A beautifully written and evoked discursive account of how the training of a goshawk enabled the author to come to terms with the death of her father. Recommended.
"Written like a thriller, slowly and carefully cranking the tension so that your stomach and heart leap queasily towards each other." - Guardian
"It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth." - Nietzsche
Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B - the pilgrimage, the promenade, the protest march, the nature ramble - and reveals what they say about us. He draws attention to thinkers who also saw walking as something central to their practice: Thoreau's eager seclusion in Walden Woods; the reason Rimbaud walked in a fury, Nerval rambling to cure his melancholy. Rousseau walked in order to think, while Nietzsche wandered the mountainside to write. In contrast, Kant marched through his hometown every day, exactly at the same hour, to escape the compulsion of thought.
A darkly funny collection of stories about the American family - a world of lost fathers and redemptive con men, of personal struggles and diminished dreams, a world marked by the wry wit and generosity of spirit in evidence in the very popular and enjoyable Beautiful Ruins.
Tesson found a radical solution to his need for freedom, one as ancient as the experiences of the hermits of old Russia: he decided to lock himself alone in a cabin (with a supply of vodka, cigars, ten boxes of painkillers for his hangovers, and a mini-library — Tournier, Lawrence, Camus, Sade, Casanova, Mishima) in the middle taiga, on the shores of Baikal, for six months. Noting carefully his impressions of the silence, he shares with us an extraordinary experience.
A powerful story of the shattering effects of the First World War on both a family and a country, from the author of the very remarkable Alone in Berlin.
Once America's capitalist dream town, the Silicon Valley of the Jazz Age, Detroit became the country's greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the furthest. The city of Henry Ford, modernity, and Motown found itself blighted by riots, arson, unemployment, crime and corruption. But what happens to a once-great place after it has been used up and discarded? Who stays there to try to make things work again? And what sorts of newcomers are drawn there?
"A clever, endlessly inventive, passionate tour through the most down-and-out yet plausibly possible of American cities." - Times
"An impassioned, visionary plea to restore to our children the spirit of adventure, freedom and closeness to nature that is their birthright. We must hear it and act on it before it is too late." - Iain McGilchrist
"Griffiths' work isn't just good - it's necessary." - Philip Pullman
James may know how to design housing estates and high streets, but is it really possible to redraw the master-plan for his own life?
"A genuinely funny, intelligent, scathing book that manages to nail both the lunacy of modern urban living and the more general problem of being a human being." - Mark Watson
Twenty-one years after his wife and daughter were murdered in the bombing of a plane over Scotland, Alan Tealing, a university lecturer, still doubts the official version of events surrounding that terrible night. Obsessed by the details of what he has come to call The Case, he is sure that the man convicted of the atrocity was not responsible, and that he himself has thus been deprived not only of justice but also of any chance of escape from his enduring grief.
"Superb. A mystery thriller, a haunting evocation of grief." - Daily Mail
Brings together detailed analysis of objects and historical sources to show how contemporary jewellery offered a way to negotiate relationships between settler and indigenous cultures, to find beauty in humble materials, to appreciate the natural environment, and to test conventions of art, gender and identity.
Hunters in the Snow by Daisy Hildyard $27.00
A young woman returns to her grandfather's farm in Yorkshire after his death. At his desk she finds the book he left unfinished when he died: part story, part scholarship; an eccentric history of England from the printing press to virtual reality.
"Comparisons will be made between Hildyard's work and that of W. G. Sebald. I had no sooner finished it than I started to read it again." - A. N. Wilson, Spectator
Calasso turns his hugely original and compelling attention to a transitional point in the emergence of 'the modern': the nineteenth century Paris of Baudelaire, Ingres, Delacroix, Degas and Manet, using Baudelaire's seminal essay 'The Painter of Modern Life' as a lens.
"A work of brilliance. Bedazzling." - Guardian
>> Trailer (in Italian).
"Splendidly enjoyable. The jokes are excellent, but the most horrible things keep happening." - Sunday Telegraph
"A comic masterpiece. The Bonfiglioli revival will surely gather apace, for he is by far the best thing to have happened again in years." - Spectator
>> Watch the trailer for the forthcoming Mortdecai film (starring Johnny Depp) if you like.
A ground-breaking argument for better treatment of mental health.
"A compelling case for a massive injection of resources into the treatment and prevention of mental illness. This is simply the best book on public policy and mental health ever written." - Martin Seligman
"Extremely easy and pleasurable to read. It's the most comprehensive, humane and generous study of mental illness that I've come across." - Melvyn Bragg
After the failure of a relationship, a man returns to his grandfather's house in the Canadian Rockies, and, with the arrival of his father, three generations must come to terms with their pasts and with each other.
"A lean, powerful book about quiet, emotional people." - Guardian
"Wilson's prose is rich and nuanced." - Sunday Telegraph
Shortlisted for the 2014 Desmond Elliott Prize.
"Perhaps the most influential originator of New Zealand Colonization we ever had." - William Fox
"A brilliant book; quite, quite brilliant." - Sunday Express
"Consistently original. An important contribution to our understanding." - The New York Times
How can such sublime work have been produced by a man who seems so ordinary, so opaque - and occasionally so intemperate?
"Magnificent, dazzling, thrilling." - New Statesman
In 2005, a man was driving his three children back to their mother's house when his car left the road and plunged into a lake. The children were drowned. Was this an accident or a warped act of revenge? Helen Garner followed the case closely and has written this compelling account.
"Helen Garner is a great writer." - Peter Carey
Sharpe's second poetry collection. Is the movement forwards really towards where it all began?
Two friends, daughters of friends - what benefits and what costs did they derive from their famous fathers?
Lebanese cuisine is enjoying a rise in popularity in the West and yet many people are not yet cooking it at home.
Appealing Swallows and Amazons-style antipodean adventure with an environmental message.
Essential work is done without personal recognition. This books looks at what goes on in the background and in the back room, and acknowledges the importance of the unallocaded work of editors, anaesthetists, fact-checkers and compilers of catalogues of new releases.
There's a lot to look at and look for in this picture book about how wonderful everything is.
How can women explore sexuality on their own terms, and find language for their desires, when desire and language are always social?
Holiday or life sentence? A father and son are pushed together in sunny Spain in this new comic novel from the author of What Was Lost.
"An awesomely talented writer." - Jonathan Coe
"Delightful. A rare love story between a father and a son." - Sunday Telegraph
"Subtle, clever and thoroughly enjoyable." - Sunday Mirror
"A remarkable and original writer ...tenderness, warmth, thoughtfulness and comic genius are words that are flung around a lot, but it's more than that. She flinches at nothing and is as sharp as dammit." - Fay Weldon, Observer
The Consumers Price Index is used by the New Zealand government to adjust student allowances, welfare benefits and superannuation; by the Reserve Bank to guide monetary policy; by the old Court of Arbitration, and by employers and employees, to negotiate wages; and by the media to inform the public about the effects of price changes on their standard of living.
