Other books that might interest you

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  Stranded - Finding Nature in...

  Maddalena Bearzi, Carl Safina

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  Marooned in LA by the pandemic, a marine biologist rediscovers the delights and wonders of the natural world in her own backyard.Conservationist and marine biologist Maddalena Bearzi made her career studying the wild creatures of the deep, but when COVID-19 made landfall on the California coast this seafaring scientist found herself shuttered up ashore, her wide blue world constricted by pandemic lockdown. Never good at sitting idle, she despaired at the confines of her Los Angeles flat—until she began to find wonder in the wilderness of her own backyard.Stranded charts Bearzi's discovery of both rapture and resilience in the unsung wildlife of urban LA. With a green thumb and a canine sidekick, she finds as much to marvel at in her garden's singing blackbirds, night-blooming cacti, and industrious wasps as in the whales, dolphins, and sea lions at the center of her maritime adventures. Discovering in the quotidian an antidote to the grief occasioned by captivity and climate chaos, Bearzi reveals how each of us can take heart, find courage, and discover inspiration in the thrumming systems of life that surround us. With a scientist's precision and a poet's instinct, she invites us to look at, listen to, and revel in the everyday grandeur of the natural world—and to embrace, with urgency, our responsibility to sustain it.

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  Real Japanese Part 1 - An...

  Max Whittle

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  Unlike most Japanese language books that focus on formal and polite use, this introductory guide will help you to speak and understand Japanese as it is used in everyday life.If you are studying, working, or just travelling to Japan, this audiobook will help you to break down the language and culture into the real and everyday essentials. Use this guide to speak Japanese from day one while also laying down a solid foundation for more advanced study and an appreciation of Japanese culture.The culturally focused essays make the audiobook easy and enjoyable to listen to, providing pauses from the sometimes-challenging process of language learning.The essays and the stories they contain bring Japan and its culture to life, providing insights that allow the reader to understand the sometimes bewildering and impenetrable ways of Japanese culture.

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  Dancing in the Mosque - An...

  Homeira Qaderi

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  An exquisite and inspiring memoir about one mother’s unimaginable choice in the face of oppression and abuse in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. 
   
   
  In the days before Homeira Qaderi gave birth to her son, Siawash, the road to the hospital in Kabul would often be barricaded because of the frequent suicide explosions. With the city and the military on edge, it was not uncommon for an armed soldier to point his gun at the pregnant woman’s bulging stomach, terrified that she was hiding a bomb. Frightened and in pain, she was once forced to make her way on foot. Propelled by the love she held for her soon-to-be-born child, Homeira walked through blood and wreckage to reach the hospital doors. But the joy of her beautiful son’s birth was soon overshadowed by other dangers that would threaten her life. 
  No ordinary Afghan woman, Homeira refused to cower under the strictures of a misogynistic social order. Defying the law, she risked her freedom to teach children reading and writing and fought for women’s rights in her theocratic and patriarchal society. 
  Devastating in its power, Dancing in the Mosque is a mother’s searing letter to a son she was forced to leave behind. In telling her story—and that of Afghan women—Homeira challenges you to reconsider the meaning of motherhood, sacrifice, and survival. Her story asks you to consider the lengths you would go to protect yourself, your family, and your dignity.

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  I Wish I Could Say I Was Sorry

  Susie Kelly

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  Listeners will shed a tear at her losses and laugh at her predicaments in this sometimes hilarious, often heartbreaking, true story that gives a moving and often shocking insight in to the earlier life of the much-loved travel writer famed for her humor and her honesty. 
  Susie recalls a 1950s childhood in post-war London's every shade of gray and the splendours of Africa as, with her glamorous mother and father, Susie boards a ship bound for exotic, technicolor Kenya. Then in its final decade as a colony, Kenya was peopled with larger-than-life characters who had helped to forge its identity. There, with the threats of the Mau Mau uprising ever-present, Susie's life disintegrates at break-neck speed into a web of jealousy, rejection, and casual cruelty. 
  Each time it seems things cannot get any worse, they do, as Susie lifts the lid on her own, often shocking, behavior in her quest to protect herself and those she loves. Rebellious, lonely, and self-destructive, it is a small grey pony named Cinderella who saves Susie from herself and brings her the love she craves.

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  Seven Climbs - Finding the...

  Charles Sherwood

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  'Even the most casual reader among you will by now have worked out that the whole thing is little more than a delightful ruse for having a very good time.'
  Experienced climber Charles Sherwood is on a quest to find the best climb on each continent. He eschews the traditional Seven Summits, where height alone is the determining factor, and instead considers mountaineering challenge, natural beauty and historical context, aiming to capture the diverse character of each continent and the sheer variety of climbing in all its forms.
  The author's ambitious odyssey takes him to the Alps, the Himalaya, Yosemite, the Andes, Kenya, New Zealand and South Georgia. His goal is neither to seek glory nor to complete a box-ticking exercise, but simply to enjoy himself in the company of his fellow climbers, including Mark Seaton, Andy Kirkpatrick and Stephen Venables, and to appreciate the splendour of his surroundings. On classic routes like the North Face of the Eiger and the Nose on El Capitan, it is hard not to be swept away by Sherwood's unfaltering enthusiasm.
  Also featuring fascinating historical detail about each route, Seven Climbs is a compelling account of Sherwood's efforts to answer a much-debated question: which are the world's greatest climbs?

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  Their Heads Are Green and Their...

  Paul Bowles

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  An engaging collection of travel essays by the author of The Sheltering Sky 
  Their Heads are Green, Their Hands are Blue deals largely with places in the world that few Westerners have ever heard of, much less seen—places as yet unencumbered by the trappings, luxuries, and corruptions of modern civilization. Bowles is a sympathetic and discerning observer of these alien cultures, and his eyes and ears are especially alert both to what is bizarre and what is wise in the civilizations in which he settles. 
  Above all, Bowles is a superb and observant traveler—a born wanderer who finds pleasure in the inaccessible and who cheerfully endures the concomitant hardships with resourcefulness, insight, and humor.

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