Category: Book Musings (Page 15 of 31)

I have been through all of the 2022 publishers catalogues for the books they have coming out in spring that I could lay my hands on (28 so far and still a few missing too). I have extracted all the books that I really like the look of. Most are non-fiction, as you have probably come to expect by now, but there are a smattering of fiction, sci-fi and the odd poetry in this list. What has staggered me a little is there are 194 books in this list below. That is more than I normally read in a year which is ominous as there are more books to follow for the latter half of the year and I still have many others to read. The pain of a reader…

 

4th Estate

Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Reshaped America – William Sommer

 

Allen & Unwin

Dalvi: Six Years in the Arctic Tundra – Laura Galloway

 

Allen Lane

Emotional: The New Thinking About Feelings – Leonard Mlodinow

Kingdom Of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern – Jing Tsu

Worn: A People’s History Of Clothing – Sofi Thanhauser

Otherlands: A World In The Making – Thomas Halliday

How To Stay Smart In A Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms – Gerd Gigerenzer

Regenesis: How To Feed The World Without Devouring The Planet – George Monbiot

The Playbook: Protecting The Corporation From The Risks Of Scientific Knowledge – Jennifer Jacquet

Fantastic Numbers And Where To Find Them: A Cosmic Quest From Zero To Infinity – Tony Padilla

 

Atlantic Books

The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World – Oliver Milman

In the Camps: Stories from China’s High-tech Penal Colony – Darren Byler

Masters of the Lost Land: The Untold Story of the Fight to Own the Amazon – Heriberto Araújo

Dead in the Water: Murder and Fraud in the World’s Most Secretive Industry – Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel

Covert Action: The Global Story of Subversion, Sabotage and Secret Statecraft – Rory Cormac

The Line of Sight: How Vision Made Us Human – Andrew Parker

 

Basic Books

A Natural History Of The Future: What The Laws Of Biology Tell Us About The Destiny Of The Human Species – Rob Dunn

Hidden Games: The Surprising Power Of Game Theory To Explain Irrational Human Behaviour – Moshe Hoffman & Erez Yoeli

 

Bloomsbury

The Perfect Golden Circle – Benjamin Myers

52 Ways To Walk: The New Science And Timeless Joy Of How, When, Where And Why – Annabel Streets

Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data Instead Of Instinct To Make Better Choices – Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

The Trespasser’s Companion – Nick Hayes

The Great Experiment: How To Make Diverse Democracies Work – Yascha Mounk

The Catch: Fishing For Ted Hughes – Mark Wormald

Motherlands – Amaryllis Gacioppo

The Digital Republic: Taking Back Technology – Jamie Susskind

Racing Green: How Motorsport Science Can Save The World – Kit Chapman

Growing Up Human – Brenna Hassett

Forget Me Not: Finding The Forgotten Species Of Climate Change Britain – Sophie Pavelle

 

Bluemoose Books

Ghost Stories by Stu Hennigan

 

Bodley Head

Cloudmoney – Brett Scott

The Journey Of Humanity – Oded Galor

An Immense World – Ed Yong

 

British Library

The Philosophy of Curry – Sejal Sukhadwala

The Book of Book Jokes – Alex Johnson

Shadows on the Wall: Dark Tales by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

The Ghost Slayers: Thrilling Tales of Occult Detection – Mike Ashley

Our Haunted Shores: Tales from the Coasts of the British Isles – Emily Alder, Joan Passey & Jimmy Packham

The Philosophy of Whisky – Billy Abbott

 

Canongate

Time On Rock: A Climber’s Route Into The Mountains – Anna Fleming

The Unusual Suspect: The Remarkable True Story Of A Modern-Day Robin Hood – Ben Machell

No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs Of A Working-Class Reader – Mark Hodkinson

How To Be Animal: What It Means To Be Human – Melanie Challenger

The Instant – Amy Liptrot

Explorer: The Quest For Adventure, Discovery And The Great Unknown – Benedict Allen

The Fire People: A Collection Of Black British Poetry – Ed. Lemn Sissay

More Fiya: A New Collection Of Black British Poetry – Ed. Kayo Chingonyi

Things I Have Withheld – Kei Miller

Blood Legacy: Reckoning With A Family’s Story Of Slavery – Alex Renton

The Secret History Of Here: A Year In The Valley – Alistair Moffat

 

Chatto & Windus

Bless The Daughter Raised By A Voice In Her Head – Warsan Shire

Nine Paths – Lexi Stadlen

Unearthed – Claire Ratinon

 

Coronet

We Need Snowflakes: In Defence Of The Sensitive, The Angry And The Offended – Hannah Jewell

A New Science Of Heaven: How The New Science Of Plasma Is Shedding Light On Spiritual Experience – Robert Temple

 

Custom House

Wahala – Nikki May

 

Doubleday

Wild Fell: Fighting For Nature On A Lake District Farm – Lee Schofield

 

Duckworth

Nice Is Not A Biscuit: How To Build A World-Class Business By Doing The Right Thing – Peter Mead

Vagabonds: Life On The Streets Of Nineteenth-Century London – Oskar Jensen

 

Elliott & Thompson

On the Scent: Unlocking the mysteries of smell – and how losing it can change our world – Paola Totaro and Robert Wainwright

A River Runs Through Me: A year and a life of salmon fishing in Scotland – Andrew Douglas-Home

A Village in the Third Reich: How ordinary lives were transformed by the rise of Fascism – Julia Boyd & Angelika Patel

Beside the Seaside: The Story of the English Coastal Town – Ian Walker

 

Europa Editions

In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing – Elena Ferrante Tr Ann Goldstein

The Passenger: Rome – Various

The Passenger: Ireland – Various

 

Faber & Faber

Wild Green Wonders – Patrick Barkham

The Stasi Poetry Circle – Philip Oltermann

Shadowlands – Matthew Green

Black And Female: Essays – Tsitsi Dangarembga

Iconicon – John Grindrod

Sounds Wild And Broken – David George Haskell

The Premonitions Bureau – Sam Knight

Exiles: Three Island Journeys – William Atkins

Beyond Measure – James Vincent

 

Gollancz

The This – Adam Roberts

The Flight Of The Aphrodite – S.J. Morden

Eversion – Alastair Reynolds

 

Granta

Grounding: Finding Home In A Garden – Lulah Ellender

Different: What Apes Can Teach Us About Gender – Frans de Waal

Refractive Africa – Will Alexander

Garden Physic – Sylvia Legris

The End Of Bias: How We Change Our Minds – Jessica Nordell

 

Grove Press

Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape and Home – Alexander Wolff

 

Harvill Secker

Africa Is Not A Country: Breaking Stereotypes Of Modern Africa – Dipo Faloyin

 

Head of Zeus

Furious Heaven The Sun Chronicles 2 – Kate Elliott

Dirty Work: Essential Jobs And The Hidden Toll Of Inequality – Eyal Press

Death By Nature?: Understanding Wildlife Diseases – Ben Garrod

Water Always Wins: Going With The Flow To Thrive In The Age Of Droughts, Floods And Climate Change – Erica Gies

A Feather At The Feast: Thomas Morton, America’s First Nature Writer And Falconer – Ben Crane

 

Headline

Chivalry – Neil Gaiman

Butter: A Celebration – Olivia Potts

The Mercenary River Private Greed, Public Good: A History Of London’s Water – Nick Higham

These Bodies Of Water – Sabrina Mahfouz

 

Hodder & Stoughton

When The Dust Settles: Stories Of Love, Loss And Hope From An Expert In Disaster – Lucy Easthope

Firmament: The Hidden Science Of Weather, Climate Change And The Air That Surrounds Us – Simon Clark

Escape From Siberia – Yoann Barbereau Tr Maren Baudet-Lackner

Dust: A History And A Future Of Environmental Disaster – Jay Owens

Where The Wildflowers Grow My Journey Through Botanical Britain – Leif Bersweden

After They’re Gone: A Love Letter To The Lost Species Of The World – Peter Marren

 

Hurst Publishers

Another World Is Possible: How To Reignite Radical Political Imagination – Geoff Mulgan

China Unbound A New World Disorder – Joanna Chiu

No Shortcuts: Why States Struggle To Develop A Military Cyber-Force – Max Smeets

Edge Of England Landfall In Lincolnshire – Derek Turner

Work Won’t Love You Back How Devotion To Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted And Alone – Sarah Jaffe

 

Icon Books

Hurricane Lizards And Plastic Squid: How The Natural World Is Adapting To Climate Change – Thor Hanson

Dear Bill Bryson: Footnotes From A Small Island – Ben Aitken

Game Theory: Understanding The Mathematics Of Life – Brian Clegg

 

Jo Fletcher

Momenticon – Andrew Caldecott

 

John Murray

The Fairy Tellers: A Journey Into The Secret History Of Fairy Tales – Nicholas Jubber

Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World – Nicholas Jubber

Extraterrestrial: The First Sign Of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth – Avi Loeb

Futureproof: 9 Rules For Humans In The Age Of Automation – Kevin Roose

Free To Go: From Orkney To New Zealand On A Motorbike – Esa Aldegheri

Rebel With A Clause Tales And Tips From A Travelling Grammar Guru – Ellen Jovin

 

Jonathan Cape

The Treeline: The Last Forest And The Future Of Life On Earth – Ben Rawlence

Pilgrim Bell – Kaveh Akbar

Ephemeron – Fiona Benson

Dreaming The Karoo – Julia Blackburn

Birdgirl – Mya-Rose Craig

 

Little Toller

Millstone Grit – Glyn Hughes

Shalimar – Davina Quinlivan

Brother Do You Love Me – Manni Coe & Reuben Coe

The Loveliness Of Ladybirds – JC Niala

 

Maclehose

Alice’s Book: How The Nazis Stole My Grandmother’s Cookbook – KARINA URBACH Tr. Jamie Bulloch

 

Michael Joseph

Small Island: 12 Maps That Explain The History Of Britain – Philip Parker

Prized Women – Caroline Lea

The Lost Paths – Jack Cornish

One Place De L’Eglise – Trevor Dolby

 

Oneworld

A Brief History Of Timekeeping: The Science Of Marking Time, From Stonehenge To Atomic Clocks – Chad Orzel

The Elements Of Choice: Why The Way We Decide Matters – Eric J. Johnson

How Minds Change: The Science Of Belief, Opinion And Persuasion – David McRaney

The Biggest Number In The World: A Journey To The Edge Of Mathematics – David Darling and Agnijo Banerjee

 

Orion

Wild City: Encounters With Urban Wildlife – Florence Wilkinson

 

Pan Macmillan

Wild Flowers Of Britain And Ireland – Roger Phillips

The Greatest Escape – Neil Churches

Too Big To Jail: Inside Hsbc, The Mexican Drug Cartels And The Greatest Banking Scandal Of The Century – Chris Blackhurst

 

Penguin

The Voltage Effect – John A List

 

Picador

In Defence Of Witches: Why Women Are Still On Trial – Mona Chollet

The Vulture – Gerard Woodward

Tomorrow’s People: The Future Of Humanity In Ten Numbers – Paul Morland

Lurex – Denise Riley

The Greatest Invention: A History Of The World In Nine Mysterious Scripts – Silvia Ferrara

Who Are We Now? Stories Of Modern England – Jason Cowley

The Book Of Minds – Philip Ball

Sea Of Tranquility – Emily St. John Mandel

 

Profile Books

The Social Lives Of Animals: How Co-Operation Conquered The Natural World – Ashley Ward

Tickets For The Ark: From Wasps To Whales – How Do We Choose What To Save? – Rebecca Nesbit

Strandings: Confessions Of A Whale Scavenger – Peter Riley

How To Live With Each Other: An Anthropologist’s Notes On Sharing A Divided World – Farhan Samanani

Tenants: The People On The Frontline Of Britain’s Housing Crisis – Vicky Spratt

Everybody Hertz: The Amazing World Of Frequency, From Bad Vibes To Good Vibrations – Richard Mainwaring

Geography Is Destiny: Britain’s Place In The World, A 10,000-Year History – Ian Morris

Chums: How A Tiny Group Of Oxford Tories Took Over Britain – Simon Kuper

Mathematical Intelligence: What We Have That Machines Don’t – Junaid Mubeen

The Celts: The Fall And Rise Of An Idea – Simon Jenkins

 

Quercus

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story Of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds And Our World – MAX FISHER

 

Reaktion Books

Hope and Fear: Modern Myths, Conspiracy Theories and Pseudo-History – Ronald H. Fritze

Polling UnPacked: The History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls – Mark Pack

 

Sandstone Press

The Year the World Went Mad: A Scientific Memoir – Mark Woolhouse

 

Saraband

Ring Of Stone Circles – Stan L Abbott

North Country – Karen Lloyd

 

Summersdale

Riding Out – Simon Parker

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

 

Tor

Eyes Of The Void – Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Kaiju Preservation Society – John Scalzi

 

Two Roads

An Atlas Of Endangered Animals – Megan McCubbin

Devorgilla Days A Memoir Of Hope And Healing – Kathleen HartWindswept: Walking In The Footsteps Of Remarkable Women – Annabel Abbs

 

Viking

How The World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide To Our Past, Present, And Future – Vaclav Smil

A Black Boy At Eton – Dillibe Onyeama

This Way To The Universe: A Journey Into Physics – Michael Dine

Birds And Us: A 12,000 Year History, From Cave Art To Conservation – Tim Birkhead

 

Vintage

Pharmacopoeia – Derek Jarman

 

W&N

The Cure For Sleep – Tanya Shadrick

Control: The Dark History And Troubling Present Of Eugenics – Adam Rutherford

Spring Tides: A Story From A Small Island – Fiona Gell

The Ballast Seed: A Memoir Of Motherhood, Nature And Staying Afloat – Rosie Kinchen

 

Wellcome Collection

Dark And Magical Places: The Neuroscience Of How We Navigate – Christopher Kemp

This Book Is A Plant: How To Grow, Learn And Radically Engage With The Natural World – Various

Am I Normal: The 200-Year Search For Normal People (And Why They Don’t Exist) – Sarah Chaney

 

William Collins

The Sloth Lemur’s Song: Madagascar from the Deep Past to the Uncertain Present – Alison Richard

Origin Africa – Jonathan Kingdon

Black Holes – Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw

Enough: The Violence Against Women and How to End It – Harriet Johnson

Where The Seals Sing – Susan Richardson

In Search Of One Last Song – Patrick Galbraith

To Cure All Ills – Camper English

Platypus Matters – Jack Ashby

How To Speak Whale – Tom Mustill

Where My Feet Fall – Duncan Minshall

The Social Machine – Justin Hampston-Jones

Nazi Billionaires – David de Jong

 

Any that take your fancy? And are there any that you know about that you think that I should know too? Let me know in the comments below.

November came and went really quickly as it always does and now we are headlong into the season of good cheer, oversized credit card bills and eating too much. If you were to look carefully you might still see a religious festival in there somewhere, but maybe not… Anyway, you’re here for the books. I hope. I only managed to get through 13 last month and I am not sure why, some books that I would have normally read in a day or so took three or fours days. However, it was a good month for reading with two books of the month and I even managed t do a whole week of reviews for an author, Dervla Murphy.

First up is a book about the much-overlooked Index that is often at the back of the books that I read. I do use them occasionally, but mostly not. How they came about is quite fascinating, but this did feel a bit like an academic paper to be honest.

I am not a great fan of gothic fantasy, but was fortunate enough to receive this from the publisher, so I thought that I would give it a go. It is a fictionalised account of some real events and people that took place in Ireland in 1914. It is not bad book overall and it you love this type of book it will be right up your street.

As a species we are defined by what we discard. Every other one on the planet manages to ensure that everything is useful and can be consumed or used by everything up and down the food chain. In this book, Lisa Wollett tells the story of her family and their work collecting rubbish and ties it in with a strong environmental message. Though it was really good for a ‘rubbish book’…

The very word witch is enough to strike horror into the minds of some people, but in the very readable book, Jennifer Lane takes us through her year as a witch and some of the rituals that she uses to maintain her balance with the natural world.

In a similar vein, Fex Inkwright uses all sorts of plants to heal and perform folk magic. This is her guide to the mysteries of plants and it is a beautifully produced book.

100 Poets is a really good introduction to the work of a large number of different poets. I have several now that I want to read, but I did think that it was lacking more modern poets.

I would highly recommend this book by Tharik Hussainif you want to expand your reading to see Europe in another light and understand what a melting pot of people, cultures and religions that it has been for hundreds of years. It is about his trip around the Balkans learning how the Muslims of Europe are living today and as he has his family along too, it is a refreshingly different travel book.

Dervla Murphy turned 90 in November and as a mini tribute to her, I wrote a little piece here and reviewed five of her books, four of which I read in November. Each of these books below tells us a lot about her as well as the places that she travels to. I can recommend all of them.

   

   

 

My two books of the month could not be any different. First is London Incognito, a sideways look at our capital peering through the gaps where some people would rather you wouldn’t look..

My second is by the master, Terry Pratchett, his take on a crime that is unforgivable with the usual cast of characters.

   

Any that take your fancy here? Or have you read them before? Tell me what you think about them in the comments below

December is flying by already. This was supposed to come out a few days ago, but last week was Dervla Murphy week on the blog, hence why this is delayed.

So this month is a much shorter TBR. I have 10 books to go on my Good Reads Challenge of 190 books for the year and then I want to start getting ahead for next year by reading some of the monsters that I have around the house. So these are the final books of the year below. I have two seasonal / Christmassy books in the pile and then a list of the big books that I am hoping to make some inroads too. The only spanner in the works is library reservations as when I went to renew last time four others were reserved, so they have gone on the list…

 

The Shepherds Crown – Terry Pratchett

The Intimate Resistance – Josep Maria Esquirol Tr. Douglas Suttle

Extraction to Extinction –  David Howe

Troubled Water – Jens Mühling Tr. Simon Pare

The Art Of More – Michael Brooks

River Kings – Cat Jarman

Treasure Of Folklore: Seas And Rivers – Dee Dee Chainey & Willow Winsham

Nests – Susan Ogilvy

 

Christmas Books

Mistletoe Winter – Roy Dennis

Sunless Solstice – Ed. Lucy Evans & Tanya Kirk

 

BIG Books

The Sea Is Not Made Of Water – Adam Nicholson

Finding the Mother Tree – Suzanne Simard

Mordew – Alex Pheby

Putin’s People – Catherine Belton

The Border  – Erika Fatland Tr. Kari Dickson

Elephant Complex: Travels In Sri Lanka – John Gimlette

Lotharingia – Simon Winder

This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends – Nicole Perlroth

Concretopia – John Grindrod

The Night Lies Bleeding –  M.D. Lachlan

Opened Ground Poems 1966 – 1996 – Seamus Heaney

Survival of the City – Edward Glaeser & David Cutler

The Metal Heart – Caroline Lea

Britain Alone – Philip Stephens

The Germans and Europe – Peter Millar

Tweet Of The Day – Brett Westwood & Stephen Moss

Women On Nature – Katherine Norbury

Any here that you have heard of or that take your fancy?

Ninety years ago on this very day, a girl called Dervla Murphy was born in Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland. She was an only child after her mother was advised not to have any more children because of rheumatoid arthritis. On her tenth birthday, she was given a bicycle and an atlas and these two gifts gave her the idea of cycling to India after she realised that by just keeping pedalling she could make it to any point in the world she desired.

Her first trips though were South England and Wales but in the mid-1950s she was in France and Spain on her bike. She managed to get a few articles published in the Hibernia journal and the Irish Independent, but her first attempt at a book was rejected. Her parents passed away in the early 1960s and now free of obligations from home life, she took the opportunity to make that trip on her bike to India. This trip through Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan before reaching that destination she saw in her atlas all those years ago, became her first book, Full Tilt, published in 1965.

It was the beginning of a happy career of travelling and then writing about it. The birth of her daughter meant a brief pause, but as soon as she was old enough she became Murphy’s talkative companion around South India and Baltistan at the ages of five and six. She joined her on other trips and when she was old enough to have her own children, they all went to Cuba.

She is a tough traveller. She has been robbed, attacked by wolves, suffered freezing cold and lived off dog biscuits and apricots and she attributes this resilience to her upbringing which was tough. Her earlier books are full of the wonders of discovering new places and people around the world, but her later books are much more political and opinionated. This came from the time she spent as a volunteer with refugees and her passion to help those suffering from injustice.

Murphy still lives in Lismore but has the company of numerous dogs and cats. She is a patron of Sustrans, a British charity for sustainable travel, and of the Lismore Immrama Festival of Travel Writing. She is a tour de force. I might not love everything that she has written, but I admire her tenacity and opinions. She was awarded the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing amongst her numerous awards. The full list of the books that she has written is below:

 

Full Tilt: Ireland to India With a Bicycle

Tibetan Foothold

The Waiting Land: A Spell In Nepal

In Ethiopia With A Mule

On A Shoestring To Coorg: An Experience Of South India

Where the Indus is young: a winter in Baltistan

A Place Apart

Wheels Within Wheels: Autobiography

Race To The Finish?: The Nuclear Stakes

Eight Feet in the Andes

Muddling through in Madagascar

Changing The Problem: Post-Forum Reflections

Ireland (with Klaus Francke)

Tales From Two Cities: Travel Of Another Sort

Cameroon With Egbert

Transylvania And Beyond

The Ukimwi Road: From Kenya To Zimbabwe

South From The Limpopo: Travels Through South Africa

Visiting Rwanda

One Foot In Laos

Through The Embers Of Chaos: Balkan Journeys

Through Siberia By Accident: A Small Slice Of Autobiography

Silverland: A Winter Journey Beyond The Urals

The Island That Dared: journeys in Cuba

A Month By The Sea: encounters in Gaza

Between River And Sea: encounters in Israel and Palestine

Here are my books:

Find out about the Dervla Murphy books that Eland still keep in print here

This week on my blog I have decided to make it Derval Murphy week. I will be publishing reviews of the books of hers that I have read recently. So do drop back again to let me know if any take your fancy

October came and went and even though I managed to get a week off at the end, I didn’t get as much read as we had a friend staying and had lots of days out around Dorset. It was good to see her. Nut I did manage to read 14 really good books and only one that I wasn’t that enamoured with.

 

I have read John Wright’s Natural History of the Hedgerow, so when I was offered this I jumped at the chance. It was a fascinating book and full  of those little details that can make a stroll around the countryside a much richer experience.

 

After he caught Covid, John Burnside almost died, but thankfully didn’t! As he recovered it gave him time to think about the processes of extinction that we have inflicted on other animals and this insightful and thoughtful book is the result. Well worth reading.

 

I read quite a lot of fiction in October. The first was Mainstream, a collection of short stories and essays from working-class, coloured and LGBT writers that do not have the same opportunities to see their words contained within the covers of a book. Didn’t like every story within, but there are some good ones. Hag is a collection of modern-day retellings of some classic folk lore tales all written by women. I really liked the modern take on the stories.

   

 

The next two books are set in America, the first is The Fugitives, which is the story of a band who get an invite to travel to America to play and when money is stolen from them, decide to head after the thief. The Con Artist is a story of a graphic artist who is framed for a murder and the shenanigans that he has to go through to prove his innocence. Both very different books!

   

 

I have not yet seen a hummingbird, but having read Jon Dunn’s new book, I now want to go and see one. However, they are native t the Americas and it is going to be a while before I can make it there. Not only is it a good read, but Dunn is a photographer too, so the images are excellent.

 

This is the second Larking poetry book that I have now read, and I really must write up my reviews. I quite like them so far and can see why he is held in high regard for some of them. As with any collection there were a few that I wasn’t keen on, but it is good to be pushed at times.

 

I had high hopes for this science book, but couldn’t get along with it. It is quite dry and academic and I thought that it lost focus sometimes.

 

I read quite a lot of travel books this month and two of them made my books of the month, but more on that below. These books took me to three different places around the planet, first to Thailand and Burma with Charles Nicholl and the slightly dubious company he was keeping at the time. Then a trip to India nearly 50 years ago with the indomitable Dervla Murphy and her daughter. Finally, Joachim Sartorius reminisced about the time that he was fortunate to spend in Cyprus in the book of that name.

          

 

My three books of the month for October were equally varied. Tom Chesshyre takes a slow journey around Spain on 52 trains fining the delights of the country in the out of the way places. Equally slow was Jasper Winn’s 100 miles he sent either on or alongside the canal network of the UK as the writer in residence. Finally, still in the UK, but with a heavy Japanese influence, we larns of the 72 micro seasons of that country and see how we can apply them to the UK and our regular four seasons.

          

Any that you see here that takes your fancy? Or have you read any? Let me know in the comments below.

Three of the UK’s most exciting poets Romalyn Ante, Dzifa Benson, and Jamie Hale have been selected as the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellows for 2020/21.

Each poet receives £15,000 and is given a year of critical support and mentoring. Turning the idea of an arts prize on its head, the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship provides each poet with the time and space to focus on their craft and fulfil their potential with no expectation that they produce a particular work or outcome.

Recognising the power of potential, the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship’s approach to funding advocates for a change in art funding practice in the UK, providing opportunities outside commercial pressures for artistic growth and new ideas to flourish. The Fellowship provides financial support towards the development of under-supported and diverse artistic practices across the UK, with a focus on the pursuit of artistic experimentation and the space for artists to thrive.

This alternative approach to recognising and rewarding outstanding poets is now in its third and final edition. Previous recipients are: Raymond Antrobus, Jane Commane and Jackie Hagan (2017-18 Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellows) and Hafsah Aneela Bashir, Anthony Joseph and Yomi Ṣode (2019-20 Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellows).

Romalyn Ante, Dzifa Benson, and Jamie Hale illustrate how diverse and exciting poetry has become in the 21st century. Through activism, visual arts, theatre, and drawing from their personal experiences/circumstances, the three poets express their practice through a multitude of ways, opening poetry up to a wide range of audiences. Each poet has produced outstanding work to date and have demonstrated enormous, unselfish generosity towards other poets, giving far more than they have received particularly during the pandemic. They have been selected for the potential they display at this critical point in their individual careers when the support provided from the Fellowship will make the most difference.

Alongside the freely given grant of £15,000, the three Fellows will each receive mentoring from the programme’s manager Dr Nathalie Teitler FRSA and access to experts drawn from the poetry world and beyond. Nathalie has run literature programmes promoting diversity in the UK for over 20 years, founding the first national mentoring and translation programmes for writers living in exile. She is the Director of The Complete Works – a national development programme that helped to raise the number of Black and Asian poets published by major presses.

Romalyn Ante is an award-winning Filipino-born, Wolverhampton-based poet, translator, editor and essayist. She is co-founding editor of harana poetry, an online magazine for poets writing in English as a second or parallel language, and her accolades include the Poetry London Prize, Manchester Poetry Prize, Society of Author’s Foundation Award, Developing Your Creative Practice, Creative Future Literary Award, amongst others. Apart from being a writer, she also works full-time as a nurse practitioner, specializing in providing different psychotherapeutic treatments.

 

 

Dzifa Benson is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work intersects science, art, the body and ritual, which she explores through poetry, prose, theatre-making, performance, essays and criticism. She has performed nationally and internationally for Tate Britain, the Courtauld Institute of Art, BBC Africa Beyond and more, and she abridged the National Youth Theatre’s 2021 production of Othello in collaboration with Olivier award-winning director Miranda Cromwell.

 

 

 

Jamie Hale is a poet, script/screenwriter and essayist based in London, whose work often explores the disabled body, nature, and mortality. Their pamphlet, Shield – about disability, treatment prioritisation, and the COVID-19 pandemic was published in January 2020. Their solo poetry show, NOT DYING, was performed at the Lyric Hammersmith and Barbican Centre in 2019, and the filmed version has been screened nationally and internationally since. Jamie is also the founder of CRIPtic Arts, an organisation showcasing and developing work by and for d/Deaf and disabled creatives.

 

 

Jon Opie, Deputy Director, Jerwood Arts, said: “The Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships is a special programme, which over the last four years has charted significant changes in the poetry world as begins to embrace the diversity of voices, experience and histories it encompasses. Past Fellows, and now the ones we have announced today, exemplify some of the multitudes of forms and languages that makes poetry an essential part of this country’s life, inseparable from mainstream media, powerfully articulating lived experiences and enhancing other art forms. I am hugely looking forward to working with Romalyn, Dzfia and Jamie over the coming year. Their talents are unique, and yet they share a generosity and sense of responsibility towards other poets and their communities. I have no doubt their Fellowships will be profound for them and for others around them.”

Sarah Crown, Director of Literature, Arts Council England, said: “The Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship continues to champion change in art funding practice in the UK as fearlessly as it has done for the last four years. Providing mentoring, financial support and, most importantly, time and space for under-represented poets to experiment and hone their craft – without the external pressures of meeting a particular outcome – nurtures creativity and enriches the sector as a whole.

The selectors have had the tough task of choosing three recipients from what was yet again an extremely strong set of nominees. Romalyn, Dzifa and Jamie join a long line of talented Fellows, and I am excited to see how they flourish over the coming year.”

The three recipients were selected from a strong field of nominees by award-winning poet and writer Joelle Taylor; writer, performer, and facilitator Yomi Ṣode (Jerwood Compton Poetry fellow 2019); and award-winning poet Pascale Petit.

Nominations were made by a pool of over 200 specialists nationally including poets, publishers, editors, literary development agencies, artists, funders and festival organisers.

Selector Joelle Taylor said: ”The task of selecting only three Fellows from a longlist of 86 poets was a painful process. Each of the poets we saw were of an international standard, committed to their practice and the changes they wish to see in their work. We made decisions based not only who was ‘best’ but on who it felt most essential to support. The three Fellows we chose are at an urgent moment in their careers. They stand at a crossroads within their art, compelled to make substantial changes, to forge new narratives, to develop in a way that would not be possible without support from Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships.”

The poets now join the six previous Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellows – Raymond Antrobus, Jane Commane, Jackie Hagan, Yomi Ṣode, Hafsah Aneela Bashir and Anthony Joseph – who have shown how transformative a supported year can be. Without setting limits or expectations, the Fellowship has enabled the careers of previous Fellows to flourish. Each Fellow has significantly developed their practice, and themselves, through the support of the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships.

Fellow Raymond Antrobus has gone on to win the Ted Hughes Award, be the London Book Fair Poet of The Fair, and be shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Griffin Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize, amongst other achievements. In 2019 he became the first-ever poet to be awarded the Rathbone Folio Prize for the best work of literature in any genre.

Jane Commane launched her first poetry collection, Assembly Lines at the Verve Festival in 2018, published by Bloodaxe. She also launched How to be a Poet: A 21st Century Guide to Writing Well, which ranked among the top five writing guides on Amazon. She is currently working on her second poetry collection, working title Municipal.

Jackie Hagan was one of five writers selected by Hat Trick Productions for its Your Voice, Your Story development scheme in partnership with Channel 4. In 2018, her one-woman show, This is Not a Safe Place, showcased at the Hebden Bridge Festival and at the Unlimited Festival, Southbank Centre.

Fellow Yomi Ṣode has toured his acclaimed one-man show COAT to sold-out audiences. In 2020 his libretto Remnants, written in collaboration with award-winning composer James B. Wilson and Chineke! Orchestra was lauded by BBC Radio 3 and The Guardian. He founded BoxedIn and The Daddy Diaries – an online blog platform for fathers & guardians. Yomi’s debut collection is scheduled for publication by Penguin in Spring 2022.

Fellow Hafsah Aneela Bashir was commissioned to write her play Cuts Of The Cloth for PUSH Festival 2019. Her debut poetry collection The Celox And The Clot was published by Burning Eye Books. During lockdown she founded the Poetry Health Service, a digital service providing free poetry panaceas by the people for the people.

Fellow Anthony Joseph was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award, and longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for his novel Kitch. As a musician, he has released seven critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 he received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composers Award.

I also am fortunate enough to have extracts of some of Dzifa Benson’s poems below

For the Love of Hendrik de Jongh, Drummer from Batavia

i
In the beginning,
he was my lord
of the 6 weeks.
When !Kaub showed
the dark side of his face
again, I had to slough off
my lover’s name.

ii
You are on the other side of the water.
Here, my forehead touches only air.
I map the radiant places of your body
the seams of my skin brittle and ablaze.

iii
Even when the rise and fall of our ribcages insist
we are still here, I try to live above the flood.
I breathe you in. You breathe me out. The world,
in rain-wind and dilate-sun, leans in to learn
which way to carve the howling sweep of years.

iv
You asked: What parts of you are unknown to me?
I answered: This too muchness of self in its not enoughness.

v
Day empties through us as a Cape sugarbird sparkles thinly
in the shadows.
You let me follow you into your dreams. Vast night looks in,
open-mouthed,
leads us by a nose of buchu into its fluid corners on the //Stars Road.
Our eyes don’t close.
I want to bury the chameleon of this love in a secret place of nerve and sinew
while we wait for the mantis to sing the !Great Hunger to sleep.

vi
If I arrived at your voice again would it fatten
into a new kind of passing time,
pour down my back into this thousand years
hollow of my spine? Your memory breathes
warmth over my skin. My body catches it
like when our astonished spirits
were every crashing leaf on every tree,
when our hallowed hands cupped
soft curving and fingered lean meat.

vii
You never left. We endured. I was still denied.

viii
My I was him.
In order to live
I had to use
the knife
between us.

 

Lusus Naturae at Bartholomew Fair: Natural-Born, Made and Fake

Ms Harvey’s eyes and hair made people weak at the knees with an uncommon fervour

They say I look like an angel with my hair
the pale straw colour of the silkworm’s thread
my eyes, a shade lighter than Indian pink.
They say I’m impertinent without being impolite
while maintaining a proper feminine dignity. Yet
the mob at Glasgow Fair was so unaffected by
my beauty, it turned me out of my cosy booth
as it also turned out a showful of wild beasts.

Ms Hipson, the tall Dutchwoman, dreams of dancing with a man tall enough to make her feel delicate

I cannot stand silence so it’s the glee and the din
of the stage for me. I sway among rafters to the patter
of the gaffer, to the gauge of long drum and hurdy-gurdy.
I am a spiritual sister of giraffe-necked women, daughter
of a stilt-walking Titan. Home is sawdust and greasepaint.
Kin is the spit-snarl of the rabble, half-cut with pale ale.

Ms Morgan, the Windsor Fairy, excited in the breasts of dukes sensations of wonder and delight

It’s a big world and I’m a little person. Blood can be
flowers or the very last thing you ever see. Even walking
can seem like a uncanny thing when you are a simulacrum
of woman, when something has been left behind. It’s a strange
tongue, this one my body has to speak. But please, do not
mistake the smallness of my anatomy for the smallness of a life.

 

Ms Sidonia married twice and retired a wealthy woman

God sent me this beard, I will not take it off!
How else would they notice me? This visage
is a lure, toast of the mob, I am a sight to silence
the baying crowd. I cheated death, I fought
and won. That makes me beautiful. I bow now
to the deities who live in my whiskers.

Ms Hopwood silenced the room when they lifted her out of the womb

They look at me as if this embarrassment of limbs
protruding from my chest is an act of war committed
against them. A wound, God in the shape of a jest,
the flight of chimaeras in hurricanes. My body is surely
not the most hospitable of hosts, cobbled together in taverns
and fairgrounds, in excess of the natural order of things.
They can’t imagine what I choose to believe in this armour.

Ms Vaughn of the piebald skin is also a trick-roper of royal lineage

Your bodies were given to you, not chosen by you.
You take your bodies for granted so you don’t exist
to me. When you thought of a daughter, you never
expected this. Shrivelled apple for a face, my epidermis
a hot to the touch patchwork of failed answers. Myth is
your yawning maw. I am the mooncalf who comes
and goes. After the fifth time my mother marked me
so she would know me again in other lives.

Ms Baartman wears her sense of self tightly, she musn’t let it float free

Here I am ripe and raw, carved root fashioned as woman.
Stone born from the brow of a dark mother whose many limbs
speak in tongues of glinting silver and singeing iron. I hang
like a curtain skirting the stage, my cloth pouring down endlessly.
These watchers, black holes where their hearts should be, would
walk right through me. They see in me the things they would do
to themselves if they were me. Who marked me while I was in the womb?
Who would curse me? I prance up and down these floorboards to keep
from weeping, sing myself away over and over again with the same red song.

 

Thank you to Gaby from Midas PR for providing the extracts and the information

Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships

The Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships are a six-year initiative supporting poets in the UK. The programme runs biennially for three editions between 2017 and 2022, creating a total of nine Fellows. Each receives a bursary of £15,000 and mentoring support. The Fellowships invest in the process and practice of making poetry, with no expectations of published work or performed events as a result of the award, and support individuals whose practice encompasses poetry in the broadest artistic sense. Poets are matched with a core mentor and have further access to a range of advisers and ‘critical friends’ to support their developing practice.

 

Project credit:

The Jerwood Compton Fellowships are designed and managed by Jerwood Arts, with support from Arts Council England including funds from the Joseph Compton bequest.

Jerwood Arts is the leading independent funder dedicated to supporting early-career UK artists, curators and producers to develop and thrive. We enable transformative opportunities for individuals across art forms, supporting imaginative awards, fellowships, programmes, commissions and collaborations. We present new work and bring people from across the arts together in the galleries at Jerwood Space, London, as well as online and across the UK.

www.jerwoodarts.org

 

Arts Council England is the national development body for arts and culture across England, working to enrich people’s lives. We support a range of activities across the arts, museums and libraries – from theatre to visual art, reading to dance, music to literature, and crafts to collections. Great art and culture inspires us, brings us together and teaches us about ourselves and the world around us. In short, it makes life better. Between 2018 and 2022, we will invest £1.45 billion of public money from government and an estimated £860 million from the National Lottery to help create these experiences for as many people as possible across the country.

www.artscouncil.org.uk

Another month passes and suddenly it is TBR time again. You know the drill, he is an unfeasibly large list that I will be picking my books from:

 

Finishing Off (Still!)

Lotharingia – Simon Winder

Sea People- Christina Thompson

On The Marsh – Simon Barnes

Another Fine Mess – Tim Moore

Snuff – Terry Pratchett

The Spirit Engineer – A.J. West

Folk Magic and Healing – Fez Inkwright

The Wheel – Jennifer Lane

Index – Dennis Duncan

 

Blog Tours

None this month

 

Review Copies

Astral Travel – Elizabeth Baines

The Germans and Europe – Peter Millar

Britain Alone – Philip Stephens

We Own This City – Justin Fenton

Spaceworlds –  Ed. Mike Ashley

The Power of Geography – Tim Marshall

Finding the Mother Tree – Suzanne Simard

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

The Sea Is Not Made Of Water – Adam Nicholson

Above the Law – Adrian Bleese

Somebody Else – Charles Nicholl

Scenes from Prehistoric Life – Francis Pryor

The Turkish Embassy Letters – Mary Wortley Montagu

On Gallows Down – Nicola Chester

Survival of the City – Edward Glaeser & David Cutler

Wish You Weren’t Here – Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

Black Lion – Sicelo Mbatha

The Babel Message – Keith Kahn-Harris

Troubled Water – Jens Mühling Tr. Simon Pare

Sunless Solstice – Ed. Lucy Evans & Tanya Kirk

Biography of a Fly – Jaap Robben

The Heath – Hunter Davies

 

Library Books

Looking for Transwonderland – Noo Saro-Wiwa

Venice – Cees Nooteboom

Afropean – Johny Pitts

Rag And Bone – Lisa Wollett

London Incognita – Gary Budden

Minarets In The Mountains – Tharik Hussain

 

Poetry

100 Poets: A Little Anthology Ed. John Carey

 

Challenge Books

The Night Lies Bleeding – M.D. Lachlan

Divided – Tim Marshall

The Wonderful Mr Willughby – Tim Birkhead

The House of Islam- Ed Husain

Asian Waters – Humphrey Hawksley

Blue Mind – Wallace J. Nichols

21 Lessons for the 21st Century- Yuval Noah Harari

The Restless Kings- Nick Barratt

To Obama- Jeanne Marie Laskas

What We Have Lost – James Hamilton-Paterson

 

Wainwright Prize

Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald

Seed to Dust Marc Hamer

English Pastoral: An Inheritance James Rebanks

I Belong Here Anita Sethi

The Wild Silence Raynor Winn

 

Stanford Award

Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul Taran Khan

Travelling While Black Nanjala Nyabola

 

Terry Pratchett

Raising Steam Terry Pratchett

We’re approaching halfway through September and I realised that I hadn’t written my August review! So here it is. It was a really good reading month and even though I had a week off, I didn’t get as much read as I thought that I would. Story of my life.

 

I read three books about books in August. One is my book of the month, but these two were good too. Dear Reader is Cathy Rentzenbrink’s memoir seen through the books that he has read in different stages of her life. Burning the Book is about those that have chosen to destroy books for all manner of reasons and Richard Ovenden looks at why societies do this.

     

 

Elites by Douglas Board is about how you can climb the corporate greasy pole should you wish to do so. Some of this book I liked, but I did have problems with some of the other parts of it.

 

I think that those that are still stupid enough to think that climate change is a fallacy, must with be in the ay of the old giants or have a cupboard full of tin foil hats. Fire, Storm & Flood is a graphical book about the very visible damage that we have done and are continuing to do to the planet. It is not a good book in lots of ways but it is written with clear and concise aims.

 

I managed to read three fiction books this month. Wyntertide is the sequel to Rotherweird and is set in the same tiny part of London that is in a very different world to ours. In this book, a long-dead man called Gerald Wynter is playing the long game and the omens are not looking good. Piranesi is two books in one really. To begin with, it starts off as this most fantastical place, an infinite room with ornate and strange statues in each one that is inhabited by one man. He is visited by one other person, who he calls the Other. But someone else is trying to gain entry to this place and it is then that the book changes in tone. It has just won the Women’s Prize too. Weathering is very different to these two, it is about a mother and a daughter who have ended back at the village that the mother grew up in to tidy up and sell her later mothers house. But the presence of her mother is still there in the house and the river nearby.

          

 

The three history books that I read in August could not have been any more different. Walking Pepys’s London is exactly what it says it is, a series of trails around Lond following the roads that Pepys would have taken that have been taken from his famous diaries.  Cathy Newman was concerned about the lack of female representation in history, so she wrote Bloody Brilliant Women to tell the stories of women who have changed history in significant ways. It is a very good book. No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen is the story of how a group of radical pacifists took possession of 300 acres of land at Fratling in Essex and established a community farm. It is a fascinating book as this is a side of the Second World War that you don’t hear that much about.

         

 

Two very different books on nature, in August. This comes from Sam Lee’s perspective as a musician and is a eulogy to the drab bird with the fantastic voice that is the nightingale. The second is a book about the time that nature takes, from the fractions of a second up to the time that is measured in aeons. Well thought through concept for a book.

     

 

My poetry book for August was  Slate petals. This uses form, structure and layout in a quite unique way. I particularly liked the poems within poems that used subtly different font colours.

 

Even though I had a week off during August, it was a staycation for a whole variety of reasons that I am not going to go into here. One of the best ways of travelling though is from your armchair at home where I read three more travel books. The first, The Kindness Of Strangers is a compilation of essays by a number of travel writers telling of the time when they have had to rely on or have been helped by people that they had never met before. It is a wonderful collection showing that there is some basic humanity left out there. I have not been to Greece, yet, but Dilys Powell’s book, An Affair Of The Heart, is her love story to the country. My final stop was Mallorca where Anna Nicholas took me to her home and introduced me to her vast menagerie and the characters that make her life fun and full.

       

 

My book of the month is the fantastic White Spines by Nicholas Royle. reading this book about his stories of finding the Picador books that he so treasures felt like I had discovered a kindred spirit. If you like books, or reading and collection books then you need to read this

So any of those take your fancy? Or have you read them already?

August flew by and I had a week off too! Managed to make a small inroad to last month’s TBR but the list is still out of control. I am aiming to pick around 16 to 18 from this list below.

 

Finishing Off (Still!)

Lotharingia – Simon Winder

Sea People – Christina Thompson

On The Marsh – Simon Barnes

Another Fine Mess – Tim Moore

Invisible Work – John Howkins

The Pay Off – Gottfried Leibbrandt and Natasha De Terán

 

BLOG TOUR

London Clay – Tom Chivers

 

Review Copies

Astral Travel – Elizabeth Baines

The Germans and Europe – Peter Millar

Britain Alone – Philip Stephens

We Own This City – Justin Fenton

Spaceworlds – Ed. Mike Ashley

The Fugitives – Jamal Mahjoub

Slow Trains Around Spain – Tom Chesshyre

The Power of Geography – Tim Marshall

Finding the Mother Tree – Suzanne Simard

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

The Glitter in the Green – Jon Dunn

Borderlines – Charles Nicholl

The Sea Is Not Made Of Water – Adam Nicholson

Mainstream – Ed Justin Davis & Nathan Evans

Flight of the Diamond Smugglers – Matthew Gavin Frank

Above the Law – Adrian Bleese

Somebody Else – Charles Nicholl

Goshawk Summer – James Aldred

The Red Planet – Simon Morden

The Turkish Embassy Letters – Mary Wortley Montagu

Lost Animals – Errol Fuller

A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce – Massimo Montanari Tr. Gregory Conti

The Long Field – Pamela Petro

100 Poets – Ed. John Carey

The Song of Youth – Montserrat Roig, Tr. Tiago Miller

Light Rains Sometimes Fall – Lev Parikian

 

Library

Grounded – Ruth Allen

Rag And Bone – Lisa Wollett

Island Dreams – Gavin Francis

Seed To Dust – Marc Hamer

 

Poetry

High Windows – Philip Larkin
Death of a Naturalist – Seamus Heaney

 

Terry Pratchett

Thought that I might get to these earlier, but no. So four books to go on the Discworld series, and this month I will read the first of the four left. Probably not going to get to the Bromliad series this year but never say never…

I Shall Wear Midnight

 

Challenge Books

The Con Artist – Fred van Lente

Water Ways – Jasper Winn

The Night Lies Bleeding – M.D. Lachlan

Divided – Tim Marshall

The Wonderful Mr Willughby – Tim Birkhead

The House of Islam – Ed Husain

Asian Waters – Humphrey Hawksley

Light of the Stars – Adam Frank

Blue Mind – Wallace J. Nichols

21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari

The Restless Kings – Nick Barratt

The Kindness Of Strangers – Ed. Fearghal O’Nuallain

To Obama – Jeanne Marie Laskas

What We Have Lost – James Hamilton-Paterson

 

Wainwright Prize

Vesper Flights – Helen Macdonald

Seed to Dust – Marc Hamer

English Pastoral: An Inheritance – James Rebanks

I Belong Here – Anita Sethi

The Wild Silence – Raynor Winn

 

Any that you have read or come across before? Or are there are any that take your fancy?

So Johnson has waved his magic wand and Covid has magically disappeared… Not. Anyway you’re here for the books I hope and I read quite a lot of them in July, 18 in the end, but never as many as I hoped. And here they all are:

First is The Way To The Sea by Caroline Crampton. In this book, she takes us very briefly from the source of the Thames to Tower Bridge where the pace slows and she spends a lot of time taking us around the estuary and some of her upbringing in the area. Well worth reading

 

Those that watched in horror as the American Capitol building was overrun by the rioters who were there supposedly to stop the steal; may have wondered where these people came from. This book goes some way to explain the very worrying rise of QAnon and their particular, hateful conspiracy theories. Grim but worthwhile reading.

 

I was sent a review copy of Book five a long while ago and have finally got to read books three and four in the series. I like them, they are entertaining and Cogman writes a good story, but they are a touch predictable.

     

 

Girl Squads was an unsolicited review copy that I was sent a long while ago. It is quite enjoyable and Maggs has done her bit for feminism by filling in the gaps that are lacking in regular history books. It is American centric but otherwise is a good read.

 

Two slightly strange books next. The first Tarmac to Towpath is a visual and artist response to the lockdowns that have been imposed because of the pandemic. I really liked it. The second is a blend of the words of Gary Budden and the amazing art of Maxim Griffin. Wonderful stuff

   

 

I am not autistic, but I can see that I have traits that move me a tiny bit up the spectrum. Katherine May is though and it wasn’t until she embarked on the South West Coast path that a chance encounter with a radio programme answered a question that she hadn’t even thought of at that point in her life. This is her story.

 

There is not a lot of depth to this, but it is a beautifully produced book about our little amphibious friends, frogs.

 

I read quite a lot of natural history books this month, meaning that I have now read more than travel so far this year. This will be resolved soon! Birdsong in a Time of Silence is another book about the discovery of the natural world during the lockdown last year. Another book that has lockdown as one of its themes is the Eternal Season, but there is more to this that that, it is also about how we are starting to have dramatic effects on the way that wildlife is being disrupted.

   

 

The Stubborn Light Of Things is Melissa Harrison’s nature diaries that have been collected together in one beautiful book. They are short pieces that can be dipped into as and when suits. How we interact with the natural world if the focus on Ian Carter’s book. Drawing on his years of experience he teases out the threads that inextricably link us to every living entity on this planet.

    

 

You can take the nature writer out of their local patch but it won’t stop them from writing about the things that they see around them. This was an idea from Jim Crumley’s publisher, Saraband and he has done an excellent job of finding a never-ending succession of interesting things to look at.

 

Just the one poetry book this month, which means that I am two behind on my target for the year now! Anyway, Owl Unbound is an interesting collection by Zoë Brooks about nature, life and the whole dam thing.

 

Sticking with life, how it evolved on this planet is still being understood. Marianne Taylor has chosen ten species to show how life has developed in its own particular way and has included a 1/2 chapter on artificial life and a bit of speculation as to where we will go from here. It might not be as in-depth as some people would like, but I did like the rich graphics and images used.

 

Delving into the secret life of those that spy is a combination of smoke, mirrors and deception. This claims to have an inside view of those clever bods that make and break codes but being an official history means that it does always feel like something (i.e. all the good stuff) is missing.

 

My book of the month is Where? This book by Simon Moreton is an artistic blend of personal memoir, family history and tribute to his late father. It is truly excellent and if you want a very different book then I can highly recommend it.

Any of these that take your fancy? Or are there some that you have read already? Let me know in the comments below