Book Recommendations Archives

The Booktopia Book Guru asks Alain de Botton author of Religion for Atheists, The Consolations Of Philosophy, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work , Status Anxiety and many more… Ten Terrifying Questions ——————- 1. To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled? I was born in Switzerland, raise... Read more

The Booktopia Book Guru asks Peter Allison author of Whatever You Do, Don’t Run,  Don’t Look Behind You, But…  and now How to Walk a Puma Six Sharp Questions  ————————– 1.    Congratulations, you’ve a new book – How to Walk a Puma – what is it about and what does this book mean to you? This book shakes me out of... Read more

This is a particularly sensual novel, and in that respect, it fits very well into that bush setting. The reader feels the ooze of the soil under hoof, smells the diesel of the red Fergy in the shed, hears the plop of the milk in the pail. And when it comes to longings of a more human kind, Tiffany's sparse and unsentimental style is both deft and poetic. Read more

Sweet Old World by Deborah Robertson ‘He goes down the stairs, singing Johnny Cash. It’s a song about a man who’s fallen real low, but he’s not low, he’s forty-three years old today, there’s still time. You never know what is waiting, you just never know. This morning he can hope. And this is the thing he doesn’t ever talk about: He wants to be a father... Read more

Vivid tale of life in pre-revolutionary Paris beats Matthew Hollis’s biography of Edward Thomas to £30,000 prize cheque writes Mark Brown in The Guardian A vividly told story of life in pre-revolutionary Paris on Tuesday won the 2011 Costa book award in what turned out to be a bitterly fought two-way tussle between fact and fiction. Andrew Miller was given one of the UK’s most prest... Read more

An intrepid African safari guide sets out to discover all he can about the wildlife of the South American continent in a hilarious book about walking pumas (can be dangerous), chasing jaguars (can be elusive) and finding love (can be tricky). Not content with regular encounters with dangerous animals on one continent, Peter Allison decided to get up close and personal with some seriously scary ... Read more

Learn to bake with Britain’s favourite women’s fiction author, Marian Keyes… Saved by Cake gives an extremely honest account of Marian Keyes’ recent battle with depression, and how baking has helped her. A complete novice in the kitchen, Marian decided to bake a cake for a friend and that was it – she realized that baking was what she needed to do in order to get h... Read more

In this highly anticipated follow-up to her award winning first novel, Good to a Fault, Marina Endicott tackles the fascinating world of vaudeville in it’s hey day of the early 20th century. The Little Shadows is itself something of a variety act, at turns tragic and comedic, melodramatic and risqué. It is a theatrical performance of a book, written in four acts and separated by an overture, in... Read more

You know you have found a really special book when reading it gives you shivers. This is especially true when you happen to be reading the book in weather conditions far more conducive to sweltering than shivering. I took Eowyn Ivey’s The Show Child on holiday with me. I read it in surroundings that could not be further removed from the book’s ice-cold, Alaskan setting. And yet despite the fact... Read more

For many parents there is a point, not long after New Years Day, when the long summer school holidays stop being fun. By then the kids have played with, broken or got bored with their Christmas presents, and the weather is too hot, too wet, too cold, too perfect for them to go outside. Parents know what I mean. Suddenly the TV is boring, the Internet is boring, video games are boring, the kids ... Read more