Over the past three years, Isabelle has become a familiar face in the bookshop. Between shifts, she spends her time tracing the winding Suffolk footpaths and rivers that have become companions, woven through her life over the past 20 years. At weekends she can be found at White House Farm; the home of the Alde Valley Spring Festival and Galloper Sands Gallery, cooking vegetable-based feasts for art events. When at home she is in her studio painting, practicing yoga or diving with meditation. With motherhood on the horizon, Isabelle will be transitioning from working behind the counter to rifling through the children's section.
Anna Jones
One: Pot, Pan, Planet
Hardback £28
My first choice is One: Pot, Pan, Planet by Anna Jones.
In terms of flavours this is the first cookbook I've come across to rival recipes by Moro and Ottolenghi. Having eaten a plant-based diet for over 10 years, I find a recipe's use of herbs and spices is especially important. Anna Jones performs food alchemy, turning what have become everyday mundane vegetables, into bright, fresh flavoured dishes. Ingredients you can find in any supermarket become eastern food fusions - often in under 30 minutes. I especially recommend Gobi Manchurian on page 272.
Lao Tzu
Tao Te Ching
Hardback £10.99
My second choice is the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu.
This wonderful book is similarly nourishing. Somewhere between poetry and prose, the Tao Te Ching shows us ways of approaching life, action by action, in a way that is effortless and harmonious with the outer world and our inner nature. Through the lessons Lao Tzu shares we can let go of our surface sense of self and dive to a deeper level of being where we merge with our environment and accept our existence as just another rhythm within the cycles of life.
James Nestor
Breath
Paperback £10.99
My third choice is Breath by James Nestor.
The impulse to breathe weaves through every moment of our lives. With each breath you are born and you die. From our first inhale to our last exhale. James Nestor's book explores the role breathing has in our lives, he looks at how it has been warped and stunted by modern life and how with practices, posture and conscious awareness we can harness rather than hinder all the benefits this simple, life giving practice provides us. James trials a range of methodologies whilst including accounts varying from athletes who use breath to boost their performance to Indian pranayama practitioners who can pause their breath for over 40 minutes at a time.
Robert Macfarlane
Underland
Paperback £10.99
My fourth choice is Underland by Robert Macfarlane.
From Breath to breathlessness, Underland is a truly breath catching book. You will feel claustrophobic as the book takes you into Parisian catacombs and mile deep caves. You will feel a sense of relief each time the book surfaces to sunlight. His writing is gripping and poetic. Here is a standout part which has imprinted into my mind since reading it, where he describes a cave formed by water from inside to out. "The cave twists into the cliff. Time reverses space - the deeper in they get, the younger the cave-space. The journey into darkness is a journey to the present. The sea has taken thousands of years to win each yard of stone".
Rachel Carson
Silent Spring
Paperback £10.99
My fifth choice is Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.
So much of who I am has been inspired, formed and fed by nature, especially time spent along Suffolk rivers, beneath our counties tree canopies and nestled into the shelter of heathlands. Rachel Carson has helped me become an advocate of the countryside I owe so much. 'Silent Spring' gives our land and the wild life within it a voice. This voice exposes the violence of humanities actions on the earth and the destruction caused by so many of our practices. What is a weed but a plant we don't know the name of, whose many uses we have forgotten. 'Silent Spring' grounds the reader back to earth with intimate knowledge of life within a wide range of environments and their inhabitants. Read it to understand the balance created within the web of the natural world. Read it to clearly see the disproportionate weight we add to disrupt this balance. Read it to inspire your own voice within the current conversation of climate and inspire your actions within your environment.
Madeline Miller
Circe
Paperback £9.99
My final choice is Circe by Madeline Miller.
This is also a story of reclamation, identity and nature. Similar to Carol Ann Duffy with The World's Wife, Madeline Miller reforms old narratives that left women remembered within shallow stereotypes. In Circe Madeline Miller gives Circe a full, complex past that reframes her place within Greek mythology. Circe is a woman who transforms situation after situation with nothing but her own guile, grit and vision. In spite of being banished to a barren island to remain isolated for the rest of her infinite life, Circe gives herself agency. Discovering what looked to be a sparse environment to be a rich landscape, full of plants with a wealth of uses, Circe equips herself with knowledge and power. She plays her part in events that should be far from her reach and is able to shape her own future.