You will love this book! When a father takes his small son out one night to see the universe, the boy finds that the universe is nearby as well as far away.
In the era of public choice and free markets, does the New Zealand state still have the best interests of its individual citizens at heart? Since 1984, as Margaret Wilson argues, the shift to a neo-liberal public policy framework has profoundly affected the country's sovereignty.
On a beautifully restored barge on the Seine, Jean Perdu runs a bookshop; or rather a 'literary apothecary', for this bookseller possesses a rare gift for sensing which books will soothe the troubled souls of his customers. The only person he is unable to cure, it seems, is himself. He has nursed a broken heart ever since the night, twenty-one years ago, when the love of his life fled Paris, leaving behind a handwritten letter that he has never dared read. His memories and his love have been gathering dust - until now. The arrival of an enigmatic new neighbour in his apartment building inspires Jean to unlock his heart, unmoor the floating bookshop and set off in search of the past and his beloved.
"What's not to like?" - Naomi
A very special and unapologetically irresistible set. The lavish box holds a book of illustrations and essays, and a great stack of exquisite and framable prints (reproductions from rare illustrated books). The oceans cover 72% of our planet - how much shelf-space do they command in your home? This would make a wonderful gift if you could bear to give it away.
Arlt's engagingly perverse anti-masterpiece, first published in Argentina in 1929, concerns a Dostoyevskyan 'underground man' anti-hero whose search for authentic experience brings him into contact with a series of 'madmen' with varying valencies of cynicism and despair.
An absolutely fascinating and beautifully written meditation on the relationship between language and landscape. As much as the land has formed our words and their use, our words have formed how we conceive of and respond to the land.
>> Here's Macfarlane's 'Peat Glossary'.
Whether by bike in Chicago or by donkey in Colombia, librarians all over the world are coming up with astonishingly ingenious ways of getting their books to the people who need them. Many of these new libraries function as community centres, and assist their members in overcoming economic, social and political barriers. Others provide an unexpected dose of culture for travellers and commuters or even prisoners. Elsewhere, architects are designing monumental public libraries without walls, and prefabricated home libraries that can be assembled in an ordinary back garden. This book covers everything from the Little Free Library movement to library bars!
Rock musician Jed Jordan's former fame means the events in his life have become public property. Years after 'Captain of the Rules' made him world famous in New Zealand, Jed is living quietly in an Auckland suburb with his family, growing peppers and recording in his home studio, when some disturbing new attention threatens to tear his world apart.
>> Carol Beu's review on Radio New Zealand National.
>> Interview here.
>> Radio interview here.
How different is the world as we see it from how it actually is? Can we ever know? All we have to help us negotiate the territory are the differences between the ways we each conceive of it. These differences are the root of politics, conflict and art. In this interesting issue of Granta, these issues are explored in essays, fiction, poetry and photography.
What do Judith Ablett-Kerr, Pinky Agnew, Donna Akersten, Judith Baragwanath, Janet Beech, Carole Beu, Rob Broughton, Judy Callingham, Trish Costigan, Valerie Davies, Lindsey Dawson, Eve de Castro-Robinson, Debbie Dorday, Dorothy Dudek Vinicombe, Anne Else, Jacquie Fahey, Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop, Chris Fletcher, Tui Flower, Emerald Gilmour, Tina Grenville, Ruth Harley, Rosie Horton, Glenda Hughes, Sue Kedgley, Jan Kemp, Anne Kennedy, Shona Laing, Helen Leach, Vinka Lucas, Sue McCauley, Elizabeth McRae, Marama Martin, Margaret Mutu, Frances Pitsilis, Ruth Pretty, Wendy Pye, Jenny Rankine, Cecilie Rushton, Catherine Saunders, Karen Soich, Pieter Stewart, Anne Thorp, Mary-Jane Tomasi, Jools Toppp, Jodi Vaughan, Prue Wallis, Ans Westra, Reina Whaitiri, Dale Williams, Margaret Wilson and Alice Worsle have in common? They’re all irate about something, sounding off on topics from ageing to architecture, shop assistants to short skirts, tablecloths to technology. You've heard it from Grumpy Old Men and more Grumpy Old Men, now let's hear it from the stroppy old women! (Hint: Mothers' Day is coming...)
An exuberant ABC, showing the many ways design affects us. If you were starting a design museum, what would you put in your collection?
"Dramatically concentrated, fateful hours, in which a timeless decision hangs on a single date, a single hour, even just a single minute, rarely occur in everyday life, and only rarely in the course of history." Zweig takes ten such moments, from General Grouchy's failure to intervene at Waterloo, to the miraculous resurrection of George Frideric Handel, and brings them very vividly to life. Newly translated by Anthea Bell, this book is further fuel for the world-wide flare-up of Zweigomania.
"Gems of literary perfection. Such lucid, liquid prose." - Simon Winchester
There are an estimated 600,000,000 passenger cars in the world, and that number is increasing every day. So too is Earth's supply of parking spaces. In some cities, parking lots cover more than one-third of the metropolitan footprint. From a cultural and urban design point of view this is unsustainable, and a radical rethinking is urgently required. This book shows how not only this problem but other vast problems can be rethought to advantage.
"A harrowing, thorough study of the Nazi camps that gathers a staggering amount of useful and necessary information on the collective catastrophe. In a tightly organized, systematic narrative, Wachsmann presents an “integrated” treatment of the Konzentrationslager that moves beyond any attempt to endow the camps with universal meaning." - Kirkus Reviews
My name is Hanna. I am 15. I am Latvian. I live with my mother and grandmother. My father is missing, taken by the Russians. I have a boyfriend and I'm training to be a dancer. But none of that is important any more. Because the Nazis have arrived, and I am a Jew. And as far as they are concerned, that is all that matters. This is my story.
What if your favorite characters came to life? Billy's spending the summer in a lakeside cabin that belongs to the mysterious Dr. Libris. But something strange is going on. Besides the security cameras everywhere, there's Dr. Libris's private bookcase. Whenever Billy opens the books inside, he can hear sounds coming from the island in the middle of the lake. The clash of swords. The twang of arrows. Sometimes he can even feel the ground shaking. It's almost as if the stories he's reading are coming to life! (More than almost.)
Racism added an extra burden to the rigours of New Zealand's Maori and Pacific Island soldiers in WW1.
Home might be a house in the country, a flat in the city, or even a shoe. Home might be on the road or the sea, in the realm of myth, or in the space where the artist created this book. A meditation on the concept of home and a visual treat that invites many return visits, this loving look at the places where people live marks the picture-book debut of Carson Ellis, illustrator of the 'Wildwood' series and artist for the indie folk-rock band The Decemberists.
>> The artist's website (recommended).
For decades after the structure of DNA was identified, scientists focused purely on genes, the regions of the genome that contain codes for the production of proteins. Other regions - 98% of the human genome - were dismissed as 'junk'. But in recent years researchers have discovered that variations in this 'junk' DNA underlie many previously intractable diseases, and they can now generate new approaches to tackling them.
A fable-like novel (or novel-like fable) by a Koren poet about a salmon who, like all salmon, is driven to swim upstream by ardent longing. Can he leap higher and escape his fate, or should he immerse himself in the river?
"In Mr. Cohen, Dodgson has had the good fortune to find a biographer who is as compassionate as he is judicious, a biographer intent on using the life to shed light on the work, rather than the work to pillory the life." - The New York Times
A valedictory collection.
"Here are these amazing works, highly praised, technically and emotionally heart-stopping poems reflecting gratefully on a life. James's famous voice twinkles even in his weakened state." - Spectator
Benares is in London. Kochhar's Michelin-starred kitchen has been the laboratory for the eighty dishes exemplifying his modern Indian cuisine.
"Every aromatic desire is explored on a journey to the heart of Benares, revealing exotic fusions and dazzling flavours."
>> What will you order at the restaurant.
>> He can cook onions.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia; the rainy season. When a Frenchman, Hugo Quercy, is found brutally murdered, Commandant Serge Morel finds his holiday drawn to an abrupt halt. Quercy - dynamic, well-connected - was the magnetic head of a humanitarian organisation which looked after the area's neglected youth. Opening his investigation, the Parisian detective soon finds himself buried in one of his most challenging cases yet...
A messy murder affects the lives of five misfits who exist on the fringes of Ireland's post-crash society.
"A punchy, edgy, sexy, fizzing feast of a debut novel from an immensely skilled storyteller with a glorious passion for words. I loved it." - Joseph O'Connor, Irish Times
At a fund-rising show in 1973, Americans had transformed their place on the world catwalk and sowed the seeds for changing the way race, gender, sexuality, and economics would be treated in fashion thereafter.
"An original, extremely funny and darkly moving glimpse into the depths of one woman’s psyche, and a delicious piece of Parisian comedy. When journalist ‘MS’ interviews the mysterious ‘XX’ for a job at her magazine, she hires him straight away – because he is gorgeous. As one date leads to another, her obsession spirals whilst the object of her affection remains aloof. There is voyeurism here, and the addiction of any glossy magazine, but the prose is also sublime – sharp, graceful and charming. And MS herself is a wonderfully sympathetic character. She has a wry awareness of how ridiculous her behaviour is even as it spins out of control, and she never takes herself too seriously." - Paul Baggaley
"Asks new questions about Abraham Lincoln. Drawing on archival sources and historical accounts, the author paints a well-delineated portrait of Lincoln as a friend and advocate of Jews before and during his political career. Heavily illustrated with images and manuscripts, the book offers an enhanced perspective on Lincoln's moral and ethical decisions, as well as his personal friendships. Sarna and manuscript collector Shapell offer a vivid, fresh perspective on Lincoln's life and times." - Kirkus Reviews
An exploration of the politics of language and the language of politics in the Israeli Palestine conflict, reflecting on the walls that they create - legal and cultural - that confine today's Palestinians just like the physical borders, checkpoints and the so called 'Separation Barrier'. The peace process has been ground to a halt by twists of language and linguistic chicanery that has degraded the word 'peace' itself.
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”
Without knowing one end of a hay baler from the other, Adam Nicolson and Sarah Raven, fed up with London and with life, escaped with his family to a run-down farm in the Sussex Weald. Looking for Arcadia, they found a mixture of intense beauty and profound chaos. Over three years they struggled with dock leaves, spring flowers, bloody-minded sheep and neighbours before eventually arriving at some kind of equilibrium.
"Candid, observant and often very funny." - Daily Mail
"A delightful memoir - a reminder that the very best writing starts at home." - Robert McCrum, Observer
An evolutionary account of female body shape, from our ancestral past to our (supposedly) surgically-enhanced future. How does body shape our lives, sexual selection, social hierarchy and self-image?
In September 1863, William Story left Abdy Farm in Yorkshire with his three sons William, Charles and Arthur, for New Zealand. The arrived in Lyttelton aboard the Canterbury and eventually settled in Orari, Temuka and Timaru. William's wife, Sarah Pepper Story, stayed in Yorkshire with their three girls Mary, Alice, Clara and baby Fred. Although she contemplated it, Sarah never did board a ship for New Zealand. This book tells of William and Sarah and their descendants
A good introduction from the prestigious Design Museum to the scope and effect of modern architecture.
Rose Elmsworth has a secret. For eighteen years, the world has been divided into the magically Gifted and the non-magical Ashkind, but Rose's identity is far more dangerous. At fifteen, she has earned herself a place alongside her father in the Department, a brutal law-enforcement organisation run by the Gifted to control the Ashkind. But now an old enemy is threatening to start a catastrophic war, and Rose faces a challenging test of her loyalties. How much does she really know about her father's past? How far is the Department willing to go to keep the peace? And, if the time comes, will Rose choose to protect her secret, or the people she loves?
Is Steinhauer the successor to John Le Carre? Read this novel of two agents indelibly marked by their CIA history and decide for yourself.
Graphic novelist Karrie Fransman invited four old friends from university to an isolated cottage on the misty moors of the Peak District to join her for a week of hedonism and creativity. Like Shelley and Byron before them, they would use the retreat to tell stories. Except these would be comics, collected together in a book (this book). The theme? The Death of the Artist. None of the five friends realised how appropriate this theme would become. (Gulp.)
Drugs. Death. Murder. Revenge - And a hit-man with two big problems: 1. The woman of Olav's dreams is his boss's wife; 2. Olav has just been hired to kill her.
During WWII, Cretan resistance to the Nazis was augmented by the Special Operations Executive (otherwise known as "The Firm"), Churchill's secret arm of the British military, made up of lone fighters, "poets, professors, archaeologists — anyone who'd travelled a bit and knew is or her way around foreign countries." Dropped behind enemy lines to wreak havoc, these "lethal shadows" fought in tandem with the resistance. How were these unlikely heroes trained? Can these methods be applied to sports performance?
The thrilling final instalment of Torday's prize-winning trilogy.
Start with The Last Wild.
>> Irresistible book trailer (in German).
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