==Travel==
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{{newreview
|author=Mick Conefrey
|title=How to Climb Mont Blanc in a Skirt: A Handbook for the Lady Adventurer
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
|summary=Scott, Amundsen, Bleriot, Stanley and Livingstone, John Glenn, et all - any child should be drummed out of school if they can't name half a dozen explorers, travel pioneers and adventurers. But give them a gold star if they can name a single female entrant to history's list. Hence this book, for while some mountains have been topped by a lady first of all, and some landmark achievements by the guys have been quickly followed by the gals, there is just too much ground to be made up in recognising what the fairer sex have done in the world of, well, going round our world.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688412</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jasper Rees
|summary=Even today, London is a remarkable compromise of the old and the new. As Alistair Duncan shows in this volume, the city of Conan Doyle and Holmes has changed – yet not changed. There have been a handful of books in the past on 'Holmes's London', but this is the first of its kind to place equal emphasis on places associated with the detective and his creator.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312500</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lucy Wadham
|title=The Secret Life of France
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
|summary=I'm rather at a loss to describe this book for you, and I'm still uncertain how to categorise it. It's part personal memoir and part analytical. Whether you regard this particular mix as brilliant or irritating is down, I suppose, to personal taste and intellectual curiosity.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571236111</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tim Fitzhigham
|title=All at Sea: One Man. One Bathtub. One Very Bad Idea: Conquering the Channel in a Piece of Plumbing
|rating=4.5
|genre=Travel
|summary=Once more my life is made easy by saying this book does just what it claims on the cover - takes a narrator of zesty, wacky humour, throws him into an unlikely situation (a bath) and gets him to do something unusual (row it across the Channel - and then beyond). This despite the fact he was the world's worst sculler at University.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090269</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Keith Miller
|title=St Peter's (Wonders of the World)
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=It is huge: not only in space but in time and structure; and in the non-material sphere of the complex interplay of meanings, symbols and significances. Miller's book, intentionally combining cultural and political history, art criticism and travel writing, manages to reflect that hugeness without weighting the reader down with too much austere detail.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1861979088</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Guy Delisle
|title=Burma Chronicles
|rating=4
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=What we have here are a male househusband and artist, and his MSF doctor wife, and their life in Burma or Myanmar for roughly a year. We get to see the life in the country, from the racks of bootleg software, to the animation class he leads, to their efforts to get into the lush country clubs, to their baby being adored by every passing girl. We see the state of the country, with its horrid drugs, HIV/AIDS and malaria problems, hidden beyond the gentle Buddhist retreats. We see the Delisles' interaction with this singular country - the censored press, and the fact that their road is only made more busy because of the roadblock diverting everyone away from Aung San Suu Kyi's house a block away.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087711</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Iain McCalman
|title=Darwin's Armada: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle for the Theory of Evolution
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=A look at Darwin's journey on The Beagle, as well as journeys by Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace. Darwin's Armada provides a broad overview that strikes a different tone to other books in a crowded market. Casual readers who usually steer clear of non-fiction will enjoy it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184737266X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Patrick Wright
|title=A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=My good mood evaporated when Sue, my Bookbag partner, asked me if I'd read and review A Journey Through Ruins. She was right to ask because Thatcher's Britain is certainly an area of interest to me. The thing is, times are depressing enough. Margaret Hilda's neo-liberal legacy is crashing around us. Jobless queues are lengthening. Roofs are disappearing from over people's heads. The rampant cronyism and venal nature of our economic and political elites are slowly exposing themselves in ways likely to send my blood pressure soaring.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199541949</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Grann
|title=The Lost City of Z: A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest to Uncover the Secrets of the Amazon
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=For Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Fawcett there was more to the Amazonian jungle than El Dorado. His target was a treasure of a different nature – a lost city to be discovered because it was a city, not for any spurious material wealth it might hold. Could an entire civilisation have been founded in the inhospitable tracks of rain forest, and left remains he might find fame in locating? As this brilliant biography shows, Fawcett was the best man around to find it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847374360</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rachel Cusk
|title=The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
|summary=So, there's this family, right, and the parents have itchy feet, so they pack everything up and say goodbye to the dog, and leave Clifton, Bristol, and drive down to Italy and live a fine and different life, and the plumbing might not be the best but the neighbours and the scrumping and the wine are all to die for and it all comes right in the end with life-affirming brilliance.
There will be many people shuddering at that completely false description of this book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571242561</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Pip Cheshire and Patrick Reynolds
|title=Architecture Uncooked: An Architect Looks Around New Zealand Holiday Houses
|rating=5
|genre=Travel
|summary=This book immediately impresses by its clearly written, yet intelligent writing, and its photography that captures both the structure and the spirit of the holiday homes scattered around the New Zealand countryside.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1869621549</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dean Starnes
|title=Roam
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
|summary=Languages, customs, rituals, fascinating things to do, places to see, people to visit – all in the one book, covering almost every nook and cranny throughout the world. This is a travel book covering, well, pretty well everything.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1869507118</amazonuk>
}}
