Category: Book Musings (Page 14 of 31)

It was warm over the weekend, but it is very much NOT summery out there at the moment. However, that is no reason not to want to announce my book list for 2o Books of Summer.

This challenge was dreamt up by Cathy at 746 Books, it is a challenge for bloggers and anyone else and the aim is to try and read through 20 books that are on their TBR. I have tried for the past two years. In the first year, I read 18, in 2020 managed 12 and in 2021 only 10! I like the idea of it and It is good to support other bloggers in what they are doing to promote reading but I have always been disappointed in failing to complete it every time so far.  I did um and ah about doing it. l like to pick themes usually, I have had travel, and outstanding review books and then realised that it fits in with another challenge that I am undertaking:

I raised that on the spreadsheet that I have been using ,I physically had 20 books that I had not read from the categories above. So without further ado, here is my list of books:

Fish	The Old Man and The Sand Eel	Will Millard
Urban Wildlife	Fox	Jim Crumley
Land Rules / Trespass	The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us	Nick Hayes
Classic Nature Novel	The Overstory	Richard Powers
Walking Trail	I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain	Anita Sethi
Another Country	Wild Nephin	Sean Lysaght
Migration	Swifts and Us: The Life of the Bird that Sleeps in the Sky	Sarah Gibson
Nature Restoration / Recovery	A Trillion Trees: How We Can Reforest Our World	Fred Pearce
Short Stories	At the Pond: Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond	Various
Sky	My House of Sky: A Life of J A Baker	Hetty Saunders
Glaciers / Mountains	Two Trees Make a Forest: Travels Among Taiwan’s Mountains & Coasts in Search of My Family’s Past	Jessica J. Lee
Mental Health	A Still Life: A Memoir	Josie George
Water (Sea / River / Ocean)	Caught By The River	Jeff Barrett, Robin Turner, Andrew Walsh (Editor)
Remote Nature	True North	Gavin Francis
Ferocious Animals	Black Lion: Alive in the Wilderness	Sicelo Mbatha
Trees	Living Trees	Robin Walters
The Forest	The Wood That Made London	C.J. Schuler
Farm	English Pastoral An Inheritance	James Rebanks
Auto-biography	Wild Silence	Raynor Winn
Folklore / Folktales	Woodland Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland Paperback	Lisa Schneidau

Follow the hashtag #20booksofsummer22 to follow those who are taking part this year.

April always seems to come and go really quickly. I did have a week off where I had hoped to read more,  but it was disturbed by work ringing me up about various issues…  Anyway, here are the 15 books that I did get read in April. Not a bad selection and a good variety of subjects.

 

Books Read

Hope and Fear – Ronald H. Fritze – 4 Stars

Seed To Dust – Marc Hamer – 4 Stars

Secret Bristol – James MacVeigh – 2.5 Stars

The Mercenary River – Nick Higham – 4 Stars

Tomorrow’s People – Paul Morland – 4 Stars

12 Birds to Save Your Life – Charlie Corbett – 3 Stars

Fledgling – Hannah Bourne-Taylor – 4  Stars

Mysterious Britain – Homer W. Sykes – 3.5 Stars

Kid – Simon Armitage – 3 Stars

Ariel – Sylvia Plath – 3.5 Stars

The Year the World Went Mad – Mark Woolhouse – 3.5 Stars

The Four Horsemen – Emily Mayhew – 4 Stars

Who Are We Now? – Jason Cowley – 4 Stars

Umbria – Patricia Clough – 3.5 Stars

 

Book of the Month

The Nanny State Made Me – Stuart Maconie – 5Stars

I thought that this was excellent. Maconie has a distinctive voice that comes through strongly in this book and he is not afraid to put forward his point of view about the failing of the current government and those that have gone before. It is more than a middle-aged guy having a rant too. He looks back at the way that the state enabled him to be able to participate in society by having a properly funded education and health system and he is seething that those opportunities have been successively taken away by Tory governments over the years.

 

Top Genres

Natural History – 11 books

Travel – 9 books

History – 7 books

Poetry – 7 books

Science – 5 books

 

Top Publishers

William Collins – 6 books

Faber & Faber – 4 books

Quercus – 4 books

Picador – 3 books

Eland – 2 books

Little Toller – 2 books

 

Review Copies Received

Thank you to all the publishers who are generous enough to send me these:

The Ghost Slayers – Ed. Mike Ashley (British Library)

Riding Out – Simon Parker (Summersdale)

The Best British Travel Writing – Ed. Jessica Vincent (Summersdale)

Machine Journey (Self)

The View From The Hill – Christopher Somerville (Haus)

Illuminated By Water – Malachy Tallack (Doubleday)

Ring Of Stone Circles – Stan L. Abbott (Saraband)

 

 

Library Books Checked Out

Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain – John Grindrod

Wild City: Encounters With Urban Wildlife – Florence Wilkinson

The Crow Folk – Mark Stay

Secrets Of A Devon Wood: A Nature Journal – Jo Brown

The Ship Asunder: A Maritime History In Eleven Vessels – Tom Nancollas

Otherlands: A World In The Making – Thomas Halliday

Salt Lick – Lulu Allison

 

Books Bought

The Olive Harvest – Carol Drinkwater (Signed)

Down To The Sea In Ships – Horatio Clare  (to be passed on to a friend)

Border – Kappa Kassabova

Street Fight In Naples – Peter Robb

Wild Signs & Star Paths – Tristan Gooley

Coronation Everest – Jan Morris

Cruel Crossing: Escaping Hitler Across the Pyrenees – Edward Stourton

London Overground: A Day’s Walk Around the Ginger Line – Iain Sinclair

Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love – by Per J. Andersson, Tr. Anna Holmwood

Blackmore Vale – Hilary Townsend

Geology – Paul Ensom

Isle Of Purbeck – Paul Hyland

Cranborne Chase – Desmond Hawkins

Madagascar – Gian Paolo Barbieri Tr. Carola Lodari

Wanderers in the New Forest – Juliette De Bairacli Levy

To A Mountain in Tibet – Colin Thubron

Eat Pray Eat: One Man’s Accidental Search For Enlightenment – Michael Booth

The Tao Of Travel – Paul Theroux

Barbed Wire And babushkas: A River Odyssey Across Siberia – Paul Grogan

River Dog: A Journey Down the Brahmaputra – Mark Shand

Russians Among Us – Gordon Corera

From the Camargue to the Alps: A Walk Across France in Hannibal’s Footsteps – Bernard Levin

The Eastern Fells – Alfred Wainwright

The Far Eastern Fells – Alfred Wainwright

The Central Fells – Alfred Wainwright

The Southern Fells – Alfred Wainwright

The Northern Fells – Alfred Wainwright

The North Western Fells – Alfred Wainwright

The Western Fells – Alfred Wainwright

Island Reich – Jack Grimwood

Shape of Light: 100 years of Photography and Abstract Art – Simon Baker & Emmanuelle De L’Ecotais

The History of the Countryside – Oliver Rackham

Serpent In Paradise – Dea Birkett

For Love and Money – Jonathan Raban (to be passed on to a friend)

Trees & Bushes – Eyre Methuen

Discovering Timber Framed Buildings – Richard Harris

Iceland: People Sagas, Landscapes – Hans Siwik

Sky – Storm Dunlop

I am very much out of shelf space…

A day late posting this, but May, or Beltane,  is already here, how did that happen? Without further ado, I am aiming to read around 18 of these over the coming month. This will definitely be the month that I will be reading some fiction as I have so failed to do so in April

 

Reading Through The Year

A Poem for Every Night of the Year – Allie Esiri

Word Perfect – Susie Dent

 

Finishing Off (Still!)

Opened Ground Poems 1966 – 1996 Seamus Heaney

The Hill of Devi – E.M. Forster

 

Blog Tour

Machine Journey – Richard Doyle

The Price of Immortality – Peter Ward

Villager – Tom Cox

 

Review Copies

Isles at the Edge of the Sea – Jonny Muir

The Good Life – Dorian Amos

Astral Travel – Elizabeth Baines

Britain Alone – Philip Stephens

We Own This City – Justin Fenton

Spaceworlds – Ed. Mike Ashley

The Power of Geography – Tim Marshall

The Spy Who Was Left Out In The Cold – Tim Tate

The Devil You Know – Gwen Adshead, Eileen Horne

Letters from Egypt – Lucie Duff Gordon

Crawling Horror – Ed. Daisy Butcher & Janette Leaf

The Valleys of the Assassins – Freya Stark

The Cruel Way – Ella Maillart

Above the Law – Adrian Bleese

Cornish Horrors – Ed. Joan Passey

Somebody Else – Charles Nicholl

Scenes from Prehistoric Life – Francis Pryor

Black Lion – Sicelo Mbatha

The Babel Message – Keith Kahn-Harris

The Heath – Hunter Davies

The Seven Deadly Sins – Mara Faye Lethem

One People – Guy Kennaway

Three Women of Herat – Veronica Doubleday

The Sloth Lemur’s Song – Alison Richard

Where My Feet Fall – Duncan Minshull

Polling UnPacked – Mark Pack

Jacobé & Fineta – Joaquim Ruyra

The View from the Hil – Christopher Somerville

The Best British Travel Writing Of The 21st Century – Jessica Vincent

Lost Woods – Rachel Carson

Ring of Stone Circles – Stan L Abbott

Riding Out – Simon Parker

 

Library

No Friend But The Mountains – Behrouz Boochani

The Antisocial Network – Ben Mezrich

A Still Life – Josie George

Scraps Of Wool – Bill Colegrave

Mind is The Ride – Jet McDonald

Silent Earth – Dave Goulson

Iconicon – John Grindrod

Notes From A Summer Cottage – Nina Burton

39 Ways to Save the Planet – Tom Heap

Park Life – Tom Chesshyre

The Bookseller’s Tale – Martin Latham

The Spymasters – Chris Whipple

Looking for Transwonderland – Noo Saro-Wiwa

A Sky Full Of Kites – Tom Bowser

A Curious Absence of Chickens – Sophie Grigson

We, Robots – Curtis White

Secrets Of A Devon Wood – Jo Brown

 

Poetry

Machine Journey – Richard Doyle

 

Books to Clear

Our Game – John Le Carré

The Tailor of Panama- John Le Carré

Year of the Golden Ape – Colin Forbes

Dreaming in Code – Scott Rosenberg

 

Challenge Books

The Wood That Made London – C.J. Schuler

English Pastoral – James Rebanks

Wild Silence – Raynor Winn

 

Photobook

Dorset In Photographs – Matt Pinner

 

So, er, that is it. Inevitably there will be library books that have to be read as others have reserved them. Either way, I win!

Any in that list that you like the look of?

Here is my summary of the books read and acquired in March. As ever I didn’t get as many books read as I hoped too but did read my target of sixteen books

 

Books Read

Wintering – Katherine May

No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy – Mark Hodkinson

Concretopia – John Grindrod

Ice Rivers – Jemma L. Wadham

A Choice of Emily Dickinson’s Verse Emily Dickinson – Ted Hughes

Wild Fell – Lee Schofield

Hebrides – Peter May & David Wilson

Putin’s People – Catherine Belton

Forecast – Joe Shute

Shalimar – Davina Quinlivan

Lotharingia – Simon Winder

The Waste Land – T.S. Eliot

Foula – Sheila Gear

Hurricane Lizards And Plastic Squid – Thor Hanson

The Turkish Embassy Letters – Mary Wortley Montagu

 

Book Of the Month

My book of the month is Moneyland – Oliver Bullough. This is a shocking book about the way that those with lots and lots of money are controlling the world at the money. He tries to shine a light into this dark pit he is calling Moneyland and it made me angry. Read it and it should make you angry too

 

Top Genres

Natural History – Ten Books

Travel – Seven Books

Poetry – Five Books

 

Top Publishers

William Collins – Six Books

John Murray – Two Books

Quercus – Two Books

Allen Lane – Two Books

Faber & Faber – Two Books

Little Toller- Two Books

Plus 32 other publishers with one book each!

 

Review Copies Received

Lost Woods – Rachel Carson

Foula – Sheila Gear

Fledgling – Hannah Bourne-Taylor

Tomorrow’s People – Paul Morland

Jacobé & Fineta – Joaquim Ruyra

The Seven Deadly Sins – Mara Faye Lethem

The Price of Immortality – Peter Ward

The Sloth Lemurs Song – Alison Richard

Taking Stock – Roger Morgan-Grenville

Where My Feet Fall – Duncan Minshall

One People – Guy Kennaway

The Hill of Devi – E.M. Forster

Three Women of Herat – Veronica Doubleday

Polling Unpacked – Mark Pack

 

Library Books Checked Out

We Robots – Curtis White

The Travel Photographer’s Way – Nori Jemil\

Babes In The Wood – Mark Stay

Robot Overlords – Mark Stay

 

Books Bought

Tiny Castles – Dixe Wills

Irreplaceable – Julian Hoffman (Signed)

Naples 44 – Norman Lewis

Sweet Thames Run Softly – Robert Gibbons

The Marsh Arabs – Wilfred Theisger

Return To The Marshes – Gavin Young (Signed)

The Wren: A Biography – Stephen Moss

Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory by Peter Hessler

Constable Paintings, Watercolours & Drawings by Leslie Parris

Europe – Jan Morris

Beyond Lion Rock – Gavin Young

Slow Boats to China – Gavin Young

Slow Boats Home – Gavin Young

Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip – Peter Hessler

Morning In The Burned House – Margaret Atwood (Signed)

In Search of Isaac Gulliver – M.V. Angel

Born To Be Mild – Rob Temple

The Village on the Hill: The Story of Colehill in Dorset – George Sadler

Three Came Home: A Woman’s Ordeal In A Japanese Prison Camp – Agnes Keith

The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld – Stephen Briggs

April is already here, how did that happen? Without further ado, I am aiming to read around 18 of these over the coming month. Also will be reading some fiction as I have so far not read any this year!

 

Reading Through The Year

A Poem for Every Night of the Year – Allie Esiri

Word Perfect – Susie Dent

 

Finishing Off (Still!)

Opened Ground Poems 1966 – 1996 Seamus Heaney

The Turkish Embassy Letters – Mary Wortley Montagu

Who Are We Now? -Jason Cowley

The Year the World Went Mad – Mark Woolhouse

Hope and Fear – Ronald H. Fritze

 

Review Copies

Tomorrow’s People – Paul Morland

The Seven Deadly Sins – Mara Faye Lethem

One People – Guy Kennaway

The Hill of Devi – E.M. Forster

Three Women of Herat – Veronica Doubleday

The Sloth Lemur’s Song – Alison Richard

Where My Feet Fall – Duncan Minshull

Polling UnPacked – Mark Pack

Fledgling – Hannah Bourne-Taylor

Jacobé & Fineta – Joaquim Ruyra

Isles at the Edge of the Sea – Jonny Muir

The Good Life: Up the Yukon Without a Paddle – Dorian Amos

Astral Travel Elizabeth Baines

Britain Alone – Philip Stephens

We Own This City – Justin Fenton

Spaceworlds – Ed. Mike Ashley

The Power of Geography – Tim Marshall

The Four Horsemen – Emily Mayhew

The Spy Who Was Left Out In The Cold – Tim Tate

The Devil You Know – Gwen Adshead, Eileen Horne

Letters from Egypt – Lucie Duff Gordon

Crawling Horror – Ed. Daisy Butcher & Janette Leaf

The Valleys of the Assassins – Freya Stark

The Cruel Way – Ella Maillart

Above the Law – Adrian Bleese

Cornish Horrors – Ed. Joan Passey

Somebody Else – Charles Nicholl

Scenes from Prehistoric Life – Francis Pryor

Black Lion – Sicelo Mbatha

The Babel Message – Keith Kahn-Harris

The Heath – Hunter Davies

 

Library

The Nanny State Made Me – Stuart Maconie

12 Birds to Save Your Life – Charlie Corbett

Seed To Dust – Marc Hamer

No Friend But The Mountains – Behrouz Boochani

Umbria – Patricia Clough

 

Poetry

Ariel – Sylvia Plath

Kid – Simon Armatage

 

Books to Clear

Our Game – John Le Carré

The Tailor of Panama- John Le Carré

Year of the Golden Ape – Colin Forbes

Dreaming in Code – Scott Rosenberg

Secret Bristol – James MacVeigh

 

Challenge Books

The Wood That Made London – C.J. Schuler

English Pastoral – James Rebanks

Wild Silence Raynor Winn

 

Photobook

Mysterious Britain – Homer W. Sykes

So, er, that is it. Inevitably there will be library books that have to be read as others have reserved them. Either way, I win!

Any in that list that you like the look of?

I am quite a bit later with this than I had intended. Ah well, this is a hobby not a job at the end of the day. So here are the books that I read in January:

I have been a big fan of Billy Connolly for as long as I can remember. He is a great human being and is always interested in those people that have made a difference in their communities. His observational humour is very rude and very funny and this book is a summation of those stories. I really liked it.

I read two history books that couldn’t have been any more different. English Farmhouse is about the rural architecture of the Wessex chalk downs and whilst it is not about a specific farm it is still a fascinating and detailed look at how these buildings were made. Across the other side of the world is the largest ocean that we have on the planet. Scattered across it are thousands of tiny islands that people have lived on for hundreds of years. Thompson takes us on a journey to these places and the people who could navigate between the islands with ease.

   

Bridging the gap between memoir and history is Thicker Than Water by the author of Islands of Abandonment, Cal Flynn. In this, she finds out about a relative who moved to Australia, and then when she is there find out about the atrocities that he perpetrated. This is her story about coming to terms with what he did.

Tanya Shadrick nearly died after the birth of her first child. She survived and it gave her a new lease of life to change from the person she had been into the person that she is now. Taking those risks meant stepping outside her comfort zone and change her life for the better.

I read six natural history books in January! Biography of a Fly is a graphic novel about a fly who befriends a raptor and we see this through his short life. Finding The Mother Tree is more science-based and is the story of Suzanne Simard’s discovery of how a forest actually functions and the key role that each plant plays, in particular, the mycological networks in the soil. On the Marsh is Simon Barnes year-long diary of the time spent looking at the wildlife on the small patch of march he is fortunate to own in Norfolk

       

The Sea Is Not Made Of Water is Nicholson applying the same rigour that he did to seabirds to the life under the ocean. Fascinating stuff. Nests is a beautiful book of all of Susan Ogilvy’s paintings of the nest that were in her garden or collected by friends. Thirteen Ways to Smell a Tree is probably the oddest titles book that I have read in a while, but it is well worth it. If you love the scent of wood in any form then I can highly recommend this.

         

Some people react to conflict by getting angry too. Shahe Mankerian wrote poetry instead and this collection is not really one I liked, the content is just too grim for that. However, I did admire it for its honesty.

I read five travel books too! My journeys were to take to modern and historical Greece in, A Thing Of Beauty, to the forests of Russia in The White Birch and slowly across America in Another Fine Mess.

       

I have had Elephant Complex on my shelf for ages and I finally got to read it last month. Not as good as some of his other books, but he does get under the skin of the Sri Lankan’s Nick Jubber’s book takes us across Europe finding the original sources of the Fairy Tales that have become so well known these days.

   

My book of the month is a book on old postcards of the county that I live in. Lost Dorset: The Towns is the companion volume to Lost Dorset: The Villages & Countryside and feature another set of postcards from Barry Cuff’s remarkable collection of Dorset postcards. As I know some of these places I personally find it fascinating.

So 18 books in total for January means that I have made a good start to the 2022 Good Reads Challenge.

Any here that you have read? Any that now take your fancy? Let me know in the comments below.

I also have a couple of questions:

1. Do you want me to include monthly stats? I.e. what genres that I have read, and top publishers?

2. Do you want me to include a list of all the books that I have bought or beent sent too? Or would you want to see that in another monthly post

January dragged as ever. It always seems to have twice as many days as other months. But it is getting lighter which is good. Everyone in my family had covid in January and I somehow avoided it. Not sure how, but I did. They are all better now. Anyway, here are the books that I will be selecting from for this months reading:

Reading Through The Year

A Poem for Every Night of the Year – Allie Esiri

Word Perfect- Susie Dent

 

Finishing Off

Lotharingia- Simon Winder

Opened Ground – Seamus Heaney

The Fairy Tellers – Nicholas Jubber

 

Review Books

A Natural History Of The Future – Rob Dunn

No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy – Mark Hodkinson

Wild Fell – Lee Schofield

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Universe –  Andrew Newsam

Astral Travel – Elizabeth Baines

Britain Alone – Philip Stephens

We Own This City – Justin Fenton

Spaceworlds: Stories of Life in the Void Ed. Mike Ashley

The Power of Geography – Tim Marshall

The Four Horsemen – Emily Mayhew

Deeper Into The Wood – Ruth Pavey

The Spy Who Was Left Out In The Cold – Tim Tate

The Devil You Know – Gwen Adshead, Eileen Horne

Meet the Georgians – Robert Peal

Letters from Egypt – Lucie Duff Gordon

Crawling Horror – Ed. Daisy Butcher & Janette Leaf

The Valleys of the Assassins – Freya Stark

The Cruel Way – Ella Maillart

Above the Law – Adrian Bleese

Cornish Horrors – Ed. Joan Passey

Somebody Else – Charles Nicholl

Scenes from Prehistoric Life – Francis Pryor

The Turkish Embassy Letters – Mary Wortley Montagu

Black Lion – Sicelo Mbatha

The Babel Message – Keith Kahn-Harris

The Heath – Hunter Davies

Bengal Lancer – Francis Yeats-Brown

The Suburbanist – Geoff Nicholson

 

Library Books

Orchard – Benedict MacDonald & Nicholas Gates

Storyland – Amy Jeffs

The Almost Nearly Perfect People – Michael Booth

Tweet Of The Day – Brett Westwood & Stephen Moss

My 1001 Nights – Alice Morrison

Looking for Transwonderland – Noo Saro-Wiwa

 

Poetry

The Rose of Temperaments Various

Tell Me Who We Were Before Life Made Us Ed. Maz Hedgehog

 

Challenge Books

Wintering: How I Learned To Flourish When Life Became Frozen Katherine May

The Wood That Made London – C.J. Schuler

English Pastoral – James Rebanks

Wild Silence – Raynor Winn

 

Books To Clear

Our Game – John Le Carré

The Tailor of Panama – John Le Carré

Year of the Golden Ape – Colin Forbes

Dreaming in Code – Scott Rosenberg

 

Probably too ambitious as ever!

Well, that was quite a year. Again. Kind of longing for a return to normality, but I can’t see it happening any time soon. Anyway, you’re hopefully here for the books and these are the favourites that I read during 2021. First up are some honourable mentions that I gave 4.5 stars to:

Fire, Storm & Flood – James Dyke

Fox Fires – Wyl Menmuir

Where – Simon Moreton

Thin Places – Kerri ní Dochartaigh

How To Be Sad – Helen Russell

Skylarks With Rosie – Stephen Moss

Shearwater – Roger Morgan-Grenville

Much Ado About Mothing – James Lowen

Light Rains Sometimes Fall – Lev Parikian

On Gallows Down – Nicola Chester

Springlines – Clare Best and Mary Anne Aytoun-Ellis

The Heeding – Rob Cowen & Nick Hayes

Red Sands – Caroline Eden

Summer In The Islands – Matthew Fort

Slow Trains Around Spain – Tom Chesshyre

Water Ways – Jasper Winn

 

I can now reveal my books of 2021:

First are two books on books. The Book Collectors of Daraya is about people seeking out an existence in the war-torn country of Syria and how they collected books for others to read and find a little bit of inner peace. My second is White Spines; the story of Nicholas Royle and his obsession with collecting the Picador White spined books.

     

I finally finished the Discworld series this year. I had intended on doing it in 2020 but didn’t read these four. They are here because I think that he is a genius, his ability to shine a light on our world and the peculiarities of our society and make us laugh about it are unlikely to be equalled.

   

   

I read several books on London in 2021, but these two were outstanding. They are very different, but each has that special something that makes London such a different city compared to others in the UK.  Budden captures the surreal nature of the place in his book and Chivers shows how the very bedrock the city is built on can be traced if you know where to look.

   

Two of my favourite natural history books this year were The Screaming Sky and the Circling Sky. Charles Foster is obsessed with the swift and he has distilled that into this short volume. Neil Ansell’s book is more wide ranging, but equally well written. He takes us on many journeys into the 1000-year-old landscape that is the New Forest, recalling past trips there when younger. I was lucky enough to spend some time with him there this year too.

   

We live in a biased world and that bias is particularly prevalent when you look at how men and women are treated. Most things are designed for the male mind and body, which means that when women come to use them they are often put into danger. Not only could they hurt themselves, but some of these examples that Criado-Perez uses show how these poorly made product have killed. Eye-opening stuff and an essential read.

My final two books are travel. You didn’t think that I would not have any travel books on this list, did you? First is a book on the extraordinary Island of Madagasgar, written by John Gimlette. It is lavishly illustrated and his prose is top-notch as ever.

 

My final travel book and my book of the year for 2021 is The Bells of Old Tokyo. Anna Sherman has captured a part of Japan that I knew nothing about and her prose is sublime. Just get a copy and read it. A friend call Jeremy who runs Travel Writing World has an interview with her here.

Thank you to those that have read, commented and shared my post all this year. I know that there are not that many of you reading this, but I appreciate every one of you.

 

These are my favourite covers of the books that I have read over the course of 2021. They are in no particular order, but the one at the bottom is my cover of the year. The way I see it, the cover of the book has one job only and that is to be catching or attractive enough to make me want to pause, pick them up and then make me want to read it. In my opinion, all of these covers do that.

     

     

     

 

    

     

     

 

     

 

 

     

     

And my book cover of the year is:

 

 

 

The build-up to Christmas starts in August so by the time it comes around, I am a mix of bored and fed up by it. That said we had a nice quiet Christmas with a couple of family members over and met up with small numbers of other families too. Ate too much, but that kind of goes without saying really. I was only given one book for Christmas, but did get a new bookcase! Anyway this is mostly about my December reads, so here we go. I only read 12 books which I needed to get to the 190 books I needed for my Good Reads challenge, and then started pre-reading for 2022.

The books are a right of mix of types and genres and the first is David Howe’s, Extraction to Extinction which is about the way we have exploited the minerals from the surface of our planet and the impending ecological crises coming from these extractions. Bleak but worth reading.

Possibly the most surreal book that I read this year is Mordew by Alex Pheby. It is about a boy who lives in this magical world that has echoes of Victorian London about it and the story concerns his growing powers over his Lord and master. It is an immersive fantasy story.

A Christmas book, but not the sort that has any mention of tinsel within the covers. Rather these are stories that will give you goosebumps.Ii liked all the stories bar one and whilst it wasn’t scary, it was slightly unnerving!

A subject that is capturing my interest more and more is folklore. This was a library book by two of the contributors of #FolkloreThursday on Twitter and in here they look at folk stories from the rivers and seas around the world. It is not an in-depth study, but a overview.

The Vikings are portrayed as a grim, violent and brutal bunch of reprobates that raped and pillaged their way along the coastlines of Europe. They did do that, but they were also capable of fine art, cultural nuance and were in contact with peoples all over the middle east and even further. Well worth reading.

Most people don’t think about maths again after leaving school, but modern society is built on maths, equations and numbers. Brooks takes a number of concepts that you might or might not have come across and explains their significance to modern life.

I am not a big reader of philosophy but decided to give this a go after being sent it by the publisher. I struggled with some parts of it but found other parts that were absolutely spot on. May need to have another read of this at some point.

The two natural history books that I read this month could not have been any different. The first, Mistletoe Winter is another collection of essays from Roy Dennis about some of his favourite subjects and a reminded of the mess we are making of the environment. To say he is livid would be an understatement. The second is the debut by Nicola Chester. In this memoir, she takes us through her life in the natural world and the political stance that she has taken against the damage being done by various organisations. Compelling reading.

    

The Black Sea is surrounded by a number of countries that have been through or are still going through a significant upheaval. To find out what life was like in these places Jens Mühling circumvented the region and tried to find out what made these people tick. Really enjoyed this and it is a great companion book to Caroline Eden’s Black Sea cook book and travelogue.

I have two books of the month for December and they are the final two books in the Discworld series, Raising Steam & The Shepherds Crown. Needless to say, I loved them. R I P Terry Pratchett, thanks for everything

   

 

Has anyone read any of these? Or are there some now that you now want to? let me know in the comments below