HALF TIME
Nigel Owens
£9.95, Y Lolfa

Rugby and being gay don’t exactly go together. Traditionally, it’s a sport that has always been viewed, like boxing, as a bastion of heterosexuality, which is why when Wales’ most-capped player Gareth Thomas came out late last year it was such big news. Before Thomas, though, in 2007 the respected international rugby referee Nigel Owens went public about being gay. Essentially, this autobiography is the story of his struggle coming to terms with who he really is. The book opens in April 1996 when Owens was an entertainer and stand-up comic as well as being a pretty decent sportsman, but despite the success he was all chewed up inside. Confused and ashamed about his sexuality, he became obsessed with believing he was fat to the point that he ended up suffering from bulimia and abusing steroids. Owens reached such despair that he decided to commit suicide before his loved ones discovered his big secret. He went to the top of a mountain above where he grew up and took an overdose of sleeping pills, as well as carrying a shotgun just in case they didn’t work. After his family saved him, he realised he needed to confront his demons, specifically by accepting his sexuality. What marks this out from the slew of airbrushed autobiographies that flood the market these days is its coruscating honesty, its willingness to tell the un-PR’d truth. This is probably because it’s clear throughout the book that Owens feels he has hidden his true self for far too long as it is. A brave, inspiring story well told.

INFORMATION IS BEAUTIFUL
David McCandless
£20, Collins
Over the past 20 years, technology has transformed the way we live and, in particular, how we receive information. Information rains down on us now from so many different sources and with such ceaselessness it’s pretty dizzying for our poor, little brains. The solution is this book. What writer and designer David McCandless has done is genius. He’s taken the surveys, statistics, facts and theories that bombard us every second of every single day and has morphed them into a visual smörgåsbord. From dry data about serious subjects, like the most common causes of death around the world or the most endangered species, to sillier stuff like vintage years for wine or the top hangover cures – for the vino fallout, obviously – are transformed from bog-standard bites of information into small pieces of pop art that engage so much you end up learning more, but without realising it. In the introduction, McCandless asks, “… Can a book with minimum text, rammed with diagrams, maps and charts, still be exciting and readable?” The answer is, most definitely, yes. The ideal encyclopaedia for the information age.

PARIS TANGO
Carla Coulson
£25, Lantern
I’m always wary of coffee-table books, primarily because they do what they say on the tin: they just sit around on coffee-tables not actually being read. My point being: what’s the point of a book if no-one is flicking through its pages? So when I opened up Paris Tango, a coffee-table book that takes a tour around the French capital, I was a tough audience to win over, not just because of my coffee-table-book phobia, but also because I lived there for a while back in a previous life and have a huge affection for the place so was worried it might not do it justice. From the first few pages, though, I realised that this is a paean to Paris and its unique spirit. In 2000, Carla Coulson gave up a well-paid job and enviable lifestyle in Sydney to move to Florence to pursue her real passion to become a photographer. Fast-forward 10 years and she’s now firmly established for her shoots in the glossy mag world and living in Paris. The original motivation for writing and photographing the city was because, when she first arrived, she very much felt like an alien abroad. That’s what I really like about the book; it doesn’t just tell how great a place Paris is, it genuinely reveals some of the difficulties of integrating into a foreign culture. So she shares her tips for befriending the locals, understanding their idiosyncrasies, as well as, capturing the essence of contemporary Paris through interviewing and picturing everyone from artists, Moulin Rouge showgirls, perfumiers and all manner of colourful City Of Light folk. A beautiful, beautiful book that doesn’t deserve to gather dust on a coffee-table.

Jason Jones dances with words