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NEW TITLES: NON-FICTION AUGUST
Caroline Sanderson
NON- FICTION
Colouring-in books may not be to everyone’s taste but it’s hard to argue with the sales figures . . .
S
omeone on social media recently lamented the fact that I had added a Colouring Books category to my New
Titles previews. While I can personally think of thousands of things I’d rather be doing with my spare time rather than colouring books in, you can’t argue with the sales figures, which in Johanna Basford’s case are in the region of half a million. Her latest offering—Magical Jungle: An Inky Expedition & Colouring Book—is out this month. It’s August, and a new football season kicks
off. It’s hard to imagine that it will bring a feat as astonishing as my team Leicester City’s 2015-2016 Premiership triumph, but perhaps it will bring restored interest in a game that should be about more than who can spend the most money. Home and Away by Dave Roberts, a timely celebration of non-league football, provides a great antidote to sport as big business.
Just as I love our unlikely Premier League Champions, I also love an unlikely bestseller. Like our Bookseller Non-Fiction Book of the Year, Norwegian Wood by Lars Mytting. The book’s success has helped fuel the continuing Scandi trend which this month manifests itself in The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids. Which anxious parent could resist a subtitle like that? However, I’d also urge you to read Alison Gopnik’s The Gardener and the Carpenter, possibly the best book about bringing up baby in the world.
EDITOR’S CHOICE/BOOK OF THE MONTH Personal favourites TOP SELLER
Likely to be the biggest selling titles of the month based on an author’s sales history ONES TO WATCH
Titles with strong sales potential and publisher support, regardless of sales history of the author
13.05.16
www.thebookseller.com
E DITOR’ S C HOIC E BOOK OF TH E MONTH FILM, TV AND MUSIC
PAUL MACALINDIN UPBEAT: THE STORY OF THE NATIONAL YOUTH ORCHESTRA OF IRAQ SANDSTONE PRESS,
18TH, H/B, £19.99, 9781910985090 How do you pull together an orchestra of young musicians, consisting of both Arabs and Kurds (uneasy neighbours at the best of times); many of whom are self-taught, many of whom lack proper instruments (or ones that buckle in the heat) and all of whom bear the scars of tyranny and war . . . and still make beautiful music? Paul MacAlindin had a love of music from an early age which helped him through a turbulent childhood. As a
musician, dancer and all round performer, he found his true métier in conducting, and has worked with orchestras and ensembles all over the world. However, his biggest challenge came when he agreed to be musical director of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq after picking up details of an appeal from a talented 17-year-old pianist called Zuhal Sultan, while eating fish and chips in an Edinburgh pub. Overcoming huge obstacles—logistical, political, financial, cultural and emotional—he and his young musicians, many of whom grew up hiding their instruments and practising in secret for fear of persecution, eventually performed not only in Iraq, but also in Britain, Germany and France, providing a beacon of hope for their damaged country, before it all fell apart due to ISIS. It’s an amazing and deeply inspiring story which will be a BBC Radio 4 “Book of the Week” on publication.
PSYCHOLOGY AND PARENTING
ALISON GOPNIK THE GARDENER AND THE CARPENTER: WHAT THE NEW SCIENCE OF CHILD
DEVELOPMENT TELLS US ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARENTS AND CHILDREN BODLEY HEAD, 25TH, H/B, £20, 9781847921611
In this immensely thought-provoking account of the parent-child relationship, Gopnik, a leading US child psychologist shatters the modern myth of “good parenting”. She shows that although caring for children is profoundly important, it should not be about shaping them to turn out a particular way, but rather letting them be the messy, unpredictable and very different beings from their parents that they are designed to be.
9780224101820
“The story of epilepsy is a tale of fear and loathing, and seemingly intractable ignorance.” The author of Bageye at the Wheel with an enthralling and eclectic account of the strange and often misunderstood disorder that is epilepsy, from the pioneering doctors whose extraordinary breakthroughs finally helped us gain an understanding of how the brain works, to anecdotes of famous people who had, or were suspected of having, epilepsy. It is also the story of Grant’s youngest brother, Christopher, an epileptic who died after a seizure. Sadly, I lost my own brother to the condition too.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
COLIN GRANT A SMELL OF BURNING: THE STORY OF EPILEPSY CAPE, 25TH, H/B, £16.99,
© David O’Driscoll
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