The Bookshelf
Throw you shakkas to the wind and embark on a journey with history's greatest crime writer and one of Britains first female surfers. Were she alive today she would no doubt be writing poetry across the face of waves with Steph Gilmore.
This book is a banger for when you've woken up late on one of your many days off, are sitting on the balcony in the sun and contemplating whether or not to hit the waves now or later. Quash any sense of guilt with the sound rational of a surfing philosopher. Alternatively, you might need this even more if you're struggling to find time to read anything within the demands of your forty plus hour work week.
Follow the story of three brothers, struggling through the days with their father, an alcoholic abalone fisherman with a dark secret. While the living is hard, surfing is there as an escape, a screening from their father.
Explore London with Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Hemingway’s escapades, chasing macho kicks around the globe, mean that he has a quiver full of stories that tie him to many of the world’s must see places. Out of all his writing though, The Old Man and the Sea, would have to stand as his most iconic.
And Cuba is definitely a woman.
Like the land, the people of Rwanda are resilient, varied and welcoming. On the one hand, Rwanda is a breadbasket of Edenic proportions. On the other, it is a place of toil. The rich, rugged soil carries many of the scars of its past, also etched paradoxically into the smiling faces of its people.
The history of Bristol is always so present and available, it's one of my favourite places to explore. So when you find yourself en route to Bristol, be sure to have Treasure Island close by. With it's rich maritime history and harbour position on the Avon river right near the ocean, it's no wonder Bristol is the setting in which this adventure begins.
Puerto Rico, through the eyes of Hunter S. Thompson in his incredible book 'The Rum Diary'.
If you like the sound of being challenged about the real cost of your Soho shopping spree to the tune of some of the finer prose ever penned then this is the book for your New York sojourn.
Literature and its litany of heroes are full of tales of woe and the story of this novel and its beleaguered author are no different. The twisted satire of A Confederacy of Dunces is the ultimate companion to the quirky streets and freaks, not always comfortable but these pages can match the people of New Orleans for Southern style hospitality.