Buyers' Choice

March 2009

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Grand designs handbook : the blueprint for building your dream home by Kevin McCloud.
"TV's architecture and design guru Kevin McCloud shares his passion and expertise in this brilliant guide to designing and building your own home, illustrated with the most memorable houses from the award-winning Channel 4 series. Through three main sections - Thinking, Dreaming and Doing - he guides you through each stage of the self-build process, from working out what you really want, to finding a plot, obtaining planning permission, commissioning and briefing architects and builders, and implementing the build itself. Structured around fundamental locations - urban, suburban and rural - Kevin presents his own compendium of houses from across the UK which he finds exciting and exemplary. Passionate and opinionated, this book is always highly readable and engaging. For anyone who cares about design and for everyone who has ever thought about building their own home it is essential and truly inspiring reading." (Product Description, Amazon UK)

Obama : the historic journey by Jill Abramson.
"This is the remarkable story of Barack Obama's journey to the White House, as told by the greatest cultural recorders in the world, the staff of The New York Times...In twelve rich chapters, filled with award-winning photos and graphics, as well as text from Nobel Prize and Pulitzer winning columnists like Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman, and seasoned political reporters like Adam Nagourney, The New York Times tells Obama's unlikely and incredible journey from the beginning all the way to his inauguration as President of the United States. Jill Abramson, the managing editor of the Times will provide biographical text and Bill Keller, the executive editor, will pen the introduction. Throughout, there will be profiles of important figures in Obama's life and the campaign - Valerie Jarrett, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, his parents and grandparents, and Michelle Obama. Obama's own writing, from his memoirs and speeches across the country, will be included, along with what will surely be an iconic, groundbreaking speech - his Inauguration Day speech." (Product Description, Amazon US)

Buyology : truth and lies about why we buy by Martin Lindstrom.
"How much do we know about why we buy? What truly influences our decisions in today's message-cluttered world? An eye-grabbing advertisement, a catchy slogan, an infectious jingle? Or do our buying decisions take place below the surface, so deep within our subconscious minds, we're barely aware of them? In BUYOLOGY, Lindstrom presents the astonishing findings from his groundbreaking, three-year, seven-million-dollar neuromarketing study, a cutting-edge experiment that peered inside the brains of 2,000 volunteers from all around the world as they encountered various ads, logos, commercials, brands, and products. His startling results shatter much of what we have long believed about what seduces our interest and drives us to buy." (Product Description, Amazon US)

Way we live with the things we love by Stafford Cliff.
"This latest addition to the The Way We Live series, The Way We Live with the Things We Love, looks at hundreds of creative and stylish interiors decorated with personalized objects and artifacts. Divided into eight sections, the book showcases Gilles de Chabaneix's incredible eye for detail and knack for photographing telling personal objects displayed in a multitude of places and cultures - from the display of expensive and cherished antiques to the imaginative use of found objects. Chapters include flea-market finds and objects found by serendipitous accident, tribal decorative elements of ethnic art from around the globe, art (prints, sketches, watercolors, and paintings), antiques, religious objects, rustic objects in wood and stone evoking a sense of the countryside, and "kitchenalia" or pre-plastic culinary paraphernalia. Within each section are highly detailed photographs of inspiring interiors that make the book a truly evocative encyclopedia of the art of making the most of what we treasure the most." (Product Description, Amazon US)

First comes marriage : modern relationship advice from the wisdom of arranged marriage by Reva Seth.
"Want commitment, love, and romance? Forget The Rules, and stop waiting for an idealized Prince Charming. In First Comes Marriage, Reva Seth shares the wisdom of more than three hundred women in arranged marriages...and shows how this classic tradition can teach twenty-first-century women important lessons about how to find - and keep - Mr. Right. The men you date will become the men you marry. The seven secrets in this counterintuitive guide will help you become more selective and increase your chances of finding the right person to share your life with. Seth knows her secrets work - she married her husband after only meeting him seven times." (Product Description, Amazon US)

The pattern in the carpet : a personal history with jigsaws by Margaret Drabble.
"This is a beautifully written and deeply personal book on the jigsaw puzzle and the part it plays in the puzzle of its distinguished author's life. It is a mix of memoir, jigsaw history and the strange delights of puzzling. James Boswell described the 'innocent soothing relief from melancholy' of playing draughts, and Margaret Drabble - among countless others - has found a similar solace from assembling jigsaws. In "The Pattern in the Carpet", she describes the history of this uniquely British form of meditation, from its earliest incarnation as a dissected map, used as a teaching tool in the late eighteenth century, to the other cut-outs and mosaics that have amused children and adults from Roman times until today...The resulting book is an original and moving personal history about ageing and the authenticity of memory; about the importance of childhood play; and, how we rearrange objects into new patterns to make sense of our past and ornament our present. It will delight and transport its readers." (Product Description, Amazon UK)

Memory Lessons : A Doctor's Story by Jerald Winakur.
"In Memory Lessons - a tender and provocative book - Dr. Winakur writes about what it's like to be medical counselor to countless patients, while disclosing his personal heartbreak at watching his 86-year-old father descend into disability and dementia, his mother at his side. In both of these roles - highly skilled professional and loving son - he finds he is hard pressed to alter a course that devastates his dad and tears at his family. But he does what he can. A doctor who does his best to listen carefully to each patient in turn, who attempts to confront every problem with, as he says, "a reasonable fund of knowledge, a modicum of common sense, and a large dose of honesty," Dr. Winakur knows that there is much we can do by loving and listening." (Product Description, Amazon US)

Fresh cut flowers by Gregory Milner.
"Everyone loves fresh flowers, and this book presents the finest details about how to grow them; how to cut them; how to care for them; how to preserve them and in fact the book is filled to the brim with all kinds of information that deals with every imaginable aspect of fresh cut flowers. Filled with illustrations and magnificent colour pictures; new ideas about fresh cut flowers; how to (or not to) handle fresh cut flowers; explanations, ideas, the history of fresh cut flowers, it's going to be a 'must have' for students of floristry, for florists, for garden buffs...in fact, for everyone who loves their garden and fresh flowers." (Synopsis, Amazon UK)

Bishop's daughter : a memoir by Honor Moore.
"Paul Moore's vocation as an Episcopal priest took him - with his wife Jenny and a family that grew to nine children - from robber-baron wealth to work among the urban poor of postwar America, prominence as an activist bishop in Washington during the Johnson years, leadership in the civil rights and peace movements, and two decades as the bishop of New York. The Bishop's Daughter is a daughter's story of that complex, visionary man: a chronicle of her turbulent relationship with a father who struggled privately with his sexuality while she openly explored hers, and a searching account of the consequences of sexual secrets. With a depth of questioning that recalls James Carroll's An American Requiem, this memoir engages the reader in the great issues of American life: war, race, family, sexuality, and faith." (Product Description, Amazon US)

The man who cycled the world by Mark Beaumont.
"On 15 February 2008, Mark Beaumont pedalled through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. 194 days and 17 hours previously, he had set off from Paris in an attempt to circumnavigate the world in record time. Mark smashed the Guinness World Record by an astonishing 81 days. He had travelled more than 18,000 miles on his own through some of the harshest conditions one man and his bicycle can endure, camping wild at night and suffering from constant ailments. The Man Who Cycled the World is the story not just of that amazing achievement, but of the events that turned Mark Beaumont into the man he is today." (Product Description, Amazon US)

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