So I was on NetGalley the other day, totally minding my own business, and I stumbled (in a super graceful manner) across these covers. They aren't books I would normally read, but the covers...oh, man. They're actually kind of stunning. Of course, I'm a total cover freak. So maybe it's just me. But I can't resist them.
Then, as this is my usual train of thoughts, I though 'HEY!' I'll put this on my blog and have it foreverrrrrr. Because that's totally just what I do. Also, you kind of really need to see these two colorful covers.
So without further rambling, here they are.
In the summer of 1965 the informal parties that Ken Kesey was holding at his house in Palo Alto California were about to evolve into what became known as the Acid Tests.
These spontaneous anarchic gatherings spread their tentacles far and wide until an entire generation seemed to be under their spell. Fifty years on from the Merry Pranksters multimedia mayhem, acclaimed author Rob Chapman explores in crystalline detail the history, precedents and cultural impact of LSD, from the earliest experiments in painting with light and immersive environments to the thriving avant-garde scene that existed in San Francisco long before the Grateful Dead and the Fillmore Auditorium.
In the UK, he documents an entirely different history, and one that has never been told before. It has its roots in fairy tales and fairgrounds, the music hall and the dead of Flanders fields, in the Festival of Britain and that peculiarly British strand of surrealism that culminated in the Magical Mystery Tour. Sitars and Sergeant Pepper, surfadelica and the Soft Machine, light shows and love-ins - the mind-expanding effects of acid were to redefine popular culture as we know it.
It's a story that you think you know, but no one has laid out the narrative quite like this before. Chapman documents psychedelia's utopian reverberations - and the dark side of its moon - in a shimmering day-glo portrait where the sublime, the sinister and the just plain silly co-exist in imperfect harmony.
The funny, moving and heartfelt family saga continues in the third instalment in Bluebell Gadsby's diaries.
It's the summer holidays and Flora has gone off with Dad to the exotic set of his new film and Mum is at home having a much-needed rest with baby Pumpkin. Bluebell, Twig and Jas have been sent to stay with Grandma at Horsehill in the countryside.
With Grandma keen that the children get as much fresh air as possible, they are sent off on bikes to go wild swimming and befriend the boys next door. With so much freedom, they can't help but get into trouble, and Grandma doesn't seem to be as capable as looking after them as she should be...
Natasha Farrant has worked in children's publishing for almost twenty years, running her own literary scouting agency for the past ten. She is the author of the Carnegie-longlisted and Branford Boase-shortlisted YA historical novel The Things We Did For Love, as well as two successful adult novels. Natasha was shortlisted for the Queen of Teen Award 2014, and the second Bluebell Gadbsy book, Flora in Love, was longlisted for the Guardian Children's Prize. She lives in London with her husband and daughters.
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