march 2018 – good to read

Paul Saltzmann
This new edition of The Beatles in India brings intimate images of the group, taken at an ashram in Rishikesh, India, to a wider audience than ever before. No photographers or press were allowed at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas, but the Beatles had no objection to fellow visitor Paul Saltzman freely snapping pictures during their time there. Containing a wide-ranging narrative by Saltzman – about everything from the story of how “Dear Prudence” came to be to George Harrison’s description of the first time he picked up a sitar – this unique and exclusive exploration of one of the Beatles’ most tender and bittersweet periods is a must-have for all fans of the legendary rock group.
Simon & Schuster, February 2018 

Karl Ove Knausgaard
The second volume in his autobiographical quartet based on the seasons, Winter is an achingly beautiful collection of daily meditations and letters addressed directly to the author’s unborn daughter. In preparation for her arrival, Karl Ove Knausgaard takes stock of the world, seeing it as if for the first time. In his inimitably sensitive style, he writes about the moon, water, messiness, owls, birthdays – to name just a handful of his subjects. These oh-so-familiar objects and ideas he fills with new meaning, taking nothing for granted or as given. New life is on the horizon, but the earth is also in hibernation, waiting for the warmer weather to return, and so a contradictory melancholy inflects his gaze.
Penguin Random House, January 2018

Deepak Chopra / Rudolph E. Tanzi
After collaborating on two major books featured as PBS specials, Super Brain and Super Genes, Chopra and Tanzi now tackle the issue of lifelong health and heightened immunity. They want to help readers make the best decisions possible when it comes to creating a holistic and transformative health plan for life. In The Healing Self they not only push the boundaries of the intellect to put forward the newest research and insights on the mind-body, mind-gene, and mind-immunity connections, but they offer a cutting-edge, seven-day action plan, which outlines the key tools everyone needs to develop their own effective and personalised path to self-healing.
Rider, February 2018

Ian Marchant
This is the story of how an old man called Bob Rowberry ended up in a broken-down bus, in a forgotten part of the world. It tells of how, along the way, Procol Harum were named after his cat, how he sold Owsley acid to R.D. Laing, of how he annoyed Saddam Hussein and the IRA, and how he was freed from jail in Mexico by a popular uprising of the peasantry who had come to know him as ‘El Maestro’. It’s also the story of his times, and the ideas that shaped him, of why you know your birth sign, why you have friends called Willow, why Yoko Ono affected how we eat much more than Linda McCartney ever did, why sex and drugs and rock’n’roll once mattered more than money, why dance music stopped the New Age Travellers from travelling, and why you need to think twice before taking the brown acid.
Jonathan Cape, March 2018

Zadie Smith
Gathering in one place for the first time previously unpublished work, as well as already classic essays, such as, “Joy,” and, “Find Your Beach,” Feel Free offers a survey of important recent events in culture and politics, as well as Smith’s own life. Equally at home in the world of good books and bad politics, Brooklyn-born rappers and the work of Swiss novelists, she is by turns wry, heartfelt, indignant, and incisive – and never any less than perfect company. Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel, White Teeth, almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world’s preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. This is literary journalism at its best.
Penguin Random House, February 2018