The Reading List: Cycling
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Bicycle by Helen Pidd £14.99
As The Independent continues its Save Our Cyclists campaign, it's worth mugging up on ways to make cycling safer than it is. Helen Pidd's practical guide for the ordinary or would-be cyclist offers lessons in everything from staying upright to pedalling in high heels.
Racing
The Rider by Tim Krabbé; £8.99
A paean to pain and existential short story-cum-memoir, this timeless classic, written in the Seventies by the Dutch writer, cyclist and chess champion better known here for The Vanishing, gives the reader a backie as it weaves along the mind-bendingly brutal yet uplifting course of a half-day race in France.
Culture
Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne; £9.99
Not so much a book about cycling as a diary-meets-manifesto and sprawling travelogue that rides into the mind of a Talking Head as the musician and cultural observer offers his take on cities as diverse as Baltimore and Buenos Aries – and their people – from the perch of his beloved folding bike.
Tour de France
Put Me Back on My Bike: In Search of Tom Simpson by William Fotheringham; £8.99
Veteran Tour correspondent Fotheringham's biography of a troubled world champion, Olympian and the first Briton to wear the yellow jersey is as gripping as it is enlightening – and sad.Watched by thousands as he took on the fearsome Mont Ventoux in 1967, a drug and brandy-addled Simpson keeled over and died.
Design
Cyclepedia: A Tour of Iconic Bicycle Designs by Michael Embacher, £19.95
This sumptuous photographic anthology of bicycle design is so drool-inducing it ought to be sold in brown paper. Covering 90 years of strange and beautiful cycle shapes, from the classic to the bizarre, it is also a tribute to the passion of its Austrian architect compiler. A book of few words, though it does have a foreword by free-wheeling fashion mogul Sir Paul Smith.
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