This week's books: Quick Fixes, Super Salads and Sweet Treats
This week there’s a children’s picture book, there a 10-step manual for improving mental wellbeing, there’s a new anthology of poetry, there’s an addictive new thriller and there’s a new cookbook out to help us make the most of our air fryers.
Easy Air Fryer, Jamie Oliver, Michael Joseph, €26.99
Jamie Oliver’s books sell so well because he’s no-nonsense and makes recipes appear easy. In this instance, although his book was only published on January 30, by February 4, it had reached number one in the UK non-fiction charts. Air fryers are generally considered to be healthy and they’re fast, so you can keep your bills down if you get to grips with them. This book is a tempting invitation to make the most of our air fryers and to produce food with more colour, more flavour and perhaps more fun.
There are 80 recipes within chapters with titles like Quick Fixes, Super Salads, Sweet Treats and Weekend Feasts. He also includes roast dinners for one and freshly baked bread. Oliver insists these essential pieces of kit are here to stay, not just replacing conventional methods of frying, but also roasting, baking and virtually all other methods of cooking. The food porn fans will appreciate the generously-sprinkled illustrations.
Meep, Maire Zepf and Paddy Donnelly, Little Island, €9.28
A charming book for the tiny people, this story first appeared in Irish, under the title Mip. Now newly published in English, this is the charming story of Meep, the smartest little robot in the world, who’s been sent to Mars on a mission. Meep is to explore the planet, possibly to encounter some aliens if there are any, and to send pictures of her exploits back down to earth. But disaster strikes when Meep fails to make contact. It transpires that the only way we earthlings can even attempt to communicate with her is through the medium of music. And so a love song is sent into Space, in hope that Meep will hear it. It’s sweet and it’s funny and it’s imaginatively illustrated. It would make a lovely bookshelf treat for any smally. Then there’s the mid-term break coming up…
The Steps, Dr Clodagh Campbell, Gill, €21.99
A graduate of Trinity College, Dr Clodagh Campbell is a leading psychologist in this country, a podcaster, broadcaster and a wellness expert. She has a particular interest in the inner dialogues we all suffer from occasionally, usually full of negativity and fed from faulty belief systems. Dislodging a faulty belief system that’s been hanging around for years isn’t necessarily easy, but it can be done, according to Campbell, and this is the book to show the reader how. The author knows how it feels to be lost, anxious and overwhelmed, because she has endured those cycles of self-doubt, of exhaustion and of feeling trapped.
In a series of 10 steps, containing practical techniques and scientifically proven strategies, she prompts the reader to challenge their belief systems from the get-go. There’s some inner-child stuff which has waned in popularity over the years, but plenty of other methods too of connecting with what’s going on under our bonnets and providing us with more reliable coping systems. From recognising our emotions and throwing some light on them rather than swallowing them, we can go through this journey and end up with not only self-acceptance, but acceptance of what is, which is the real secret of happiness. So they tell me.
44 Poems on Being With Each Other, Ed by Pádraig Ó Tuama, Canongate, €19.99
O’Tuama is a well-established and highly regarded poet, as well as a theologian, and he hosts the Poetry Unbound podcast, which has had more than 17 million downloads since it commenced. Human connection and the myriad ways in which we are linked to each other, like it or not, is the central theme running through this beautiful anthology. And in exploring how we connect, or even disconnect, it provides fertile ground for some self-reflection. Each poem is introduced by Ó Tuama and accompanied by his personal evaluation, offering even a novice poetry reader lots of food for thought, and several ways to ‘see’ the poem besides the immediate or the obvious. It’s a charming anthology, a lovely dipper to return to for repeat visits, a rich cupboard of food for thought.
Beautiful Ugly, Alice Feeney, Macmillan, €14.99
The latest novel by the ‘Queen of Twists’ opens with novelist Grady Green having the worst day of his life when it should have been his finest hour. His latest novel has topped the New York Times bestseller list. This is a first for Grady and he’s overjoyed. He’s on the phone to his wife Abby, expecting her home any minute. Abby’s driving while she’s on the call and she’s not far from home, but she comes across a woman in trouble on the road and tells Grady to hang on, she’s going to investigate and see if she can help. Abby is never seen again. Fast forward a year, and Grady’s in trouble with writer’s block. His agent offers him a cottage retreat on a remote Scots island in the hope that he’ll get his mojo back. He accepts, thinks the solitude and fresh air might help. But once there, some strange things begin to happen. Besides, he’s convinced he’s seen a fleeting glimpse of the missing Abby.
The back story of both characters is slowly unravelled between chapters, and nothing is really as it seems. Neither husband nor wife in this marriage has had anything like a normal childhood and their previous experiences add to the escalating horror of this fine psychological thriller that will keep you guessing.
Footnotes
From world premieres to intimate screenings, the Dublin International Film Festival is a big deal for film fans and this year it’s happening from February 20 to March 2. See diff.ie for details and tickets.
Trim Musical Society’s latest production, Rock of Ages, runs from Monday 17 February to Saturday 22nd in the gorgeous Swift Cultural Centre and promises to be another great show. Tickets available from swiftculturalcentre.ie.