Read This: Books under the Radar is a weekly post written by a guest author – often a friend of mine, someone I’ve met on my writerly travels, or an author I admire – who recommends three books they think deserve more recognition. If you’re interested in buying any of the books, please click on the covers and give these hidden gems some love. You can see the full list of books which have been selected, as well as the author’s latest book on Bookshop.org, where you can have a browse and buy any that take your fancy. Happy reading!
Read This: Adam Weymouth
I read Adam’s first non-fiction book, Kings of the Yukon just before we taught together on an Editing Fiction and Non-fiction course for Arvon, and I loved it. I’m lucky enough to have been send a proof of his next, Lone Wolf, which argh! I still haven’t managed to read. Too many books, too little time. But I am certain I’ll love it. Here’s what he has to say about himself:
I am a freelance writer and journalist, living on the south coast of England. I work for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian, The BBC, The Atlantic and Granta. My first book, Kings of the Yukon, tells the story of a four month canoe trip across Alaska, examining the decline of the king salmon and exploring how that decline is impacting on the many communities, and the ecosystems, which depend on it. The book won both the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and the Lonely Planet/ Stanfords Adventure Travel Book of the Year. My new book, Lone Wolf, will be published by Penguin on 29th May 2025.
Bluesky – adamweymouth.bsky.social
Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Random Family is an incredible accomplishment. It tells the true story of two Puerto Rican women, Coco and Jessica, coming of age in the Bronx in the late 1980s, and traces their lives and those of their families from their teenage days up until the early 2000s. For eleven years LeBlanc immersed herself in her characters’ lives, living with them, attending their court hearings, playing with their kids, and the result is an astonishingly intimate look into these women’s worlds and minds.
Both women are entangled in the drug trade that is always present on the street, their boyfriends dealers, their families users. There is the eternal promise of striking it rich, but in reality they are trapped in a cycle of prison sentences, absent fathers and their friends dying far too young. Both women are remarkable, resourceful, loyal, and forever optimistic, desperate to provide better for their children then what they had themselves, but their circumstances render any choices ultimately futile. LeBlanc’s approach is deeply empathetic and non-judgemental, and Random Family does a better job than any book I know of showing how impossible it can be to escape from the world you are born into.
Encounters with the Archdruid by John McPhee
I could choose any number of John McPhee books, but this one had a profound affect on me. It is a profile of the environmentalist David Brower, among other things founder of Friends of the Earth and Executive Director of the Sierra Club. But in order to construct his profile, McPhee places Brower in three situations alongside what he terms his “ideological enemies”: on a hike through the Glacier Peak Wilderness with a man who wants to mine it; exploring a remote island with a man who wants to develop it; and rafting down the Glen Canyon with a man who wants to dam it.
McPhee comes along for the ride each time, quietly observing his subjects as they argue about the dual values of wilderness and progress, all set against a backdrop of some of the States’ most magnificent landscapes. I had no idea that you could create a non-fiction narrative in this way until I read this book; as so often, McPhee shows how creative you can be with reality. And despite being more than fifty years old, Brower’s discussions with his enemies feel just as relevant, and just as unresolved, as they ever did.
Modern Nature by Derek Jarman
I have just finished this and so it’s very much on my mind. Jarman’s diaries cover 1989 and the best part of 1990. He has recently bought Prospect Cottage, in Dungeness, and much of the journal is taken up with his descriptions of making a garden in the shingle of the beach, in the shadow of the nuclear power station, the most unpromising of locations. Jarman has been diagnosed as HIV positive, and his friends are dying all around him. He gardens in spite of this, and in spite of his awareness of climate change, which he was already acutely aware of, four decades ago.
It veers between the heartbreaking and the uproarious, but whether writing about his childhood, his yearning for a lost London, or the details of his lavender cuttings, it is always a pleasure to spend time in his company. When much of the global narrative feels hopeless, there is something inspiring in Jarman’s conviction to tend to what he can, to prioritise beauty and meaning. His conviction that creation matters, whether in his garden, his films or his communities, is life-affirming. He would die three years later, but his legacy, and his garden, carry on.
All these recommendations sound amazing, although the only writer I’ve heard of in these three is Jarman and I haven’t read anything by him. What did I say up top? So many books, so little time. Have you read any of these? If you’d like to be told about future Read This recommendations, you can follow me on Instagram, or subscribe to my newsletter.
More Read This: Books Under the Radar
Lou Morrish author of Women of War
Francesca Ramsay author of Pinch Me
Sarah Leipciger author of Moon Road
Tim Chapman university librarian
Juliet West author of The Faithful
Lindsay Hunter author of Hot Springs Drive
Gina Chung author of Sea Change
Susmita Bhattacharya author of Table Manners
Vanessa Harbour author of Safe
Freya North author of The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne
Judith Heneghan author of Birdeye
Clare Mackintosh author of I Promise it won’t always Hurt like This
Barney Norris author of Undercurrent
Jo Leevers author of The Last Time I saw You
Alice Winn author of In Memmoriam
Anna Mazzola author of The House of Secrets
Alice Peterson author of The Saturday Place
Jenna Smith bookblogger
Lucy Atkins author of Windmill Hill
LV Matthews author of To Love a Liar
Ruth Thomas author of The Snow and the Works on the Northern Line
Jo Furniss author of Dead Mile
Nina Stibbe author of Went to London, Took the Dog
Nussaibah Younis author of Fundamentally
Cara Hunter author of Making a Killing
Leena Norms author of Half-Arsed Human
Cherie Jones author of How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House
Cate Baum author of The Land of Hope
Carole Burns author of Another Country
Sally Hughes, book blogger
Chloe Lane author of Arms and Legs
Tamsin Hope Thomas newsletter subscriber