Damian Barr

You Will Be Safe HereMaggie & Me ‘We’re not all in the same boat. We are in the same storm’ #BigScottishBookClub PhD FRSA FRSL He/Him https://t.co/hu4T32GHzV

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Book Recommendations:

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Recommended by Damian Barr

@louisewelsh00 @PenguinUKBooks @LGBTHistoryScot It’s such an english book and so very particular and I love it. He was edited by Diana A. I was introduced to him@by @tiffanymurray when he was out of print.good to see him back where he belongs! (from X)

1958. Reprinted. 154 pages. Pictorial dust jacket over green cloth. Black and white illustrated frontispiece. Pages and binding are presentable with no major defects. Minor issues present such as mild cracking, inscriptions, inserts, light foxing, tanning and thumb marking. Overall a good condition item. Boards have mild shelf wear with light rubbing and corner bumping. Some light marking and sunning. Unclipped jacket has moderate edgewear with chips, tears, and creasing. Light tanning to spine and edges.

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Recommended by Damian Barr

@theguyliner @amateuradam Love this for you! And loved that book! (from X)

In the US edition of this international bestseller, Adam Kay channels Henry Marsh and David Sedaris to tell us the "darkly funny" (The New Yorker) -- and sometimes horrifying -- truth about life and work in a hospital. Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships. Welcome to the life of a first-year doctor. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, comedian and former medical resident Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the front lines of medicine. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking by turns, this is everything you wanted to know -- and more than a few things you didn't -- about life on and off the hospital ward. And yes, it may leave a scar.

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Recommended by Damian Barr

@Matt_Casbourne @OSMANstudio @canongatebooks This is such a great book! And lovely to see @Sathnam backing it too! (from X)

A coming-of-age story set in Birmingham in the 1980s and 1990s, The Go-Between opens a window into a closed migrant community living in a red-light district on the wrong side of the tracks. The adult world is seen through Osman's eyes as a child: his own devout Pashtun patriarchal community, with its divide between the world of men and women, living cheek-by-jowl with parallel migrant communities. The orthodox attend a mosque down the road from the prostitutes and pimps. Children balance Western school teachings with cultural traditions. Alternative masculinities compete with strict gender roles, and female erasure and honour-based violence are committed, even as empowering female friendships prevail. The stories Osman tells, some fantastical and humorous, others melancholy and even harrowing, take us from the Birmingham of Osman's childhood to the banks of the river Kabul and the river Indus, and, eventually, to the London of his teenage years. Osman weaves in and out of these worlds, struggling with the dual burdens of racism and community expectations, as he is forced to realise it is no longer possible to exist in the spaces in between.

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Recommended by Damian Barr

@calflyn @monisha_rajesh @ScribePedersen Was a joy having you there! I love yer book and I’m delighted to see it doing so well. #BigScottishBookClub @IWC_Media @BBCScotComms @markmdownie (from X)

A beautiful, lyrical exploration of the places where nature is flourishing in our absence "[Flyn] captures the dread, sadness, and wonder of beholding the results of humanity's destructive impulse, and she arrives at a new appreciation of life, 'all the stranger and more valuable for its resilence.'" --The New Yorker Some of the only truly feral cattle in the world wander a long-abandoned island off the northernmost tip of Scotland. A variety of wildlife not seen in many lifetimes has rebounded on the irradiated grounds of Chernobyl. A lush forest supports thousands of species that are extinct or endangered everywhere else on earth in the Korean peninsula's narrow DMZ. Cal Flyn, an investigative journalist, exceptional nature writer, and promising new literary voice visits the eeriest and most desolate places on Earth that due to war, disaster, disease, or economic decay, have been abandoned by humans. What she finds every time is an "island" of teeming new life: nature has rushed in to fill the void faster and more thoroughly than even the most hopeful projections of scientists. Islands of Abandonment is a tour through these new ecosystems, in all their glory, as sites of unexpected environmental significance, where the natural world has reasserted its wild power and promise. And while it doesn't let us off the hook for addressing environmental degradation and climate change, it is a case that hope is far from lost, and it is ultimately a story of redemption: the most polluted spots on Earth can be rehabilitated through ecological processes and, in fact, they already are.