Category: Book Musings (Page 16 of 31)

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

Another month passes and I nearly forgot to add the next set of books to this still vast list that I will be picking from during August.  It is starting (!!!) to get a little out of control now…

Finishing Off (Still!)

Lotharingia – Simon Winder

Sea People – Christina Thompson

On The Marsh – Simon Barnes

Another Fine Mess – Tim Moore

Girl Squads – Sam Maggs

Bloody Brilliant Women – Cathy Newman

BLOG TOUR

Peacocks in Paradise – Anna Nicholas

Review Copies

Burning The Books – Richard Ovenden

Dear Reader – Cathy Rentzenbrink

Astral Travel – Elizabeth Baines

The Germans and Europe – Peter Millar

Britain Alone – Philip Stephens

We Own This City – Justin Fenton

Spaceworlds – Ed. Mike Ashley

Elites – Douglas Board

The Fugitives – Jamal Mahjoub

Invisible Work – John Howkins

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

No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen – Ken Worple

The Devil You Know – Gwen Adshead, Eileen Horne

Letters from Egypt – Lucie Duff Gordon

Nature Fast and Nature Slow – Nicholas P. Money

The Glitter in the Green – Jon Dunn

Borderlines – Charles Nicholl

The Sea Is Not Made Of Water – Adam Nicholson

The Pay Off – Gottfried Leibbrandt and Natasha De Terán

MAINSTREAM – Ed Justin Davis & Nathan Evans

Flight of the Diamond Smugglers – Matthew Gavin Frank

White Spines – Nicholas Royle

Above the Law – Adrian Bleese

Somebody Else – Charles Nicholl

Goshawk Summer – James Aldred

Fire, Storm & Flood – James Dyke

Walking Pepys’s London – Jacky Colliss Harvey

Library

The Nightingale – Sam Lee

Weathering – Lucy Wood

No Friend But The Mountains – Behrouz Boochani

Poetry

Slate Petals (and Other Wordscapes) – Anthony Etherin

Challenge Books

An Affair Of The Heart – Dilys Powell

Wyntertide – Andrew Caldecot

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

I almost can’t believe that we are halfway through the year already. First a few mid-year stats. I have now read 99 books and 26274 pages, or pretty much double what I had read by the end of March. Sixty-four of the authors were male and the remaining thirty-five were female (35%). I have read 52 review books, 27 library books and 20 of my own. I have read books from 59 different publishers so far.

The top five publishers are:

Eland – 5 books

Picador – 5 books

Faber & Faber – 5 books

William Collins – 5 books

Bloomsbury – 4 books

My top five genres are:

Travel – 17 books

Natural History – 15 books

Fiction – 14 books

Poetry – 11 books

Miscellaneous – 5 books

So on to the books that I read in June. I read four fiction books during the month. Trimming England by M.J. Nicholls is a comedic story about a future English Prime Minister who decides to rid each count of its most annoying citizen and send them to Jersey. There were some amusing parts, but it wasn’t really for me. The Others is a completely different book, set in the modern-day, it is about an author who finds a set of notes about the Carlist Wars in the mid-1830s and the story of a Prussian Gentleman who arrived in the region to fight. Not a bad book overall. The Lip is Charlie Carroll’s first fiction book. This story is about a girl who lives in Cornwall and who objects to the way the people who can afford second homes are pricing the locals out of the neighbourhood. I liked it and the way it tries to deal with mental health and many other factors. My fourth book is one of my books of the month, which is at the bottom of this post

I read three books that had a food theme, one of which made it to my books of the month too. These two could not be more different though, the first is all about the wonderful drink that is cider. There is not a lot of detail in here, but it is a good introduction though. Pete Brown writes some really good books on food and drink and this is his selection of the meals that make Britain. Some of the foods he picks would have made my list but some won’t have…

I read two books that had a musical theme, the first Lev’s Violin is the story of Helena Attlee being captivated after hearing a violin play and sifting through history to find out more about the instrument. When Quiet Was the New Loud is a book about the music that Tom Clayton listened to during the late 1990s and early 2000s. I must admit that the music is not really my sort of thing, so much so that I had barely heard of some of the bands he talks about. That said I really enjoyed the book, he has a way with words that makes it worthwhile reading

The Odditorium does exactly what it says on the cover; namely tells you about all the people who have done something significant but slighting unusual in their lives. Interesting and light-hearted reading.

I read two natural history books this month and both had the same story to tell about how interlinked the natural world is, but from very different perspectives. I can recommend both

The two science books I read both were about the nuclear industry. The first is about the creation of the superheavy elements that were originally needed by the scientists and engineers who were making nuclear reactors. The second is about the mess that we have left in the relentless pursuit of this nuclear goal.

I have only reading Wilding before by Isabella Tree, so was looking forward to her book on Nepal. This is part travel and part history about the Living Goddesses who are still revered in Nepal. Whilst context is needed, I felt this was much heavier on the history and rituals behind the position rather than her travels in the country learning about them.

An so onto my books of the month. First up is the wonderful Summer in the Islands, an account of the time that Matthew Fort spent travelling around Italy on his Vespa eating lots of lovely food. This will make you hungry! Next is The Heeding, an artistic and poetic response by Rob Cowen & Nick Hayes to the lockdowns that we had to go through with the pandemic. Finally is the beautifully written Fox Fires, about a girl who is looking for her father in the dystopian city of O.

Have you read any of these? Are there any that you now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.

Halfway through another strange year, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better at the moment. I could go on about Covid, but you’re probably as bored of it as I am.  Anyway, you are here for the books so this is the super long list that I am intending to work my way into. If I don’t emerge please send doughnuts.

Finishing Off (Still!)

Lotharingia: A Personal History Of Europe’s Lost Country – Simon Winder

Behind the Enigma: The Authorized History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency – John Ferris

On The Marsh: A Year Surrounded By Wildness And Wet – Simon Barnes

Pie Fidelity: In Defence Of British Food – Pete Brown

Another Fine Mess: Across Trumpland In A Ford Model T – Tim Moore

Blog Tour

The Storm is Upon Us – Mike Rothschild

New Book

These Towers Will One Day Slip Into The Sea – Gary Budden & Maxim Griffin

Review Copies

Did manage to read 7 review copies in May, but the list grows ever longer each month:

Burning The Books – Richard Ovenden

Dear Reader – Cathy Rentzenbrink

Astral Travel – Elizabeth Baines

The Germans and Europe – Peter Millar

Britain Alone – Philip Stephens

We Own This City – Justin Fenton

Elites – Douglas Board

The Fugitives – Jamal Mahjoub

Invisible Work – John Howkins

Slow Trains Around Spain – Tom Chesshyre

The Power of Geography – Tim Marshall

The Four Horsemen – Emily Mayhew

The Spy who was left out in the Cold – Tim Tate

Tarmac to Towpath – David Banning, Julian Hyde

Where – Simon Moreton

The Devil You Know- Gwen Adshead, Eileen Horne

Human, Nature- Ian Carter

Letters from Egypt – Lucie Duff Gordon

The Glitter in the Green – Jon Dunn

Lakeland Wild – Jim Crumley

Croak – Ed. Phil Bishop

Borderlines – Charles Nicholl

The Pay Off – Gottfried Leibbrandt and Natasha De Terán

The Eternal Season – Stephen Rutt

The Story of Life in 10 1/2 Chapters – Marianne Taylor

Mainstream – Ed Justin Davis & Nathan Evans

Flight of the Diamond Smugglers- Matthew Gavin Frank

White Spines – Nicholas Royle

Above the Law – Adrian Bleese

Library

There are fewer library books this month as I managed to renew some:

The Lost Plot – Genevieve Cogman

The Burning Page – Genevieve Cogman

The Way To The Sea – Caroline Crampton

Concretopia – John Grindrod

The Electricity Of Every Living Thing – Katherine May

Weathering – Lucy Wood

No Friend But The Mountains – Behrouz Boochani

Seed To Dust – Marc Hamer

Wainwright Prize

The Wainwright Prize was announced last month and I have read six so far so I am intending on working my way through the ones that I haven’t read yet.

Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald

The Stubborn Light of Things: A Nature Diary Melissa Harrison

Seed to Dust Marc Hamer

English Pastoral: An Inheritance James Rebanks

Birdsong in a Time of Silence Steven Lovatt

I Belong Here Anita Sethi

The Wild Silence Raynor Winn

Poetry

Only intending on reading one this month given the vastness of the rest of the list…

Owl Unbound – Zoë Brooks

20 Books Of Summer

Cathy at 746 books is running this again and my post about it is here. I am not going to get to all of these this month, but they are here so I can start ticking them off the list to read. Two down from last month!

An Affair Of The Heart – Dilys Powell

Wyntertide – Andrew Caldecot

The Con Artist – Fred van Lente

Girl Squads: 20 Female Friendships That Changed History – Sam Maggs

Water Ways: A Thousand Miles Along Britain’s Canals – Jasper Winn

The Night Lies Bleeding – M.D. Lachlan

Divided: Why We’re Living in an Age of Walls – Tim Marshall

The Wonderful Mr Willughby: The First True Ornithologist – Tim Birkhead

The House of Islam – Ed Husain

Asian Waters: The Struggle Over the South China Sea and the Strategy of Chinese Expansion – Humphrey Hawksley

Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth – Adam Frank

Blue Mind: How Water Makes You Happier, More Connected and Better at What You Do – Wallace J. Nichols

21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari

The Restless Kings: Henry II, His Sons and the Wars for the Plantagenet Crown – Nick Barratt

The Kindness Of Strangers: Travel Stories That Make Your Heart Grow – Ed. Fearghal O’Nuallain

To Obama: With Love, Joy, Anger, and Hope – Jeanne Marie Laskas

What We Have Lost – James Hamilton-Paterson

Bloody Brilliant Women: The Pioneers, Revolutionaries and Geniuses Your History Teacher Forgot to Mention – Cathy Newman

These lists never seem to get any shorter, do they? ?

Any that you have read or are there some above that take your fancy?

I have been through all of the autumn 2021 publishers catalogues that could lay my hands on (31 so far). I have listed all the books that I really like the look of. The majority on this list 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 there.

4th Estate

Thinking Better – Marcus De Sautoy

A Cook’s Book – Nigel Slater

Allen Lane

Index, A History Of The – Dennis Duncan

Basic Books

Rule Of The Robots – Martin Ford

Bloomsbury

Farewell Mr Puffin – Paul Heiney

Everybody Needs Beauty – Samantha Walton

A Field Guide To Larking – Lara Maiklem

Ripples On The River – Laurie Campbell & Anna Levin

Abundance – Karen Lloyd

Tales From The Tillerman – Steve Haywood

In Kiltumper – Niall Williams & Christine Breen

Truffle Hound – Rowan Jacobsen

Urban Wild – Helen Rook

Feet First – Annabel Streets

The Book Of Vanishing Species – Beatrice Forshall

Bloomsbury Sigma

Our Biggest Experiment – Alice Bell

Worlds In Shadow – Patrick Nunn

Fire And Ice – Natalie Starkey

Sticky – Laurie Winkless

Bodley Head

Four Thousand Weeks – Oliver Burkeman

British Library

Future Crimes – Mike Ashley (Editor)

Canongate

Livewired – David Eagleman

Small Bodies Of Water – Nina Mingya Powles

Explorer – Benedict Allen

Chatto & Windus

The Amur River – Colin Thubron

Ebury

Why We Swim – Bonnie Tsui

Evil Geniuses – Kurt Andersen

Surrounded By Bad Bosses And Lazy Employees Or, How To Deal With Idiots At Work – Thomas Erikson

The Man Who Mistook His Job For His Life – Naomi Shragai

Eland

The Turkish Embassy Letters – Mary Wortley Montagu

A Moroccan Trilogy – Jérôme And Jean Tharaud

Bengal Lancer – Francis Yeats-Brown

Elliott & Thompson

The Pay Off – Gottfried Leibbrandt And Natasha De Terán

The Eternal Season – Stephen Rutt

Goshawk Summer: A New Forest Season Unlike Any Other – James Aldred

The Red Planet – Simon Morden

Light Rains Sometimes Fall – Lev Parikian

Europa Editions

A Short History Of Spaghetti With Tomato Sauce – Massimo Montanari Tr. Gregory Conti

Eye Books

Above The Law – Adrian Bleese

Faber

Chewing The Fat – Jay Rayner

Allegorizings – Jan Morris

Gollancz

The Ultimate Discworld Companion – Terry Pratchett And Stephen Briggs, Illustrations By Paul Kidby

Granta

Hello, Stranger – Will Buckingham

A Trillion Trees – Fred Pearce

Slime – Susanne Wedlich

Greenfinch

A Portrait Of The Tree – Adrian Houston

This Is The Canon – Kadija Sesay, Deirdre Osborne And Joan Anim-Addo

Harvill Secker

The Dream Of Europe – Geert Mak

Haus

Walking Pepys’s London – Jacky Colliss Harvey

My Cyprus – Joachim Sartorius Tr. Stephen Brown

Head of Zeus

The Story Of Life In 10 1/2 Chapters – Marianne Taylor

Scenes From Prehistoric Life – Francis Pryor

Fire, Storm & Flood – James Dyke

The Heath – Hunter Davies

Headline

A Curious Absence Of Chickens – Sophie Grigson

Secret Nation – Sinclair Mckay

Hodder & Stoughton

Gifts Of Gravity And Light – Editors: Anita Roy & Pippa Marland

Firmament – Simon Clark

Journeys To Impossible Places – Simon Reeve

Trust No One Inside The World Of Deepfakes – Michael Grothaus

(Dis)Connected – Emma Gannon

Icon Books

Space 2069 – David Whitehouse

Flight Of The Diamond Smugglers – Matthew Gavin Frank

Once Upon A Time I Lived On Mars – Kate Greene

The Babel Message – Keith Kahn-Harris

Jonathan Cape

Learning To Sleep – John Burnside

Silent Earth – Dave Goulson

Vuelta Skelter – Tim Moore

Eating To Extinction – Dan Saladino

Little Toller

English Farmhouse – Geoffrey Grigson

No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen – Ken Worple

Woods Of Se Wales – Oliver Rackham

The Long Field – Pamela Petro

Aurochs And Auks – John Burnside

Venetian Bestiary – Jan Morris

Millstone Grit – Glyn Hughes

Maclehose

The Dawn Of Language – Sverker Johansson Tr. Frank Perry

533 – Cees Nooteboom Tr. Laura Watkinson

Nicholas Brealey

Why Travel Matters – Craig Storti

Oneworld

The Longest Story – Richard Girling

The Gold Machine – Iain Sinclair

Animal Vegetable Criminal –  Mary Roach

A Thing of Beauty – Peter Fiennes

By Any Other Name – Simon Morley

Life as We Made it – Beth Shapiro

Infectious – John S. Tregoning

The Invisible Universe – Matthew Bothwell

Pan Macmillan

Broken Heartlands – Sebastian Payne

Penguin

Gathering Moss – Robin Wall Kimmerer

Another Bangkok Reflections On The City – Alex Kerr

This Is Your Mind On Plants – Michael Pollan

Picador

The Glass Wall – Max Egremont

The Cat Who Saved Books – Sosuke Natsukawa

New And Selected Poems – Ian Duhig

Oak – Katharine Towers

Profile Books

The Nation Of Plants – Stefano Mancuso

What’S The Use? – Ian Stewart

Being A Human – Charles Foster

A Spotter’S Guide To Countryside Mysteries – John Wright

The Library – Andrew Pettegree And Arthur Der Weduwen

Fabric – Victoria Finlay

The Wordhord – Hana Videen

Reaktion Books

Crime Dot Com – Geoff White

Blood, Sweat And Earth – Tijl Vanneste

The Sea – Richard Hamblyn

Miracles Of Our Own Making – Liz Williams

Most Unimaginably Strange – Chris Caseldine

Riverrun

Storyland – Amy Jeffs

September Publishing

The Wheel: The Witch’s Way Back to the Ancient Self – Jennifer Lane

Seven Dials

Frozen In Time – Rhys Charles

Square Peg

The Swan – Stephen Moss

Tor

Invisible Sun – Charles Stross

Transworld

Woodston – John Lewis-Stempel

London Clay – Tom Chivers

Making Numbers Count – Chip Heath And Karla Starr

Liquid History – John Warland

The Soaring Life Of The Lark – John Lewis-Stempel

Two Roads

An Atlas Of Endangered Animals – Megan Mccubbin

A Spell In The Wild – Alice Tarbuck

Unbound

Mainstream – Ed Justin Davis & Nathan Evans

W&N

The Star Builders – Arthur Turrell

William Collins

The Black Ridge – Simon Ingram

Cider Country – James Crowden

Sbs – Silent Warriors – Saul David

WW Norton

The Sound Of The Sea – Cynthia Barnett

Cryptography – Keith Martin

Super Volcanoes – Robin George Andrews

Seed Money – Bartow J. Elmore

Any that take your fancy? More importantly, are there any that I might have missed that you know about?

One of my books of 2020 was Into The Tangled Bank by Lev Parikian. It is a funny and thoughtful meander into how the British experience the natural world. It was published by Elliott and Thompson last week in paperback. As I really liked it I thought that I would tell you a little bit more about the book and then get Lev to answer some questions and tell us a little more about his new (!!!) book that is due to be published in September.

First a little bit about the book, in case you’ve not come across it:

Lev Parikian is on a journey to discover the quirks, habits and foibles of how the British experience nature. He sets out to explore the many, and particular, ways that he, and we, experience the natural world – beginning face down on the pavement outside his home then moving outwards to garden, local patch, wildlife reserve, craggy coastline and as far afield as the dark hills of Skye. He visits the haunts of famous nature lovers – reaching back to the likes of Charles Darwin, Etta Lemon, Gavin Maxwell, John Clare and Emma Turner – to examine their insatiable curiosity and follow in their footsteps.

And everywhere he meets not only nature, but nature lovers of all varieties. The author reveals how our collective relationship with nature has changed over the centuries, what our actions mean for nature and what being a nature lover in Britain might mean today.

And about Lev:

Lev Parikian is a writer, birdwatcher and conductor. His book Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? was published by Unbound in 2018. He lives in West London with his family, who are getting used to his increasing enthusiasm for nature. As a birdwatcher, his most prized sightings are a golden oriole in the Alpujarras and a black redstart at Dungeness Power Station.

Q & A

May seemed to rush past. I didn’t get quite as much reading down as I wanted as I spent an inordinate amount of it up a ladder decorating. But we are nearly done now in the hall stairs and landing now so I can get fully back to the books. I still managed to get around to reading 16 books in May and here is a roundup of them:

I read three books that had mental health as the central focus. In Finding True North, Linda Gask tells of her move to Orkney and coming to terms with a lifetime of depression and the lessons that she learnt by helping others overcome their issues. Moving to a smallholding was supposed to be the ultimate dream for Rebecca Schiller, however, as she tells us in Earthed things didn’t go quite as planned until the medical profession finally diagnosed her condition. Phosphorescence is very different. Julia Baird has long been fascinated by the natural light that is given off by creatures and she sees that as a metaphor that we can use to inspire us to do better and greater things.

My three poetry books this month could not have been any different. One was my first Seamus Heaney and whilst I didn’t love it, I did really like the way that he crafts words into these poems about the rural culture he is steeped in. Very different is watery through the gaps, rather than the connection via the land, Emma Blas is looking for a connection via water in her prose. Different once again is Victoria Bennett’s pamphlet, To Start The Year From Its Quiet Centre which is about the loss of her mother. Very moving poems.

Just two natural history books this month, one of which is my book of the month at the bottom of this post. First though is Empire of Ants which is about those amazing little creatures that have been creating societies for millions of years and the research that Suzanne Foitzik has been undertaking on them. A very interesting book,

Not quite natural history, but still very much well worth reading is Helen Gordon’s new book, Notes from Deep Time. this is a deep-time view of the forces that create and still have the power to change our planet.

Where possible I am trying to read themed books together. This month the theme was technology and I have five different books on how were are using and coping with technology in the modern world. Fred Vogelstein’s book is a bit like ancient history now as it looks into the rivalry between Apple and Google. It was an interesting read though. My now teenage kids have grown up with broadband and online access. They have never had to suffer dial up! Born Digital is a look at how this new generation is coping with the always online permanent connection to the worldwide web. Really well done and worth reading. Tracey Follows comes at this from a different angle and looks at the things we need to do and have in place to maintain a strong and balanced online presence.

Everybody Lies is about the data that we generate every time we do something online and how looking at this metadata can show trends before they are visible in the real world. More worrying are the revelations revealed in Reset, this is how the surveillance industry tracks what we are doing and how less than honourable companies are turning that to their advantage.

My two travel book could not have been any more different this month. Westering is the account of Laurence Mitchell’s walk from Norfolk to Wales. Paul Theroux’s book is about the time that he spent in Mexico finding out more about the country that borders his and the pressures that people are under to move to America to eke out a living.

My book of the mo(n)th is Much Ado About Mothing. Moths are one of those insects that have bad press but in this book, by James Lowen aims to set the record straight. He is a teenie bit obsessed by moths and he does a really good job of conveying that in the prose.

Have you read any of these? Are there any that you now want to? Let me know in the comments below