Authors Christmas Recommendations 2022 - Part IV
Welcome to Part IV of a special series of posts in the run up to the holiday season! (Read Part I here, Read Part II here, & Read Part III here).
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?
Seirian Sumner
This one! An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong.
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Review from Book Depository:
Enter a new dimension - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving only a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into previously unfathomable dimensions - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.
We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and humans that wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision.
We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries which lie unsolved.
Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the threads of scent, waves of electromagnetism and pulses of pressure that surround us. Because in order to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.
Buy On:
Easons €28.00 Book Depository €17.47 Waterstones £17.99 Wordery $22.99(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps
Review from Book Depository:
Where bees and ants have long been the darlings of the insect world, wasps are much older, cleverer and more diverse. They are the bee's evolutionary ancestors - flying 100 million years earlier - and today they are just as essential for the survival of our environment. A bee, ecologist Professor Seirian Sumner argues, is just a wasp that has forgotten how to hunt.
For readers of Entangled Life, Other Minds and The Gospel of Eels, this is a book to upturn your expectations about one overlooked animal and the wider architecture of our natural world.
With endless surprises, this book might teach you about the wasps that spend their entire lives sealed inside a fig, about stinging wasps, about parasitic wasps, about wasps that turn cockroaches into living zombies, about how wasps taught us to make paper.
It offers up a maligned insect in all its diverse, unexpected splendour; as both predator and pollinator, the wasp is an essential pest controller worldwide. Inside their sophisticated social worlds is the best model we have for the earth's major evolutionary transitions. In their understudied biology are clues to progressing medicine, including a possible cure for cancer.
The closer you look at these spurned, winged insects - both custodians and bouncers of our planet - the more you see. Their secrets have so far gone mostly untapped, but the potential of the wasp is endless.
Buy On:
Easons €28.00 Book Depository €19.90 Waterstones £20.00 Wordery $18.72(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Suzanne O'Sullivan
The book I recently came across which is endlessly fascinating in different ways is Phobias and Manias by Kate Summerscale.
The Book of Phobias and Manias: A History of Obsession
Review from Book Depository:
Plunge into this rich, surprising and stunningly designed A-Z compendium to discover how our fixations have taken shape, from the Middle Ages to the present day, as bestselling author Kate Summerscale deftly traces the threads between the past and present, the psychological and social, the personal and the political.
Buy On:
Easons €23.79 Book Depository €15.56 Waterstones £16.99 Wordery $17.99(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness
Review from Book Depository:
In Sweden, refugee children fall asleep for months and years at a time. In upstate New York, high school students develop contagious seizures. In the US Embassy in Cuba, employees complain of headaches and memory loss after hearing strange noises in the night.
These disparate cases are some of the most remarkable diagnostic mysteries of the twenty-first century, as both doctors and scientists have struggled to explain them within the boundaries of medical science and - more crucially - to treat them. What unites them is that they are all examples of a particular type of psychosomatic illness: medical disorders that are influenced as much by the idiosyncratic aspects of individual cultures as they are by human biology.
Inspired by a poignant encounter with the sleeping refugee children of Sweden, Wellcome Prize-winning neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan travels the world to visit other communities who have also been subject to outbreaks of so-called 'mystery' illnesses.
From a derelict post-Soviet mining town in Kazakhstan, to the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua via an oil town in Texas, to the heart of the Maria Mountains in Colombia, O'Sullivan hears remarkable stories from a fascinating array of people, and attempts to unravel their complex meaning while asking the question: who gets to define what is and what isn't an illness?
Reminiscent of the work of Oliver Sacks, Stephen Grosz and Henry Marsh, The Sleeping Beauties is a moving and unforgettable scientific investigation with a very human face.
Buy On:
Easons €11.20 Book Depository €10.83 Waterstones £10.99 Wordery $11.99(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Ben Cave
I’ve been reading Nihal Arthanayake’s Let’s Talk - How to have better conversations. (Orion books and still in HB).
I’d be happy to recommend it. It’s a lovely antidote to emoji’s, text speak and shorthand, and reminds us of the importance of human conversation.
A really good Christmas present.
Let's Talk: How to Have Better Conversations
Review from Book Depository:
How do you talk to someone who doesn't want to talk to you?
What happens in the brain when we're having a good conversation?
What have smartphones done to how we connect?
Conversations are broken. And while effective dialogue is supposed to lead to greater fulfilment in our personal and professional lives, all the scientific evidence points towards us sharing fewer interactions than previous generations. From ever decreasing face-to-face meetings to echo chambers online, we no longer have the necessary tools to talk to each other.
Nihal Arthanayake is bucking this trend. As the world becomes increasingly more fractured, he has built a platform of 1.2 million listeners a week on BBC Radio 5 Live who regard him as one of the best people of his generation at having public conversations. Guests from the world's biggest stars to leaders of inner-city gangs have lauded his seemingly innate ability to stimulate positive discussions without the need for confrontation. Now he wants to understand how he developed his skills, what it exactly means to have a 'great conversation' and, most importantly, how he can teach us to have better interactions in our everyday lives.
Let's Talk blends Nihal's experiences as an acclaimed interviewer with expert and celebrity opinion on the secrets and psychology behind successful communication. From tracing the evolution of dialogue to discovering what lights up in the brain when we're enjoying a good discussion, Nihal speaks to conversational authorities including Lorraine Kelly, former president of Ireland Mary McAleese, Professor Tanya Byron, internationally bestselling author Johann Hari, Matthew Syed, and many more, to find out why good conversation has eroded over time and how we can fix it.
Part how-to and part manifesto, Let's Talk is Nihal's accessible, anecdotal and invigorating toolkit to having better conversations with anyone, any time.
Buy On:
Easons €23.79 Book Depository €14.82 Waterstones £14.99 Wordery $16.34(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
What We Fear Most: Reflections on a Life in Forensic Psychiatry
Review from Book Depository:
Meet Dr Ben Cave. For over thirty years he has worked in prisons and secure hospitals diagnosing and treating some of the most troubled men and women in society. A lifetime of care takes us from delusional disorders to schizophrenia, steroid abuse to drug dependency, personality disorders to paedophilia, and depression so severe a mother can kill her own baby.
These are the human stories behind the headlines. The reality of a life spent working with patients with the severest mental health disorders. The tragic and often frightening truth about what happens behind closed doors.
Dr Ben Cave takes us on a journey to the heart of this highly emotive environment, putting himself under the microscope as well as his patients. In the process, he allows us to share what they have taught each other, and how it has changed them. To share the psychological battle scars that come with a career on the frontline of our health service. To learn about the brilliant mental health nurses for whom physical injury and verbal abuse are a daily hazard. To learn about ourselves, and what we fear most.
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Easons €26.59 Book Depository €16.31 Waterstones £18.99 Wordery $17.73(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Miranda Keeling
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
This is a book to make you think about the world you move through and how much of your experience is determined by societal factors of all kinds. Octavia wrote this novel in 1979 but it feels fresh and relevant, as it explores race and feminism and a person's 'luck' or lack of it, through circumstance. A woman of colour living in Los Angeles in the 70s, finds herself suddenly pulled back into 19th Century Maryland. The expectations of her there are as appalling as you can imagine and the author dares to make us look at the darkness of humanity and to question how much, and if, we have changed. In a world where modern slavery is still a devastating problem, it is sadly relevant. As a work of fiction, it is a real page-turner and a well-crafted piece. I'm really glad I read it, I hope you will be too.
Kindred
Review From Book Depository:
In 1976, Dana dreams of being a writer. In 1815, she is assumed a slave.
When Dana first meets Rufus on a Maryland plantation, he's drowning. She saves his life - and it will happen again and again.
Neither of them understands his power to summon her whenever his life is threatened, nor the significance of the ties that bind them.
And each time Dana saves him, the more aware she is that her own life might be over before it's even begun.
This is the extraordinary story of two people bound by blood, separated by so much more than time.
Buy On:
Easons €11.19 Book Depository €9.93 Waterstones £9.99 Wordery $10.71(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
The Year I Stopped to Notice
Review from Book Depository:
January: A man walking along Caledonian Road falls over onto the huge roll of bubble wrap he is hugging, perhaps for just this sort of situation.
Inspired by her popular Twitter account, The Year I Stopped to Notice brings together Miranda Keeling's observations of the magic, humour, strangeness and beauty in ordinary life. Through the changing seasons, on city streets and on buses, in parks and cafes, Miranda notices things: moments between friends, the interactions of strangers, children delighting in the world around them, the quiet melancholy of lost items on the pavement.
Accompanied by stunning watercolour illustrations from Luci Power, Miranda's poetic vignettes take us on journeys of discovery and share with us the joy of stopping to notice.
September: On a sweltering, packed rush-hour train, my arm suddenly feels lovely and cool, and I look down to see a shopping bag held by the woman beside me - full of just-bought cartons of milk.
Buy On:
Easons €18.19 Book Depository €11.64 Waterstones £12.99 Wordery $13.67(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Victoria Shepherd
I'm hoping to find Shadowlands, A Journey Through Lost Britain by Matthew Greene (Faber and Faber) under the tree this year. It feels like the right moment for a melancholy wander through traces of our past as we all try to work out where we are now. I was beguiled by Ghostland In Search of a Haunted Country by Edward Parnell (William Collins) - a captivating memoir about grief, and also a travelogue around our national ghosts stories so I'll slip this in as a hard recommendation for a gift.
Shadowlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Cities and Vanished Villages
Review From Book Depository:
Drowned. Buried by sand. Decimated by plague. Plunged off a cliff.
This is the forgotten history of Britain's lost cities, ghost towns and vanished villages: our shadowlands.
Historian Matthew Green travels across Britain to tell the forgotten history of our lost cities, ghost towns and vanished villages. Revealing the extraordinary stories of how these places met their fate - and exploring how they have left their mark on our landscape and our imagination - Shadowlands is a deeply evocative and dazzlingly original account of Britain's past.
Buy On:
Easons €28.00 Book Depository €21.36 Waterstones £17.99 Wordery $20.41(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country
Review From Book Depository:
In his late thirties, Edward Parnell found himself trapped in the recurring nightmare of a family tragedy. For comfort, he turned to his bookshelves, back to the ghost stories that obsessed him as a boy, and to the writers through the ages who have attempted to confront what comes after death.
In Ghostland, Parnell goes in search of the 'sequestered places' of the British Isles, our lonely moors, our moss-covered cemeteries, our stark shores and our folkloric woodlands. He explores how these landscapes conjured and shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of literature and cinema, from the ghost stories and weird fiction of M. R. James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood to the children's fantasy novels of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper; from W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn and Graham Swift's Waterland to the archetypal 'folk horror' film The Wicker Man...
Ghostland is Parnell's moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists - and what is haunting him. It is a unique and elegiac meditation on grief, memory and longing, and of the redemptive power of stories and nature.
Buy On:
Easons €15.40 Book Depository €10.99 Waterstones £17.99 Wordery $12.35(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
A History of Delusions: The Glass King, a Substitute Husband and a Walking Corpse
Review from Book Depository:
The King of France - thinking he was made of glass - was terrified he might shatter...and he wasn't alone.
After the Emperor met his end at Waterloo, an epidemic of Napoleons piled into France's asylums.
Throughout the nineteenth century, dozens of middle-aged women tried to convince their physicians that they were, in fact, dead.
For centuries we've dismissed delusions as something for doctors to sort out behind locked doors. But delusions are more than just bizarre quirks - they hold the key to collective anxieties and traumas.
In this groundbreaking history, Victoria Shepherd uncovers stories of delusions from medieval times to the present day and implores us to identify reason in apparent madness.
Buy On:
Easons €23.80 Book Depository €19.41 Waterstones £16.99 Wordery $17.99(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Florence Wilkinson
I'm looking forward to finishing Phillipa Perry's The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did). I say finishing, because I'm currently about half way through, but with a seven month old it takes me rather longer to read anything these days! What I've read so far, though, has really helped me to think about the relationship I'm building with my little one and how it might impact him as he grows up. I think people will find this book helpful not just for parenting, but for relationships in general too.
The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did)
Review From Book Depository:
Every parent wants their child to be happy and every parent wants to avoid screwing them up. But how do you achieve that?
In this absorbing, clever and funny book, renowned psychotherapist Philippa Perry tells us what really matters and what behaviour it is important to avoid - the vital dos and don'ts of parenting.
Instead of mapping out the 'perfect' plan, Perry offers a big-picture look at the elements that lead to good parent-child relationships. This refreshing, judgement-free book will help you to:
* Understand how your own upbringing may affect your parenting
* Accept that you will make mistakes and learn what you can do about them
* Break negative cycles and patterns
* Handle your own and your child's feelings
* Understand what different behaviours communicate
Full of sage and sane advice, this is the book that every parent will want to read and every child will wish their parents had.
Buy On:
Easons €10.44 Book Depository €10.43 Waterstones £10.99 Wordery $12.99(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Wild City: Encounters With Urban Wildlife
Review from Book Depository:
The badgers of Brighton's most exclusive postcode. The water voles of Glasgow. The Black Country bats who have found a haven in old industrial tunnels. The peregrine falcons nesting on the ledges of tower blocks. The mosquitoes found on the London Underground and nowhere else on earth.
In Wild City Florence Wilkinson takes us on a fascinating journey into why we should engage with our fellow urban species. What we might see - if we only take the time to look - and how nature is adapting to human-engineered environments in unexpected and ingenious ways.
As more and more of our planet is urbanised, we humans still feel that primal pull to connect with our wilder roots. This gorgeously lyrical book invites us to celebrate the natural world, while also offering a clear-eyed glimpse into the challenges faced by urban plants and animals as cities grow and sprawl.
Wild City proposes a compelling manifesto for city wildlife, suggesting how we might take action to protect the often-overlooked residents who live alongside us.
City-dwellers, it's time to meet your neighbours.
Buy On:
Easons €23.80 Book Depository €16.03 Waterstones £16.99 Wordery $16.34(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Huge thanks, míle buíochas & diolch yn fawr to Seirian, Suzanne, Ben, Miranda, Victoria, & Florence for their great Christmas book picks!
(Read Part I here, Read Part II here, & Read Part III here) with more author recommendations :-)
Merry Christmas All & Happy Reading!
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Pan Macmillan (The Sleeping Beauties), Icon Books (The Year I Stopped To Notice), Vintage Publishing (An Immense World), Profile Books Ltd (The Book of Phobias and Manias), Headline Publishing Group (Kindred), Faber & Faber (Shadowlands), HarperCollins Publishers (Endless Forms, Ghostland), Oneworld Publications (A History of Delusions), Penguin Books Ltd (The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read), Orion Publishing Co (What We Fear Most, Let's Talk, Wild City)
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