PenguinReaders' Group
 

Author Book Choices

A Guide To The Birds of East Africa

We asked our Featured Author, Nicolas Drayson, author of A Guide To The Birds of East Africa, to recommend three books to our readers.

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

I know lots of children and many adults love this writer's Moomintroll books but I much prefer this book of gentle tales set on an island in the Baltic Sea where 6-year-old Sophia has adventures and discussions with her grandmother one long Scandinavian summer. Each sees the wisdom of the other, and father is left firmly in the background to get on with writing his book.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

The sardine canning factories of Monterey in California may no longer be in business but you can revisit them in John Steinbeck's short novel published in 1945. Mack and his down-and-out companions seem to get up to nothing of much importance - a visit to Lee Chong's grocery store to try and wheedle a bottle of "Old Tennis Shoe" whisky perhaps, or chewing the fat with the amiable marine biologist Doc or Dora Flood, madam of the local brothel and community benefactor - but all of life is there. I can think of no winner of a Nobel Prize for literature who has combined such insight into the human heart with so sure and simple a style.

On the Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin

You may already be feeling slightly overdosed with Darwin in this the 150th anniversary of the publication of his magnum opus, but Darwin was not just a great thinker – he was a great writer. Not much longer than Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities (also published in 1859), this is a beautiful exposition of a great idea told in simple clear language, a celebration of life and the power of human understanding. Read it - and think how much you will impress your friends!