing Mexican recipes.
A haunting novel that probes the fragility of our personal relationships and the mystical connection between people and the places they call home.
"The Well asks us where do we seek refuge, and why? And perhaps it shows us that what is left, after all is suffered, is love. Battered, weathered, at the end of the novel it comes cresting over the hill, a herald of relief. I loved this book!" - Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist
A perceptive charting of a platonic friendship between two men, from their chance meeting in 1993, through girlfriends and wives, success and failure, children and bereavements. This is the story of a friendship built on a shared guilt and a secret betrayal.
"Powerful and moving. I loved The Faithful Couple." - Roddy Doyle
Former Olympic runner, Aganetha Smart is 104, alone in a nursing home, forgotten by family and history. Until two young strangers come and kidnap her and take her on a journey back into her past.
"A beautiful, thoughtful homage to those forgotten women who stepped outside the boundaries of what was allotted to them, and a testament to the struggles and sacrifices that paved the way for the female athletes who followed." - Quill & Quire
The use of numerals can be traced back through the Romans and Greeks to Babylon, but where did Arabic numerals come from? The author's search takes him to India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and ultimately into the wilds of Cambodia. There he is amazed to find the earliest zero - the keystone of our entire system of numbers - on a crumbling, vine-covered wall of a seventh-century temple.
Someone’s stealing nuts from the forest, and it’s up to Detective Gordon to catch the thief! Unfortunately, solving this crime means standing in the snow and waiting for a long time. If only he had an assistant – someone small, fast, and clever – to help solve this terrible case. Then Detective Gordon would be able to go back to doing what he’s best at: thinking, eating cakes, drinking tea, and stamping important papers.
Just what goes into the food we buy? What happens in factories to make preprepared food quite unlike the food we make at home? Just what does 'natural' mean? This book will change the way you shop.
A candid memoir of gay Berlin in the 1930s, a pivotal decade in Isherwood's life and oeuvre. Includes much on his friends Auden, Spender and Forster.
>> Historical perspicacity.
A new book from the author of the 'Slated' trilogy.
In a future world, life is tightly controlled by the all-powerful PareCo. Standing out from the crowd is dangerous so misfit Luna hides her secrets carefully, not realising her own power. Unlike her friends and family, Luna has never been able to plug into Realtime, PareCo's virtual world, where almost everyone now lives their lives. So how do PareCo know about Luna, and why do they want her for their elite think tank?
The many lives of one of the most influential cultural impresarios of the early twentieth century: a patron and dealmaker of the Harlem Renaissance, a photographer who captured the era's icons, and a novelist who created some of the Jazz Age's most salacious stories. A close confidant of Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, van Vechten frolicked in the 1920s Manhattan demimonde, finding himself in Harlem jazz clubs, Hell's Kitchen speakeasies, and the Greenwich Village underground gay scene.
"An astonishing book: honest, sober, exciting, and humane. This book brings you to the very forefront of one of the most amazing medical journeys of our time."—Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies
"Jeffrey Lieberman has produced a masterful behind-the-scenes examination of psychiatry - and, by extension, the human condition. A wise and gripping book that tackles one of the most important questions of our time: what is mental illness?" —Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon
Who better to tell the history of fly fishing than the flies themselves?
Monsters are in the eye of the beholder. Rosa suffers from a rare condition that renders her mute. She lives on the strange island of Mirasol where the rain never seems to stop. In the gloom of the island, its superstitious population are haunted by all sorts of fears - they shun people who suffer from Rosa's condition, believing them to be monsters. So Rosa must live hidden away in an isolated house with its back to the rest of the world, with only the internet for a social life. When she meets Ansel95 online, she realises she has found a friendship that must take place in the real world.
"A precious and important novel." - Guardian
You are not alone. What is it about parenting, especially parenting of teenagers, that causes you to doubt your own values and desires?
From the Yardbirds to Cream to his solo career, Clapton's subtle guitar has bewitched a million ears.
>> Cream, live, 1968.
>> Clapton shows how to play his Gibson SG.
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