Books | An Unweeded Garden

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Chinese lessons: part II

May 22, 2012

And so it begins, in earnest. Chinese lessons. Official Chinese lessons. Not Chinese lessons in a park, on a bench, with whoever has decided to take it upon themselves to teach me the Mandarin for Beijing Duck this week. No, I’ve enrolled at The Hutong School in Sanlitun. A proper school, with a proper syllabus, […]

Why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller

March 28, 2010

You would expect Jeff Rubin’s “Why Your World is About to get a Whole Lot Smaller” to go into a great deal of depth on the issue of peak oil but his exploration of peak corn, food and natural gas are well written and interesting escapades. His writing style makes a whole heap of stats […]

The River Cottage Cookbook

November 30, 2009

Tremendous stuff. Really. This is right up there with one of those weekends when you turn on the TV at 9am only to find it’s wall to wall Whittingstall as far as the eye can see. Don’t expect too many recipes here, they really do take back seat to pages of prep and animal husbandry. […]

Symbol of Courage: A History of the Victoria Cross

November 30, 2009

More of a book for dipping in and out than for reading cover to cover. The background to the battles during which VCs were awarded is enlightening (although I picked this up somewhat annoyingly just weeks before Private Beharry’s latest medal). The dispatches notes themselves are surprisingly ordinary and although a fantastic collection overall, can […]

Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion

October 30, 2009

I’m often wary of books that look like this for fear of them masquerading as an interesting read before revealing themselves to be nothing more than a spurious collection of sales truisms. This book is different. It walks through theory in an enlightening and surprising kind of way to leave you knowing about techniques that […]

One Red Paperclip: Or How an Ordinary Man Achieved His Dream with the Help of a Simple Office Supply

October 30, 2009

A book that gallops from start to finish. I defy you to put it down, or to take more than a day to read it! It’s one of those annoyingly simple ideas that you wish you’d thought of, straight out of the Dave Gorman mold. But reading Kyle’s story, it becomes apparent that few people […]

The Land that Never Was: Sir Gregor Macgregor and the Most Audacious Fraud in History

October 28, 2009

Ah, this should have been so much more interesting and enjoyable than it turned out to be. How could a man persuade a whole host of settlers to follow him half way across the world, raise an extraordinary amount of funds and give up all their worldly possessions in order to build a new life […]

The Ode Less Travelled

October 28, 2009

I can’t bring myself to lend every book I recommend, so this time I bought a second copy instead. This is a charming book that is as well-written as it is well-intentioned. Fry manages to open up a world of meter, rhythm and opsimathy (what did you expect?) for those that already knew and loved […]