Entertainment

Books: 101 Ways To Go Zero Waste a useful guide with no moral high ground-taking

101 Ways To Go Zero Waste by Kathryn Kellogg
101 Ways To Go Zero Waste by Kathryn Kellogg 101 Ways To Go Zero Waste by Kathryn Kellogg

:: BOOK OF THE WEEK

101 Ways To Go Zero Waste by Kathryn Kellogg is published in paperback by WW Norton, priced £9.99 (ebook £8.35). Available May 3

GREEN solutions are worthless if people don't get on board with them – and to many people, 'zero waste' sounds unrealistic. This is why Kathryn Kellogg's new book is so good. Kellogg is in touch with what real, everyday life looks like for regular folk and families. Here she invites them to embrace a more waste-conscious lifestyle, in ways that won't leave them paralysed by overwhelm. There's no scaremongering or moral high ground-taking. It's an engaging read brought to life with witty, relatable anecdotes, and just enough science to gently hammer home the point. Nobody is 100 per cent zero waste – and that's OK. Here, though, are 101 ways you can move towards zero-waste. Kellogg explains how to make changes and navigate those in-between stages or moments when your zero waste sensibilities just won't win. This book won't make you feel even more guilty and hopeless; it will get you to slow down and think about your consumer choices a little more.

9/10


Abi Jackson

:: FICTION

The Mister by EL James is published in paperback by Arrow, priced £7.99 (ebook £4.99)

EL JAMES calls her new novel "a Cinderella story for the 21st century." But the fairytale plot belongs in the dark ages: Wealthy, powerful man saves innocent, penniless, damsel in distress. Maxim is a party boy who's never worked and has a different woman in his bed every night. His brother dies, leaving him a noble title, a fortune and the family's estates. Meanwhile Alessia has just arrived in London from rural Albania, and finds work as Maxim's cleaner. They quickly fall for each other but it's not that simple – he's keeping his position a secret and she's on the run from something much darker. It's a pretty troublesome cliche, but what James is adept at doing is creating suspense. You feel the tension in the build-up to the romance – but he has all the power, so it's inherently creepy. If you are a fan of the author's style, it's got a similar vibe to Fifty Shades. But it could be used to greater effect with a storyline that celebrates a woman's power rather than diminishes it.

4/10


Lauren Taylor

Only Americans Burn In Hell by Jarett Kobek is published in hardback by Serpent's Tail, priced £12.99 (ebook £6.64)

IT'S difficult to write a review of this book without feeling you are a compromised cog in the very system that Jarett Kobek sets out to satirise and excoriate over 300-odd blistering, and often very funny, pages. Kobek is a dissident social polemicist only very thinly disguised as a writer of fiction. Ostensibly a novel about an immortal fairy queen and a shady billionaire philanthropist sheikh called Dennis, his book is a take-down of the world we live in – the western plutocracy, its media stooges, the murderous hyper-real nonsense that passes for our politics. There is anger here, but also fierce comedy, unerring parody and historical acuity. Kobek combines allegory and personal anecdote with sections of robustly researched commentary – and blithely attacks just about every publishing house and media outlet in the process – to deliver a huge punch to the gut of Trump's America. Nothing will change of course, and in between the hilarity you read with a certain despair.

9/10


Dan Brotzel

Things In Jars by Jess Kidd is published in hardback by Canongate, priced £14.99 (ebook £11.99)

JESS Kidd's third novel Things In Jars takes her poetic and fluid writing style to Victorian London, where the inimitable Bridie Devine, red-haired widow and private detective, is asked to investigate the kidnapping of an extraordinary, hidden child. Stalked by a louche prize-fighting ghost, Bridie picks the threads of a gothic story that winds throughout the crime-ridden city and through a past she'd rather forget. Kidd's lyrical writing style might be hard to absorb at first, but readers will be swept up in the swell of her words as she vividly describes the sensory overload of London, and the chilling blend of life and things from beyond. Taking strong inspiration from magical realism and Irish folklore – Kidd 'was brought up in London as part of a large family from Mayo', her publishers say –Things In Jars is peculiar but striking.

8/10


Rosemin Anderson

:: NON-FICTION

How To Fail: Everything I've Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day is published in hardback by Fourth Estate, priced £12.99 (ebook £7.99)

START this collation of memoir/essay/celebrity interview/anthropological musing, and you may want to abandon it. After all, is being "mediocre" at tennis really failure? Did anyone genuinely feel like they fitted in at school? But as you burrow further into the questioning, self-assessing and highly self-aware mind and writings of Elizabeth Day, you find it opens you up to thoughts and feelings you might never have been able to articulate yourself, but had wanted to. On the breakdown of relationships, the language used around infertility, and particularly the chapter on female anger, she is eloquent and incredibly moving. While those who have listened to the How To Fail With Elizabeth Day Podcast may find it goes over much of the same ground, there is depth and power here. It will make you consider your own perceived failures, and provide a source of strength that will encourage you to be kinder to yourself.

8/10


Ella Walker

:: YOUNG ADULT FICTION

The Girl Who Came Out Of The Woods by Emily Barr is published in paperback by Penguin, priced £7.99 (ebook £4.99). Available May 2

ARTY is roughly 16, raised off the grid at The Clearing in the forests of south India. A happy life, a peaceful life. Arty is surrounded by her whole world, everyone she has ever known, everybody that she loves. An independent and bright girl, she has never stepped off the compound to experience life in the modern world. That is until an illness sweeps through her home, all those around her fall sick and start to die. She and her five-year-old brother leave everything behind and go to the city to look for help. With only a teddy bear and a name in her hands, she must find her way to the family she has never known and journey through an unfamiliar world she has never seen. Barr has woven two very different tales together, one of seclusion and corruption, and another of wide-eyed wonder and discovery. The themes that run throughout are complex but well handled, from the touching anniversary where the community touch the modern world for just one evening, to the adulation fix people try to find online with social media. Very much a story for modern times.

8/10


Rachel Howdle