2023 was a strange year with several significant events taking place, most notably Sarah being given the all-clear from breast cancer. I didn’t have quite as many five-star reads as normal, either from the 190 books that I read. First up are some honourable mentions that I gave 4.5 stars to:
Restoring The Wild: Sixty Years of Rewilding Our Skies, Woods and Waterways – Roy Dennis
Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide – Bill McGuire
England on Fire: A Visual Journey through Albion’s Psychic Landscape – Stephen Ellcock& Mat Osman
The Bookseller’s Tale – Martin Latham
Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval – Gaia Vince
Two Lights: Walking through Landscapes of Loss and Life – James Roberts
One Place De L’Eglise: A Year Or Two In A French Village – Trevor Dolby
Notes from the Cévennes: Half a Lifetime in Provincial France – Adam Thorpe
The Serpent Coiled in Naples – Marius Kociejowski
The Lost Rainforests Of Britain – Guy Shrubsole
Rosewater – Tade Thompson
Taking Flight: A Celebration Of The Miraculous Phenomenon Of Flight – Lev Parikian
Real Dorset – Jon Woolcott
Between The Chalk And The Sea: A Journey On Foot Into The Past – Gail Simmons
Grounding: Finding Home In A Garden – Lulah Ellender
The Language of Trees: How Trees Make Our World, Change Our Minds and Rewild Our Lives – Katie Holten
La Vie: A Year In Rural France – John Lewis-Stempel
Wild About Dorset: The Nature Diary of a West Country Parish – Brian Jackman
Ravenous: How To Get Ourselves And Our Planet Into Shape – Henry Dimbleby
High Caucasus: A Mountain Quest In Russia’s Haunted Hinterland – Tom Parfitt
Rural: The Lives Of The Working Class Countryside – Rebecca Smith
Grounded: A Journey Into The Landscapes Of Our Ancestors – James Canton
The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey – Tim Hannigan
Life At Full Tilt: The Selected Writings of Dervla Murphy Dervla Murphy – Ed. Ethel Crowley
Singing Like Larks: A Celebration Of Birds In Folk Songs – Andrew Millham
Feather, Leaf, Bark & Stone – Jackie Morris
And here are my five-star reads:
Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them – Dan Saladino
Under The Blue – Oana Aristide
The Lost Orchards: Rediscovering The Forgotten Cider Apples Of Dorset – Liz Copas & Nick Poole
Undercurrent: A Cornish Memoir Of Poverty, Nature And Resilience – Natasha Carthew
The Swimmer: The Wild Life Of Roger Deakin – Patrick Barkham
Seriously Funny: The Endlessly Quotable Terry Pratchett – Terry Pratchett
And My Book of the Year:
Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive’s Tour Of The Bookshops Of Britain – Robin Ince
Good to see James Canton in your 4.5 list – I really love his books.
He is always worth reading
So glad to hear Sarah’s good news x
Thank you Linda. It was quite a relief
Quite a year for you, happy to hear the good news.
Of your five star books, I’ve read Under the Blue which was fabulous. One of the few fiction books on your lists.
Thank you, Annabel. It was really well done and utterly plausible
Wonderful books, and I have a few of them TBR so am looking forward to those even more now. Very good news about Sarah, I think I had missed that. I am so glad for all of you.
Thank you, Liz! It was a shorter list this year than 2022, but still fantastic books though
I also really enjoyed the Robin Ince and Martin Latham books – also in a similar vein is RB Russell’s “50 forgotten books”. You’ve probably read this one as well – but Christopher Fowler’s ‘Book of forgotten authors’ from a few years’ ago is also an entertaining read.