The Waves is an astonishingly beautiful & poetic novel. It begins with six children playing in a garden by the sea & follows their lives as they grow up & experience friendship, love & grief at the death of their beloved friend Percival. Regarded by many as her greatest work, The Waves is also seen as Virginia Woolf`s response to the loss of her brother Thoby, who died when he was twenty-six. ...

One bright February afternoon on a beach in Cornwall, Gavin Pretor-Pinney took a break from cloudspotting & started watching the waves rolling into shore. Mesmerised, he wondered where they had come from, & decided to find out. He soon realised that waves don`t just appear on the ocean, they are everywhere around us, & our lives depend on them. From the rippling beats of our hearts, to the movement of food through our digestive tracts & of signals across our brains, waves are the transport systems of our bodies. Everything we see & hear reaches us via light & sound waves, & our information age is reliant on the microwaves & infrared waves used by the telephone & internet infrastructure. From shockwaves unleashed by explosions to torsional waves that cause suspension bridges to collapse, from sonar waves that allow submarines to `see` with sound to Mexican waves that sweep through stadium crowds...there were waves, it seemed, wherever Gavin looked. But what, he wondered, could they all have in common with ones we splash around in on holiday? By the time he made the ultimate surfer`s pilgrimage to Hawaii, Gavin had become a world-class wavewatcher, although he was still rubbish at surfing. &, while this fascinating, funny book may not teach you how to ride the waves, it will show you how to tune into the shapes, colours & forms of life`s many undulations. ...

Thom Wheeler is not a man to be put off by the prospect of an uncharted, impractical or downright dangerous journey. Having accidentally introduced his old school friend Vicky to Dmitry, the Russian love of her life, at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Thom decides to travel to their wedding in Astrakhan in the most obvious & straightforward way: by following the Volga river, from its source over 1, 000 miles inl&, all the way to the Caspian Sea & a party to remember. ...

Rooted in two vastly different cultures, a young man struggles to understand himself, find his place in the world, & reconnect with his mother-and her remote tribe in the deepest jungles of the Amazon rainforest-in this powerful memoir that combines adventure, history, & anthropology. ” My Yanomami family called me by name. Anyopo-we. What it means, I soon learned, is `long way around`: I`d taken the long way around obstacles to be here among my people, back where I started. A twenty-year detour.” For much of his young life, David Good was torn between two vastly different worlds. The son of an American anthropologist & a tribeswoman from a distant part of the Amazon, it took him twenty years to embrace his identity, reunite with the mother who left him when he was six, & claim his heritage. The Way Around is Good`s amazing chronicle of self-discovery. Moving from the wilds of the Amazonian jungle to the paved confines of suburban New Jersey & back, it is the story of his parents, his American scientist-father & his mother who could not fully adapt to the Western lifestyle. Good writes sympathetically about his mother`s abandonment & the deleterious effect it had on his young self; of his rebellious teenage years marked by depression & drinking, & the near-fatal car accident that transformed him & gave him purpose to find a way back to his mother. A compelling tale of recovery & discovery, The Way Around is a poignant, fascinating exploration of what family really means, & the way that the strongest bonds endure, even across decades & worlds. ...

New cover reissue of this magical story from award-winning international bestselling picture book creator of Lost & Found, Oliver Jeffers. Once there as a boy, & one day, he found an aeroplane in his cupboard... He didn`t remember leaving it in there, but he thought he`d take it out for a go right away. At first, all went well & the plane flew higher & higher & higher until...suddenly, with a splutter, it ran out of petrol. The boy was stuck on the moon...and he was not alone... ...

By the mercy of God I am a Christian, by my deeds a great sinner, by calling a homeless wanderer of the lowliest origins, roaming from place to place. Here, see my belongings: a bag of dry crusts on my back & the Holy Bible in my breast pocket; that`s it. In 1884 there appeared in Russia a slim volume containing four short tales. They told of a pilgrim, a lone wanderer, led by his quiet curiosity & a deep spiritual longing to undertake a lifelong journey across the l&. A folk hero, a figure familiar from the works of Tolstoy & Leskov, this gentle pilgrim & his simple story would soon travel the world
- & would even, much later, traverse the pages of JD Salinger`s Franny & Zooey as the `small pea-green cloth-bound book` that Franny keeps close in her handbag. The pilgrim`s ancient journey takes him from a city monastery through forests, fields & the steppes of Siberia. He walks by day & by night, through rains & summer months, finding food & shelter where he can. Along the way, he encounters priests & professors, convicts, nuns & beggars, a tipsy old man in a soldier`s greatcoat, from whom he slowly gathers great stores of wisdom & experience. But at the heart of his journey is his time spent praying as he journeys on alone, discovering the peace & consolation that come of constant prayer & silent contemplation. Simple & sincere, The Way of a Pilgrim paints an enduring picture of a life of detachment through wandering & prayer. &, as the pilgrim makes his way through the wilds, he invites us to travel with him, along an ancient path into an immense, mystical landscape.
...

Benjamin Lundy crossed oceans under sail in the late nineteenth century & over one hundred years later Derek Lundy, his great-great nephew, has re-created that journey. In The Way of a Ship he places Benjamin on board the Beara Head with a community of fellow seamen as they perform the exhausting & dangerous work of sailing a square-rigger across the Atlantic & round Cape Horn. Derek Lundy adorns his story of an extraordinary journey with a profound knowledge of the sea & sailing, & reminds us that the ocean voyage under sail is an overarching metaphor for life itself. ...

On his journey from his war-torn village, Muri the cat travels through Yugoslavia, Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Finland & Sweden, meeting on the way an unlikely
- but helpful
- group of creatures, from a sperm whale to a paraplegic mountaineer & a wandering Jew. This is no children`s book, but a witty exploration of the human condition through the people & objects Muri meets on his travels. Somewhere in the mix, Boyashov introduces us to two eminent professors, one from Cambridge, one from Geneva, who take opposite views on the question: Is man in a perpetual & aimless state of wandering or must he always have a goal in mind? The book is intended to be read on two levels
- as a narrated story of real (fictional) characters & as an allegory. It has been compared with ` Sophie`s World`.


...

The Way of Saint James
- From Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela is a pocket sized pilgrimage guidebook adapted
...

The Way of Saint James from Figeac to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port is a pocket sized pilgrimage guidebook adapted to hikers’ needs, containing necessary information for both preparation & the walking. Wilfrid Alexandre, long familiar with the Ways of Saint James as both a pilgrim & a host (hospitalero), provides detailed routes, historical landmarks & practical advice. The guide is broken down into stages of the way & features colour photographs & generous note & log book pages for personal comments & memories to be recorded, as well as space to collect route stamps. Prior to departure information offers tips on equipment, sign reading, itinerary planning, accommodation & obtaining the necessary credencial. Each stage has an overview route plan which shows accommodation & facilities contact details & locations, as well as route profiles & descriptions of cultural, historical & natural heritage. ...