Long live the pedometer! 5 books you'll want to read in May

Bark skins

Annie Proulx

We had to gather courage for a while to get to the Bark skins by Annie Proulx to begin with. After all, the book is 800 pages long, so you will need to make some time for it. But this novel is well worth that. As a reader, you are unceremoniously planted in the wild forest of North America, still called New France in the late seventeenth century. A wilderness where mosquitoes cover your skin like a fur skin, and where it gets so cold that deer stand upright frozen in the forest.

Proulx's history spans three centuries and begins with loggers René Sel and Charles Duquet, two absolute opposites. Sel marries a simple but wise Indian, while Duquet strives for wealth and builds a timber empire. It is about them and their offspring, but the real protagonist is encroaching capitalism. That destroys climate, nature and peoples with a cruel hand. Something the current US president denies. 'Not everything that is broken can be glued,' Proulx writes at the end of this impressive novel. You wish she was wrong.

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(De Geus)

The cloud musician

Ali Bader

In the concise novel The cloud musician by Ali Bader, we follow cellist Nabiel during his disengagement from motherland Iraq. The terror he suffers as a somewhat dandy-like creative gradually becomes unbearable - Islam considers his music sinful, unlike the many porn channels on television. Nabiel flees to Brussels, but even Europe is not as harmonious as he hoped. Bader does not need many words to make this history palpable.

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The honest and painful The cloud musician gives the reader much food for thought.
(Publisher Jurgen Maas)

Ode to E-numbers

Rosanne Hertzberger

Fresh and home-cooked food is the healthiest, so away with ready meals and E-numbers in our food. In the current times, when one diet type succeeds another and, as an ordinary consumer, you can no longer see the forest for the superfoods, microbiologist Rosanne Hertzberger presents an interesting, thought-provoking counterpoint.

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In her smooth and engaging book Ode to E-numbers she challenges prevailing myths about food and food technology. Such as the idea that E-numbers are carcinogenic, that processed food is less healthy, that dividing or manipulating crops is bad and that we should all start eating like our ancestors again.
(AmboAnthos)

Eat move sleep

Tom Rath

A book in the same corner is Eat move sleep by Tom Rath - who takes a different view from Hertzberger on some points. The average person sleeps too little, moves too little and eats too much and too unhealthily, three things that are also closely related.

In his book Eat move sleep. How small choices lead to big changes Tom Rath gives tips on how to do things differently and shows that it doesn't have to be so complicated. The author is an expert by experience: he suffers from the rare Von Hippel-Lindau genetic disorder and therefore has all kinds of tumours in his body, which he manages to keep under control by exercising and sleeping a lot and eating healthy.[bol_product_links block_id=”bol_5910513eedfe9_selected-products" products="9200000071290480″ name="a4m" sub_id="eat move" link_color="003399″ subtitle_color="000000″ pricetype_color="000000″ price_color="CC3300″ deliverytime_color="009900″ background_colour="FFFFFF" border_colour="D2D2D2″ width="250″ cols="1″ show_bol_logo="0″ show_price="1″ show_rating="1″ show_deliverytime="1″ link_target="1″ image_size="1″ admin_preview="1″]

For example, he shows that a pedometer is a smart tool, that it is better not to put healthy food at the bottom of the fridge as usual, but rather at eye level, and that you should not work longer or try harder during important events, but rather sleep more.
(Boom Publishers)

Fuzzie

Hanna Bervoets

This year, she won two awards at the same time, a rightful confirmation that Hanna Bervoets is one of the most interesting young authors in Dutch literature. Bervoets is a researcher and uses her soon-to-be-composed novels to look at themes from different angles.

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In her sixth novel Fuzzie she explores what affection is. Her characters find comfort in a soft fluffy ball. Compared to her previous novels as Ivanov or All there was Fuzzie is admittedly slightly less exciting, but with its freer, more daring form, Bervoet takes an interesting step forward literarily.
(AtlasContact)