The GeographyPages Bookshop - Please click through to Amazon and get shopping !

The first thing to say is that I have a house FULL of books, many of them related to travel and foreign places, many of them fairly esoteric. Here are some recommended books I've read in the last year or so which you will find are worth seeking out. If you want to buy them,

please click through to Amazon where you'll then contribute a small amount to my pension fund (or a pint of beer at the rate it's going...)

"Mountains of the Mind" - Robert Macfarlane

Granta (2003)

Superb exploration of people's fascination with mountains, and the need to climb them.

"Trawler" - Redmond O' Hanlon

Viking (2003)

One of the last of the Chatwin generation of British travel writers takes his committed and eccentric style to sea in a Force 10 gale to highlight the heroism of the people who bring home the fish (rather than the bacon)

Now out in paperback.

"London Orbital" - Iain Sinclair

Penguin (2002)

Psycho-geographer and urban writer Sinclair take a pre-millennial trip around London, with the M25 as a rough route as a work of art, in the company of artists, and writers like Bill Drummond and reflects on how the edges of the city are changing beyond all recognition as we bulldoze the past.

"The Little Ice Age" - Brian Fagan

Super exploration of the effects of this period in climatic history. This is an area which I could quite easily have gone into, if there'd been any money, thanks to Lance Tufnell, a lecturer I had in the 1980's...

"Fire Mountain" - Peter Morgan

An account of the events leading up to the Mont Pelee eruption on Martinique which famously wiped out the capital city and killed 20 000 people in a matter of seconds. An engrossing historical account. Recently got an e-mail from the author thanking me for my positive review.

"Stranger on a Train" - Jenny Diski

(Virago, 2002)

Author who 'Skated to Antarctica' travels across the Atlantic on a freighter, then drifts around the USA by train, smoking and making conversation - all the while wishing she were back home... Part memoir, part exploration of what it means to travel.