Cathartic biography and visceral fiction chosen by Alex Jones, Amanda Abbington, Graham Norton and JJ Chalmers

8 November 2022

BBC Two's book club Between the Covers is back, and Sara Cox's celebrity guests are sharing more of their favourite reads. This week, take a new perspective on education, enter the world of freediving, and expand your horizons with two very different novels.

Each week we reveal the favourite books brought in by guests on Between the Covers. In the first episode of the latest series, Alex Jones, Amanda Abbington, Graham Norton and JJ Chalmers share their reading recommendations with the nation.

Episode one - Favourite books from our guests

The cover says: Tara Westover grew up preparing for the end of the world. She was never put in school, never taken to the doctor. She did not even have a birth certificate until she was nine years old. At sixteen, to escape her father's radicalism and a violent older brother, Tara left home. What followed was a struggle for self-invention, a journey 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.

Alex says: “This is a book that has stayed with me. I read it about six years ago and it's a memoir. Tara Westover was born to a family in Idaho, in the mountains in America. She wasn't registered as a person, basically her dad didn't register her, and they had no medical records. They lived this life where they were survivalists, so they'd make these packs for the end of the world.

Tara wanted an education. And it's her journey, educating herself firstly and then going on to uni. She goes to Harvard, ends up in Cambridge as a historian. And she writes this looking back at her life. When she gets to Cambridge [the question is] has she gone too far to ever go back to her family?

So Gene, the dad, he’s charismatic but he does run this scrap-yard and she as a child, and the brothers, had to work there. They have burns, they are crushed by all this metal. But they don't see doctors and instead the mother comes up with all these homeopathic remedies - which she then makes a lot of money from. So the family make a lot of money, and then Tara goes down her path of getting her education, and they just become further and further apart. The distance grows between them. It’s amazing.”

The cover says: While on assignment in Greece, journalist James Nestor witnessed something that confounded him: a man diving 300 feet below the ocean's surface on a single breath of air and returning four minutes later, unharmed and smiling. This man was a freediver, and his amphibious abilities inspired Nestor to seek out the secrets of this little-known discipline.

In Deep, Nestor embeds with a gang of extreme athletes and renegade researchers who are transforming not only our knowledge of the planet and its creatures, but also our understanding of the human body and mind.

Amanda says: “I read it a lot! I read it once every couple of years. It’s brilliant. It's so good.

So [James] is a sports-journalist and scientist, and he's asked to cover a freediving competition, which he thinks is really trivial and ridiculous. He doesn't really understand. He covers the freediving competition, and is so taken by it that becomes a freediver.

He then travels the world and meets very old Chinese ladies who dive for pearls, and can hold their breath for eight minutes at a time, and speaks to submariners who are trying to save the oceans and conserve them, and he learns to free-dive. It's all about his journey. He said it’s such an amazing experience, and makes us realise how tiny and fragile we are as human beings.

I'm terrified of it. So this was my thing. I went scuba-diving this year for the first time because I wanted to overcome my fear of drowning. It is a catharsis kind of book.”

The cover says: In 1976, Dana dreams of being a writer. In 1815, she is assumed a slave. When Dana first meets Rufus on a Maryland plantation, he's drowning. She saves his life - and it will happen again and again. Neither of them understands his power to summon her whenever his life is threatened, nor the significance of the ties that bind them. And each time Dana saves him, the more aware she is that her own life might be over before it's even begun.

Graham says: “I'm kind of surprised that this is my 'Bring your own Book' because it's a genre that I don't particularly read. It's sort of science fiction-y and fantasy.

It’s set in the 1970s - and it was written in the '70s by Octavia E. Butler, who died when she was only 58. This woman, she’s Edana, and she’s a black American woman living in Los Angeles. Edana starts being shunted through time, back to pre-Civil War America, to the time of slavery, and what brings her there each time is that she's got to save her forefather.

Basically, she’s saving herself. But her forefather is a white slave owner. It sounds like such a trite way to deal with a really serious topic like slavery, but it's fascinating because you're seeing the black experience of a slave through the eyes of a modern black woman.

I must warn you, it’s pretty visceral and there is a lot of violence in it and stuff. It never goes quite as bad as you think it might, but it is pretty out there. But, I loved it. And apparently all her other books are more science fiction-y fantasy. She called this a ‘grim fantasy’, that’s what she called it. Apparently she’s fabulous.”

The cover says: At 6'6", 240 pounds, Forrest Gump is a difficult man to ignore. Follow Forrest from the football dynasties of Bear Bryant to the Vietnam War, from encounters with Presidents Johnson and Nixon to pow-wows with Chairman Mao. Go with Forrest to Harvard University, to a Hollywood movie set, on a professional wrestling tour, and into space on the oddest NASA mission.

JJ says: “I have not cheated on my assignment here and just watched the film. It's a brilliant film, but this is an even better book. Forrest goes on an even bigger adventure than he does in the film. He is a different character in physical appearance. Not necessarily in nature to Tom Hanks’ portrayal of him; I mean his adventures are so wild. SPOILER ALERT - he even goes to space. That’s how far Forrest Gump goes in this.

The thing I really love about it - I'm not a great reader, I’m dyslexic - but I found I just went through it at such a lick of pace because so much happens. And it's an amazing adventure. He's the sort of individual who says yes and then finds himself in predicaments, but a lot of the time these joyous, joyous places.

My wife actually recommended it to me, mainly because she said this is an easy book to read, and it certainly is that.”