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NEW TITLES: NON-FICTION MAY


Caroline Sanderson


NON- FICTION


May offers opportunities to see the world in different ways: either by seeing the land in a different light or by listening more carefully


t is time to cast a clout, throw off the blinkers of Brexit, and get outdoors on a May Day mission to remind ourselves of all the odd reasons there still are to love this conflicted country of ours. Alice Stevenson’s Ways to See Great Britain: Curious Places and Surprising Perspectives is the perfect guide to take with you, while Hugh Warwick’s Linescapes will help you look at the lines of the land with new eyes. From looking with new eyes to listening


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with new ears, and Sound by Bella Bathurst, my Book of the Month. Eleven million people in the UK have some form of hearing loss, and for years, Bathurst was one of them. Losing, and later regaining her hearing prompted her to reflect on listening and silence, music and noise, and the result is my favourite kind of blended book, incorporating memoir, history, popular science, psychology and more. Read it, and resolve never to take the world of sound for granted again. And the award for the most cheering book of the month (runner-up: Stuart Heritage’s laugh-out-loud, Don’t Be a Dick, Pete) goes to The Wine Dine Dictionary by Victoria Moore. Study her suggestions and by May you’ll be eating asparagus, and drinking something grassy and acidic to go with it.


10.02.17 www.thebookseller.com


E DITOR’ S C HOIC E BOOK OF TH E MONTH


BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIRS


BELLA BATHURST SOUND PROFILE, 4TH, H/B, £16.99,


9781781257753 “I was just like everyone else; I accepted the ordinary


miracle of my senses and I expected them to get on with the job.” Few writers have been shortlisted for as diverse a range of prizes as Bathurst (Guardian First Book Award, the Orange Prize, the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, the CWA Gold Dagger Award), while her 1999 bestseller, The Lighthouse Stevensons remains a classic. Her new book Sound demonstrates perfectly what an eclectic and interesting writer she is, wittily


blending memoir, history, biography, physiology and physics. In 1997 after two separate head injuries— one skiing, the other in her car—Bathurst began to go deaf over a period of months, until eventually only around 20% remained. For the next 12 years, deafness shaped her life until pioneering surgery in 2009 restored her hearing. This is her hugely engaging exploration of how we hear sound, and what losing the ability to do so can teach us about listening and silence, music and noise. There are encounters with a shipbuilder, an acoustics professor, and a bomb disposal expert; along with insights into the lives of the famously deaf, including Beethoven, Thomas Edison and Sir Peter de la Billière. Eleven million people in the UK have some form of hearing loss, but as Bathurst reveals, our relationship with sound is far more complex than most of us— hearing impaired or not—have ever realised.


FOOD & DRINK


ITAB AZZAM & DINA MOUSAWI SYRIA: RECIPES FROM HOME TRAPEZE, 4TH, H/B, £25, 9781474604505


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


I was lucky enough to visit Syria 20 years ago, and ate many memorable meals while I was there. In researching this sumptuous new cookbook, the authors—who are friends and passionate cooks both—talked to Syrian women in the Middle East and in Europe (many of them refugees) about their favourite recipes from their native cuisine. The result sounds delicious: from hot yoghurt soup with turmeric to cherry meatballs and it’s rich testament to the fact that even in the wake of war and devastating displacement, the taste of home survives. Profits from the book will go towards the Open Foundation, a charity funding artistic projects with Syrian women refugees.


HISTORY


CHARLIE ENGLISH THE BOOK SMUGGLERS OF TIMBUKTU COLLINS, 4TH, H/B, £20,


9780008126636


The legendary city of Timbuktu was a medieval centre of learning, and has long been home to tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts on subjects ranging from religion to poetry, law to history, pharmacology to astronomy: giving the lie to Western notions of African history being somehow primitive and largely oral. When al-Qaeda-linked jihadists surged across Mali in 2012, threatening the existence of these documents, a team of a librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit them into hiding. English—formerly head of international news at the Guardian—weaves together the enthralling stories of this urgent rescue mission, and of legendary Timbuktu itself.


© David O’Driscoll


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