Without leaving the comfort of your favourite chair, you could travel around…

…Australia

• In Green Nomads, Bob Brown packs a simple tent and sets off on a three-month odyssey across the country. Along the way, he documents, photographs and reflects on the luminous corners of our outback.
• Kara Rosenlund’s Shelter is a revealing and intriguing photographic story of homes that have been created in isolated areas, of rambling, crumbling sheds and shacks that provide shelter.
• Lost Melbourne is a catalogue of public buildings from Heather Chapman that looks at the cherished places in the city that time, fashion and progress have swept aside.

…Britain

• Walking Away gives us more travels with troubadour Simon Armitage on England’s south coast. Our reviewer writes, ‘The heart of this book is the gentle humour of the character observations along the way’. You can read the full review here.
• Slow to start, The Shepherd’s Life expands into a gentle and pertinent exploration of the shepherding practices of farmers in the Lakes District of England. The author James Rebanks is well equipped to talk on this topic as his family has farmed the area for more than six hundred years.
• Katharine Norbury’s yearning travelogue, The Fish Ladder, depicts the author’s travels across the raw landscapes of Wales and Scotland as she remembers and grieves for losses in her life. The writing has an ebb and flow, echoing the movement of water, and moving backwards and forwards across time, too, with the interweaving of stories from local myth and legend.

…France

• Life, love and fashion in the great city by the Seine. What’s not to love? I loved reading My Paris Dream by Kate Betts; the streets and architecture were described in such detail that I could almost be there with her.

…the whole world

• Windows on the World is a compilation of short pieces by writers from around the world as they ponder the view they see from where they are sitting and writing. A personal highlight for me was our own Richard Flanagan who is writing from Bruny Island.
• In Metropolis: Mapping the City, Jeremy Black looks at the development of the mapping and representation of the city, revealing how we organize the urban space.
• Map: Exploring The World brings together a curated selection of 300 maps that celebrate humans’ efforts to understand the world around them through the ages.

Ann Le Lievre is the School and Libraries Liaison.