Author Patricia Nicol unveils a selection of the best books on: Camping

I was camping in Sussex a few weeks ago when the heat wave hit (briefly). For several hours before dawn, there was the most dramatic electrical storm: violent thunder, livid lightning and driving rain.

All that separated me from this tumult was a polyester pop-up. I lay awake, excited but also worried that the tent wouldn’t hold up. It is, but hopefully anyone packing a tent today makes it through easier times.

Camping in children’s literature often reflects a spirit of carefree adventure: think Swallows And Amazons and the Famous Five. In adult books, there are more complex things to tie together.

A powerful and original debut novel, The Stranding by Kate Sawyer, is set in a post-apocalyptic future. Ruth, a teacher in her twenties, takes time off from work to go hiking in New Zealand. But his arrival coincides with a cataclysmic global event. Her portable pop-up tent becomes a shelter for her and a young man she meets in a way that would have previously seemed unimaginable.

British author Patricia Nicol has put together a selection of the best books on exam results, including Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason and Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls.

Raynor Winn’s extraordinary best-selling memoir, The Salt Path, recalls how, after losing a beloved home in middle age, Winn and her husband took on the challenge of hiking the South West Coastal Path. They often camped because they couldn’t afford a roof over their heads.

The book is fascinating and insightful into the scourge of rural poverty in many of England’s most sought-after summer holiday spots in Cornwall, Devon and Dorset.

Perhaps my favorite novel I read last summer, The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, is set in the summer “camp” of a posh East Coast American family that has been passed down from generation to generation. the other. I don’t think anyone sleeps under canvas, but in moldy, dilapidated cabins with bugs in their walls and nature all around.

The Paper Palace is located in the middle of a forest, by a lake, where people wake up every morning and bathe. It is its own closed world.

If you find yourself camping as fall approaches, hopefully it will be hassle-free.