NEW RELEASES
Pain was Joe Grim's self-expression, his livelihood and reason for being. In 1908-09 the Italian-American boxer toured Australia, losing fights but amazing crowds with his showmanship and extraordinary physical resilience. On the east coast Grim played a supporting role in the Jack Johnson-Tommy Burns Fight of the Century; on the west coast he was committed to an insane asylum. In between he played with the concept and reality of pain in a shocking manner not witnessed before or since. Winkler braids the story of Grim in Australia and meditations on pain with thoughts on masculinity and vulnerability, plus questionable jokes, into a highly creative haymaker.
Short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award.
"The strangest book you are likely to read this year." —J.M. Coetzee
"Grimmish meets a need I didn't even know I had. I lurched between bursts of wild laughter, shudders of horror, and gasps of awe at Winkler's verbal command: the freshness and muscle of his verbs, the unstoppable flow of his images, the bizarre wit of the language of pugilism-and all the while, a moving subterranean glint of strange masculine tenderness." —Helen Garner
Campaigners, chefs and food writers rail against 'intensive farming'. But the problem isn't the adjective. It's the noun. Around the world, farming has been wiping out vast habitats, depleting freshwater, polluting oceans, and accelerating global heating, while leaving millions undernourished and unfed. Increasingly, there are signs that the system itself is beginning to flicker. But there is another way. Regenesis is an journey into a new possible future for food, people and the planet. Drawing on the rapidly advancing science of soil ecology, Monbiot shows how the hidden biological universe beneath our feet could transform what we eat and how we grow it. He travels to meet the people who are unlocking these methods, from the fruit and vegetable growers who cultivate pests as well as potatoes; through producers of perennial grains who are liberating their fields from ploughs; to the scientists pioneering new forms of protein. The tiniest life forms in the soil might help us save the living world, allowing us to produce abundant, cheap, healthy food while returning vast swathes of land to the wild. Interesting and hopeful.
"When my squawking baby brother arrived, I realised I needed a new family. No one seemed to mind when I packed my bag. I took a box and used my best handwriting to write 'FREE KID', then waited for some new parents to take me home." Waiting in a box like an abandoned pet and encountering the passersby changes the child's perspective. At the end of the day, when her parents pretend they need an older sister for their new baby, she is ready to leave her box and go happily back home. A delightful book!
This remarkable book challenges our received narratives of historical determinism and the myths of cultural ‘progress’ devised to justify the status quo. If we unshackle ourselves from these preconceptions and look more closely at the evidence, we find a wide array of ways in which humans have lived with each other, and with the natural world. Many of these could provide templates for new forms of social organisation, and lead us to rethink farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilisation itself. A fascinating and important book, now in paperback.
>>All figured out.
>>Human history gets a rewrite.
>>Collective self-creation.
>>Inequality is not the price of civilisation.
>>American anarchist.
>>What other social systems have there been?
>>Lots of really good videos.
>>Articles by Graeber.
>>Graeber's playlist.
>>Also available as a very satisfying hardback.
>>Other books by David Graeber
We regularly use Julia Busuttil Nishimura's previous two cookbooks at home because they are full of sure-fire recipes that are a pleasure to make and even more of a pleasure to eat, so we are looking forward to adding this new book to our collection. Julia Busuttil Nishimura always knows the right dish for the occasion, weather or time of day. She also understands the power food has to bring people together, whether that's to prepare a meal or enjoy the delicious results. With recipes ranging from quick, flavourful meals for busy weeknights to simple indulgences for summer feasts, Around the Table perfectly matches dishes to time and place. It includes Mediterranean classics from Italy and Malta, and Japanese dishes Julia has learned from her husband, Nori, that will soon become favourites around your table, too.
A fast-paced fantasy adventure set in a broken, future England, following the further exploits of the outlaws Scarlett and Browne. Scarlett McCain and Albert Browne have outwitted their pursuers and escaped into the wilderness once more, and it’s not long before they become famous for their audacious heists across the Seven Kingdoms. Yet neither is fully able to escape the shackles of the past – as they discover when a dangerous job turns sour. Soon old enemies and sinister new threats are pressing in on every side, and Scarlett and Browne must pull off an impossible mission and strike out against The Faith Houses and the Brothers of the Hand if they are to save the people they hold most dear.
>>Read Stella's review of The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne (#1).
>>Book trailer for Book #2.
>>Read Stella's review of The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne (#1).
>>Book trailer for Book #2.
>>A reader recommends.
Wonderworks: Literary invention and the science of stories by Angus Fletcher $28
Wonderworks reveals that literature is among the mightiest technologies that humans have ever invented, precision-honed to give us what our brains most want and need. Wonderworks tells the story of the greatest literary inventions through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to modern-day America. It draws on cutting-edge neuroscience to demonstrate that the inventions really work: they enrich our lives with joy, hope, courage and energy, and they help our brains heal from grief, loneliness and even trauma.
A newly married woman longs, irrationally, for a silk umbrella; a husband chases away his wife's beloved cat; a betrayed mother impulsively sacks her housekeeper. Underneath the surface of these precisely observed tales of love, marriage and family life in mid-century Copenhagen pulse currents of desire, violence and despair, as women and men dream of escaping their conventional roles and finding freedom and happiness — without ever truly understanding what that might mean.
"An intense reading experience. So clear is Ditlevsen's eye that it's impossible to tear yourself away from the fates of her characters, however grim." —John Self, Guardian
Language opens up our world, and in the same instant, limits it. What does it mean to exist in a language that was never meant for you to speak? Why are we missing certain words? How can we talk about our communal problems without fuelling them? What does it actually mean to speak freely? As a writer and activist fighting for equality, Kübra Gümüşay has been thinking about these questions for many years. In this book she explores how language shapes our thinking and determines our politics. She shows how people become invisible as individuals when they are always seen as part of a group, and the way those in the minority often have to expend energy cleaning up the messy thinking of others. But she also points to how we might shape conversations to allow for greater ambiguity and individuality, how arguments might happen in a space of learning and vulnerability without sacrificing principles — how we might all be able to speak freely.
Julia has landed a fresh start — at a 'pan-European' restaurant. 'Imagine that,' says her mother. 'I'm imagining.' Nick is flirting with sobriety and nobody else. Did you know: adults his age are now more likely to live with their parents than a romantic partner? Life should have started to take shape by now — but instead we're trying on new versions of ourselves, swiping left and right, and searching for a convincing answer to that question: 'What do you do?' Reward System is a set of ultra-contemporary and electrifyingly fresh fictions, of a generation of the cusp, meshed in Zooms and lockdowns, loneliness and love.
"Reward System is an exhilarating and beautiful book by an extraordinarily gifted writer. Reading these stories, I found myself thinking newly and differently about contemporary life." —Sally Rooney
Prescod-Weinstein shares her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter—along with a perspective informed by history, politics, and the wisdom of Star Trek. One of the leading physicists of her generation, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is also one of fewer than one hundred Black American women to earn a PhD from a department of physics. Her vision of the cosmos is vibrant, buoyantly nontraditional, and grounded in Black and queer feminist lineages. Dr. Prescod-Weinstein urges us to recognize how science, like most fields, is rife with racism, misogyny, and other forms of oppression. She lays out a bold new approach to science and society, beginning with the belief that we all have a fundamental right to know and love the night sky. The Disordered Cosmos dreams into existence a world that allows everyone to experience and understand the wonders of the universe.
Finding the Raga: An improvisation on Indian music by Amit Chaudhuri $25
By turns essay, memoir and cultural study, Finding the Raga is Amit Chaudhuri's singular account of his discovery of, and enduring passion for, North Indian music: an ancient, evolving tradition whose principles and practices will alter the reader's notion of what music might — and can — be. Tracing the music's development, Finding the Raga dwells on its most distinctive and mysterious characteristics: its extraordinary approach to time, language and silence; its embrace of confoundment, and its ethos of evocation over representation.
"Supple, intricate and uncompromising, full of delicate observation and insight, Amit Chaudhuri's Finding the Raga immerses us in the rigorous beauty and cosmology of Indian classical music. It is also a loving memoir about relationships and places, dedication and vocation." —Geoff Dyer
Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine and Poland by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them. Largely forgotten today, these pogroms – ethnic riots – dominated headlines and international affairs in their time. Aid workers warned that six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty years later, these dire predictions would come true. Drawing upon long-neglected archival materials, including thousands of newly discovered witness testimonies, trial records, and official orders, Veidlinger shows how this wave of genocidal violence created the conditions for the Holocaust. Through stories of survivors, perpetrators, aid workers, and governmental officials, he explains how so many different groups of people came to the same conclusion: that killing Jews was an acceptable response to their various problems.
In the closing third of the twentieth century, Wales experienced the simultaneous effects of deindustrialisation, the subsequent loss of employment and community cohesion, and the struggle for its language and identity. These changes were largely forced upon the country, whose own voice, rarely agreed upon within its borders, had to fight to be heard outside of Wales. Brittle with Relics is a history of the people of Wales undergoing some of the country's most seismic and traumatic events: the disasters of Aberfan and Tryweryn; the rise of the Welsh language movement; the Miners' Strike and its aftermath; and the narrow vote in favour of partial devolution. Featuring the voices of Neil Kinnock, Rowan Williams, Leanne Wood, Gruff Rhys, Michael Sheen, Nicky Wire, Sian James, Welsh language activists, members of former mining communities and many more, this is a vital history of a nation determined to survive, while maintaining the hope that Wales will one day thrive on its own terms.
"Richly humane, viscerally political, generously multi-voiced, Brittle with Relics is oral history at its revelatory best: containing multitudes and powerfully evoking that most remote but also resonant of times, the day before yesterday." —David Kynaston
"A testament to the brutal circumstances that bonded the communities of Wales into a new polity for the 21st century." —Gruff Rhys
Who's Hiding? by Satoru Onishi $20
Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking by Marianne Eloise $33
Homesickness by Colin Barrett $35
Board book editions in either te reo Maori or English of this deservedly popular and enjoyable book for infants. 18 colourful animals stand in a row. Something small changes on every double page: animals disappear, turn around, cry or sleep. Young children love spotting the changes and, at the same time, get to know animal names, colours, expressions, emotions and how to count.
"Obsessive was, still is, my natural state, and I never wondered why. I didn't mind, didn't know that other people could feel at peace. I always felt like a raw nerve, but then, I thought that everyone did." Writer and journalist Marianne Eloise was born obsessive. What that means changes day to day, depending on what her brain latches on to: fixations with certain topics, intrusive violent thoughts, looping phrases. Some obsessions have lasted a lifetime, while others will be intense but only last a week or two. Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking is a culmination of a life spent obsessing, offering a glimpse into Marianne's brain, but also an insight into the lives of others like her. From death to Medusa, to Disneyland to fire, to LA to her dog, the essays explore the intersection of neurodivergence, obsession and disorder, telling the story of one life underpinned and ultimately made whole by obsession.
"The mortifying ordeal of being known, minus the ordeal and sans mortification. I felt recognised on every page, learned so many new things, and laughed so hard I choked on my water. Read this!!!" —Naoise Dolan
The much-anticipated second collection of stories from the author of Young Skins. In these eight stories, Barrett takes us back to the barren backwaters of Ireland's County Mayo, via Toronto, and illuminates the lives of outcasts, misfits and malcontents with an eye for the abrupt and absurd. A quiet night in the neighbourhood pub is shattered by the arrival of a sword wielding fugitive. A funeral party teeters on the edge of this world and the next, as ghosts won't simply lay in wake. A shooting sees an everyday call-out lead a policewoman to confront the banality of her own existence.
The Rack by A.E. Ellis $24
Why Patti Smith Matters by Caryn Rose $28
"The stories in Homesickness are crafted with skill and flair. Colin Barrett anchors the work with emotional accuracy and careful delineation of character, and then, using metaphors and beautifully made sentences, he lets his narrative soar." —Colm Toibin
"Superb. There is an utterness to his attention, a devotion to the lives of his characters, that shifts the work into some more lasting place. Barrett is already one of the leading writers of the Irish short story, which is to braggingly say, one of the leading writers of the short story anywhere. He means every word and regrets every word. He just kills it." —Guardian
'Consider yourself an experiment of the gods in what a man can endure.' Paul Davenant, has arrived at a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps with hopes of a full cure and a normal life. But as the weeks and months pass interminably by, he undergoes endless tests and medical procedures, each more horrific and dehumanizing than the last, all the while facing the possibility that his case may be hopeless. Despite the pain, indignity, and tediousness, Davenant never loses sight of the outrageous, farcical side to his situation, the absurdity of it all. And when he falls in love with a fellow patient, he becomes determined to recover his health. Will he succeed, or will all the tortures he has endured have been for nothing? When The Rack was first published in 1958, the critical acclaim was universal — reviewers compared it with the works of Proust, Mann, and Camus and declared it a masterwork destined to take its place among the great novels of the 20th century. It was subsequently all but forgotten until this new edition.
"There are certain books we call great for want of a better term, that rise like monuments above the cemeteries of literature — Clarissa, Great Expectations, Ulysses. The Rack to my mind is one of this company." —Graham Greene
Through her poetry, her songs, her unapologetic vocal power, and her very presence as a woman fronting a rock band, Patti Smith kicked open a door that countless others walked through. Sha has done much that embodies the 'nothing-to-hide' rawness of punk, and has long nurtured a place in society for misfits of every stripe. Why Patti Smith Matters is the first book about the iconic artist written by a woman. The veteran music journalist Caryn Rose contextualises Smith's creative work, her influence, and her wide-ranging and still-evolving impact on rock and roll, visual art, and the written word. Rose goes deep into Smith's oeuvre, from her first album, Horses, to acclaimed memoirs operating at a surprising remove from her music.
>>1976.
A novelisation of the life of Uriah Rennie, the UK football Premier League's first and only Black referee. From Jamaica to Sheffield to the recently formed Premier League, Uri rises through the ranks as a referee, making it to the the highest level of our national game. But along the way he is confronted with tensions and prejudices, old and new, which emerge as his every move is watched, analysed and commented on.
Bolla by Pajtim Statovci $33
No Words by Maryam Master $19
Wooolf! by Stephanie Blake $19
"Freestyle poetry is teamed with kick-by-kick reports in this stirring, stylistically unorthodox novel. A bold and powerful narrative experiment." —Guardian
It is April, 1995. Kosovo is a country on the cusp of a dreadful war. Arsim is twenty-two, newly married, cautious - an Albanian trying to keep his head down and finish his studies in an atmosphere of creeping threat. Until he encounters Milos, a Serb, and begins a life in secret. Bolla is the story of what happens when passion and history collide - when a relationship, already forbidden and laced with danger, is ripped apart by war and migration, separated by nations and fate. What happens when you are forced to live a life that is not yours, so far from your desires? Can the human remain?
Hero doesn't feel like a hero, but sometimes she feels as if the universe is asking her to be one. When Aria, a mysterious boy who never EVER speaks, starts at school and is picked on by His Royal Thug-ness Doofus (Rufus), Hero and her bestie Jaz feel compelled to help. But they're far too chicken to actually do anything heroic, so they befriend Aria and try to uncover the truth about him. What happened to his voice? Where did he come from? What are those three dents on his middle finger? This is the story of a 12-year-old refugee who's trying to establish a new life in a new country, grapple with his past and, most importantly, find his voice.
Once there was a little rabbit who did only what he wanted. When his mother asked him to tidy his room he cried, “Wooolf! The wolf is coming!" and, when she ran away, he did whatever he wanted. One day he did a wee where he wanted, and the wolf came to get him. "Wooolf!" he cried, but his mother didn't fall for that. The wolf got him! It was just Simon's father in a wolf mask. Simon promised never to cry wolf again. But when his mother opened the cupboard in the morning, a wolf cried, "Awwoooo!"
No comments:
Post a Comment