Archives de catégorie : London 2023 Nonfiction

VOYAGERS de Lauren Fuge

Journeying through remote landscapes across the Earth and beyond, VOYAGERS seeks to understand how human exploration has driven us into the Anthropocene.

VOYAGERS:
Our Journey into the Anthropocene
by Lauren Fuge
Text Publishing (Australia), August 2024

At night, as I stargazed from my tiny tent, I’d hear the primal whalesong roll up along the ocean floor and onto the beach where I lay. The ethereal melodies seeped through my shivering skin, like a relic of an ancient time. I felt as if I was eavesdropping across millennia, the sound stirring some faint genetic memory deep inside me.
Come home.
Since the beginning of human history, we have been wanderers. Modern humans left Africa by 150,000 years ago, heading first to Asia and Europe, then Australia, the Americas, and finally—in an incredible feat of innovation and imagination—across the Pacific. Our explorations yielded great rewards: land and resources, food and knowledge. In every landscape we have explored, we have become a force of change. Humans are the dominant influence on the environment. And our surging population and insatiable industrial metabolism are outgunning the planet’s own forces: the sea is sucking at our doorsteps; the forests fall too quickly for us to hear. Still, we seek new seas to fish, new oil deposits to drill, new land to develop. A compelling blend of natural history, science and memoir, journeying from the dramatic fjords of British Columbia to the ancient geology of outback Australia to the shifting coastlines of Norway, VOYAGERS asks: What drives our urge to explore? How has it influenced our relationship with the planet? And, in the face of imminent environmental collapse, can we find in our voyaging history the tools to reimagine our future?

Lauren Fuge is an award-winning science writer. She has been a science journalist for Cosmos magazine and was awarded the 2022 UNSW Bragg Prize for Science Writing; her writing features regularly in the Best Australian Science Writing anthology. She is undertaking a PhD exploring creative forms of climate communication.

HOW TO STOP TRYING de Kate Williams

A smart and humorous look at the self-help industry and the pervasive impact of social media in our modern world.

HOW TO STOP TRYING:
Rejecting Empowerment Culture, Ignoring Bad Advice, and (Finally) Giving Yourself a Break
by Kate Williams
Harper Wave, Summer 2024
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary)

You can think of this as straddling the line between Jenny Odell’s sparkling How To Do Nothing and Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck if it had been written by a woman who considers Mean Girls a canonical film. Delivered with the whip smart humor and grace of someone who has made a career writing about everything from Wu-Tang Clan to colonics and odor-resistant underwear, HOW TO STOP TRYING has short chapters like Death Is The Ultimate Life Hack that helps you jump into perspective shifts and You Don’t Have to Be Who You Think You Are that teaches you to start living beyond the nouns in your social media bio and think of how you want to be instead of what you want to be.
Kate Williams has spent her career crafting narratives for women—as a ghostwriter for celebrity books, a magazine journalist, and an editorial director at companies like Urban Outfitters and Calvin Klein—but she has come to the conclusion that these narratives of never giving up, pushing through, soldiering on are causing a lot of harm. As a lifelong consumer and maker of media, Kate is keenly aware of exactly how these campaigns are working to sell you stuff, make you feel bad about yourself (so they can sell you stuff) and keep you from enjoying the actual life you’ve already built.
When Kate gave up trying to have a second child after several miscarriages, the most common response she got was: “Don’t give up. Keep trying. It’ll be worth it in the end.” She understood that this response was usually coming from a well-meaning place, but she bristled as her aha moment arrived—at what point do we have to quit, move on make peace, stop trying? And why is everyone else so invested in me not giving up? She did something revolutionary and just…stopped. As she began to turn her attention to what was already in her life instead of what wasn’t she began to see a bigger life theory come into focus. Not just about trying for a baby but trying (so hard) at all the things all the time.
There is no shortage of self-improvement books (Kate has ghostwritten many of these!) but there is a gap in books that really focus on bringing awareness to assumed cultural norms that are damaging so many of us. In the post-pandemic world, the conversation about stepping back is prevalent but what it misses is that stepping back is not just another pit stop before gearing back up to breakneck speed (in the way self-care has become) but instead it’s a whole new road of a gentler way to move forward.

Kate Williams is the author of the YA series The Babysitters Coven and the novel Never Coming Home (Delacorte Press). Her nonfiction has appeared in Cosmopolitan, NYLON, Elle, Women’s Health, Shape, Time Out New York, Monster Children, Russh, Oyster, The Fader, NME, H&M, Popular, Style.com and more. As a ghostwriter, she has written New York Times bestsellers, celebrity tell-alls, memoirs, how-tos, and beauty bibles.

LITTLE SECRETS de Gail Schimmel

A perfect life, a perfect lie. A compelling new read for fans of Liane Moriarty and Lisa Jewell.
‘LITTLE SECRETS is utterly brilliant – it’s a wolf of a thriller in suburban sheep’s clothing!’ – Qarnita Loxton, author of the much-loved ‘Being’ series

LITTLE SECRETS
by Gail Schimmel
Picador Africa, 2024
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

Monique and Ben Cohen have been married for 25 years. They both know that they didn’t get married for the right reasons, but they’re happy with the decision they made. They have a good life, in a beautiful house, with three children that they adore. It all worked out in the end. Or did it?
Monique has become obsessed with being the perfect wife and mother. Her sense of self is attached to the compliments she receives from friends and relatives. From her appearance to her home to her children – nobody will be allowed to see the cracks.
Ben knows that he gave up on a part of himself and his dreams when he married Monique. He’s an actuary, working for a corporate, and not the artist that he longed to be. If anyone asks, he’s happy.
Their daughter Rose is struggling with her friendships and the daunting world of teenage parties. But she knows that even if she gets frustrated, Monique’s rules will keep her safe.
Until Ben meets Daisy. And Rosie meets Margie. And everything starts to fall apart.

Gail Schimmel is the author of seven novels including The Aftermath (2019) and Never Tell A Lie (2021). She writes domestic noir and pacy thrillers that feature women and characters with secrets. She is an admitted attorney with four degrees to her name. Gail also writes cosy crime as part of writing duo Katie Gayle.

ZODIAC: A GRAPHIC MEMOIR de Ai Weiwei, illustré par Gianluca Costantini

In this beautifully illustrated and deeply philosophical graphic memoir, legendary artist Ai Weiwei explores the connection between artistic expression and intellectual freedom through the lens of the Chinese zodiac..

ZODIAC: A GRAPHIC MEMOIR
by Ai Weiwei
illustrated by Gianluca Costantini
Ten Speed Graphic, January 2024

As a child living in exile during the Cultural Revolution, Ai Weiwei often found himself with nothing to read but government-approved comic books. Although they were restricted by the confines of political propaganda, Ai Weiwei was struck by the artists’ ability to express their thoughts on art and humanity through graphic storytelling. Now, decades later, Ai Weiwei and Italian comic artist Gianluca Costantini present ZODIAC, Ai Weiwei’s first graphic memoir.
Inspired by the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac and their associated human characteristics, Ai Weiwei masterfully interweaves ancient Chinese folklore with stories of his life, family, and career. The narrative shifts back and forth through the years—at once in the past, present, and future—mirroring memory and our relationship to time. As readers delve deeper into the beautifully illustrated pages of ZODIAC, they will find not only a personal history of Ai Weiwei and an examination of the sociopolitical climate in which he makes his art, but a philosophical exploration of what it means to find oneself through art and freedom of expression.
Contemplative and political, ZODIAC will inspire readers to return again and again to Ai Weiwei’s musings on the relationship between art, time, and our shared humanity.

Ai Weiwei leads a diverse and prolific practice that encompasses sculptural installation, filmmaking, photography, ceramics, painting, writing, and social media. Born in Beijing, China, in 1957, he is a conceptual artist who fuses traditional craftsmanship and his Chinese heritage, moving freely between a variety of formal languages to reflect on contemporary geopolitical and sociopolitical conditions. Ai Weiwei’s work and life regularly interact and inform one another, often extending to his activism and advocacy for international human rights.
Gianluca Costantini is an Italian cartoonist, comic journalist, and activist. He has contributed to numerous publications and is the author of several graphic novels. He is well know for his drawing related to human rights campaigns all over the world. He collaborates with organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, ActionAid, and SOS Méditerranée. In 2019, he received the Art and Human Rights Award from Amnesty International.

THE CHASE de Jenny Wood

This playbook by a high-level executive at Google not only tells readers how to achieve better outcomes, but also exactly what to do, step-by-step, to overcome the most common personal and professional obstacles, from negotiating a raise to finding a mentor to landing a first date.

THE CHASE:
An Unconventional, Uninhibited, and Unapologetic Approach to Getting What You Want in Life
by Jenny Wood
Portfolio, TBD
(via Writers House)

Jenny Wood was working at Google for more than ten years when she set her sights on a much bigger role in the company. It took more than six months and sixty internal coffee chats for Jenny to go from Manager of Analytical Leads, a member of a seven-person sales team, to Head of U.S. West Coast Technical Operations, leading a team of forty-five alongside four other managers.
All her previous roles were easy to get. This one was hard. It took effort, intentionality, and grit. When she landed the job, Jenny wrote notes to herself as a kind of “playbook,” figuring she’d want to remember the details the next time she had to go through the process. The doc was also a tool Jenny could use as she mentored others. Soon people were sharing; hundreds and then thousands of employees at Google found “Jenny’s Job Search Tips” to be invaluable. Fast forward less than two years, and Jenny’s side project—which now includes workshops, keynotes, and tips on everything from email to influence to building a personal brand—is a full-blown global phenomenon called Own Your Career. A Google program with a $250,000 annual budget, Own Your Career is now used by 58,000 Googlers (that’s one-third of the company) and distributed by Google to companies like American Express, Spotify, Target, Indeed, and CVS.
Turns out lots of people want to know how to go from entry level at a place like Google to the top 2% of management, and in THE CHASE: An Unconventional, Uninhibited, and Unapologetic Approach to Getting What You Want in Life, Jenny Wood gives readers the playbook for that and more. Reclaiming labels we often attach to people who transgress social norms to get what they want—Weird, Selfish, Shameless, Nosy, Obsessed, to name a few—Jenny shows that “to get there, you have to be a little bit out there,” and her book transforms the labels into powerful mantras for success. Wood not only tells readers how to achieve better outcomes, she tells them exactly what to do, step-by-step, to overcome the most common personal and professional obstacles, from negotiating a raise to finding a mentor to landing a first date.

Before Google, Jenny Wood was a research associate at Harvard Business School, authoring case studies that have been published and sold to MBA programs worldwide. With her smarts, energy, and platform—and with Google’s full support in her tailwinds (she also flies airplanes)—Jenny Wood is poised to deliver the next must-buy book for the same ambitious readers who made Dare to Lead and Atomic Habits huge bestsellers.