Favourite Outdoor Reads for When You're Indoors
For many of us spending more time indoors and longing for outdoors, a great solace and satisfaction can come from our imaginations and the stories and words that fuel them.
If you are missing being by the sea a fantastic book to turn to is Moby Dick. It’s a longer read, but an adventure in itself. It’s a fascinating view into a different time, transporting you onto the open ocean and into an all to different life and experience, with some of the most awe inspiring descriptions of the ocean and its majesty.
A delightfully wonderful book about an animal you perhaps might have never considered reading about before is Reindeer: An Arctic Life. It’s a wonderfully enjoyable read, with heartwarming and almost unbelievable anecdotes about these majestic and comforting creatures. A book very much to life your spirits and make you smile.
It’s almost always possible to look up, and looking up into the night sky can be wondrous. Kelsey Oseid’s What We See In the Stars is a beautifully illustrated guide to the magic, myth and science of our infinite above. A great treat to delve into and discover.
Isolation and survival, two themes very much explored in Robinson Crusoe. It’s a read to be savoured, and maybe even more so during a time when many of us are stranded away from loved ones. As individual readers we fall in step with Robinson through his trails, successes and setbacks in a world so distant from the one he’s known. We root for him, learn from him and meditate alongside him on the shape and nature of our lives.
It’s hard not to read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and ever be able to pass an ornate wardrobe again without the faintest trace of longing and the magic of ‘What if...?’ The idea that something so ordinary-seeming in our homes can deliver us into such adventure is forever tantalising. A book can often be a great substitute for a wardrobe!
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Tilly Smith looks after a herd of majestic reindeer in the Cairngorms. In this enchanting and beautifully bound book she writes of reindeers’ natural history and shares anecdotes from her own experiences and years of tending these wonderful animals.
Author : Tilly Smith
Edition : The History Press, Hardback, 192 pages
ISBN : 9780750987974
An Illustrated Tour of the Night Sky
What We See in the Stars Kelsey Oseid is a richly illustrated guide to the myths, histories, and science of the celestial bodies of our solar system, with stories and information about constellations, planets, comets, the northern lights, and more.
Combining art, mythology, and science, What We See in the Stars is a tour of the night sky through more than a hundred magical pieces of original art, all accompanied by text that weaves related legends and lore with scientific facts.
This beautifully packaged book covers the night sky's most brilliant features such as constellations, the moon, the bright stars, and the visible planets, as well as less familiar celestial phenomena like the outer planets, nebulae, and deep space. Adults seeking to recapture the magic of youthful stargazing, younger readers interested in learning about natural history and outer space, and those who appreciate beautiful, hand-painted art will all delight in this charming book.Author : Kelsey Oseid
Edition : Pan Macmillan, Hardback, 160 pages
ISBN : 9780752266510
Published : 5th October 2015
Weight: 620g
Dimensions: 210 x 210 x 18mm
A beautiful pocket-sized edition of the much-loved children’s classic.
The most loved of all the Chronicles, this wonderful tale can be enjoyed again and again. Lucy steps into the Professor's wardrobe but steps out again into a snowy forest. She's stumbled upon the magical world of Narnia, land of unicorns, centaurs, fauns! and the wicked White Witch, who terrorises all. Lucy soon realises that Narnia, and in particular Aslan, the great Lion, needs her help if the country's creatures are ever going to be free again.
Author : C S Lewis
Edition : Harper Collins, Hardback, 208 pages
ISBN : 9780007586325
Weight: 240g
Dimensions: 157 x 116 x 24mm
'Thus fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.’
Who has not dreamed of life on an exotic isle, far away from civilisation? Here is the novel which has inspired countless imitations by lesser writers, none of which equal the power and originality of Defoe's famous book. Robinson Crusoe, set ashore on an island after a terrible storm at sea, is forced to make do with only a knife, some tobacco, and a pipe. He learns how to build a canoe, make bread, and endure endless solitude. That is, until, twenty-four years later, when he confronts another human being. First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe has been praised by such writers as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Johnson as one of the greatest novels in the English language.
Why Novel North recommends
'Based on the real life Scottish castaway Alexander Selkirk, Robinson Crusoe is rich in detail and believable. It’s both considered and insightful, and reflects the contemplations of those of us who’ve pondered how we would survive marooned on an island. It rightly deserves its consideration as one of the most the famous adventure stories written.'
Author : Daniel Defoe
Edition : Penguin Clothbound Classic, Hardback, 288 pages
ISBN : 9780141393407
Weight: 403g
Dimensions: 204 x 138 x 29mm
'Ahoy there! This is the Pequod, bound round the world.'
In Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab is an eerily compelling madman who focuses his distilled hatred and suffering (and that of generations before him) into the pursuit of a creature as vast, dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. More than just a novel of adventure, this is a haunting social commentary populated with some of the most enduring characters in literature. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby Dick is a profound and timeless inquiry into character, faith and the nature of perception.
Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.
Why Novel North Recommends
'Reading Moby Dick, you feel as though you've accomplished something more than reading a classic, you feel as though you yourself have been transported, that you've embarked on an epic voyage and returned changed because of it. An experience which stays with you.
It’s an incredible feat. Profound and humorous. Epic in scale and uncompromising in detail. An adventure classic.’
Author : Herman Melville
Edition : Penguin Clothbound Classic, Hardback, 720 pages
ISBN : 9780141199603
Weight: 845g
Dimensions: 204 x 138 x 46mm