Changes

|isbnauthor=1523092734Alastair Humphreys|title=A Women's Guide to Claiming Space|author=Eliza Van CortLocal|rating=455|genre=Politics and SocietyTravel |summary=''She brings a hug-kick-thunderclap that every woman needs in her lifeAlastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the world. And then written about it. Again For this book he walked and again cycled very close to home and againthen wrote about it. As he says in his introduction, the book is an attempt '' (Alma Derricksto share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a small map. Nature loss, pollution, land use and access, agriculture, former CMOthe food system, Cirque du Soleil RSD) rewilding…''To claim space is to live One of the joys of the book for me was that the life biggest thing he learned about all of choosing unapologetically and bravely. It these things was that there are no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong', that every upside is likely to live the life you've always wantedhave a downside for somebody and that there are some hard choices ahead.''|isbn=1785633678}}{{Frontpage|author=Edel RodriguezSometimes the reviewing gods are generous|title=Worm: at A Cuban American Odyssey|rating=4|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=We're in childhood, and we're in Cuba. The revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of as a time when violence against women is much in saviour of the newscountry, ''A Women's Guide has proven himself a Communist, and not done nearly enough to Claiming Space'' by Eliza Van Cort dropped onto my deskcreate a level playing field for all. Now Well, those hours- to be clear - this book is not a long speeches of his were kind of taking his time away. Our narrator'how to disable your attacker with two simple jabss family weren' manual: it's something far more effectivet in the happiest of places here, but discussion at the moment seems an uncle refusing to be about how women can the good soldier the country demanded (especially as he would probably be ''protected''. I've always thought that women need shipped off to rise above thissome minor pro-Communism skirmish, such as Angola) and the father being watched and watched, to be people who don't need protectionand not liked for his successful photography business, people who claim their own spacesuccess being frowned upon. If all women did The mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the heat, but in thissultry island country, those few men who are violent to women would realise that we are not just an easy target to be used to prove that they are big men.it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen…|isbn=1474616720

|author=Polly BartonSarah Wilson|title=Fifty SoundsThis One Wild and Precious Life: the path back to connection in a fractured world|rating=43.5|genre=Politics and SocietyLifestyle|summary= Where My favourite Mary Oliver line is the one in which she asks ''What is it you plan to do I startwith your one wild and precious life? '' I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question get to love that line so much because my answer is ''Why Japan?This! Precisely this.'' Japan has been on I'm lucky enough to be living my radar for a while one wild and if precious life the world hadn't gone into melt-down way I would have visited by nowwant to. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful Sarah Wilson is equally lucky. And like Barton, In her book that takes Oliver's words as her title (though I doncan't know see that she acknowledges the answer source) she pushes us to the question think about whether we really ''why Japan?are'' She explains her feelings in respect of living the question in life we want – the first essay, which best life that we could be living. Her answer is on the sound an unequivocal ''no, we are not'giro' . Don't care what you' – which re doing, she describes as being, among other thingsthinks you (we, I) could be doing more…And she's effing furious about the sound of ''every party where you have to introduce yourself''fact that we are not.|isbn=19130975011785633848

|authorisbn=Stephen Fabes1785633457|title=Signs Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of LifeEngland by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson

|summary= I was brought up on maps and first-person narratives Clive Wilkinson has a history of tales of far away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and curiositytravelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. Unfortunately, I didn't inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had which was As he neared his eightieth birthday the guts to simply go out and do it. I also didn't inherit idea of exploring the kind edges of steady nerve, ability to talk to strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with the requisite 'bottle'England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In order words I'm not the sort of person who will get on fact, it should be a bike outside a London hospital pleasant holiday for Clive and not come home for six years. Fabes did precisely that.|isbn=1788161211his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?

|isbn=15043213831529153050|title=Single, Again, and Again, and AgainBritain's Best Political Cartoons 2022|author=Louisa PatemanTim Benson|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyHumour|summary=Seeking some light relief from the current political turmoil which is coming to seem more and more like an adrenaline sport, I was nudged towards ''You canBritain't be happy and fulfilled on your own. You are not complete until you find a mans Best Political Cartoons of 2022''. This was what Louisa Pateman was brought up to believe. It wasnSharp eyes will have noted that we't unkindre not yet through the year: it was simply the adults in her life advising her as cartoons run from 4 September 2021 to what they thought would be best for her31 August 2022. It was reinforced by all those fairy tales where the girl (she's usually fairly young) is rescued by the handsome prince who then marries her so that they Who can live happily ever after. Few girls are lucky enough imagine what there will be to be brought up ''without'' come in the expectation that they will marry and have children. It was a belief and it would be many years before Louisa would conclude that ''a belief is a choice''.2023 edition?

|authorisbn=Sakinu AhronglongB0B7289HKQ|title=Hunter SchoolConversations Across America: A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America|author=Kari Loya|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyTravel|summary= The flyleaf to this little collection tells us Kari (that it is a work of fiction. That's possibly misleading. I am not sure whether it is "fiction" in the sense that Ahronglong made it all uprhymes with ‘sorry’, or whether it is as by the blurb goes on way) wanted to say ''recollections, folklore spend some time with his father and autobiographical stories''. It feels the period between two jobs seemed like the lattera good time to do it. It feels like The decision was made to ride the stories he tells about his experiences as a childTrans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, as an adolescentVirginia to Astoria, as an adult are real and trueOregon - all 4250 miles of it - in 2015. But memory is They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than the recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a fickle thing, and maybe poetic licence has taken over here and there, and maybe calling challenge that it fiction means that its safer and therefore more would be for most people will read who considered taking iton. More people shouldMerv Loya was 75 years old and he was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's.|isbn=1999791282

|authorisbn=Frederic Gros1739593901|title=A Philosophy of Walking22 Ideas About The Future|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)

|genre= Politics and SocietyScience Fiction|summary= ''Our future will be more complex than we expected. Instead of flying cars, we got night-vision killer drones and automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to track grandma.'' I confess I picked this one up from the library in my pre-lockdown forage 've got a couple of random stuffconfessions to make. Now I have 'm not keen on short stories as I find it easy to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the pages I have marked read a few stories and then forget to return to its varying wisdom when I need the book. There's got to be a very compelling hook tokeep me engaged. Some books draw you in slowly Then there's science fiction: far too often it's the technology which takes centre stage along with the world-building. This one had It's human beings who fascinate me in : the technology and the first world scape are purely incidental. So, what did I think of a book of twenty-two pagesscience fiction short stories? Well, wherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a sport''I loved it.|isbn=1781688370

|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane Jane Goodall and Edward Gauvin (translator)Douglas Abrams |title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered HopesThe Book of Hope |rating=4.5|genre=Graphic NovelsPolitics and Society |summary=I never really followed The done thing is to read a book all the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when way through before you sit down to review it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities. I’m making an exception here, you know. because I certainly didn't know don’t want to lose any of the weeks experience of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man imagereading this amazing book, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either sidewant to capture it as it hits me. And it is hitting me. This beautiful book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back has me in 1989tears.|isbn=1684056993024147857X

|authorisbn=Sharon Blackie1788360737|title=If Women Rose RootedArtivism: The Battle for Museums in the Era of Postmodernism|author=Alexander Adams|rating=52|genre= BiographyPolitics and Society|summary= I normally say Can art ever be apolitical? All art is political because art is not made in a vacuum. It is made by people. Antonio Gramsci stated that you can tell how much a book means ‘’Every man… contributes to me by how many pages have corners turned downmodifying the social environment in which he develops’’. Perhaps an Therefore, all art must be political, even greater measure implicitly. Alexander Adams in his new book ‘Artivism: The Battle for Museum in the Era of impact Postmodernism’ is adamant that art is setting out freer when it is art for art’s sake. The recent trend of so-called artivism has caused artists to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the one I've borrowedbecome more overtly political (read: left wing). I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'lifeTheir seemingly grass roots movements have been astroturfed by large “left-changing' – although it is definitely the first two wing” donors and only time will tell about the third – but clichés exist for media elites hoping to create a reason more globalist and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any betterprogressive regime. Or at least that’s what Alexander Adams believes.|isbn=1912836017

|authorisbn= Linda Scott1398508632|title= The Double X EconomyWilderness Cure|author=Mo Wilde

|genre= Politics and SocietyLifestyle|summary=''Women are economically disadvantaged in every country in It had been on the world''. It's cards for a bold statement for an opening chapter, while but it's far from hyperbole as was the following pages explainweek-long consumer binge which pushed Mo Wilde into beginning her year of eating only wild food. This book shines a light on what is happening The end of November, particularly in different placesCentral Scotland was perhaps not the best time to start, and in a world where the impact on the local normal sores had been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and world economya pandemic. What can be learnt from Wilde had a few advantages: the great strides in gender-equalising legislation in the west? What can be done about the selling area around her was a known habitat with a variety of young women into marriageterrains. She had electricity which allowed her to run a fridge, freezer and what can chimpanzees dehydrator. She had a car - and bonobos teach us about mothering?|isbn=0571353606fuel. Most importantly, she had shelter: this was not a plan to ''live'' wild just to live off its produce.

|authorisbn=Danny Dorling1529149800|title=SlowdownThings You Can Do: How to Fight Climate Change and Reduce Waste|author=Eduardo Garcia and Sara Boccaccini Meadows

|genre=Politics Home and SocietyFamily|summary= We are living in begin with a time of rapid change, and we're worried about ittelling story. Dorling tells us that All the birds and animals fled when the latter is normalforest fire took hold and most of them stood and watched, natural and probably good for usunable to think of anything they could do. We are designed The tiny hummingbird flew to worry the river and began taking tiny amounts of water and with flying back to drop them into the current state of fire. The animals laughed: what we're good was that doing in the world we have much to be worried about. However, over ''I'm doing the next three-hundred-and-some pages, if you best I can follow the arguments, it sets out in scientific detail why either we shouldn't be as worried as we are', or in some cases that we're worrying about said the wrong thingshummingbird. Mostly. Because mostlyAnd that, really, things are not changing as rapidly as is the only way that we think they are. In fact, will solve the rate problem of climate change in many things is slowing down and the direction – by each of change will in some cases go into reverseus doing what we can, however small that might be.|isbn=0300243405

|isbn=02414467321638485216|title=Our House is on FireBlack, White, and Gray All Over: Scenes of a Family A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and a Planet in CrisisLaw Enforcement|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante ThunbergFrederick Reynolds

|summary=It's easy to forget at times that The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normalNaked Don't Fear the Water isn't actually fiction, because it reads very much like a well-paced thriller at times. This is not by any means a criticism, but rather a testament to how well Matthieu Aikins – a Canadian citizen who decided to accompany his friend as a refugee from Afghanistan through Europe – recounts a vast and at times painful journey. Malena Ernman was an opera singer There are tense moments and Svante Thunberg took gripping accounts of border crossings which had me on most of edge the parenting of their two daughterswhole way through. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating But it's written with a haunting and talking almost lyrical quality that allows the reader to perfectly envisage the environments and her sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happeningpeople described.|isbn= B09N9157T6}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1785633074|title=Staggering Hubris|author=Josh Berry|rating=4. In such circumstances5|genre=Humour|summary=Members of Parliament like us to believe that the country is run by politicians, itheaded by the Prime minister - the ''primus inter pares'' (that's natural to seek a solution close to home, for those of you who are Eton and Oxbridge educated) but eventually, it became clear to the family reality is that they were the ''burnedprime'' movers are the special advisers -out people on a burnedthe SPADS -out planet''who are the driving force behind the government. If they were We are in the privileged position of having access to find a way the memoirs of Rafe Hubris, the man who was behind the skilful control of the Covid crisis which was completely contained by the end of 2020. You might not know the name now but he will certainly be the man to live happily again their solution would need to be radicalwatch.

|isbn=06486848061846276772|title=Clara ColbyThe End of Bias: The International SuffragistHow We Change Our Minds|author=John HollidayJessica Nordell|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy BewickAnyone who is not an able, white man understands bias in that they may no longer even recognise the extent to which they suffer from it: it's simply a part of everyday life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At White men will always come first. The able will come before the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothersdisabled. InsteadJobs, she remained with her grandparentspromotions, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out higher salaries are the preserve of schoolthe white man. She was Even when those who wouldn't pass the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had medical become pioneer farmers in the mid-west a part of the United States and life was hardan organisation it's rare that their views are heard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the familythat their concerns are acknowledged. Clara would only know her mother It's personally appalling and degrading for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth the individuals on the receiving end of the bias but it's not long after Clara arrived. As just the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakeningindividuals who are negatively impacted.

|isbn=183895015X1529148251|title=Misfits: A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a PrisonerPersonal Manifesto|author=Chris AtkinsMichaela Coel

|summary=Documentary filmmakers don't usually get 'How am I able to be so transparent on paper about rape, malpractice and poverty, yet still compartmentalise? It's as though I were telling the run truth whilst simultaneously running away from it.'' Before you start reading ''Misfits'' you need to be in a certain frame of establishments mind. You're not going to read a book of essays or a self-help book. You're going to read writing which was inspired by Michaela Coel's 2018 MacTaggart Lecture to professionals within the Mountbatten-Windsor Hotel Group, television industry at the Edinburgh TV Festival. You might be ''reading'' the book but after getting involved you need to ''listen'' to the words as though you're in an illegal tax scheme to fund his latest film, Chris Atkins was invited for a five-year staythe lecture theatre. The first nine months were spent in HMP Wandsworth, which is probably the oldest, largest disjointedness will fade away and most dysfunctional prison in Europeyou'll be carried on a cloud of exquisite writing.

|authorisbn=Michael Harris0008350388|title=Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded WorldWe Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba

|summary= This I am a firm believer that sometimes we choose books, and sometimes books choose us. In my case, this is not one of the latter. Not so very long ago, if I had come across this book I was expecting 'd have skimmed it to be. For , found some reason I expected of it to be another self-help manual on how to find calm, how to step outside the mainstreaminteresting, but it is would not have 'hit home' in the way that at allit does now. Instead of telling us how I believe it came to me not just because I was likely to give it is more about the a favourable review [ ''why'full disclosure The Bookbag's u.s.p. Harries examines how we're eroding solitude, which used to be a natural part of our human life, and why is that matters. Of course, he talks about how some people have found solitude and what has come of thatchose their own books rather than getting them randomly, and eventually in so there is a predisposition towards expecting to like the final chapter he talks about his own experience of having deliberately sought book, even if it doesn't always turn outthat way'' ] – but also because it is a book I needed to read, but mostly he wanders down the alleys and by-ways that his thinking about this lost art led himright now.|isbn=18479476621800461682

|isbn=17837843501787332098|title=This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted HistoryHow to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World|author=Esther RutterHenry Mance

|genre=HistoryPolitics and Society|summary=It was December ''When we do think about animals, we break them down into species and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office jobgroups: cows, dogs, foxes, writing to people she'd never met elephants and preparing spreadsheetsso on. The job frustrated her And we assign them places in society: cows go on plates, dogs on sofas, foxes in rubbish bins, elephants in zoos, and even her knitting did not soothe her mindmillions of wild animals stay out there, ''somewhere,'' hopefully on the next David Attenborough series. January '' I was going to be a time argue. I mean, cows are for making changes cheese (I couldn't consider eating red meat...) and she decided I much prefer my elephants in the wild but then I realised that she would travel I was quibbling for the length sake of it. Essentially that quote sums up my attitude to animals - and breadth I consider myself an animal lover. If I had to choose between the company of the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering humans and telling the story company of wool's history and how it had made and changed animals, I would probably choose the landscapeanimals. She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the farm'' - and learned I insisted that I read this book: no one was trying to spinstop me but I was initially reluctant. I eat cheese, knit eggs, chicken and weave from her mother fish and her mother's friendI needed to either do so without guilt or change my choices. This was in her bloodI suspected that making the decision would not be comfortable.

|isbn=00082940111523092734|title=How A Women's Guide to Lose Claiming Space|author=Eliza Van Cort|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=''She brings a hug-kick-thunderclap that every woman needs in her life. Again and again and again.'' (Alma Derricks, former CMO, Cirque du Soleil RSD) ''To claim space is to live the life of choosing unapologetically and bravely. It is to live the life you've always wanted.'' Sometimes the reviewing gods are generous: at a Countrytime when violence against women is much in the news, ''A Women's Guide to Claiming Space'' by Eliza Van Cort dropped onto my desk. Now - to be clear - this book is not a 'how to disable your attacker with two simple jabs' manual: The 7 Steps from Democracy it's something far more effective, but discussion at the moment seems to be about how women can be ''protected''. I've always thought that women need to rise above this, to be people who don't need protection, people who claim their own space. If all women did this, those few men who are violent to Dictatorshipwomen would realise that we are not just an easy target to be used to prove that they are big men.}}{{Frontpage|author=Ece TemelkuranPolly Barton|title=Fifty Sounds

|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=A little while ago a friend asked me if Where do I start? I thought that we were living through what in years to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question ''Discuss the factors which led to...Why Japan?'' I agreed that she was right Japan has been on my radar for a while and wasnif the world hadn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didngone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know what all the answer to the question ''why Japan?'this' was leading to. I think now that I do know. We are She explains her feelings in danger respect of losing democracy and whilst itthe question in the first essay, which is on the sound ''giro' 's a flawed system I can't think of a better one– which she describes as being, among other things, particularly as the sound of 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as henevery party where you have to introduce yourself''s teeth.|isbn=1913097501

|isbnauthor=1786893452Stephen Fabes|title=The Ungrateful Refugee|author=Dina NayeriSigns of Life|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyTravel|summary=Here in the West, we see news reports about immigrants I was brought up on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about themmaps and first-person narratives of tales of far away places. But all of those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, I was birth-righted wanderlust and almost alwayscuriosity. Unfortunately, no matter how deep I didn't inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had which was the investigative journalism they carry guts to simply go outand do it. I also didn't inherit the kind of steady nerve, outsiders ability to talk to the world strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with the situations that refugees find themselves inrequisite 'bottle'. It In order words I's rare that we find out m not the journeys from the refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that, in this intelligent, powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone sort of person who was born in the middle of will get on a revolution in Iran, fleeing to America as bike outside a ten-year-oldLondon hospital and not come home for six years. Fabes did precisely that.|isbn=1788161211

|isbn=18460455761504321383|title=Walks In The WildSingle, Again, and Again, and Again|author=Peter Wohlleben and Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp (Translator)Louisa Pateman|rating=4.5|genre=Animals and Wildlife|Animals and WildlifeAutobiography|summary=''An instruction manual for the forestYou can't be happy and fulfilled on your own. You are not complete until you find a man'' is how Wohlleben. This was what Louisa Pateman was brought up to believe. It wasn's publisher described t unkind: it was simply the idea adults in her life advising her as to what they thought would be best for this book, and thather. It was reinforced by all those fairy tales where the girl (she's basically what it usually fairly young) is – although right at rescued by the end handsome prince who then marries her so that they can live happily ever after. Few girls are lucky enough to be brought up ''without'' the author says expectation that they will marry and have children. It was a belief and it would be many years before Louisa would conclude that ''a belief is not intended to be a reference book, but an appetiserchoice''.