Book Choices for Autumn 2025

We will meet on Thursday 25th September, 8pm at The Ash Tree, Ashendon, to discuss 'A Chip Shop in Poznań' by Ben Aitken. 

Here are the choices for our next read:

My Journey to Lhasa by Alexandra David–Néel

The classic story of the only Western woman who succeeded in entering the Forbidden City.

An exemplary travelogue of danger and achievement by the Frenchwoman Madame Alexandra David–Néel of her 1923 expedition to Tibet, the fifth in her series of Asian travels, and her personal recounting of her journey to Lhasa, Tibet's forbidden city.

To penetrate Tibet and reach Lhasa, she used her fluency in Tibetan dialects and culture, disguised herself as a beggar with yak hair extensions and inked skin and tackled some of the roughest terrain and climate in the World. With the help of her young companion, Yongden, she willingly suffered the primitive travel conditions, frequent outbreaks of disease, the ever–present danger of border control and the military to reach her goal.

The determination and sheer physical fortitude it took for this woman, delicately reared in Paris and Brussels, is an inspiration for men and women alike.

David-Neel is famous for being the first Western woman to have been received by any Dalai Lama, and as a passionate scholar and explorer of Asia, hers is one of the most remarkable of all travellers' tales.

The Art of A Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

In 18th-century England, a widowed confectioner is drawn into a web of love, betrayal, intrigue and a battle of wits.

Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. Her confectionery shop on Piccadilly is barely turning a profit, and her suppliers are conspiring to put her out of business because they don’t like women in trade. 

Henry Fielding, the famous author-turned-magistrate, is threatening to confiscate the money in her husband’s bank account because he believes it might have been illicitly acquired. And even those who claim to be Hannah’s friends have darker intent.

Only William Devereux seems different. A friend of her late husband, Devereux helps Hannah unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his death. He also tells her about an Italian delicacy called 'iced cream'; an innovation she is convinced will transform the fortunes of her shop. But their friendship opens Hannah to speculation and gossip and draws Henry Fielding’s attention her way, locking her into a battle of wits more devastating than anything she can imagine.

Educated By Tara Westover

Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer, she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter, she salvaged in her father's junkyard.

Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd travelled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.