Book Recommendations – Page 2

Extract- Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024

Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 takes us on a beautiful journey through the British countryside, drawn from The Guardian’s beloved Country Diary. With an introduction by Ian McMillan, and illustrations by Clifford Harper.

For over a century, The Guardian’s Country Diary has published the nation’s most celebrated writers of natural history as they capture the essence of the British countryside.

From Yorkshire to Belfast, Orkney to Cumbria, and Gwynedd to the Scottish Highlands, exquisitely written and softly observed snapshots emerge – of fishes lurking in dusky pools, of age-old trees beneath deep blue skies, of lives being lived alongside the ebbs and flows of the natural world.

Bringing together the finest contributions to the column from recent years, Under the Changing Skies is an essential companion for all those with a deep love for the British countryside, charting its subtle changes over the course of the seasons.

With contributions from Cal Flyn, Mark Cocker, Josie George, Nicola Chester, Lev Parikian, Amy-Jane Beer, Kate Bradbury, Andrea Meanwell and many others.

Here is an extract:

Pre-order Tim Marshall’s NEW book to be entered into our competition

Pre-order your copy of Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography: The Quiz Book from Stanfords to be in with the chance to win the following prizes:

British Cartographic Society Conference Event at Stanfords with Matthew Teller

Thank you to everyone who attended the British Cartographic Society Conference #carto24 networking event at Stanfords on Wednesday night. A special thank you to Matthew Teller who came to talk about his books and the maps included in them.

His new paperback Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture is out in October but we have signed copies available now.

Top Five Places to Volunteer this year

-by Carol Donaldson

In celebration of the publication of my book The Volunteers: A memoir of Conservation, Companionship and Community (Summersdale 2024) I would like to invite you to experience the joys of volunteering for yourself by exploring my list of the five best organisations to volunteer for in the UK.

TCV The Conservation Volunteers

TCV offered me my first every professional conservation job and have long been the standard bearers for volunteering. They were also ahead of their time at being an inclusive organisation. TCV run hundreds of volunteer projects across the UK including the Green Gym where you can get fit and make friends while doing anything from edible gardening to dry stone walling

2. The RSPB

Not just for birders. When I was 21 I spent two life changing weeks guarding an osprey nests from egg collectors on the RSPB’s Loch Garten reserve. I came away knowing I wanted a career in conservation. The RSPB are one of the few organisations to still offer short term residential volunteer opportunities. You could find yourself at the tip of Kent wardening the RSPB Dungeness reserve or monitoring bittern in the reedbeds at Blacktoft Sands.

New Fiction we’ve been reading

Here are six new titles that we have been enjoying during our summer holidays:

Time of the Flies

by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Frances Riddle

£12.99

Set in: Argentina

Fifteen years after killing her husband’s lover, Ines is fresh out of prison and trying to put together a new life. Her old friend Manca is out now too, and they’ve started a business – FFF, or Females, Fumigation, and Flies – dedicated to pest control and private investigation, by women, for women. But Senora Bonar, one of their clients, wants Ines to do more than kill bugs – she wants her expertise, and her criminal past, to help her kill her husband’s lover, too.

This is Pineiro at her wry, earthy best, alive to all the ways we shape ourselves to be understandable, to be understood, by family and love and other hostile forces.

An Opinionated Guide to London Bookshops

We are honoured to be featured in the new book from Hoxton Mini Press. In An Opinionated Guide to London Bookshops with text by Sonya Barber and James Manning and photography by Ellen Christina Hancock, you will find a double page spread on Stanfords and 63 other places, including many of our fellow indie bookshop friends. It also contains an introduction and a ‘best for….’.

We think this is a perfect book to arrange a bookshop tour with. If you start at Stanfords you can also buy one of our London maps and plot your bookshop route around London.

London Bookshops is available now from Stanfords for £10.95

NEW Editions of My Ibiza and My Formentera Guides

We are very excited to have new editions of My Ibiza and My Formentera as our customers love them which we know because they always feature on our list of bestsellers.

These guides are so popular as they are unlike any other guides. Written, produced and illustrated by Hjordis Fogelberg, born and raised on the island of Ibiza, these guides are a personal collection of experiences gathered through trial and error.

Originally started in 2014 as the “My Ibiza & Formentera” guide, and was then split into two separate guides in 2018. Every year the guides are revised and every 2 years a new edition is published.

Lonely Planet’s Guide to Death

Lonely Planet’s Guide to Death, Grief and Rebirth is an illuminating book that reveals how cultures and communities around the world grieve their loved ones – with lessons we can all learn from to help us all live (and die) well.

Divided into four key chapters: Celebrating, Commemorating, Mourning, and Offering, readers will discover resting places, burials, rituals, and symbols that have been associated with death throughout time.

Guest Post from Clare Hammond author of ‘On the Shadow Tracks: A Journey Through Occupied Myanmar’

Being a map and travel bookshop, we are famous for showing people the world from the comfort of their armchairs. When we can’t travel somewhere, we really rely on maps, books and travel writers to help us learn about the history of a country and its people so we can keep ourselves informed. A perfect example of this is Clare Hammonds new book On the Shadow Tracks: A Journey Through Occupied Myanmar. Here she shares with us some things she has learnt while travelling by rail around Myanmar.

Tips for rail travel in Myanmar

By Clare Hammond

In 2016, while working as a journalist in Myanmar, I came across an obscure map that showed a web of new railways spanning the length and breadth of the country – railways not shown on any other publicly available maps at the time.

It inspired me to pack a small backpack and set out on a three-month journey to piece together the story of why these mysterious railways were built. This journey would transform my understanding not only of Myanmar’s modern history but also of Britain’s colonial past. I hope my new book, On the Shadow Tracks, will inspire others to discover more about this shared history, including by (one day) travelling to Myanmar. Which brings me to my first tip for rail travel…

Around the World in 5 Books

Let us take you on a quick trip around the world via these five selected books of fiction with a sense of place that are currently on our shelves here at Stanfords:

Blessings

by Chukwuebuka Ibeh

£14.99

Set in: Nigeria

When Obiefuna’s father witnesses an intimate moment between his teenage son and the family’s apprentice, newly arrived from the nearby village, he banishes Obiefuna to a Christian boarding school marked by strict hierarchy and routine, devastating violence. Utterly alienated from the people he loves, Obiefuna begins a journey of self-discovery and blossoming desire, while his mother Uzoamaka grapples to hold onto her favourite son, her truest friend.

Interweaving the perspectives of Obiefuna and his mother Uzoamaka, as they reach towards a future that will hold them both, BLESSINGS is an elegant and exquisitely moving story of love and loneliness. Asking how we can live freely when politics reaches into our hearts and lives, as well as deep into our consciousness, it is a stunning, searing debut.