A satirical account of a small Canterbury town through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the (mis)fortunes of Frank Tolland and the finance company he founds, as told by Frank's mute brother.
>> An interview with the author.
>> Kicking off the playlist.
"Nance was a week short of her sixth birthday when she and Frank were roused out of bed in the dark and lifted into the buggy, squashed in with bedding, the cooking pots rattling around in the back, and her mother shouting back towards the house: Goodbye, Rothsay, I hope I never see you again!"
When Kate Grenville's mother died she left behind many fragments of memoir. These were the starting point for One Life, the story of a woman whose life spanned a century of tumult and change. In many ways Nance's story echoes that of many mothers and grandmothers, for whom the spectacular shifts of the twentieth century offered a path to new freedoms and choices. In other ways Nance was exceptional. In an era when women were expected to have no ambitions beyond the domestic, she ran successful businesses as a registered pharmacist, laid the bricks for the family home, and discovered her husband's secret life as a revolutionary.
>> The author talks about the book about her mother.
Long out of print, Davis' only novel concerns a narrator attempting to arrange her memories of her affair with a much younger man into a novel but beginning to suspect that, due to the elusiveness of memory and the limitations of her understanding, what she thought she knew about her own past is really a sort of fiction.
>> Lydia Davis with Ben Marcus.
When Sophie enters her grandmother's maze one sweltering Louisiana summer in 1960, she does not expect to emerge 100 years in the past, on to her ancestors' sugar plantation, mistaken for a slave. Sophie is about to learn a historical lesson she'll never forget.
Winner of the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.
"The People is a book we badly need. It offers a clear, compelling, broadly persuasive narrative of a century of British history as seen through working-class eyes and from a working-class perspective. Todd avoids hectoring, but by the end one is left suitably angry: the people have been screwed. She is a subtle as well as powerful historian." - David Kynaston, Observer
"Compelling." - Owen Jones (author of The Establishment)
"The most interesting academic work on British politics this year." - Independent
Another wonderfully child-centric book from the author of the splentastic Emil and the Detectives.
Dot loves play-acting, dressing up her pet dachshund and making up words like 'splentastic'. Her best friend is Anton, who lives in a little apartment and looks after his mother. They share a secret: every night, when their parents think they are asleep, they sell matches and shoelaces on the streets of Berlin with Dot's grumpy governess. But why? The answer involve a villain called 'Robert the Devil', a club-wielding maid, a wobbly tooth, a pair of silver shoes and a policeman dancing the tango.
Includes Jim McAloon on Nelson and the First World War, and articles on the Tapawera military camp, WWI nurses, and on the exploration of Upper Takaka by James Mackay Jr in the 1850s.
Raymond Blanc was invited to create a special kitchen garden at Kew to showcase the heritage and botany of the chosen plants as well as uncover their growing and cooking secrets. This book explores how these plants were discovered, brought back by intrepid plant hunters, how they flourished and how they spread to become part of our everyday meals. The Kew gardeners offer their tips and expertise in growing this produce, from carrots to potatoes, rhubarb and gooseberries, apples and peas. Interwoven with these stories are Blanc's detailed tasting notes and recipes.
>> BBCTV. >> The pages in the book are large enough for Blanc's signature.
Short-term, community-based projects - from pop-up parks to open streets initiatives - have become a powerful and adaptable new tool of urban activists, planners, and policy-makers seeking to drive lasting improvements in their cities and beyond. These quick, often low-cost, and creative projects are the essence of the Tactical Urbanism movement.
>> Interesting. >> Nice. >> Fun.
>> A lecture from Lydon.
When an elderly recluse discovers a corpse on his land, Officer Henry Farrell follows the investigation to strange places in the countryside, and into the depths of his own frayed soul.
"Bouman brings his world to life with texture that gives every room and vehicle and person a history and character, keeping us immersed in this mesmerizing and often terrifying story.” - Washington Post
>> The author talks about the book.
>> Playlist: (the wrong detective).
21 stories from leading practitioners of dieselpunk: an emerging retro-futuristic sub-genre, similar to steampunk, based on the fuel-rich era between the First World War and the start of the Atomic Age, merging elements of noir, pulp, and the past with today's technology (and sometimes a dash of the occult).
>> Playlist: Dielselpunk Overture.
Where did Alice stop and Alice begin? What is the relationship between Charles Dodgson, the quiet academic, and his second self Lewis Carroll, storyteller, innovator and collector of 'child friends'? The 'Alice' books are deeply embedded in our experience of childhood. What was their relationship to their own time?
>> Playlist: Alice live at Woodstock, 1969.
200 delicious, achievable recipes, including Korean Kimchi BBQ Burgers, Vegan BLT Mac and Cheez, Sesame and Soy Marinated Mushroom Steaks, and Savannah Pecan Pies. Mmmm.
Ehrenreich's books manifest her rigorous rationality. How then does she describe and explain a mystical experience she had as a teenager? Is there any place for belief in a rationalist's world view?
>> Lo! She talks.
Emily's best friend Sloane disappears, almost without a trace - the only thing left behind is a to-do list. On it, thirteen Sloane-inspired tasks that wallflower Emily wouldn't normally do, and definitely not without her best friend. But what if completing the list could bring Sloane back?
>> Well, yes, of course there's a song.
According to this book, computer games do truly "believe in you". They focus, inspire and reassure people in ways that teachers and parents can't. Games give people a chance to learn at their own pace, take risks, cultivate deeper understanding, fail and want to try again, and, ultimately, succeed in ways that too often elude them at school. Apparently.
>> This book also makes the playlist!
With corporations increasingly copyrighting and controlling the character and distribution of food seeds, the operation of seed libraries is important not only to preserve genetic and local variety but as an act of political urgency.
Photographs evoking the synergy between famous guitarists and the instruments of their fame, with notes on the guitars' special characteristics.
>> Neil Young and his hazardous necktie.
Eighty years old and still on the road.
>> Memoir, music and marijuana.
"Homemade dogfood recipes with a human twist." Despite the cute photographs, don't leave this book lying around in your house.
