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ENDURANCE is the story of one of the most astonishing feats of exploration and human courage ever recorded. In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men set sail for the South Atlantic on board a ship called the Endurance. The object of the expedition was to cross the Antarctic overland.

In October 1915, still half a continent away from their intended base, the ship was trapped, then crushed in ice. For five months Shackleton and his men, drifting on ice packs, were castaways on one of the most savage regions of the world. This utterly gripping book, based on first-hand accounts of crew members and interviews with survivors, describes how the men survived, how they lived together in camps on the ice for 17 months until they reached land, how they were attacked by sea leopards, the diseases which they developed, and the indefatigability of the men and their lasting civility towards one another in the most adverse conditions conceivable.

'One of the most remarkable tales of human courage and determination. The story is gripping and the book is a classic' Sir Ranulph Fiennes

source: www.gutterbookshop.com

This book addresses questions and uncertainties expressed by those who have distanced themselves from the faith in which they were nurtured as children. Their faith is still there, flickering in the depths, but it is surrounded by doubts and prejudices. Pagola understands their reluctance to search the past for those once-comforting certainties, and is aware of their unwillingness to return to the beliefs and practices of former times. Offering guidance in their need for understanding various things about the faith, Pagola proposes not a process of catechesis, or meetings for religious formation, or prayer meetings for believers. Rather, he suggests that the most helpful way through this stage would be to make the return journey with a group of fellow seekers who are taking the first steps toward a new faith by sharing their anxieties and experiences with others.

source: www.thriftbooks.com

National Book Award Finalist-Fiction  NYT review

It is 1870 and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence. In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna's parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.

Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act "civilized." Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.

Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember-strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become-in the eyes of the law-a kidnapper himself. 

A book that is both highly accessible and profound in its importance. 

The Japanese phenomenon that teaches us the simple yet profound lessons required to liberate our real selves and find lasting happiness.

The Courage to be Disliked shows you how to unlock the power within yourself to become your best and truest self, change your future and find lasting happiness. Using the theories of Alfred Adler, one of the three giants of 19th century psychology alongside Freud and Jung, the authors explain how we are all free to determine our own future free of the shackles of past experiences, doubts and the expectations of others. It's a philosophy that's profoundly liberating, allowing us to develop the courage to change, and to ignore the limitations that we and those around us can place on ourselves.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?", Kind, said the boy.

Four very different characters take centre stage in this unusual and beautifully illustrated book. There's a horse, wise and reliable; a boy, Christopher Robin-like in his curiosity and kindness; a mole, driven by an optimism, and love of cake; and a fox, vulnerable and in need of love and understanding. The story of their friendship is told through Charlie Mackesy's evocative pen and ink sketches. Most but not all are accompanied by three or four lines of text, not so much a narrative but rather meditations, little flashes of insight into the human condition: "We have such a long way to go," sighed the boy. "Yes, but look how far we've come," said the horse. It's a book full of tenderness and compassion, with much to make readers smile and more yet to prompt a sense of forgiveness, even of ourselves.

Though simple enough for the youngest children, words and pictures will resonate just as much with adult readers. A very special book.

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"The Grapes of Wrath" for our time, "required reading for all Americans."  NYT full review

'I couldn't put it down. I'll never stop thinking about it' Ann Patchett 'One hell of a novel about a good woman on the run with her beautiful boy' Stephen King FEAR KEEPS THEM RUNNING. HOPE KEEPS THEM ALIVE. Vivid, visceral, utterly compelling, 

AMERICAN DIRT is the first novel to explore the experience of attempting to illegally cross the US-Mexico border. It is a story that will leave you utterly changed. Yesterday, Lydia had a bookshop. Yesterday, Lydia was married to a journalist. Yesterday, she was with everyone she loved most in the world. Today, her eight-year-old son Luca is all she has left. For him, she will carry a machete strapped to her leg. For him, she will leap onto the roof of a high speed train. For him, she will find the strength to keep running.

'One of the strongest and most affecting works in Allende's long career' New York Times Book Review

Pregnant widow Roser and Victor Dalmow, the brother of her deceased love, marry in the aftermath of the fascist takeover in 1930s Spain, in order to flee on a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda. Along with the other refugees, they start over in Chile as Europe erupts in war, and find a way to embrace their new life and each other in exile.

"Both an intimate look at the relationship between one man and one woman and an epic story of love, war, family, and the search for home, this gorgeous novel, like all the best novels, transports the reader to another time and place, and also sheds light on the way we live now."-J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Saints for All Occasions

A masterful work of historical fiction about hope, exile, and belonging, A Long Petal of the Sea shows Isabel Allende at the height of her powers.  Penguin Randon House

Greer's Pulitzer-winning satirical novel tracks a lovelorn writer on a cathartic voyage of self-discovery.  Full review

What would possibly go wrong? Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last.

...philosophical, poignant, funny and wise, filled with unexpected turns ... What makes Less such an endearing character is that he isn't a miserable wretch but a sweet and guileless one ..Carmela Ciuraru. The San Francisco Chronicle

A novel about a magical gift, a devastating loss, and an underground war for freedom.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of herbut was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home hes ever known.

So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia's proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the deep South to dangerously utopic movements in the North. Even as he's enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram's resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures. 

NYT review

Lahiri's breathes unpredictable life into the page, and the reader finishes each story reseduced, wishing he could spend a whole novel with its characters. NY Times 

A really easy read and quick to fly through whilst still being thought provoking!

Jhumpa Lahiri's debut collection of stories, published in 1999, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Hemingway/PEN Award in 2000, and several of the stories appeared in The New Yorker. The title is taken from one of the stories in the collection which, like all the stories, explores the lives and loves of Indians in their native land and in their adopted, Western homes.

The book was a critical and commercial success, and was lauded for the powerful storytelling and elegant themes of the work. Lahiri writes eloquently about the immigrant experience and about the divide between cultures, examining both the difficulties and joys of assimilation. These immensely personal stories form, in one critic's opinion, a story cycle. Overarching themes and narrative styles culminate in an exploration of the Indian and Indian-American experience, through the eyes of a multitude of characters grappling with themes of identity, ethnicity, love, and culture.

Read it here

This book began in prayer and grew as a labor of love. During one of his daily prayer sessions, Pope Francis received an inspiration: to shine a light on the vital role of grandparents and other elders. He began to preach frequently about the world's need to pay close attention to our elders and heed their wisdom.

More than 250 people were interviewed and  a collection of those stories was sent to the Vatican. These encompassed universal themes of love, loss, survival, hope, peace in the face of unimaginable tragedy, and above all, faith. Pope Francis received every story, prayed over them, and responded with sensitivity and grace to 31 of the stories and the issues they raise. In his Preface, Pope Francis lays out his reasons for this collection of wisdom stories and the movement he hopes it inspires. He also contributes as a fellow elder, offering a story from his own life at the start of each chapter . And in his own wise and compassionate way, he serves as a spiritual shepherd, commenting on dozens of heartfelt stories. source: www.sharingwisdomoftime.com

"Your elders will dream dreams,your young people will see visions."  Book of Joel, 3:1

THE HEARTBREAKING TRUE STORY OF A FAMILY TORN APART BY WAR

Winner of the August Prize, the story of the complicated long-distance relationship between a Jewish child and his forlorn Viennese parents after he was sent to Sweden in 1939, and the unexpected friendship the boy developed with the future founder of IKEA, a Nazi activist.

Otto Ullmann, a Jewish boy, was sent from Austria to Sweden right before the outbreak of World War II. Despite the huge Swedish resistance to Jewish refugees, thirteen-year-old Otto was granted permission to enter the country-all in accordance with the Swedish archbishop's secret plan to save Jews on condition that they convert to Christianity. Otto found work at the Kamprad family's farm in the province of Småland and there became close friends with Ingvar Kamprad, who would grow up to be the founder of IKEA. At the same time, however, Ingvar was actively engaged in Nazi organizations and a great supporter of the fascist Per Engdahl. Meanwhile, Otto's parents remained trapped in Vienna, and the last letters he received were sent from Theresienstadt.

 And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain - Elisabeth Åsbrink

The Girl With the Louding Voice - Abi Daré

"Dreams and Intelligence That We Kill"

Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a "louding voice"--the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni's father sells her to be the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir. She eventually escapes the marriage and heads to Lagos, where she works for a wealthy family and encounters yet more punishing setbacks. Despite what she endures, this is a courageous story of a woman asserting her own voice.

A powerful, emotional debut novel told in the unforgettable voice of a young Nigerian woman who is trapped in a life of servitude but determined to get an education so that she can escape and choose her own future. Read more

From the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bad Religion, a powerful portrait of how our turbulent age is defined by dark forces seemingly beyond our control 

The Decadent Society explains what happens when a rich and powerful society ceases advancing -how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemates, cultural exhaustion, and demographic decline creates a strange kind of "sustainable decadence," a civilizational languor that could endure for longer than we think.

Correcting both optimists who insist that we're just growing richer and happier with every passing year and pessimists who expect collapse any moment, Douthat provides an enlightening diagnosis of the modern condition-how we got here, how long our age of frustration might last, and how, whether in renaissance or catastrophe, our decadence might ultimately end.

The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success -  Ross Douthat

The Little Prince  - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

The Little Prince is an enchanting little tale about an aviator's chance meeting with a little boy who happens to be visiting Earth from another planet. The aviator crashes in the Sahara desert and damages his airplane to the point where he cannot fly any longer. Left with little food and water, the aviator ponders his predicament. As he worries, he is approached by a young and serious blond boy; the two become friends.

The Little Prince may come across as a children's book. However, this book is certainly also for adults. More than children, adults need to be reminded of  the simple truths about what counts and what doesn't count in life. Children in any case are born with this wisdom.

The Little Prince and books like it deserve eternal acknowledgment and attention. As long as people refer to them, they make a pause in their busy lives in order to think about the most important things like love, responsibility, and life goals.

Read here a great review from writology.com

Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucía - Chris Stewart 

Chris, eternal optimist and itinerant sheep shearer, moves with his wife Ana to a mountain farm in Las Alpujarras, an oddball region in the south of Spain. Misadventures gleefully unfold as Chris discovers that the owner has no intention of leaving and meets their neighbours, an engaging mix of peasant farmers and shepherds, New Age travellers and ex-pats. Their daughter Chloe is born, linking them irrevocably to their new life. The hero of the piece, however, is the farm itself - a patch of mountain studded with olive, almond and lemon groves, sited on the wrong side of a river, with no access road, water supply or electricity.

Could life offer much better than that?

source: https://www.bookdepository.com

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

The Plot is simple: a Spanish shepherd boy, Santiago, keeps getting the same dream that there is treasure lying underneath the Egyptian pyramids. After meeting an old king who offers him some advice and some magic stones, Santiago embarks on his journey to cross the Mediterranean and the Sahara to find his treasure and accomplish his Personal Legend (a concept equivalent to our purpose in life). Amidst swindlers, tribe wars and endless sand, Santiago finds his one true love, learns alchemy and the language of his heart, and of course, fights to reach his treasure.

(Source: https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/oct/10/the-alchemist-paulo-coehlo-review.

"The Screwtape Letters" remains one of "Chronicles of Narnia" author most popular works. Continuously in print since Lewis published it in 1942, the novel has been adapted into plays, made into a comic book, and recorded as an audio drama by John Cleese. Fox owns the film rights, and Ralph Winter, best known for blockbusters like "X-Men" and "Fantastic Four," has said he will produce it.

For believers, the letters are theology in reverse, teaching the love of God through the wiles of the Devil, but for all readers, regardless of belief, the letters frame human experience as a familiar sequence of trials, from how you take your tea and what parties you attend to the sort of person you choose for a partner and the sort of politics you espouse. Justice Scalia said "The Screwrape Letters is a great book. It really is, just as a study of human nature."

Screwtape, a demon in the top ranks of Satan's army, is sending letters to his nephew, Wormwood, who is trying to ensure a man's soul is sent to Hell. Through this premise and Screwtape's letters, Lewis tackles most of the common Christian paradoxes and dilemmas. He also proposes how demons might try to undermine Christians and their relationships with God by placing himself in the role of a demon attempting to do so. Download pdf here

source: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-devil-you-know

Emotive, compelling and uplifting, `LONG WALK TO FREEDOM' is the exhila- rating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience and ulti- mate triumph, told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader.

 ____UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER 

"Words like 'generosity,' 'fortitude,' and 'patience' ring through this moving account of Mandela's life and struggle. . . . All hail to the man who could wait so long, and who knew what would be worth waiting for" 

 Globe and Mail 

Nikolai Lantsov has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he endured in his country's bloody civil war-and he intends to keep it that way. Now, as enemies gather at his weakened borders, the young king must find a way to refill Ravka's coffers, forge new alliances, and stop a rising threat to the once-great Grisha Army.

Yet with every day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built. With the help of a young monk and a legendary Grisha Squaller, Nikolai will journey to the places in Ravka where the deepest magic survives to vanquish the terrible legacy inside him. He will risk everything to save his country and himself. But some secrets aren't meant to stay buried-and some wounds aren't meant to heal.

source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36307634-king-of-scars

"One of those monumental books that can draw you across space and time into another family's experience in the most profound way." -The Washington Post

"NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY" - The Wall Street Journal

Bridge of Clay, by Markus Zusak (The Book Thief), is about five Australian boys raising themselves after their mother's death and their father's subsequent abandonment of them. The story delves into the individual histories of many of the characters, spanning decades and unearthing family secrets. Loss and love are the major themes, giving families much to discuss about the different ways people handle grief and tough times.

about Chris Lowney

After living for seven years as a Jesuit seminarian, practicing vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to the Jesuit general in Rome, Chris Lowney was transformed into a corporate man as an investment banker at JP Morgan. Lowney's years in business revealed that leadership challenges, especially how to recruit and mould leadership in your company's teams, is a universal corporate challenge faced by all companies around the world and throughout time. He realised that the super smart, ambitious and strong willed recruits at JP Morgan didn't always translate into long-term successes at the firm. Lowney noticed that many up-and-comers with raw talent and sheer ambition, either were terrified of making major decisions, or terrorised anyone who dared make a decision without them. Some were good at managing only numbers and not human beings and most were uncomfortable with change and taking personal risks.

source: https://www.tomorrowtodayglobal.com/2011/03/03/heroic-leadership-a-summary/

As he wrestled with the challenge of developing successful leadership in the corporate environment, Lowney was drawn to think back to the leadership lessons he had learnt from the Jesuit company during his time as a Jesuit priest. He realised that this 470 year old company had grappled quite successfully with many of the challenges confronted by companies today, including how to institute a 360-degree feedback loop, forging seamless multi-national teams, motivating inspired performance and remaining change ready and strategically adaptable. 

"Heroic Leadership" is a book which lay out a leadership approach that every company and leader should take seriously.