Book of the Month – Page 8

Book of the Month: Time on Rock

Stanfords Book of the Month for January 2022 is Time on Rock: A Climber’s Route into the Mountains by Anna Fleming. Available for £16.99.

This is a rock-climber’s eye view of the natural world, tracing a geological and personal journey across the British Isles over ten years. In Time on Rock Anna Fleming charts two parallel journeys: learning the craft of traditional rock climbing, and the new developing appreciation of the natural world it brings her.

Brilliant Maps

Maps that help put the last 12 months in some context

-by Ian Wright

I’m honoured that Brilliant Maps An Atlas for Curious Minds has been selected for Stanfords December book of the month. I really enjoyed writing it and hope you’ll enjoy reading it just as much.

Since December is the last month of the year, I thought I’d choose a few maps that help put the last 12 months in some context. And given Christmas is coming I can’t resist including a couple of Christmas themed maps too.

Children’s Book of the Month: The Lights that Dance in the Night

The Stanfords Children’s Book of the Month for December 2021 is The Lights that Dance in the Night by Yuval Zommer.

A magical, lyrical ode to the soul-stirring beauty of the northern lights, and to the landscape and animals of the Arctic.

Book of the Month: Brilliant Maps

Stanfords Book of the Month for December 2021 is Brilliant Maps: An Atlas for Curious Minds by Ian Wright, illustrated by Infographic.ly with a foreword by Tim Harford.

See the world anew with this unique and beautifully designed infographic atlas.

Which nations have North Korean embassies? Which region has the highest number of death metal bands per capita? How many countries have bigger economies than California? Who drives on the ‘wrong’ side of the road? And where can you find lions in the wild?

An extract from Allegorizings by Jan Morris

The Stanfords November Book of the Month is Allegorizings by Jan Morris. Published one year on from her death, at the age of ninety-four, it is the final despatch from one of the greatest chroniclers of the Twentieth Century. To give you a taste, here is an extract from Allegorizings:

Paradise Somewhere

If paradise is the stuff of the conventional promise, all sweetmeats and complaisant houris, then I certainly have never experienced it. But a nirvana of a different kind I did transiently enter long ago, when I was on my way back to Kathmandu, in Nepal, out of the Himalayas. I was travelling with a Sherpa friend of mine. His name was Sonam. We had come out of the mountains fast, and when we got down into the foothills I began to feel ill and weak – the reverse of altitude sickness, I suppose. The monsoon had broken upon us, and the endless rain did not help, but ‘Come with me to my home village,’ Sonam said, ‘and we will make you better.’

Children’s Book of the Month

Stanfords Children’s Book of the Month for November 2021 is The Trans-Siberian Railway Illustrated by Anna Desnitskaya, Text by Aleksandra Litvina.

A gloriously illustrated journey through Russia along the length of the Trans- Siberian railway.

Book of the Month: Allegorizings by Jan Morris

Stanfords Book of the Month for November 2021 is Allegorizings by Jan Morris.

Published one year on from her death, at the age of ninety-four, Jan Morris’ Allegorizings is the final despatch from one of the greatest chroniclers of the Twentieth Century.

‘Almost nothing in life is only what it seems.’

Book of the Month: The Amur River by Colin Thubron

Our October Book of the Month is The Amur River by Colin Thubron £20.00

The first travel book in a decade from Colin Thubron, the 2019 recipient of the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing.

In his 80th year, Thubron made an ambitious journey along the 3000-mile river that divides China and Russia.

The Amur River is almost unknown. Yet it is the tenth longest river in the world, rising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific. For 1,100 miles it forms the tense border between Russia and China. Haunted by the memory of land-grabs and unequal treaties, this is the most densely fortified frontier on earth.

Book of the Month: Atlas of the Invisible

Atlas of the Invisible: Maps & Graphics That Will Change How You See the World by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti £25.00

In our Book of the Month for September award-winning geographer-designer team James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti redefine what an atlas can be. Transforming enormous data sets into rich maps and cutting-edge visualisations, they uncover truths about our past, reflect who we are today, and highlight what we face in the years ahead. With their joyfully inquisitive approach, Cheshire and Uberti explore happiness and anxiety levels around the globe; they trace the undersea cables and cell towers that connect us; they examine hidden scars of geopolitics; and illustrate how a warming planet affects everything from hurricanes to the hajj.

Extract from Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles

Our Book of the Month for August is Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles, Taking us from London to New Zealand, Shanghai to Malaysia via a lyrical, poetic essay collection that blends memoir with powerful writing on the natural world. To give you an idea of what to expect from this book, here is an extract for you to read: