November is a strange month, the evenings are dark, but it doesn’t have any of the bling of Christmas. It is also a short month, so I never feel I have the time to fit books in, in the headlong rush to the end of the year. But it was a good month for reading, with three books of the month. Here they are:
Books Read
The Ghost Of Ivy Barn – Mark Stay – 4 Stars
Lost Acre – Andrew Caldecott – 3 Stars
Prophet – Helen Macdonald & Sin Blaché – 3.5 Stars
A Line Above The Sky: On Mountains And Motherhood – Helen Mort – 2.5 Stars
Heavy Time: A Psychogeographer’s Pilgrimage – Sonia Overall – 3.5 Stars
Windswept: Life, Nature and Deep Time in the Scottish Highlands – Annie Worsley – 3.5 Stars
Morning In The Burned House – Margaret Atwood – 3 Stars
On the Scent: Unlocking The Mysteries Of Smell – And How Losing It Can Change Our World – Paola Totaro and Robert Wainwright – 3.5 Stars
The Possibility of Life: Searching for Kinship in the Cosmos – Jaime Green – 4 Stars
A Life in Car Design – Oliver Winterbottom – 3 Stars
Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in the Woods – Lyndsie Bourgon – 3.5 Stars
In Sardinia: An Unexpected Journey in Italy – Jeff Biggers – 4 Stars
Book(s) Of The Month
Singing Like Larks: A Celebration Of Birds In Folk Songs – Andrew Millham – 4.5 Stars
Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive’s Tour Of The Bookshops Of Britain – Robin Ince – 5 Stars
Seriously Funny: The Endlessly Quotable Terry Pratchett – Terry Pratchett – 5 Stars
Top Genres
Fiction–28
Travel – 22
Natural History – 22
Poetry – 17
Memoir – 13
Fantasy – 9
History – 7
Science Fiction – 7
Environmental – 4
Science – 4
Top Publishers
Faber & Faber – 12
Simon & Schuster – 6
Bloomsbury – 6
Little Toller – 6
Penguin – 6
William Collins – 5
Jonathan Cape – 5
Headline – 4
Doubleday – 4
Elliott & Thompson – 4
Review Copies Received
Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness – Alastair Humphreys
Library Books Checked Out
Elixir : In The Valley At The End Of Time – Kapka Kassobova
Sea of Tranquility – Emily St. John Mandel
Mischief Acts – Zoe Gilbert
52 Ways to Walk: The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness and Joy, One Week at a Time – Annabel Streets
Books Bought
Nature Writing for Every Day of the Year – Ed. Jane McMorland Hunter
The Flying Sorcerers – Ed. Peter Haining
The Wizards of Odd : Comic Tales of Fantasy – Ed. Peter Haining
The Hawaiian Archipelago: Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands – Isabella Lucy Bird
Lore Of The Land: A Guide to England’s Legends, from Spring Heeled Jack to the Witches of Warboys – Jennifer Westwood & Jacqueline Simpson
Then We Sailed Away – John Ridgway, Marie Christine Ridgway & Rebecca Ridgway
I Came, I Saw: An Autobiography – Norman Lewis
Honey and Dust: Travels in Search of Sweetness – Piers Moore Ede
Into the Heart of Borneo – Redmond O’Hanlon
The Road to Oxiana – Robert Byron
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes – Robert Louis Stevenson
Who’s In The Next Room? – Thomas Hardy & various
An Area of Darkness – V.S. Naipaul
Christmas Ghost Stories – Various
Monet in the 20th Century – Various
The Art of the Lord of the Rings – Wayne G. Hammond, Christina Scull & J.R.R. Tolkien
Tibetan Foothold – Dervla Murphy
Leaves from the Fig Tree – Diana Duff
London is a Forest – Paul Wood
Nightwalking: Four Journeys into Britain After Dark – John Lewis-Stempel
Dress & Textiles – Rachel Worth
The Unadulterated Cat: The Amazing Maurice Edition – Terry Pratchett
Isle of Purbeck in Pen & Ink – Roy Carr
Travels as a Brussels Scout – Nick Middleton
Uneasy Rider: The Interstate Way of Knowledge – Mike Bryan
An Encyclopaedia of Plants in Myth, Legend, Magic and Lore – Stuart Phillps
Photographing Flowers: Inspiration*Equipment*Technique – Sue Bishop
So any from that huge list that you have read, or now seeing them, now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.
Lovely incomings and good reads, a good combo. I managed to have fewer incomings than reads this month, though that just transfers some onto other shelves, of course …