Nerve 20 - Round-up of Recommended Reads

Round-up of Recommended Reads

By Mandy (shop with the real Amazons) Vere

Liverpool has recently been blessed with three visits from intrepid journalist and author, Bidisha - for a talk on feminism, a conversation with Ahdaf Soueif on Egypt, and most recently to introduce her book "Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path Through Palestine" (Seagull £6). As a "beginner" visiting an occupied people, she writes beautifully, belligerently but simply about what she saw. The Israeli and other walls have been adorned with the artwork of Banksy and at last we have a (totally unofficial and unauthorised) biography by Will Elsworth-Jones, "Banksy: the Man Behind the Wall" (Aurum £20 HB).

However much we love sport and internationalism, we're in dire need of an antidote to this summer's jingoism and militarism. Marc Perelman's "Barbaric Sport: a Global Plague" (Verso £8.99) is a "magnificent manifesto for all of us dedicated anti-Olympiads, revealing how sport is the political and financial dirty business of the rulers". While Iain Sinclair's "Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project" (Penguin £9.99) is "a wounding assault", mourning the disruption of communities and exploring a landscape under sentence of death. Less critical but nevertheless to be recommended is a poetry collection edited by Neil Astley & Anna Selby, "The World Record: International Voices from Southbank Centre's Poetry Parnassus" (Bloodaxe £10) which consists of a poem from each of the 204 Olympic participating countries. It's not often that Gabon, Oman and Tuvalu get equal footing with the UK or US!

Staying with the internationalism, NfN's founder, Bob Dent, has written another book, "Hungary 1930 & the Forgotten History of a Mass Protest" (Merlin £13.95), when 100,000 marched through Budapest under the slogan "Work and Bread!". Why, who and what happened?

It's Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday (yippee! bread & roses all round, Woody) and his daughter Nora (recently in Liverpool, too) has a new book out: "My Name is New York: Ramblin' Around Woody Guthrie's Town" (Powerhouse Books £12). It's a walking guide but we can live vicariously… Wandering, wandering… Robert MacFarlane's latest tome is "The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot" (Hamish Hamilton £20 HB). He follows the ancient tracks, drove-roads and sea paths which criss-cross our land, connecting us with the subtle ways we're shaped by our landscape - beautiful.

Now I'm sorry to introduce a sour note, but if you remember the murder of Hilda Murrell, world-renowned rose grower and nuclear power activist, you'll be interested in her nephew Robert Green's book "A Thorn in Their Side: The Hilda Murrell Murder" (Rata Books £18), a "who, why and what dunnit" according to Michael Mansfield, QC.

Finally if you're looking for a good novel to while away this soggy summer, the three on my bedside list are: "The Submission" by Amy Waldman (Windmill £7.99) which explores the ramifications when a Muslim architect wins an anonymous contest for a memorial to a terror attack in Manhattan. "There But For The" by one of our favourite Scottish lesbian writers, Ali Smith (Penguin £8.99) draws us into a beautiful, strange place where everyone is so much more than they at first appear and was hailed as a book of the year. "The Cat's Table" by Michael Ondaatje (Vintage £7.99) follows 11-year old ragtag Michael on a liner from Colombo to England. A novel "poised between the magic of innocence and the melancholy of experience".

There you go then…

News from Nowhere
Open: Mon - Sat, 10am - 5.45pm
96 Bold Street, Liverpool L14HY
Tel: 0151 708 7270
www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk

(online ordering from the REAL Amazons - boycott union-busting Amazon!)

Printer friendly page

Sorry Comments Closed

Comments are closed on this article