Beach, garden, park, bed or sofa, a good book is a precious luxury anywhere, and as the days slide towards September I’ve been squeezing in some page-turning lately.
The scent of paperback pages take me back to happy days with seagulls in blue skies: sunloungers on Greek beaches, a hillside Sardinian hotel or a windy cafe table in Essaouira, watching horses cantering across the beach.
By total coincidence 5/6 of these books have turquoise-ish covers and maybe this is why? When I worked in music, I saw a homeopath in California because I was exhausted (long days, long nights and too much to pack in to a week). The first night of taking the remedy she had prescribed after a lengthy “interview” spanning emotional and physical health, I dreamed I was at a beach cafe in the late afternoon listening to live music – reggae – and everything from the coffee cups to the walls, doors, wooden fence and tables (except for the musicians and the sand) were…turquoise. What was that?!
I phoned her about my turquoise dream the next day and she said “Ah that’s a good sign, turquoise is the colour of healing – you’re healing”.
Two of these books I’ve barely started: Rich Roll’s “Finding Ultra” and Christy Lefteri’s bestseller “The Beekeeper of Aleppo” but the other four I have read, and here’s why I think they’re worth a mention, in case you’re looking for a good book for August?
Chasing The Sun – Linda Geddes
One of the podcasts I love Is Dr Rangan Chatterjee’s “Feel Better Live More”, and if we had more doctors like him it would surely ease the burden on the NHS.
If you’re a sun worshipper and don’t do well in overcast climates, you’ll really relate to this book. It reminds us how crucial circadian rhythms, sunlight, daylight and more natural light generally all are for our (mental) health. Our eyes need good natural light and our bodies need sunshine.
Linda and her family experimented with living by candlelight for a while one winter and when party season arrived, she was sure nobody would want to come round to their electricity-free home but the opposite happened. Her friends loved the glowy, intimate, quiet, primal/tribal vibe of just candles, a welcome respite from all the electric lighting around us (shopping malls – gah!)
It’s an easy read with some science in it, urging us to get off the sofa and get outside because in a nutshell, even spending part of the greyest day, outside, is much better for us than staying in.
The Olive Route – Carol Drinkwater
I read this years ago, but just bought the paperback version recently and I’m on the Lebanon chapter (which as of yesterday feels heartbreaking after the massive tragedy that just happened there). As many of you will know, Carol owns an olive farm in the south of France and she felt “an urgent need to return to the eastern Mediterranean, to learn the secrets of the olive tree”.
A stranger in Australia sent her a photo of him standing next to a hollowed out olive tree in Lebanon (he claimed it was 6,000 years old) and this photo sparked her adventurous quest in 2005 to trace the history of the olive tree all the way from Marseille through into Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Malta, Tunisia, Libya, Greece, Crete and Israel, despite the instability in the Middle East.
It’s a fascinating “escape” – again, an easy read – full of colourful local characters and local foods, a real and vivid travelogue that feels both brave and dream-like, especially during these confinement-centric times.
The Beekeeper of Aleppo – Christy Lefteri
”Moving, compassionate and beautifully written…a powerful testament to the triumph of the human spirit” (back cover).
The turquoise cover and gold embossed cover caught my eye in a book display and after looking it up on Amazon I ordered it. I’m only a few pages in, but gosh this is an evocative book and I have a feeling much hope, bravery, sadness and love fills the pages to come.
The synopsis:
”Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife Afra, an artist They live happily in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo – until the unthinkable happens and they are forced to flee. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain”.
Here’s a quick taste…narrated by Nuri the beekeeper:
”Bronze…was the colour of the city far below. We lived in a two-bedroom bungalow on a hill. From so high up we could see all the unorganised architecture and the beautiful domes and minarets, and far in the distance the citadel peeking through.
”It was pleasant to sit on the veranda in the spring, we could smell the soil from the desert and see the red sun setting over the land. In the summer though, we would be inside with a fan running and wet towels on our heads and our feet in a bowl of cold water because the heat was an oven.
“I had four beehives in the garden, piled one on top of the other, but the rest were in a field on the outskirts of eastern Aleppo. In the mornings I would wake up early, before the sun, before the muezzin called out for prayer. I would drive the thirty miles to the apiaries and arrive as the sun was just rising, fields full of light, the humming of the bees a single pure note.
The bees were an ideal society, a small paradise among chaos. The worker bees travelled far and wide to find food, preferring to go to the furthest fields. They collected nectar from lemon blossoms and clover, black nigella seeds and aniseed, eucalyptus, cotton, thorn and heather”.
Christy Lefteri, daughter of Cypriot refugees, wrote this book after her time working as a volunteer at a Unicef supported refugee centre in Athens. I can’t wait to read the rest of it.
Finding Ultra – Rich Roll
Ultra endurance athlete Rich Roll transformed his life through exercise and a plant-based diet after feeling unwell and breathless at the top of a flight of stairs at home one evening (the night before his 40th birthday). Shocked, he was 50lbs overweight and a lawyer at the time and swore to turn his health around (he did, in a matter of months).
Rich Roll’s podcast guests (also on YouTube) range from thinkers like Guru Singh (who I find incredibly comforting and sane in this wild time) to future-thinking scientists like Australian Harvard-based biologist and professor of genetics David Sinclair PhD who’s on a mission to slow down ageing, to young British runner Nick Butter, who ran a marathon in 196 countries (a fascinating interview I listened to during lockdown although the idea of so many flights and countries now seems unthinkable).
I bought the Kindle version of this book and haven’t started it yet, but I think Rich Roll is one of the most switched-on, enlightened, clear-thinking podcasters out there (I’ve actually cut down on podcasts and only really listen to Rich Roll, Dr Chatterjee, Lewis Howes and sometimes Dhru Purohit now).
Grow A New Body – Dr Alberto Villoldo
Villoldo’s “bio” alone is fascinating. He’s a psychologist, medical anthropologist – and a shaman – and having read his One Spirit Medicine book this also appealed to me.
Not only can we “grow new cells” in our bodies, our brains exhibit neuroplasticity, too – this is something that’s new news, because science has told us we lose brain cells as we age and there’s nothing we can do about it. But new thinking and trials show the old “our brains just shrink away” idea is wrong. (For more on brain neuroplasticity, see Deepak Chopra and Dr Rudi Tanzi’s works, and for memory loss, The End of Alzheimer’s by Dr Dale Bredesen is an absolute must-read.
I read it cover to cover (it’s quite scientific but if you pull out the main, core points covering supplements and lifestyle it’s ground-breaking – this neurologist is now reversing (and halting) Alzheimer’s.
Dr Villoldo covers quite a lot here including detoxification, energy healing, superfoods, how to switch on your longevity genes (autophagy, when the body clears out “bad” or damaged cells overnight while we sleep to encourage new, healthier ones, is a big one and intermittent fasting boosts autophagy).
If you’re not into energy healing or shamanism, this might not be for you and this book covers things like facing your fear of death too. It’s very much about our inner journey and energy frequency. I read it cover to cover and it really resonated with me. Although shamanism doesn’t resonate or feel right at all, for me, I did get a lot out of this book.
Walk With Your Wolf – Jonathan Hoban
With the 2021 Awards opening for early entries this month, my reading days will soon be over, but I’ve been listening to this one on Audible and I found Jonathan via a Tweet by Julia Bradbury, watched his video with her on grief and loss and decided to get it.
From Amazon:
“Written by a London-based therapist, Walk with your Wolf is part memoir, part self-help and part reflection on the connection we must re-establish with our natural, intuitive selves if we are to live healthy, fulfilling lives. Offering practical advice and exercises on how to walk and think as a method of confronting difficult emotions, this book will allow you to reconnect with your intuition, confidence and power”.
If you’re chair or sofa-bound and should be getting up and out more often, this book could be the boost you need. And if you need to discuss a heavy/potentially volatile topic, it’s worth remembering that the best way to do it is on a calm walk, while moving, and in nature ideally, for the best chance of an amicable (re)solution.
Jonathan has pioneered a unique type of therapy, Walking Therapy, and as we know, walking is already a basic form of therapy in itself – supercharged if it’s in nature obviously.
Jonathan’s book made me get up and out at 6.30am (instead of gliding around quietly in the kitchen brewing a matcha latte or a coffee) to make the most of the early morning light, with the added delights of spotting an occasional Little Owl or partridge family early in the day, along my way…
What have you been reading this summer? Any good recommendations? Have you read any of these ones? x