"One kind word can warm three winter months." ~ Japanese proverb
|
|
Wheelers eBooks focuses on New Zealand writers and publishers. The collection currently contains over 500 eBooks, but new material is being added regularly. The collection includes fiction and non-fiction items for adults, young adults and children.
|
|
New and Recently Released!
|
|
|
To Timbuktu for a Haircut: A Journey Through West Africa
by Rick Antonson
The president and CEO of a Canadian tourism group describes his month-long adventure into the Sahara Desert city encountering locals, stranded tourists, crippling poverty and historic, priceless treasures and discusses the effect of the 2012 military coup in nearby Mali.
|
|
| The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran by Hooman MajdAfter 50-year-old Iranian-American journalist Hooman Majd married and had a son with his American wife, Karri, the family moved to Tehran for a year... at a time when relations between the U.S. and Iran were tense, to say the least. But the couple wanted Majd -- who'd left the country of his birth as a child -- to get reacquainted with his homeland, and they wanted to introduce their son to the Iranian part of his heritage. Though they dealt with questions from Iranian security, fasted during Ramadan, and Karri had to wear a headscarf, they also found some things were familiar (parties, Facebook, and organic food). Offering an intimate insight into a country and its people, this is Majd's 3rd and most personal book about his homeland. For another look at a Middle Eastern reporter's journey home, try Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Shadid's beautiful House of Stone. |
|
|
In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist
by Pete Jordan
Chronicles the author's exploration of Amsterdam on his bicycle, which offered a respite from the financial struggles of beginning life in a new country with a new bride, and looks at the evolution of cycling in the Dutch city
|
|
| My Venice and Other Essays by Donna LeonMystery fans will recognize Donna Leon's name -- she's the author of the critically acclaimed Guido Brunetti series set in Venice. Having lived in Italy for three decades, Leon knows the floating city well. Here, in a series of short essays, she shares her opinions about the onslaught of masses of tourists to her adopted home (she's not a fan), as well as a wide variety of other subjects (she's also not keen about the American obesity epidemic or the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia). Even if you've never read her eloquent, atmospheric novels, anyone interested in an intimate look at Venice will find Leon to be a no-nonsense guide who writes in "sharply revealing and precisely vivid sentences" (Library Journal). |
|
|
The Village Against the World
by Dan Hancox
Explores the realities behind the three-decade effort to establish the communist utopia village of Marinaleda outside of Seville, tracing how its residents do not have mortgages and work together to maintain the neighbourhood, in an account that also traces the story of mayor Sánchez Gordillo.
|
|
|
The Nomad's Path: Travels in the Sahel
by Alistair Carr
The Manga is one of Africa's most wild and remote regions: a hostile and unforgiving landscape inhabited by nomads. Situated in south-eastern Niger, in the shadow of the Old Salt Road, it has been mislaid by the modern world; no westerner had been seen there in living memory. The Nomad's Path is a beautifully-rendered account of a journey across this inhospitable region at a time of Tuareg insurgency in 2004 and 2008. Carr sets out to explore the centuries-old link between the Barbary Coast and the Sahel along the Old Salt Road, while conjuring to life a lost wilderness and those who survive within it. At its heart is the story of a daring journey across the Sahel with the Tubu nomads. With tales of rebellion, lost civilisations, explorers both intrepid and eccentric and an epic seventeenth-century odyssey, Carr captures a sense of the intangible nature of the Sahel and delivers an evocative portrait of the Tubu - a people living on the tide-line of the Sahara and the edge of the world.
|
|
Good Books You Might Have Missed
|
|
| On the Map:A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks by Simon GarfieldWhere would we be without maps? Probably lost and confused. Simon Garfield, the award-winning author who examined fonts in Just My Type, explores just how important cartography is in witty, highly readable style in On the Map. Ranging from ancient to modern times, Garfield discusses the first century Geographica, the c.1290 Hereford Mappa Mundi, maps in movies, maps to movie stars' homes, apps, and Google maps. He also examines the pivotal relationship between mapping and civilisation, demonstrating the unique ways that maps relate and realign history in a book chock full of engaging cartography anecdotes. Though this isn't a travelogue, it does offer travellers "an engrossing, endlessly fascinating" (Booklist) look at an indispensable travel tool. For more on maps, try Ken Jennings' Maphead or Jerry Brotton's A History of the World in 12 Maps. |
|
| Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-WiwaThough she was raised in England, Noo Saro-Wiwa was born in Nigeria and was dragged back there every summer break. But after the country's military regime executed her well-known environmental activist father, Ken Saro-Wiwa, in 1995, 19-year-old Noo stopped visiting. After travelling the globe as a travel writer, she finally returns to Nigeria for the first time since attending her father's burial and tries to get to know the real Nigeria. She visits disorganized Lagos, the largest city in the area, makes her way to mountains and the beach, as well as exploring dog shows, a desolate amusement park (the titular Transwonderland), and other places; all the while, she is struck by both the level of government corruption and the captivating people she meets in this "remarkable chronicle" (New York Times). |
|
| Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti by Amy Wilentz"Fred Voodoo" is the joking, catch-all name that reporters used to call the man on the street in Haiti. Veteran journalist Amy Wilentz, who's been fascinated by and reporting on the poverty-stricken country for almost 30 years, is happy to say goodbye to that moniker and show readers some of the fascinating individuals she's met, including parents, priests, and presidents. Describing Haiti's turbulent history, and taking a particularly close look at the devastating 2010 earthquake, she provides an unsentimental yet loving look at a troubled land. This "excellent and illuminating" (Los Angeles Times) book is one of five on the short list for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography; winners will be announced on March 13. For more on post-earthquake Haiti, try Jonathan M. Katz's The Big Truck That Went By. |
|
|
This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City
by John Rogers
Join John Rogers as he ventures out into an uncharted London like a redbrick Indiana Jones in search of the lost meaning of our metropolitan existence. Nursing two reluctant knees and a can of Stella, he perambulates through the seasons seeking adventure in the city's remote and forgotten reaches.
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|