The usual massively ambitious TBR for this month is below, though now the clocks have gone back, staying in and reading seems like the best plan.
Daily Reading
A Tree A Day – Amy-Jane Beer
An Insect a Day: Bees, Bugs, And Pollinators For Every Day Of The Year – Dominic Couzens & Gail Ashton
Still Reading
Handbook of Mammals of Madagascar Hardcover – Nick Garbutt
Phantoms of Kernow – Joan Passey (Ed)
Weather – Storm Dunlop
Themed Reads
PhotoCity New York – Guillaume Gaudet & Zora O’Neill
New York Vertical – Horst Hamann
Plus if I can get to these:
Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation – Edward Glaeser, David Cutler
Banksy: The Man Behind The Wall – Will Elsworth Jones
The Fifth Risk – Michael Lewis
Constable: Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings – Leslie Parris
Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain – Pen Vogler
Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI – James Muldoon, Mark Graham & Callum Cant
When the Rivers Run Dry: Water – The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century – Fred Pearce
The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future – David Wallace-Wells
#20BooksOfSummer (Ha!)
The Cruel Stars – John Birmingham
The Solar War – A.G. Riddle
Cage of Souls – Adrian Tchaikovsky
Jade City – Fonda Lee
The Old Drift – Namwali Serpell
WFMAC
The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months Unearthing the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country – Helen Russell
Along the River that Flows Uphill: From the Orinoco to the Amazon – Richard Starks
Review Books
Small Earthquakes: A Journey Through Lost British History In South America – Shafik Meghji
21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari
Your Journey Your Way: The Recovery Guide to Mental Health – Horatio Clare
The Future Of Travel – Daniel Maurer
Slow Trains Around Britain: Notes from a 4,088-Mile Adventure on 143 Rides – Tom Chesshyre
Return of the Ancients: Unruly Tales of the Mythological Weird – Katy Soar (Ed)
Little Ruins – Manni Coe
Books I’m Clearing
Russians Among Us – Gordon Corera
Free: Coming of Age at the End of History – Lea Ypi
Library
Upon A White Horse: Journeys In Ancient Britain And Ireland – Peter Ross
Lone Wolf: Walking The Faultlines Of Europe – Adam Weymouth
Nature Needs You: The Fight To Save Our Swifts – Hannah Bourne- Taylor
Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces – Laurie Winkless
Craftland: A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Arts & Vanishing Trades – James Fox
Poetry
Green and Pleasant Land: Best-Loved Poems of the British Countryside – Ana Sampson (Ed)
Book Club
It is a crime thriller this month, so I’m passing on it…
So are there any from that list that you have read, or now seeing them, now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.
Scoff sounds fascinating, When the Rivers Run Dry sounds like it would give me nightmares, and I’m glad to see I’m not the only one with unresolved summer book issues. I half read far too many books which hang over me like spectres.
I would be very happy to send on Scoff when I have read it
That’s a very generous offer which you are perfectly entitled to reconsider when you realise I live in the Netherlands, though my sister in Norfolk could act as an intermediary.
International post can be expensive! That could work!
Then let me know when you’ve read it and I’ll see what’s the best option at the time. No rush, though. Plenty to read, however long it takes. 😄
That makes sense. I am sure you’re not going to run out of books any time soon either…
Scoff is excellent.
I’ve just finished the Peter Ross and really enjoyed it. Despite visiting many well known ancient sites he manages to put a different spin on how to look at them. And he has an easy and unforced way of writing. One of my top books of 2025.
He is such a good author. Jon Woolcott has a book on chalk figures out next year too
Phantoms of Kernow and Return of the Ancients are definitely on my to read list.
Just finished Phantoms of Kernow and liked it
I’ve seen a few reviews of Craftland so that’s the one that appeals to me – how are you finding it?
I haven’t started it yet, but it does have another reservation on it so will be read very soon. I have read Alex Langlands book on Craft in the past, but wasn’t that impressed by it.