Our lovely friends at the Tandem Collective have gathered some wee reading idea gems we can enjoy with our coffee over the next few months. This is just the first chapter to whet your appetite!

Humankind, by Rutger Bregman

Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think – and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society. It is time for a new view of human nature.
Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. The instinct to cooperate rather than compete, trust rather than distrust, has an evolutionary basis going right back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our politics and economics too. In this major book, international-bestselling author Rutger Bregman takes some of the world’s most famous studies and events and reframes them, providing a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history.

I want to read this book!

The perfect Coffee Companion for “Humankind” is definitely “The Paradox Blend”

The Metal Heart, by Caroline Lea

The Metal Heart is a hauntingly rich Second World War love story about courage, freedom and the essence of what makes us human during the darkest of times. Orkney, 1940. Five hundred Italian prisoners-of-war arrive to fortify these remote and windswept islands. Resentful islanders are fearful of the enemy in their midst, but not orphaned twin sisters Dorothy and Constance. Already outcasts, they volunteer to nurse all prisoners who are injured or fall sick. Soon Dorothy befriends Cesare, an artist swept up by the machine of war and almost broken by the horrors he has witnessed. She is entranced by his plan to build an Italian chapel from war scrap and sea debris, and something beautiful begins to blossom. But Con, scarred from a betrayal in her past, is afraid for her sister; she knows that people are not always what they seem. Soon, trust frays between the islanders and outsiders, and between the sisters – their hearts torn by rival claims of duty and desire.

I want to read this book!

The perfect coffee companion for “The Metal Heart” would be the “Hauntingly rich” Papua New Guinea

Finding Freedom in the Lost Kitchen, by Erin French

A life-affirming memoir about survival, renewal and the pleasure of bringing joy to people through food – from Erin French, owner and chef of the critically acclaimed The Lost Kitchen. Erin tells her story of multiple rock-bottoms, from medical student to pregnant teen, of survival as a jobless single mother, of pills that promised release but delivered addiction, of a man who seemed to offer salvation but ripped away her very sense of self. And of her son who became her guiding light as she slowly rebuilt her personal and culinary life around the solace she found in food-as a source of comfort, a sense of place, as a way of creating community and making something of herself, despite seemingly impossible odds.

I want to read this book

The perfect coffee companion for “Finding Freedom in the Lost Kitchen” has to be Chefs Blend!

The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave

This compulsive thriller centres on the disappearance of an ideal husband who may not be who he says he is and the suspenseful relationship between his daughter and the stepmother charged with protecting her. Soon to be a major TV series starring Julia Roberts. Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his new wife, Hannah: protect her. Hannah knows exactly who Owen needs her to protect – his sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. And who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother. As her increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, his boss is arrested for fraud and the police start questioning her, Hannah realises that her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey might hold the key to discovering Owen’s true identity, and why he disappeared. Together they set out to discover the truth. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realise that their lives will never be the same again…

I want to read this book!

The perfect coffee companion for “The Last Thing He Told Me”: we’d go for the Ipanema Estate from Brazil

Hope you found some interesting ideas for your June reading. We’ll have more for you soon