November 2023 Review

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.

Spread the love

1 Comment

  1. Liz Dexter

    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 …

Leave a Reply

© 2025 Halfman, Halfbook

Theme by Anders NorénUp ↑