Book picks similar to
Bookshop Tours of Britain by Louise Boland
non-fiction
travel
books-about-books
biblio
The Book Lover's Journal: My Personal Reading Record
Rene J. Smith - 2011
At last, a place to record the books you've read. Months and years from now, this journal will help you instantly recall long-forgotten details of your reading experience. This is also the place to record books you'd like to read next (take it with you to the bookstore or library). You'll find pages to list books borrowed, lent, or given (even a place to list books you'd like to give) your book sources, and book group contact information, plus lists of acclaimed authors and titles to inspire future reading choices and a section devoted to your reading life.
Arctic Summer
Damon Galgut - 2014
On board is Morgan Forster, novelist and man of letters, who is embarking on a journey of discovery. As Morgan stands on deck, the promise of a strange new future begins to take shape before his eyes. The seeds of a story start to gather at the corner of his mind: a sense of impending menace, lust in close confines, under a hot, empty sky. It will be another twelve years, and a second time spent in India, before A Passage to India, E. M. Forster's great work of literature, is published. During these years, Morgan will come to a profound understanding of himself as a man, and of the infinite subtleties and complexity of human nature, bringing these great insights to bear in his remarkable novel.At once a fictional exploration of the life and times of one of Britain's finest novelists, his struggle to find a way of living and being, and a stunningly vivid evocation of the mysterious alchemy of the creative process, Arctic Summer is a literary masterpiece, by one of the finest writers of his generation.
Book Towns: Forty-Five Paradises of the Printed Word
Alex Johnson - 2018
Book Towns takes readers on a richly illustrated tour of the 40 semi-officially recognized literary towns around the world and outlines the history and development of each community, and offers practical travel advice. Many Book Towns have emerged in areas of marked attraction, such as Ureña in Spain or Fjaerland in Norway, where bookshops have been set up in buildings including former ferry waiting rooms and banks. While the UK has the best-known examples at Hay, Wigtown and Sedbergh, the book has a broad international appeal, featuring locations such as Jimbochu in Japan, College Street in Calcutta, and major unofficial “book cities” such as Buenos Aires.
Speaking With the Angel
Nick HornbyRobert Harris - 2000
Some money from each copy of Speaking with the Angel sold will benefit autism education charities around the world, including The Treehouse School in London, where Nick’s son Danny is a student, and the New York Child Learning Institute here in the States. This project is truly a labor of love for Hornby and the other writers involved, many of whom are Nick’s friends.These original first-person narratives come from the most exciting voices in fiction. Melissa Bank gives readers a glimpse into the mind of a modern New Yorker whose still-new relationship is a constant source of surprise in “The Wonder Spot.” In Zadie Smith’s “I’m the Only One,” a young man recalls his strained relationship with his diva-esque sister. Dave Egger’s “After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned,” is told from the viewpoint of an unfortunate pit bull. Helen Fielding offers up a new twist on I’ve fallen and I can’t get up in “Luckybitch.” And in Nick Hornby’s “NippleJesus,” a bruiser finds out that guarding modern art is far more hazardous than controlling the velvet ropes at a nightclub. Speaking with the Angel also includes stories from Roddy Doyle, Irvine Welsh, Colin Firth, John O’Farrell, Robert Harris, Patrick Marber, and Giles Smith.Twelve completely new stories, written by twelve undeniably imaginative voices. Speaking with the Angel is at turns clever, outrageous, witty, edgy, tender, and wicked. This is what they meant by original.
Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny: My Autobiography
Limmy - 2019
You might know me from Limmy’s Show. Or you might not know me at all. Don’t worry if you don’t.They asked me to write a book about mental health, because I sometimes talk about my mental health in tweets and interviews, like suicidal thoughts and anxiety, and what I’ve done to try and deal with it.I said to them, oh, I don’t know if I could fill a whole book with just that. But how’s about I write a general autobiography type of thing, and all the mental health stuff will naturally appear along the way? I could talk about growing up and slashing my wrist and taking acid all the time and getting done for car theft and feeling like a mad freak that would never amount to anything.And then how I made my own sketch show. I directed it and everything. Plus I’m a dad. I’m an adult. But I still feel like that mad freak from years ago. I still feel like chucking it all away, for a laugh.I asked them if they wanted me to write about all that, plus some other stuff. Like being an alky. And my sexual problems. Stuff like that.They said aye.So here it is.
Selected Poems
W.B. Yeats - 1939
Yeats laid the foundations for an Irish literary revival, drawing inspiration from his country's folklore, the occult, and Celtic philosophy. A writer of both poems and plays, he helped found Dublin's famed Abbey Theatre. The poems here provide an example of his life's work and artistry, beginning with verses such as "The Stolen Child" from his debut collection "Crossways "(written when he was 24) through "Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?" from "On the Boiler," published a year prior to his death.
Best of Lonely Planet Travel Writing
Tony Wheeler - 2009
This title includes stories from popular Lonely Planet anthologies such as 'On The Edge', 'By The Seat Of My Pants', 'The Kindness of Strangers', 'Tales From Nowhere', and others.
The Printer and the Preacher: Ben Franklin, George Whitefield, and the Surprising Friendship that Invented America
Randy Petersen - 2015
But they were fast friends. No two people did more to shape America in the mid-1700s.Benjamin Franklin was the American prototype: hard-working, inventive, practical, funny, with humble manners and lofty dreams. George Whitefield was the most popular preacher in an era of great piety, whose outdoor preaching across the colonies was heard by thousands, all of whom were told, “You must be born again.” People became excited about God. They began reading the Bible and supporting charities. When Whitefield died in 1770, on a preaching tour in New Hampshire, he had built a spiritual foundation for a new nation—just as his surviving friend, Ben Franklin, had built its social foundation. Together these two men helped establish a new nation founded on liberty. This is the story of their amazing friendship.
Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine
Julie Summers - 2000
These two names have been inextricably joined since the two climbers disappeared on Mount Everest more than 75 years ago. Could they have been the first to reach the summit of the world's highest mountains-some 30 years earlier than Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay? Mallory's story has been well chronicled, but Irvine has always been overshadowed by his more famous climbing partner and little has been written about him. Who was he? Why was he invited by the British Everest Committee to join the 1924 expedition despite his limited mountaineering experience? And why did Mallory, 16 years his senior, select Irvine as his partner for the final assault on the summit? Julie Summers, great niece of Sandy Irvine, has been fascinated since childhood by the story of Uncle Sandy. In May 2000, Julie made an astonishing discovery: a long forgotten and unopened trunk containing Irvine's letters and photographs from Everest. Drawing on these and other material, Julie writes a revealing story of a fearless young adventurer whose life and death linked him with one of the greatest mountaineering legends of all time.
Charles Manson: The Man Who Murdered the Sixties
David J. Krajicek - 2019
Freshly paroled, he stumbled into San Francisco in 1967 just as thousands of impressionable young people were streaming into town for the Summer of Love.Posing as a musician-come-guru-come-Christ-figure, Manson built a commune cult of hippies, consisting mainly of troubled young women. But what made this group set out on the four-week killing spree that claimed seven lives? Former Journalism Professor, David J. Krajicek, seeks to discover just that.
The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life
Andy Miller - 2012
Or so he kept telling himself. But, no matter how busy or tired he was, something kept niggling at him. Books. Books he'd always wanted to read. Books he'd said he'd read that he actually hadn't. Books that whispered the promise of escape from the daily grind. And so, with the turn of a page, Andy began a year of reading that was to transform his life completely.This book is Andy's inspirational and very funny account of his expedition through literature: classic, cult, and everything in between. Beginning with a copy of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita that he happens to find one day in a bookstore, he embarks on a literary odyssey. From Middlemarch to Anna Karenina to A Confederacy of Dunces, this is a heartfelt, humorous, and honest examination of what it means to be a reader, and a witty and insightful journey of discovery and soul-searching that celebrates the abiding miracle of the book and the power of reading.
These Three Words
Jess van der Hoech - 2018
And if her family were different and her friends actually liked her. Better yet, maybe if she was a different person altogether, preferably a person who doesn't have anxiety about absolutely everything. Just as Luna begins to think all hope is lost, she meets Sadie Rainbow, a counsellor who supports Luna through a journey of self-discovery, where she learns coping strategies that really work and finds the power that can be hidden within three words. These Three Words is a unique therapeutic novel for teenagers with the aim of linking together the feelings, emotions and behaviours connected to anxiety, with some of the therapeutic tools that can be used in order to enable better self-regulation, increased confidence and different ways of thinking. The book is equally valuable to parents of teenagers with anxiety, giving them an insight and understanding into some of the issues that may be affecting their child, and potentially opening up a line of communication and a way forward between parent and teen.
The Gifts of Reading
Jennie Orchard - 2020
F. Said, Madeleine Thien, Salley Vickers, John Wood and Markus ZusakThis story, like so many stories, begins with a gift.The gift, like so many gifts, was a book...' So begins the essay by Robert Macfarlane that inspired this collection. In this cornucopia of an anthology, you will find essays by some of the world's most beloved novelists, nonfiction writers, essayists and poets. 'You will see books taking flight in flocks, migrating around the world, landing in people's hearts and changing them for a day or a year or a lifetime. 'You will see books sparking wonder or anger; throwing open windows into other languages, other cultures, other minds; causing people to fall in love or to fight for what is right. 'And more than anything, over and over again, you will see books and words being given, received and read - and in turn prompting further generosity.' Published to coincide with the 20th anniversary of global literacy non-profit, Room to Read, The Gifts of Reading forms inspiring, unforgettable, irresistible proof of the power and necessity of books and reading. Inspired by Robert Macfarlane Curated by Jennie Orchard
Hiking Through: Finding Peace and Freedom on the Appalachian Trail
Paul V. Stutzman - 2010
He quit his job of seventeen years and embarked upon a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, a 2,176-mile stretch of varying terrain spanning fourteen states. During his nearly five-month-long hike, he battled brutal trail conditions and overwhelming loneliness, but also enjoyed spectacular scenery and trail camaraderie.With breathtaking descriptions and humorous anecdotes from his travels, Stutzman reveals how immersing himself in nature and befriending fellow hikers helped him recover from a devastating loss. Somewhere between Georgia and Maine, he realized that God had been with him every step of the way, and on a famous path through the wilderness, he found his own path to peace and freedom.