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Find out moreLooking to find out something more about the world we live in, instead of gallivanting off into the realm of fiction? Have a look at our hand-picked non-fiction choices.
By turns gripping, meditative and elemental, and always inspirational, this treasure trove of prose, poetry and art lays bare a richness of relationships between female adventurers and the great outdoors. Shunning conventional, simplistic narratives about mankind conquering the highest this, or the deepest that, each adventurer-contributor shares their unique experiences with enlightening, engaging subtlety. In the wise words of one writer, “People go outdoors to push themselves past what they thought they could do…I go outdoors for the struggle, not to beat it.” This eloquent anthology contains over seventy pieces of writing and art, among them an enlightening piece about the motivations of an Antarctic researcher, an intimate account of a mountaineer’s connection with her father through cross-country skiing, and an exquisite evocation of the sensuous life-forces of a Dartmoor brook. It’s a delight to dip into, and the perfect gift for nature-lovers and adventure-seekers.
Offering a deep and abiding connection with nature and our landscape around us, this winter journal really is the most poignant yet uplifting, and emotionally observant read. Horatio Clare explains in his prologue that he is embracing winter, in order to raise a torch against depression. Declaring that “I will not lose touch with nature”, he says he wants to stop turning inwards, and start looking outwards. What follows is a journal that starts on the 16 October and travels through winter into early Spring. With a gift for seeing what others may have missed, for expressing and painting with words, Horatio Clare is able to take the reader by the hand and share the memory with us too. As he battles the darkness to be found in winter, he sends out a blazing light. I adored the snippets of new-found (for me) information, including that in Welsh lore dragons thrive as green woodpeckers. I have since seen a green woodpecker in their low, darting, rolling flight with completely new eyes! The Light in the Dark is so eloquently descriptive and beautiful, emotional goosebumps kept me company as I read, and oh, that ending! Highly recommended, this just had to feature as one of our Star Books.
'The vegan Jamie Olivers.' The Times Save the Planet and Feel Amazing BOSH!, the pioneers of simple, easy and delicious plant-based cooking, are here to make a sustainable and ethical lifestyle accessible to everyone. BOSH! How to Live Vegan will help you make a few positive changes that will have a huge impact on the world around you. It covers all aspects of vegan living, everything from food to toiletries to travel. Should you be eating avocados? Is it still ok to wear an old leather belt? What do you tell your friends when they offer you a glass of non-vegan wine? Henry and Ian will answer these questions and more in this fully-comprehensive guide to the how and the why of a plant-based lifestyle. Henry and Ian answer all the questions and more, with easy tips and simple hacks to help you live a more sustainable life. Whether you're already vegan or just about to start on your vegan journey, this is all the inspiration you need.
Modern Toss: Work is Shit is a book of hilarious cartoons by Jon Link and Mick Bunnage, who together make up Modern Toss. Some of the cartoons have appeared previously in The Guardian or Private Eye but most are to be seen here for the first time. Set in the workplace, as the title suggests, and containing some bad language, they are extremely funny because they are so true, putting into words what so many of us are thinking and have wanted to say on finding ourselves in similar situations. So well-drawn too, with expressions and body language conveyed in just a few pen strokes. My very favourite takes place at the water cooler (as so much does!), where a male colleague is telling his female counterpart that he has 'been really enjoying working here since I started pretending it was some ropey reality TV show'. On a slightly more serious note, the changes brought about by the introduction of more technology and issues like sexual harassment, health and safety and stress are also addressed in a humorous way. Utterly irreverent and often absurd, these clever satirical cartoons will have you in stitches...I just wish there were more of them. Guess I'll just have to wait for the next edition. Drena Irish, A LoveReading Ambassador
The Peaky Blinders as we know them, thanks to the hit TV series, are infused with drama and dread. Fashionably dressed, the charismatic but deeply flawed Shelby family blind enemies by slashing them with the disposable safety razor blades stitched in to the peaks of their flat caps, as they fight bloody gangland wars involving Irish terrorists and the authorities led by a devious Home Secretary, Winston Churchill. But who were the real Peaky Blinders? Did they really exist? Well-known social historian, broadcaster and author, Carl Chinn, has spent decades searching them out. Now he reveals the true story of the notorious Peaky Blinders, one of whom was his own great grandfather and, like the Shelbys, his grandfather was an illegal bookmaker in back-street Birmingham. In this gripping social history, Chinn shines a light on the rarely reported struggles of the working class in one of the great cities of the British Empire before the First World War. The story continues after 1918 as some Peaky Blinders transformed into the infamous Birmingham Gang. Led by the real Billy Kimber, they fought a bloody war with the London gangsters Darby Sabini and Alfie Solomon over valuable protection rackets extorting money from bookmakers across the booming postwar racecourses of Britain. Drawing together a remarkably wide-range of original sources, including interviews with relatives of the 1920s gangsters, Peaky Blinders: The Real Story adds a new dimension to the true history of Birmingham's underworld and fact behind its fiction.
From the bestselling author of Eating Animals and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - a brilliant, fresh take on climate change and what we can do about it Climate crisis is the single biggest threat to human survival. And it is happening right now. We all understand that time is running out - but do we truly believe it? And, caught between the seemingly unimaginable and the apparently unthinkable, how can we take the first step towards action, to arrest our race to extinction? We can begin with our knife and fork. The link between farming animals and the climate crisis is barely discussed, because giving up our meat-based diets feels like an impossible ask. But we don't have to go cold turkey. Cutting out animal products for just part of the day is enough to change the world. The task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves - with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. But we have done it before and we can do it again. Collective action is the way to save our home and way of life. And it all starts with what we eat, and don't eat, for breakfast. With his distinctive wit, insight and humanity, Jonathan Safran Foer presents the essential debate of our time as no one else could, bringing it to vivid and urgent life and offering us all a much-needed way out.
For entrepreneurs ready to reach the next level of success, small business owner turned multibillionaire Tilman Fertitta shares the commonsense principles that have rocketed his worldwide hospitality empire to the top. For aspiring entrepreneurs or people in business, this audiobook will help you take your company to the next level. When you finish listening, you’ll know what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong to operate your business, and if you’re just getting started, it will help set you up for success. Tilman Fertitta, also known as the Billion Dollar Buyer, started his hospitality empire thirty years ago with just one restaurant. So he knows the challenges that business owners face, as well as the common pitfalls that cause them to go under. Over the years he’s stayed true to the principles that helped him scale his business to what is believed to be the largest single-shareholder company in America, with over $4 billion in revenue, including hundreds of restaurants (Landry’s Seafood, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, Morton’s Steakhouse, Mastro’s, The Chart House, Rainforest Café, and over forty more restaurant concepts) and five Golden Nugget Casinos. He’s also sole owner of the NBA’s Houston Rockets. In Shut Up and Listen!, he shares the key insights that made it all possible. When entrepreneurs appear on Billion Dollar Buyer, the biggest obstacles they often face are ones they don’t suspect: not knowing your numbers, not knowing your strengths and weaknesses, or not being willing to go that extra mile with your customers. Fertitta has seen it all. He knows that what you aren’t paying attention to can either sink your business or become the very things that launch you to the top. As Fertitta says: “You might think you know what you’re doing, but I’m going to show you what you don’t know.” Fertitta shares straight-talk “Tilmanisms” around six key action items that any entrepreneur can adopt today: Be the Bull No Spare Customers Change, Change, Change Know Your Numbers Follow the 95/5 Rule Take No Out of Your Vocabulary A groundbreaking, no-holds-barred audiobook, Shut Up and Listen! offers practical, hard-earned wisdom from one of the most successful business owners in the world.
What a wonderfully helpful book for anyone with any of the long term health conditions listed in this book. I have many of these conditions. It is done very simply and in a very simple easy language to understand. “TEAM” is mentioned which means “Together We Achieve More”, which is so true. They have included many illustrations to describe what each statement is about. I really found the “Motivational Interview” page great. I am a volunteer tutor for “Self Care Management Program” which teaches patients how to live and deal with long term health conditions. I work throughout the Walsall area, where this program is well received. This is another sign posting for people who are suffering with long term health conditions. This program is free and run by the NHS. Diana Mason, A LoveReading Ambassador
The highly anticipated new book from Malcom Gladwell, host of the chart-topping podcast Revisionist History. With original archival interviews and musical scoring, this enhanced audiobook edition of Talking to Strangers brings Gladwell's renowned storytelling to life in his unparalleled narrating style. The routine traffic stop that ends in tragedy. The spy who spends years undetected at the highest levels of the Pentagon. The false conviction of Amanda Knox. Why do we so often get other people wrong? Why is it so hard to detect a lie, read a face or judge a stranger's motives? Through a series of encounters and misunderstandings - from history, psychology and infamous legal cases - Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual adventure into the darker side of human nature, where strangers are never simple and misreading them can have disastrous consequences. No one challenges our shared assumptions like Malcolm Gladwell. Here he uses stories of deceit and fatal errors to cast doubt on our strategies for dealing with the unknown, inviting us to rethink our thinking in these troubled times.
'Operation Sustainable Human' by Chris Macdonald is a frightening, frank and forceful description of the state of our planet but the author does offer hope if only we would all take action now. The book examines in turn the four main culprits which have caused our present dire predicament, namely our methods of food production, our penchant for travel, our throwaway society and the unholy alliance between politics and big business. It then goes on to recommend four actions we can all take to counteract each of these. We should adopt a much more plant-based diet, avoid fossil fuel powered modes of travel whenever possible, buy less 'stuff' and vote more responsibly. None of these is easy but we have to stop thinking that it makes no difference what any single person does...if enough people do it, it does make a difference. This book comes at a time when it seems that our young people are growing increasingly disillusioned with the progress towards halting climate change being made by their elders. The recent global climate strike will hopefully make more people in positions of power sit up and take notice and do something as time is rapidly running out. Chris Macdonald's book is cogent, concise and compelling. It should be compulsory reading for every person in every country, especially a certain president I don't need to name. I would urge anyone who loves Planet Earth to buy a copy and spread the ideas it contains because, to quote the author, there is no Planet B. Drena Irish, A LoveReading Ambassador Available on Amazon
An eye-opening wander (and sometimes adrenaline ride) down memory lane for a life-long hillwalker and mountaineer. John D. Burns has spent forty years trekking and climbing mountains, he grew up in industrial Merseyside and escaped to the wilds as often as he could. He opens by admitting a mistake that could have cost lives, his raw honesty hits home, this isn’t a playground. In his early years he learns through near catastrophes and calamitous events that he needs proper equipment and to never take the outdoors for granted. He basically learns through his mistakes - TAKE NOTE! As the author grows more experienced he later becomes a part of the rescue team and starts to really become aware of the beauty around him. The majority of this memoir runs in a straight line through time, occasionally though it deviates, and sometimes stories just stop, to carry on at a later point. This memoir is more about the thrills and escapades, than the beauty of where he is and yet that joy is also there. I would recommend reading The Last Hillwalker followed by his fictional Sky Dance, as once you have finished both, you get more of measure of this man. A fascinating read.
There is good reason why some people don't want to talk about religion in polite company. Like conversations about politics, discussions about religion all too often set people at odds with each other in ways that are hard to predict and difficult to control. For all the controversy involved with such debate, this book invites the reader to engage with an ethical appraisal of religion(s) as they are practised today. It is written in the belief that this is an important dialogue for our time. It claims, despite the emotive character of the subject, that the free exchange of ideas and experience between people of differing views and commitments can with practice generate more light than heat. Particular effort is made to answer the question: how can we fairly evaluate the ethical character of religion(s)? It focuses especially but not at all exclusively on the religions of Christianity and Islam, being critical of them in many respects; but it also offers sharp rebuke to some of the perspectives of Richard Dawkins and others among the new atheists.
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Cartoonist, Robert Crumb said; “When I come up against the Real World, I just vacillate”. Well, he can happily vacillate here for a while. This section features a whole host of books covering subjects as diverse as Mankind’s place in the Universe (Human Universe by Brian Cox), the history of the human journey to work (Rush Hour by Iain Gateley) and the real business of reading books (Bookworms, Dogears and Squashy Big Armchairs by Heather Reyes). This is the ‘Human’ section in our book lovers’ journey.
If you love reading, then you’ll find something here to fascinate you. There are new and interest-piquing passages here from science, philosophy, politics, history, religion, and all of the things that occupy the lives of humans. And we mean ALL of them. The fight against Cancer, the fight for freedom, feminism, fatality, frailty and fame. It’s too big to list. Have a browse through the titles by using our monthly recommendations past and present. We guarantee you’ll be hooked in minutes!