Authors Christmas Recommendations 2021 - Part I
Welcome to a special series of posts in the run up to the holiday season! I asked some of the lovely authors that have previously appeared on the site about their Christmas book recommendations for this year. They graciously replied with some fantastic book picks! Hopefully these book recommendations might help you with your own Christmas shopping gift ideas too! :-)
Q. Is there a smart thinking book that you are looking forward to reading this Christmas, or one you would like to give or receive as a gift?
Mark Blyth
Sure. This one - The Color of Money : Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap. Best book I read all year.
The Color of Money : Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap
Review from Book Depository:
When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than 1 percent of the total wealth in America. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged. The Color of Money seeks to explain the stubborn persistence of this racial wealth gap by focusing on the generators of wealth in the black community: black banks.
With the civil rights movement in full swing, President Nixon promoted "black capitalism," a plan to support black banks and minority-owned businesses. But the catch-22 of black banking is that the very institutions needed to help communities escape the deep poverty caused by discrimination and segregation inevitably became victims of that same poverty. In this timely and eye-opening account, Baradaran challenges the long-standing belief that black communities could ever really hope to accumulate wealth in a segregated economy.
Buy On:
Book Depository €15.38 Waterstones £14.95 Wordery $19.58(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
You can read Mark's previous interview & book recommendations here, and please also check out Mark's book Angrynomics:
Angrynomics
Review from Waterstones:
Why are measures of stress and anxiety on the rise, when economists and politicians tell us we have never had it so good? While statistics tell us that the vast majority of people are getting steadily richer the world most of us experience day-in and day-out feels increasingly uncertain, unfair, and ever more expensive.
In Angrynomics, Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth explore the rising tide of anger, sometimes righteous and useful, sometimes destructive and ill-targeted, and propose radical new solutions for an increasingly polarized and confusing world. Angrynomics is for anyone wondering, where the hell do we go from here?
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Book Depository €15.38 Waterstones £12.99 Wordery $17.53(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Sue Black
I would choose - Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
I made a pact with myself to read books outside my usual comfort zone. I fell in love with the story and so utterly believed it. What a film this would make.
Spinning Silver
Review From Book Depository:
Naomi Novik has once again been influenced by classic folktales, following Uprooted. Taking Rumpelstiltskin as her starting point, Spinning Silver is rich, original and a joy to read.
Will dark magic claim their home?
Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father's too kind-hearted to collect his debts. They face poverty, until Miryem hardens her own heart and takes up his work in their village. Her success creates rumours she can turn silver into gold, which attract the fairy king of winter himself. He sets her an impossible challenge - and if she fails, she'll die. Yet if she triumphs, it may mean a fate worse than death. And in her desperate efforts to succeed, Miryem unwittingly spins a web which draws in the unhappy daughter of a lord.
Irina's father schemes to wed her to the tsar - he will pay any price to achieve this goal. However, the dashing tsar is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of mortals and winter alike. Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and Irina embark on a quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power and love.
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Book Depository €12.94 Waterstones £12.99 Wordery $13.71(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Written in Bone: hidden stories in what we leave behind
Review from Waterstones:
Our bones are the silent witnesses to the lives we lead. Our stories are marbled into their marrow.
Drawing upon her years of research and a wealth of remarkable experience, the world-renowned forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black takes us on a journey of revelation. From skull to feet, via the face, spine, chest, arms, hands, pelvis and legs, she shows that each part of us has a tale to tell. What we eat, where we go, everything we do leaves a trace, a message that waits patiently for months, years, sometimes centuries, until a forensic anthropologist is called upon to decipher it.
Some of this information is easily understood, some holds its secrets tight and needs scientific cajoling to be released. But by carefully piecing together the evidence, the facts of a life can be rebuilt. Limb by limb, case by case - some criminal, some historical, some unaccountably bizarre - Dame Sue Black reconstructs with intimate sensitivity and compassion the hidden stories in what we leave behind.
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Book Depository €10.44 Waterstones £18.99 Wordery $19.31(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Joanne McNeil
My recommendation: Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone.
I can't think of a single person who wouldn't benefit—and feel seen!—from reading this, which is why I plan to buy it as a gift for many friends. Jaffe is a sharp writer and rigorous thinker who provides the reader with endlessly relatable stories of workplace frustration and exploitation. She shows where organizing can take us and the necessary tools to finally bring about change.
Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone
Review From Book Depository:
Whether it's working for free in exchange for 'experience', enduring poor treatment in the name of being 'part of the family', or clocking serious overtime for a good cause, more and more of us are pushed to make sacrifices for the privilege of being able to do work we enjoy.
Work Won't Love You Back examines how we all bought into this 'labour of love' myth: the idea that certain work is not really work, and should be done for the sake of passion rather than pay. Through the lives and experiences of various workers-from the unpaid intern and the overworked teacher, to the nonprofit employee, the domestic worker and even the professional athlete-this compelling book reveals how we've all been tricked into a new tyranny of work.
Sarah Jaffe argues that understanding the labour of love trap will empower us to work less and demand what our work is worth. Once freed, we can finally figure out what actually gives us joy, pleasure and satisfaction.
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Book Depository €20.92 Waterstones £20.00 Wordery $26.85(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Lurking: How a Person Became a User
Review from Book Depository:
A concise but wide-ranging personal history of the internet from--for the first time--the point of view of the user In a shockingly short amount of time, the internet has bound people around the world together and torn us apart and changed not just the way we communicate but who we are and who we can be. It has created a new, unprecedented cultural space that we are all a part of--even if we don't participate, that is how we participate--but by which we're continually surprised, betrayed, enriched, befuddled. We have churned through platforms and technologies and in turn been churned by them. And yet, the internet is us and always has been.
In Lurking, Joanne McNeil digs deep and identifies the primary (if sometimes contradictory) concerns of people online: searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity, and visibility. She charts what it is that brought people online and what keeps us here even as the social equations of digital life--what we're made to trade, knowingly or otherwise, for the benefits of the internet--have shifted radically beneath us. It is a story we are accustomed to hearing as tales of entrepreneurs and visionaries and dynamic and powerful corporations, but there is a more profound, intimate story that hasn't yet been told. Long one of the most incisive, ferociously intelligent, and widely respected cultural critics online, McNeil here establishes a singular vision of who we are now, tells the stories of how we became us, and helps us start to figure out what we do now.
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Book Depository €20.48 Waterstones £21.99 Wordery $22.13(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Susannah McFarlane
They say that reading the Divine Comedy changes your life - let’s see!
In between that heavy lifting, I’m looking forward to This Has Been Absolutely Lovely by Jessica Dettman, praised as having ‘humour and heart’, ‘a story of growing up and giving in, of parents and children, of hope and failure, of bravery and defied exceptions, and whether it is ever too late to try again.’
Can’t wait - reckon I’ll start halfway through Dante’s Purgatory!
The Divine Comedy
Review From Book Depository:
The Divine Comedy is the precursor of modern literature, and Clive James's vivid translation - his life's work and decades in the making - presents Dante's entire epic poem in a single song.
While many poets and translators have attempted to capture the full glory of The Divine Comedy in English, many have fallen short. Victorian verse translations established an unfortunate tradition of reproducing the sprightly rhyming measures of Dante but at the same time betraying the strain on the translator's powers of invention. For Dante, the dramatic human stories of Hell were exciting, but the spiritual studies of Purgatory and the sublime panoramas of Heaven were no less so.
In this incantatory translation, James - defying the convention by writing in quatrains - tackles these problems head-on and creates a striking and hugely accessible translation that gives us The Divine Comedy as a whole, unified, and dramatic work.
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Easons €23.80 Book Depository €13.61 Waterstones £16.99 Wordery $20.04(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
This Has Been Absolutely Lovely
Review From Book Depository:
Family is forever, and there's nothing you can do about it.
The charming, hilarious and all-too-relatable new novel from the author of How to be Second Best 'Dettmann nails the funny, sad and bizarre nuances of family life in this gripping novel that will appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty, Jojo Moyes and Marian Keyes' Sally Hepworth.
Molly's a millennial home organiser about to have her first baby. Obviously her mum, Annie, will help with the childcare. Everyone else's parents are doing it.
But Annie's dreams of music stardom have been on hold for thirty-five years, paused by childbirth then buried under her responsibilities as a mother, wage earner, wife, and only child of ailing parents. Finally, she can taste freedom.
As Molly and her siblings gather in the close quarters of the family home over one fraught summer, shocking revelations come to light. Everyone is forced to confront the question of what it means to be a family.
This Has Been Absolutely Lovely is a story about growing up and giving in, of parents and children, of hope and failure, of bravery and defied expectation, and whether it is ever too late to try again.
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Book Depository €38.29(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Grumble Boats
Review from Book Depository:
Emma is very grumpy. Why should she have to visit Grandma while her brother goes to a pirate party? Harumph! Fortunately, Grandma knows exactly how to send Emma's bad mood away...
Grumble Boats is a gorgeous reminder of the power of nature and the special magic of grandmas to make us feel better.
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Book Depository €32.76(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Manchán Magan
Yes, It's The Spirit of the River by Declan Murphy.
Declan's profound immersion in the life of a small strech of a single river in Wicklow left me in a tailspin, seeing nature in a way I had never dreamt of experiencing it before. He is a profound,, patience and perceptive observer of nature. You come away from the book with a whole new wonder about the drama and complexity of the lives of birds - kingfishers and woodpeckers especially.
The Spirit of the River: A Quest for the Kingfisher
Review From Book Depository:
'As I study the birds, animals and plants around me, I cannot help but see the patterns all living things seem driven to create.'
Declan Murphy's first encounter with a kingfisher as a young boy was unforgettable. Returning to the rivers years later, he embarks on a quest to study this most brightly-coloured bird during its nesting season, a seemingly straightforward challenge. But the river is slow to reveal the habits and secrets of its residents. Dippers, goosanders, grey wagtails and great spotted woodpeckers all yield their hidden habits to the author's patient pursuit; yet the kingfisher continues to elude him.
In this work of rare calibre in the mould of the great contemporary nature writers Robert Macfarlane, Helen Macdonald and Tim Robinson, the author's retreat into the natural world is not simply for the sake of knowledge: nature is his remedy for managing the world around him. Since childhood, nature has provided balance, solace and direction.
As the search for the kingfisher reaches its culmination, these two spheres, the author's and the others', suddenly and unexpectedly collide, forcing him to confront how he sees the world and leading to a resolution where balance is restored through the power and intervention of nature. Writing with hallucinatory clarity and singular powers of observation, he brings the beauty and mystery of the animal kingdom to light. His quest becomes the reader's in the unfolding drama of his search for harmony and knowledge, from mythography to an acute awareness of people's fragility.
Buy On:
Easons €18.00 Book Depository €13.67 Waterstones £13.00 Wordery $17.56(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Tree Dogs, Banshee Fingers and Other Irish Words for Nature
Review from Easons:
'In Irish there are so many great rain words and magic words and highly specific natural words (such as the material put on the hooves of donkeys to stop them slipping in ice), or words to communicate with animals, or evocative plant words, or the gorgeous words for different amounts of light in the sky, or words that hint at different ways of seeing colour, or twilight words . '
Manchán Magan is fascinated by words, particularly Irish words, with all of their complex meanings and associations and their connections to the natural world. Having enjoyed huge success with his bestselling book Thirty-Two Words for Field, Manchán now brings his infectious wonder and enthusiasm for the Irish language to a younger audience, offering delightful translations and explanations of animal, bird, fish, insect and nature words. When you see the world through Irish, you see the world differently. Get ready to share the magic with this delightful book for readers of all ages.
Buy On:
Easons €15.99 Book Depository €18.19 Waterstones £18.99(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Wade Graham
The Pyrocene: How we created an age of fire and what happens next by Stephen J. Pyne.
Pyne is the Homer of global fire studies, gifted with a clear, powerful voice and world-encompassing knowledge. There is no one better to guide us through the changing, and frightening, new age of man-made fire.
The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next
Review From Book Depository:
A provocative rethinking of how humans and fire have evolved together over time-and our responsibility to reorient this relationship before it's too late.
The Pyrocene tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet.
Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass-lithic landscapes-and humanity's firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene.
Around fires, across millennia, we have told stories that explained the world and negotiated our place within it. The Pyrocene continues that tradition, describing how we have remade the Earth and how we might recover our responsibilities as keepers of the planetary flame.
Buy On:
Easons €29.40 Book Depository €21.15 Waterstones £21.00 Wordery $21.58(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Dream Cities: Seven Urban Ideas That Shape the World
Review from Book Depository:
From the acclaimed landscape designer, historian and author of American Eden, a lively, unique, and accessible cultural history of modern cities--from suburbs, downtown districts, and exurban sprawl, to shopping malls and "sustainable" developments--that allows us to view them through the planning, design, architects, and movements that inspired, created, and shaped them.
Dream Cities explores our cities in a new way--as expressions of ideas, often conflicting, about how we should live, work, play, make, buy, and believe. It tells the stories of the real architects and thinkers whose imagined cities became the blueprints for the world we live in.
From the nineteenth century to today, what began as visionary concepts--sometimes utopian, sometimes outlandish, always controversial--were gradually adopted and constructed on a massive scale in cities around the world, from Dubai to Ulan Bator to London to Los Angeles. Wade Graham uses the lives of the pivotal dreamers behind these concepts, as well as their acolytes and antagonists, to deconstruct our urban landscapes--the houses, towers, civic centers, condominiums, shopping malls, boulevards, highways, and spaces in between--exposing the ideals and ideas embodied in each.
From the baroque fantasy villages of Bertram Goodhue to the superblocks of Le Corbusier's Radiant City to the pseudo-agrarian dispersal of Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City, our upscale leafy suburbs, downtown skyscraper districts, infotainment-driven shopping malls, and "sustainable" eco-developments are seen as never before. In this elegantly designed and illustrated book, Graham uncovers the original plans of brilliant, obsessed, and sometimes megalomaniacal designers, revealing the foundations of today's varied municipalities. Dream Cities is nothing less than a field guide to our modern urban world.
Illustrated with 59 black-and-white photos throughout the text.
Buy On:
Book Depository €14.86 Waterstones £14.99 Wordery $21.58(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Huge thanks & míle buíochas to Mark, Sue, Joanne, Susannah, Manchán & Wade for their great Christmas book picks!
Watch out next week for Part I of the series with more author recommendations :-)
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Harvard University Press (The Color of Money), Agenda Publishing (Angrynomics), Pan Macmillan (Spinning Silver, The Divine Comedy), C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd (Work Won't Love You Back), Picador USA (Lurking), HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd (This has Been Absolutely Lovely), Affirm Press (Grumble Boats), The Lilliput Press Ltd (The Spirit of the River), Gill (Tree Dogs, Banshee Fingers and Other Irish Words for Nature), University of California Press (The Pyrocence),Amberley Publishing (Dream Cities).
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