Book Reviews (30/01/19)

Hi there - as well as being a keen blogger, I'm a bit of a bookworm as well.

So, I'm going to post reviews of the last few books I've read - as I read another one I'll take the last one of the list (although I will leave some on for longer that that!)

All the reviews are also posted on Amazon UK - you may care to visit the links if you think the book sounds interesting. All reviews are put up under the the name "Stewart M - Victoria, Australia".  You can find all 327 here.
reviews

If you feel like leaving a comment - there is a comment box way down at the bottom of the page. Tell me what you think.

A Short History of England - Simon Jenkins  4/5

Starting in 410 and ending in 2018 this a rapid, but rather good, account of English history. 

For me the book has two distinct sections – the first is the history up to the time of Queen Victoria, and the second is the history that follows.   The marked difference between these two sections seems to be the speed at which time passes in the book.

In the first section time passes quickly, Kings and Queens come and go, wars are fought, alliances formed and fractured all in the space of a few pages.  The relevance of these sections to today may still be real – especially in regards to English relationships with Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and possibly even the wider area of Europe – but they feel too distant to connect with.

In the second section the rush of time slows – the cast of 1000s becomes more familiar and the objects and events mentioned seem far more accessible.  We still use Victorian railway tunnels and England’s industrial geography (if it still has one!) is defined by the use of resources that are no longer prized.  So, for me at least, this second section was about a lived history – either my own, those of my more elderly relatives – rather than a recalled history.

I read the first sections not entirely enjoying the rush of history, but embraced the second section whole-heartedly for its clarity and its sense of story.

Recommended.

Rain - Melissa Harrison   4.5/5

I’m not sure that the English talk about the weather more than other people, but I am sure that English weather gives more opportunities for conversations should you be minded to have one.

This delightful, if slim, volume is a conversation about walking in the rain.  Based on four walks in (generally) gentle English countryside this is not so much a book about places as a book about a set of unified experiences – walking in the rain, making sure that despite of the rain you don’t get (too) wet and possibly most importantly knowing that only walking in fine weather robs you of some of the varied experiences that walking and landscape can bring. 

A walk without a rewarding view is not less than a walk that provides one – its just a walk that provides opportunities to see different things, feel different things and find different experiences. 

Some of the reviews here suggest that the writing in this book fails to create a sense of place or location – and while I can see what these reviewers mean – I think it misses the point of the book.  I think the book is about processes rather than place, ie the walking and the raining are more important than the location.

I really liked this book and its delicate voice – I would strongly recommend it.

Border Districts  - Gerald Murnane  2/5

This is a book about an author who moves away from the city to live in a very small country town. It seems to be about the things that catch his eye, and the relationship between these things and his past life in the city.  It is also about the books he has read and the ones he last left behind.  So far, so good.

However, I found this book rather confusing.  Not because the writing is unclear or poor – far from it in fact.  But rather because I never really came to understand what the author was trying to doing with his writing.

Some versions of the book have a sub-title that reads ‘a fiction’.  And this is where my confusion starts.

The book is clearly autobiographical (the story line is identical to the recent life of the author), and the voice of the books narrator is clearly the author’s own voice.  So, is fact? Is it fiction? Is it some version of both – and does it matter anyway?  Well, I assume it matters or why identify it as ‘a fiction’.

The structure of many of the passages is also strange, in that books narrator often tells you what he was thinking about as he was writing the sentence or paragraph before last.  So the focus of the book keeps tracking backwards, looping around an idea rather than looking at (more or less) head on.

There is a more than decent change that I have missed the whole point of the book – distracted as I was by its form – but it really did not work for me.

Proceed with caution.

Norse Mythology  - Neil Gaiman  4/5

I’m not completely sure I understand what Neil Gaiman was trying to achieve by retelling this set of well-known stories, but what he has produced is a simple, easy to read version of Norse Mythology. 

All the characters you are likely to encountered elsewhere are there – Thor, Odin, Loki and such like – as well as many minor players that are no less, shall we say, marvellous (!).  The stories run from the birth of the world, to its end with few storylines left hanging. Loki is bad, Thor strong, but rather stupid, and Odin is wise. 

While all this is familiar, what seems to be missing is any real sense of rhythm or poetry in the words – the stories are told in a matter of fact, which cant hide how simple (of often silly) the plot lines are.  But this simplicity is also a strength – there is none of the false ‘quoth he’ kinds of dialogue that can sometimes be used to signify myth, or times go past.

These are simple tales of courage, strength and feats of arms.  They are not subtle, and (unlike many other sets of myths) I doubt they are burdened by any assumptions that they have to make real sense, or be taken as literal truth.

I rather enjoyed them!

The Inner Life of Animals  - Peter Wohlleben  1.5 /5

Not many books defeat me – but this one did.

There is almost no question that non-human animals are so much more than just biological machines that are slaves to instinct or the will of DNA.

So I think it’s unfortunate that this book, that could have been so illuminating, is written in way where the style of writing becomes a huge barrier to embracing what the author is talking about.

The tone of the book is almost entirely anecdotal, and while there are references to scientific studies, these references are often undercut by the way they are used. As examples: a study where pigeons can identify which images that will result in food or not is cited as an example of counting because a large number of images are used.   A famous example of a ‘counting horse’ is explained by the fact that the horse was picking up micro cues from its owner, but the author’s goats can count to two because the run towards the person who feeds them on his second visit to a field.

These things strike me as being rather sloppy – and they are not isolated examples.

The author does make an excellent point, that understanding how animals feel – and gaining insights into their inner lives – is important if we are to treat them as well as we can.  But I suspect people should look elsewhere for the best treatment of this important subject.

On Doubt  - Leigh Sales  5/5

This is really very good book - in a few short pages it outlines the case for the importance and doubt (or at least open minded questioning).  While the focus of the book is the impact of a lack of doubt on the operation of politics, much the same argument could be made for almost all decision-making.  Doubt and indecision are not the same thing - as this book makes clear.  Originally written 10 years ago, this version has a new chapter at the end of the book, which looks at how (apparently) absolute certainty has spread since the original essay was written.

In many ways this is a saddening book, as it clearly outlines how much of the current debate in the world is driven by opinion, with little of no reference to factual or imperial data.  However, it also makes the point that there are people (Sales in this case) who intend to keep asking difficult questions.

I can only recommend this book most highly.

The Fly Trap  - Fredrik Sjokerg   5/5

At first glance, a book about the Hoverflies of a small Scandinavian Islands would seem to hold little attraction.  How can this subject, so small and so specialist, be of interest to anybody but the more most ardent entomologist?

Well, the truth is, this book manages this with ease and flair.  To take a line from elsewhere, to actually say this is a book about Hoverflies is the same as saying Moby Dick is a book about whales.

While the author does spent time talking about Hoverflies, they are just a vehicle to explore beauty, fascination and the knowledge of place.  Some people travel far around the world to find these things, but others (including the author) find such things in the local and the small.

This is a really wonderful book about how close observation can lead to a larger understanding and a greater appreciation of the things around us.   

For those not fond of insects, there is actually far more to this book than just the consideration of Hoverflies – but I’m not going to talk about those.

Go read the book. Go find out for yourself.

Very Highly Recommended.

The Handmaid's Tale  - Margaret Atwood   5/5

Despite being first published in 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale is very much a current book. 

The recent HBO series and the on-going way in which women are treated by the powerful are the backdrop to reading this book today.

At times I find reading books that come loaded with such a glowing praise to be a disappointment.  This is most definitely not the case with this book. 

I suspect that new readers of this book (i.e. me) would have to have been living under a rock in a remote part of the wilderness not to know at least something about the plot.  So, in many ways the book is no longer carried by it, but by its shear believability.  And that’s what makes the book really rather frightening.  

On an almost daily basis were hear stories of the way women are treated that could have been part of the back-story to this tale.

Wonderful, scary and awfully prescient.

Highly Recommended.

Seahenge  - Francis Pryor   2.5/5

This is a rather good book about prehistory – written by one of the more publicly well-known archaeologists. I think that Francis Pryor writes in a way that is aimed at the interested general public, rather than any form of specialist – and this means that this book – and a number of his others – is pretty much accessible to anybody.

In this book Pryor gets to write about two of his favourite things – prehistoric ritual sites in (mainly) the UK and himself.   This is not meant to be as snide as it probably seems, but the narrative structure of the book relies as much on the development of Pryor’s career as it does on the passing of time in pre-history.

If you don’t mind the inclusion of the ‘then I went to work in Canada’ and the ‘while I was washing the dishing, I realised that……’ sections of the book, it does read as a good introduction to prehistoric ritual sites within the UK.

Which brings me to the biggest single issue – despite the name of the book this is NOT a book about the ‘Seahenge’ ritual site.  While this site is included in the book, it occurs near the end, and it no more detail than some other sites.  If the book used its sun-heading  ‘a quest for life and death in Bronze Age Britain’ as its main title, this would be a more accurate description of the books content.

I do recommend this book as it seems to be a decent, wide ranging account, of a number of significant British Bronze Ages site – but it does not do what it says on the label.

For a more detailed account of Seahenge, you may have to look elsewhere.

Autumn  - Ali Smith   2.5/5

I have to admit that I struggled with this book. I admit this may say more about me than it does about the book, but there you go.

There are parts of the book I really liked, especially the interactions between the two main characters – but these sections do not make up the majority of the book. 

There are parts of this book I really did not like at all – the dream (or near death) sequences that start the book and reappear regularly and the (?) stream of consciousness sections that occur later in the book.  Neither seems to add much to the narrative – even if they are rather clever.

The book is set in a number of different times, the 60’s in London, the recent past and, most importantly around the time of the BREXIT vote.

I suspect that the development of the relationship between the two central charterers is mirror for the relationship between the UK and Europe.  There is initial engagement, benefit, separation and eventual division.

I would not go so far as to say ‘don’t bother’ – but I think that the fulsome praise on the front of this book is out of tune with my experience of it.

Proceed with caution.  

Early Humans  - Nick Ashton   5/5

The New Naturalist series is a classic natural history series, and this volume is a really worthwhile addition to the series.

To be able to fully understand what the book is about the rider ‘in Britain’ should be added to the title, as this is what the book is really about.  Not that long ago the history of Early Humans did not really include Britain, with the ancient action happening elsewhere.  But this book puts that record straight.

With habitation (albeit, not continuous) stretching back over a million years Britain does have something to say about the history of early humans.

I think this book is a little easier to read from cover to cover than some other NN series books as the chronology gives the book far more of a narrative than many of the other books in the series.  (and that’s not a criticism of the other books)  I also think that the writing in this volume is wonderfully clear, and sprinkled with enough anecdotes and asides to keep everyone interested.

In some ways (and I am sure this is not intentional) the book reads like a companion volume to The History of the Axe (Miles) that covers much of the same time period, but with a far wider geographic scope.

Early Humans is wonderful, informative read that I highly recommend.

Uncommon Ground  - Dominick Tyler   5/5

Uncommon Ground is a simple book, with a grand purpose.   The underlying idea of this book, and a number of other recent publications, is that to be able to know a place you have to be able to describe it – and this means that unique places need unique words to describe them.

It’s a simple idea that was embraced unconsciously in the past in the development of dialect and vernacular.  Today, language seems more unified and less distinctive – and (according to the idea of this book) less able to describe the world in which we live.

Based on broad regions of the UK, the words in this book are drawn from a number of sources – history, geography, industry and even humour.

You may be able to tell, but I really liked this book – it’s a book that rewards browsing, but can also be read from cover to cover in a couple of evenings.  I started with the first and ended up doing the second.

I would suggest that if you are interested in the unique and varied nature of landscape, then this is a book you should read.  I would also suggest that if you don’t find the section on plastic bags in trees funny, you may need help!!

Highly Recommended.

The Gathering Tide - Karen Lloyd 4.5 /5

The Gathering Tide seeks to explore the shores – the ‘edgelands’ -  of Morecambe Bay’ – that much you get from the title.

This struck me as an interesting idea – there have been a few books that look at edges such as Edgelands and The Unofficial Countryside, both of which seek to look at generally overlooked landscapes.

This book takes a similar idea and turns it into really rather good travel writing.  The edge of Morecambe Bay is trapped between two huge landscapes, the expanse of the bay itself and the well-known and much loved hills of the Lake District.

In many ways I think this book is about the value of the local and the small – and the books journey takes along a narrow strip of landscape that may otherwise be overlooked.

I was lucky enough to live in this area years ago, and really liked the feeling of local knowledge that the book provides.  Although the content does stray away from the edges of the Bay at times this can be forgiven I think.  This is a book born of short walks, long views and local history.  It also seems to rain a good deal, which matches my memories of the area rather well!

A really rather wonderful book, that I would recommend highly.

Beyond the Fell Wall  - Richard Skelton  4.5/5

Drystone walls are a central element of many upland landscapes in the UK.  I was brought up with them on the Mendips in Somerset and they were a classic feature of the Lake District, where I lived for a while.

This little (less than 100 pages) book is a kind of homage to the walls of the Lake District.  This is not a book about how to build walls – it’s a book about the (possible) meaning and importance of walls.

With a mix of prose and poems the books explores how walls define, separate, protect and expose the living things around them.  It’s not a technical book, it’s an emotional book.

Although brief, the number of interesting ideas and turns of phrase it contains makes it more than worthwhile.

Highly recommended.

Village Christmas  - Laurie Lee  4.9 /5

This is a really splendid little book – 150 pages of quality and (for me) a feeling of nostalgia.

This is a book that is in love with the English countryside and the things that make (or maybe made) it special.  Laurie Lee needs no introduction as an author, and certainly not one from me, but I think this book contains the elements of his style that made him well known – a love of the local combined with a willingness to look beyond if needed.

The book is split into four sections based on the English seasons, with each section being about the same length.  There is snow, rain and the falling of leaves – none of which is unexpected.  But there is also humour, anger and passion.

The only thing I think is missing from the book is some indication of when the writing occurred – you can place the chapters to season but not to year.  I think the addition of a date would help in the interpretation of the writing – but this is both a minor and a personal point.

Highly recommended.

Walking the Woods and the Water -  Nick Hunt 4 /5

Walking the Woods and the Water is an account of a journey east through Europe.   The route of the journey is based on one walked in the 1930s by Patrick Leigh Fermor, which was described in three ‘classic’ volumes.

I’m not sure if you need to have read the original books to fully appreciate this this book, but I have not read them, and maybe this has coloured my thoughts on this current version.

I enjoyed this book, but I did find that it developed a rather familiar structure, in that there were just a few too many trips to the pub to sample local ales and not really enough historical context beyond that provided by the original books.

A few reviews have mentioned the ‘predictable’ political stance in the book – but I have to say the event when the author needs medical attention in Germany and gets it free of charge, is a notable example of where political predictability would seem to have a benefit.  Equally, the book, which is now a couple of years old, does seem to accurately identify the similarity of some aspects of European (and now world) politics that occurred in the 30s and today: growing calls for isolationism, the blaming of ‘others’ for all the worlds ills and an inward rather than outward view of the world.

I’m not sure the book is destined to be a classic, although its timing as a journey across Europe’s open boarders may make a volume that people look back on in the future.

Recommended.

Mountainscape -  Greg Whitton  4.5 /5

This is a slim but rather good volume of mountain landscape shots from the UK. While this may be a rather well worn photographic subject, Greg Whitton does manage to bring something new to his images.

The pictures are generally not big glossy and expansive.  Rather they are soft, delicate images that seem to rely more on detail than grandeur.  Sure, there are wide landscapes, but they seem to remain intimate.

One of the aspects I most liked about these pictures was their locations.  These are places most of us could visit – and in many cases I have.  So, the quality of the pictures comes not from ‘remoteness’ or ‘exoticness’, but from light and land that we can all see.

I have to say I like this book and recommend it highly.

Where Song Began -  Tim Low  4.5 /5

There are at least three reasons why I would recommend this book.

Firstly, although it clearly focuses on birds, there is enough additional information in this book about the ‘non-standard’ biology of Australia to make it worth reading simply for this aspect alone.

The second reason is the lucid way in which much of the current thinking about the evolution (or possibly more actually the radiation) of birds is presented.  Data based on DNA evidence and relationships can be rather overwhelming at times, but this is not the case in this book.

Thirdly, the book presents a wonderful case study of how prejudice and ‘narrow’ thinking can restrict the development of science.  In this case it was the preconception that Australia is a land of primitive and generally second-rate animals that hindered the development of our understanding of the role that Australia played in the development of songbirds.

So, is the book perfect?  Well, no its not.  At times I think that simply too many examples of biological relationships are used to make a point, so that the text feels like you are reading a list rather than a chapter. As a result I think the book may be about 20% too long.

That being said I would recommend the book most strongly:  I think it would be of interest to birders anywhere in the world, general natural history readers and in particular anybody wanting to find out more about Australian ecology.

Highly recommended.

Tribe - Sebastian Junger 5/5

Tribe is a short book – or maybe an extended essay – about the impact of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of the lives of (mainly) soldiers from around the world.  This may seem a relatively familiar topic, as it is often in the news, but what makes this book different is the way in which it seeks to explain why some groups of veterans seem to suffer from PTSD more than others.

I simple terms the book seems to suggest that the variation is due to differing levels of shared commitment and community connection between the soldiers and the “back at home” community.  So, soldiers who fought in unpopular wars doe less well then those that gain community support.   This difference is highlighted in the differencing ways in which soldiers in Americas recent wars have coped compared to those from Israel.

While written in a ‘popular’ fashion, the author provides lists of references and sources to the studies he cites – which gives the book a greater feeling of authority than some straight ‘opinion pieces’ about the impact of war.

I’m not sure the book says anything remarkably, but what it does say, it says clearly.

I would think that this is pretty close to required reading for anybody interested in the consequences of modern war.  Highly Recommended.

The Outrun - Amy Liptrot  5/5

Amy Liptrop, the author of this is honest and rather wonderful book has not tried to sugar coat her decline (and recovery) from alcoholism.  Neither has she tried to over romanticise (too much) her connection to the Orkneys, where she was raised as a kid.

And I think this is the strength of the book.  The accounts of some aspects of her alcoholism are toe-curlingly honest, and make it clear that this addiction is not something happens to ‘others’ who are not like her readers, but can engulf almost anybody.

The author’s relationship with the landscape of Orkney is something of a mirror image of her relationship with alcohol.  At first she flees from Orkney to the ‘bright lights’ of London, but in the end it is the landscape she once rejected that she most craves, and finds most therapeutic.

I think that the landscape of home is most powerful for those who have had it taken away – and here I think that Liptrop looses her (healthy) sense of place in the world to alcohol.  In this book she seems to refind it in wave washed ocean beaches, the chill of the winter air and the call of the birds.

By the end of the book she seems to be becoming healthier by the day.

The writing in the book is crisp and to the point.  The personal landscape of the book is not pretty, but the physical landscape is remarkable.

Very highly recommended.

The Fish Ladder - Katherine Norbury 4/5

The second line of the title of this book – A Journey Upstream – is a little misleading, and in some ways diminishes the scope of this rather wonderful book.

Sure, one of the key elements of the book is about a number of journeys up rivers, in search of the source.  But there is a good deal more happening in this book than just that.

A number of reviews here have suggested that the book is rather self-indulgent, and could not have been carried out by a person without some kind of external support – and while that may be true, is it not also true for the vast majority of other ‘journey’ books as well.  To my reading, this feel petty and small minded.

The journeys in this book are physical, historical and medical.  All start from, or aim at, a single point – a point that determines the direction of the journey and the flow of the stories.

I rather liked it as a meditative, if not exactly groundbreaking read and I would be confident in recommending it.

The Shepherd's Life - James Rebanks 5/5

The Lake District must be one of the best-loved areas of England.  For many it is an adventure ground, holiday destination and daydream address.  This book looks at The Lakes in a different way – as a place of work and a home.

“The Shepard’s Life’ follows the life of James Rebanks from his (Grand)fathers knee to his own farm.  It plots the many changes in attitude and circumstance that come with growth up, moving away and coming back.

In this regard this is not a very original book – many people have written about these three things - but what sets this book apart is the place where it occurs.  The Lake District comes alive as more than just a playground in this book, and the reality of the work needed just to keep your head above water is always present.

At times it’s easy to forget that the Lake District is a landscape that was formed by work, and not one that was formed for play.  The fact that so many people ‘love the Lakes’ is due to the hard work of others, who are often not given the credit they are due for the work they do.

I recall reading heated debate about the closure of footpaths during the foot and mouth outbreak -  but one small section of this book puts all that into a different perspective.

I suspect that the author was a bit of a pain as a teenager, and I am sure some things he writes here will rub people up the wrong way.  However, this is passionate writing about a much loved place.

In the end the Lakes will only survive if people can live and work there – and this book is an honest look at what that means to some people.

Highly recommended.

Landmarks - Robert Macfarlane - 4/5

The central ideas of this book are that language defines how we relate to landscape and that landscape comes to define language.  So, landscape and language are intimately connected.

Parallel to this is the observation that we are becoming less connected to the ‘natural’ landscape to the detriment to both language and our understanding of the language.

By splitting the landscape into broad categories the author looks at how people have reacted to landscape and each section concludes with a listing of (underused or neglected) words that describe these categories of landscape.

If you are already aware of the work of Robert Macfarlane this book will feel very familiar – dense with ideas, rich with references to other peoples work (he has a few special favourites) and often rather academic in flavour.  None of these is a weakness, but in combination they can start to produce a text that seems rather more like a university essay rather than a passionate call to arms about the need to protect the language of landscape.  (or the landscape of language)

The book is really very thought provoking, but it is not a page-turner.   I think that the content of the book is really important, but I wish the writing was just a little more accessible.  I can’t help but think of works of Richard Mabey, which are just as dense with ideas, but are not written in such an academic manner.

Despite all I have said, I would still recommend this book very strongly; I just wish it was a gentler read.

The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro  4.5 /5

This is a rather strange and wonderful book, which left me thinking that I knew what it is about, but suspecting that I may be very, very wrong!

Set in England some time after the fall of King Arthur, the storyline revolves around an old couple looking for their son in a landscape still blighted by war and yet to come into its classic Englishness.

What makes this journey rather different from how it seems in this short description is that few people in this land have memories of the past.  The past is shrouded in a mist that makes people forget even the most recent things – and the more distance past seems to have gone completely.

The landscape – and the book – are slightly fey in feel.  Knights, dragons, pixies, strangers on the road, the lingering ghost of King Arthurs lost Kingdom and the forgetful mist all contribute to this.  In terms of the books style, this ‘feyness’ is most clearly voiced in the style of the dialogue.  In the end some people may find the constant ‘husbands’ and ‘princesses’ that pass between the old couple a little annoying – but I found them a simple and central element to the book.

So, what is it about?

Clearly I think it’s about the battle between forgetting and memory – and the consequences of living a life where peace has been bought at the cost of ignorance (ie no memory) rather than an understanding and acceptance of the past.  At least one character seems to be a ‘gate keeper’ to memory and I have to wonder if this is some form off illusion to our current keepers of history who seem to think we may be better off not knowing about the past as we move into a brave new future.

The above paragraph my of course be utterly out of step with the writers intention – but I suggest you read this book to find out for yourself.

Highly Recommended.

It's what I do - A Photographers life of Love and War - Lynsey Addario 4.5 /5

Conflict photographers are a strange breed; part adventurer, part evangelist, part witness.   And as such they often seem strangely appealing to those of us who like to put an eye to a camera viewfinder.

If ever there was a book to add a dimension of truth to the myths of this form of journalism, then it was this one.

While the three parts I list above are clearly present in this book, so much more is revealed about what it is like to get up every day, eat your breakfast and go watch disasters unfolding. This is not a book about photographic technique, it is not about ‘how I do it’ – it’s much more about ‘what it’s like to do it’.

While little of what happens in the personal and professional life of the author is much of a surprise (with the exception of one phone call!) given the places she and her colleagues work in, the honesty with which they are presented gives them power.

If you want to read a book to see what journalism is capable of, and how far below this standard most of what we see and watch falls, then you should read this book.

Very highly recommended.

H is for Hawk - Helen Macdonald 5/5

Although the central character of this book is a bird – a Goshawk - , this wonderful book focuses on emotion rather than biology.

This simple fact may be enough for some people to decide if they are going to read this book or not.  This is a book that places the emotion reaction of the author to the death of her father, the English countryside and the trials and tribulations of a trying to train a hawk above pure biological knowledge. 

If you want fact and figures, weights and measures then this is not the book for you. However, if you want a wonderfully written, authentic feeling account of coming to terms with loss and finding the strength to do so through a connection with nature, then this is the book for you.

The intertwined strands of place, passion and more than a little frustration are what hold this book together.  And sitting in the background like a memory is the book The Goshawk by TH White, a volume that apparently falls in the category of ‘flawed masterpiece’.

So people have said that this book may be a little ‘over indulgent’ because of the way in which the author links her emotional life to the life of both and a bird and the countryside it which she trains and hunts with it.  I think this misses the point that nature has a power beyond just a dispassionate experience.

We make our own meanings from nature, and in this book you can follow the authors journey.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

  

Claxton - Mark Cocker - 4/5 

In many ways this is a fairly conventional account of the turning of the years around the village of Calxton in the Yare valley in Norfolk.  While there are a few side trips to other places, the focus of the book is the titular village.

Like many other ‘year in the life of…..’ books the daily accounts are drawn from more than one year, so while they are presented in calendar order, they are not truly sequential – I only mention this because some books seem not to be honest about this format – but this one is.

The daily entries are generally short – most are just a single page (more or less) of the book – and most end with a sort of philosophical musing which seeks to place the short piece in the wider context of the world.  This is both the strength and weakness of the book: each piece of writing is self-contained, but each also becomes rather too predictable in tone.

I think this may be due to the way in which they were originally published – weekly or at least a few days apart.  Reading them one after another compresses a week or a month into minutes and the pace (and predictability) seem too much.

Equally, I think that that the rapidity with which you can move through the book makes some of the recurring themes recur a little to often as well – the link between the soil and the rest of the world, the shape and effect of a passing peregrine and the sound of geese all occur regularly in the book.

All this being said, I really enjoyed the book and the writing is very evocative.  Its clear from this and the authors other books that he has a great eye for detail.

So, would I recommend the book?  Absolutely!

But I do suggest that you read it over a longer period of time than a few days – read a couple of days each day, so that the year in the book unfolds at a more realistic pace and I am sure you will enjoy it.

Storm - Tim Minchen  - 5/5 

This is a really interesting little book.  And two words here are important – ‘interesting’ and ‘little’.

The book is ‘interesting’ because of what it seeks to explore – belief and rationalism, which are hardly the normal stuff of comedy.  And the book is ‘little’, not because it is insignificant, but because if you just read the poem that is the core of the book, you will complete the book in 10 – 15 minutes.

If you are already aware of Tim Minchen’s work, this book will contain few surprises, but much delight.  This beat poem, with its strange rhythms and off key rhymes, is an account of the kind of ‘rant’ that many of us may have wished to unleash when exposed to hocus-pocus and pseudo-science – in this case it happens at a dinner party where we meet an Australian called Storm.

Believers in auroras, spirit healing, the therapeutic value of crystals and (possibly above all else) homeopathy will find little joy within these pages. 

This is a book for lovers of science, logic and evidence. 

It’s a storming book!

Feral - George Monbiot  - 4.5 /5

This is a really rather good book – not perfect, but one that makes you stop and think ‘do I agree with what I have just read?’

In reality this is almost two books rather than one – the first is about developing a great connection between people and the land on which they live. This is ‘re-wilding people’.  The second is about taking a less interventionist approach to wildlife management, by allowing nature a freer hand to build new ecosystems.

The first is a reasonably well-trodden path  - and is based on the assumption that people and the land do better when they are connected.  Connection.  Interest. Care. Passion. And in the end, survival.  This all seems to make sense.

The second theme of the book – actually re-wilding landscape – is probably a little more contentious.  Especially as one of the key things that the author suggests in terms of re-wilding is the re-introduction of large predators – such as wolves – to some ecosystems.  While any such introduction would clearly rely on human intervention in its early stages, the idea is to re-establish the kind of ecological processes that have been removed from many ecosystems by humans. 

There is little doubt that conventional conservation management is not always successful – with large areas (the book really takes most examples from the UK) being maintained in some sort of agriculture dominated state – the classic example here being most UK uplands which are often just sheep, deer or grouse maintained habitats, which lack the diversity they once had.

I think there needs to a well informed debate about who land is managed into the future – and this book is as good a place as any to start thinking about what this debate could mean or should include.

Highly recommended.

Waterlight - Selected Poems - Kathleen Jamie - 5/5

I am not a natural reader of poetry.  I came to this book through the wonderful prose books of the author.

Her prose is marked by a remarkable ability to see and render detail in clear and precise language. 

If anything, the poems take this ability even further. 

As the book progressed the poems became longer and more complex and I missed the simple, but accurate word picture painting of the shorter verses.

Maybe I was not ready for multi-page poems, but the early pages of the book are filled with remarkable images and turns of phrase.

If ever a book was to direct me towards more poetry, I think it could be this one.

Highly recommended.

Four Fields - Tim Dee - 5/5

This is a wonderfully dense, slow moving and thought-provoking book. 

In may ways everything else I am going to say will be just an extension of that opening line – if you are in a hurry I recommend you stop reading this and buy the book.

For those of you with a little more time I will expand my comments a little.

Fields are a strange combination of nature and human control – and the fours fields of books title show varying degrees of these two aspects.  The Fens fields of East Anglia and the abandoned fields of Chernobyl are mostly, but not entirely, human.  The fields of Africa and North America are mostly, but not entirely, still shaped by nature. 

The fen fields of East Anglia are returned to in a conventional seasonal approach, but the content of these four chapters goes far beyond the normal “it was winter and I saw this type of bird” narrative that dominates so much nature writing.  Water flows through the fens and the movement (and control) of water are central themes in these chapters.

The ideas encountered in the other fields are as divers as their locations – but ideas of control (or the loss of it) are also present.

One of the things I most liked about this book was its clear sense of ending – many books of nature writing seem to stop only when the author runs out of things to say (or the year has turned full circle). Here the book has a wonderful concluding feel, where themes come to an end in a way the feels natural.  The book comes to an end, rather than simply stopping.

While it’s clear that the author is a bird watcher – and most of the encounters with wildlife in the book are with birds – this book has a far wider range (field?) of reference than just birds.

This is one of the best books in this general area I have read in a number of years and it comes very highly recommended.