BOOKS: Culture

Winner of the NorthBound Book Award 2021 | Cold Fish Soup is a memoir in essays, a series of funny, insightful meditations about life and death in a declining Yorkshire coastal town. The stories range across the pull of family, a compulsion towards the sea, male mental health, and how we can find sanctuary, humanity and humour in the most unexpected places.

An exploration into our Neolithic past through the history, legends and lore of Cumbria’s prolific array of standing stones.

***October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month*** In this searing, frank, and funny memoir by the author of When I Had a Little Sister ("A superb memoir" Sunday Times), a crisis causes Catherine Simpson to reflect—and to see how her body tells the story of her life.

Humanity’s ability to fashion nature to its own ends is by no means a new phenomenon. Silica-rich rocks have been flint-knapped by Stone Age people, transformed into stained glass in medieval times, and made into silicon chips for computers in the Digital Age. Our trick of turning rocks rich in malachite and chalcopyrite into copper has taken us from Bronze Age Minoan vases to the wiring that powers modern-day machinery. In Extraction to Extinction, David Howe traces our environmental impact through time to unearth how our obsession with endlessly producing and throwing away more and more stuff has pushed the planet to its limit.

The Mahogany Pod is a deeply moving account of falling in love with someone who only has a few months to live. Through honest prose, Jill Hopper’s story explores the joy and pain of loving and losing, and the beginnings that come after endings. “Affecting and beautifully written.” – The Bookseller, Editor’s Choice.

Everything Passes, Everything Remains is a cycle down memory lane with award-winning writer Chris Dolan as he explores our never-ending quest for identity – as citizens, individuals and nations. Along the way, he explores the highs and lows of growing up and growing older, and the demons that follow us as we try to make sense of our history and our place in it.

Meat-and-potato pies, quirky club mascots, standing room paddocks and hyperlocal sponsors... at every local club, there is much more about ‘going to the match’ than the match itself. For many of us, the local club offers it all: passion, hope, heartache, drama. Steve Leach spends a year visiting the twenty towns and clubs that are special to him – towns and teams that may not be glamorous, but they are unique and, more importantly, they are home.