MUST READS
THE WAY WE EAT NOW
by Bee Wilson (4th Estate £9.99, 400 pp)
‘For most people across the world, life is getting better but diets are getting worse. Our food is killing us, not through its lack, but through a hollow kind of abundance.’
This is the shocking premise of the latest book by acclaimed food writer Bee Wilson.
While hunger may be decreasing, ‘malnutrition now affects one in three people on the planet’, with a rapid increase in obesity and related conditions such as hypertension, stroke, diabetes and cancer.
Nor should your conscience be clear if you prefer clean eating to junk food: Wilson’s account of the disastrous effects of avocado farming in Mexico will make you see avocado toast in a new light.
She makes a powerful case for the need to transform our eating habits, so the consumption of cheap, fast food becomes as unacceptable as smoking or drink-driving.
THE ROSIE RESULT
by Graeme Simsion (Penguin £7.99, 384 pp)
In 2013 Graeme Simsion published The Rosie Project, a romantic comedy about a socially awkward Australian genetics scientist, Don Tillman, who devises a questionnaire to assess suitable partners.
Then he meets Rosie, a barmaid with a complicated family history who doesn’t meet any of his criteria, but is still strangely appealing.
A second novel followed: The Rosie Effect is set in New York, where Don and Rosie, now married, are preparing for parenthood.
This final volume of the trilogy finds Don and Rosie back in Melbourne, where their 11-year-old son, Hudson, is having problems at school; Don is facing a disciplinary hearing after a complaint about one of his lectures; and Rosie is struggling with her boss.
This funny novel tackles tough questions about family and love with a light touch and a big heart.
DIARY OF A SOMEBODY
by Brian Bilston (Picador £8.99, 288 pp)
The pseudonymous author Brian Bilston never intended to become the unofficial ‘poet laureate of Twitter’.
On his way to a reading by the then official laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, he tweeted a comic verse. When he looked at his phone, he found his tweet had been shared hundreds of times.
From there to the Costa Book Awards shortlist for this novel, it has been an epic poetic journey.
As the novel begins, on January 1, Brian contemplates a drab waste-land of disappointment: middle-aged, separated from his wife and with a dead-end job, he decides to write a poem a day, only to find his life transformed in surprising and sometimes alarming ways.
With echoes of Adrian Mole, Ed Reardon and The Diary Of A Nobody, this is perfect comfort reading for the dark winter days.