Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
A recommendation from my good friend Jaime, this sounds absolutely brilliant, a page turner, cult-classic in the making. I reckon this could end up being a book group choice of the future if the hype is anything to go by.
Shy by Max Porter
Max Porter’s bestselling new novel about a boy called Shy. I love the sound of this, not least for the drum n bass and jungle references. Max is a fantastic writer and from round these parts.
How Westminster Works, And Why It Doesn’t by Ian Dunt
Again, already a big bestseller. I think it’s fair to say that few people will know better exactly how Westminster works. With an election looming next year, it feels like a good time to know what it is they’re up to.
Hands of Time by Rebecca Struthers
A customer came in the shop a few Saturdays ago asking if we had any books on time. I struggled to think of a great one we had on the shelves, so this goes out to that customer. If we could travel back to Saturday 22 April I would thrust this book into your hands. Brand new from watchmaker and historian Rebecca Struthers, it sounds enlightening and beautiful.
All The Wide Border by Mike Parker and Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer
Two books on places that interest me greatly. Mike Parker writes on the border of England and Wales, a warm meditation on identity and landscape, split into three parts corresponding to the three rivers of this borderland, the Dee, Severn and Wye. We cross an entirely different border in Beyond the Wall, back in time again to East Germany. Historian Hoyer ‘offers a kaleidoscopic new vision of a vanished country’. Sounds perfect.
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
I knew nothing of this book – a ‘dystopian masterpiece’ – until someone posted it on Twitter the other week. ’The best single work of science fiction yet written’ Ursula K Le. Guin. Enough said really!
