Category: Book Musings (Page 21 of 31)

A couple of times a year a list of books appears that someone else thinks that you need to have read to have become a complete reader or person or something else. The latest one was on the BBC a few weeks ago and was called The 100 Novels That Shaped Our World. The link is here for those that want to go and see how many they have read.

The premise behind this latest one was to have a list of novels that have in some way affected or had some impact on that particular group of readers that compiled the list. I thought it was an interesting selection, but as with a lot of the others that are published, it did feel like a list of books that others feel you ought to read rather than books that someone else genuinely loved. So I thought, how difficult is this to do?

It turns out actually more difficult than I thought. Mostly because narrowing it down to 100 is hard. Really hard.

I thought long and hard about which authors to include and then which of their books were my favourites. I have tried to include one each of their books in each of the categories that I selected, but so easily could have of included more (ok, in some cases all of them).

So why these books?

Well, there are a variety of reasons that I have chosen these titles. There are books in this list that I loved when I first read them, there are books that helped me discover a particular genre or subject. Some have been transformational in their own way, opening my eyes to a new way of thinking, but most are here because I think that they are brilliant works written by some of the best authors.

I am not going to suggest that you must read these. I am very much of the mind that anyone should impose their reading tastes on anyone else. What I would like you to do, though is give a few of these a go, or use this list to find out about these and other authors whose writing might spark your interest or curiosity.

 

Travel

A Time of Gifts – Patrick Leigh Fermor

To a Mountain in Tibet – Colin Thubron

A Year in Provence – Peter Mayle

Tequila Oil – Hugh Thomson

French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France – Tim Moore

Wild Coast: Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge – John Gimlette

A Dip in the Ocean: Rowing Solo Across the Indian Ocean – Sarah Outen

An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan – Jason Elliot

Old Glory: An American Voyage – Jonathan Raban

This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland – Gretel Ehrlich

Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran – Lois Pryce

Around India in 80 Trains – Monisha Rajesh

Bearback: The World Overland – Pat Garrod

 

Natural History

Sightlines – Kathleen Jamie

Waterlog – Roger Deakin

Landmarks – Robert Macfarlane

The Last Wilderness – Neil Ansell

Crow Country – Mark Cocker

21st Century Yokel – Tom Cox

Turning – Jessica J. Lee

Nightwalk: A Journey to the Heart of Nature – Chris Yates

The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland – John Lewis-Stempel

The Running Sky: A Bird-Watching Life – Tim Dee

Bird Therapy – Joe Harkness

Flora Britannica – Richard Mabey

 

Landscapes

Edgelands – Paul Farley & Michael Symmons Roberts

Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach – Jean Sprackland

Under the Rock: The Poetry of a Place – Benjamin Myers

Four Fields – Tim Dee

On the Marshes – Carol Donaldson

Limestone Country – Fiona Sampson

This Luminous Coast – Jules Pretty

 

Children’s

Stig of the Dump – Clive King

Swallowdale – Arthur Ransome

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 – Sue Townsend

Volcano Adventure – Willard Price

Asterix – René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo

Comet in Moonminland – Tove Jansson

 

Biography

Patrick Leigh Fermor – Artemis Cooper

Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson

The Fry Chronicles – Stephen Fry

Gavin Maxwell: A Life – Douglas Botting

Life at Walnut Tree Farm – Rufus Deakin & Titus Rowlandson

Stargazing – Peter Hill

 

Fiction

The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

At Hawthorn Time – Melissa Harrison

The Girl on the Landing – Paul Torday

The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood

The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John le Carré

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas – John Boyne

Reamde – Neal Stephenson

The Gallows Pole – Benjamin Myers

Lanny – Max Porter

Elmet – Fiona Mozley

 

Science Fiction

Consider Phlebas – Iain M Banks

Eon – Greg Bear

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

The City & the City – China Miéville

Pattern Recognition – William Gibson

Redrobe – Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Embers of War – Gareth L Powell

 

Books & Bookshops

Robin Ince’s Bad Book Club – Robin Ince

Stuff I’ve Been Reading – Nick Hornby

The Bookshop Book – Jen Campbell

The Bookshop That Floated Away – Sarah Henshaw

The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life – Andy Miller

Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co – Jeremy Mercer

84 Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff

Where I’m Reading From: The Changing World of Books – Tim Parks

The Gifts of Reading – Robert Macfarlane

The Book Smugglers Of Timbuktu : The Race To Reach The Fabled City And The Fantastic Effort To Save Its Past – Charlie English

The Diary Of A Bookseller – Shaun Bythell

Jacob’s Room Is Full Of Books: A Year Of Reading – Susan Hill

 

History

SBS: The Inside Story of the Special Boat Service – John Parker

Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: The Most Notorious Double Agent of World War II – Ben Macintyre

East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity – Philippe Sands

Vesuvius: The Most Famous Volcano in the World – Gillian Darley

Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox – Victoria Finlay

Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey – Rachel Hewitt

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time – Dava Sobel

Where Poppies Blow: The British Soldier, Nature, The Great War – John Lewis-Stempel

The Story of England – Michael Wood

 

Science

Bad Science – Ben Goldacre

Alex’s Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Mathematics – Alex Bellos

Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial – Simon Singh

Ocean of Life. How Our Seas are Changing? – Callum Roberts

An Ocean Of Air: A Natural History Of The Atmosphere – Gabrielle Walker

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet – Mark Lynas

Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour – Philip Ball

Chasing the Sun: The Epic Story of the Star That Gives Us Life – Richard Cohen

 

Fantasy

Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman

Guards, Guards – Terry Pratchett

Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin

Spring – William Horwood

Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovitch

Uprooted – Naomi Novik

Perdido Street Station – China Miéville

Magician – Raymond E. Fiest

 

Language

Mother Tongues: Travels Through Tribal Europe – Helena Drysdale

The Horologicon: A Day’s Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language – Mark Forsyth

Who Touched Base in My Thought Shower?: A Treasury of Unbearable Office Jargon – Steven Poole

The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities: A Yearbook of Forgotten Words – Paul Anthony Jones

The Gift Of The Gab: How Eloquence Works – David Crystal

Mother Tongue: The Story of the English Language – Bill Bryson

 

Other Books

Passage – Andy Goldsworthy

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking – Susan Cain

Just My Type – Simon Garfield

Paper: An Elegy – Ian Sanson

Stanza Stones – Simon Armitage

Envisioning Information – Edward Tufte

Are You Dave Gorman? – Dave Gorman

Everything Bad is Good For You – Steven Johnson

 

So to answer the question, that I often get asked: what is your favourite book? It is probably one of these above, or it could be another that I haven’t quite remembered as you have put me on the spot.

The sharp-eyed of you that have made it to the bottom of the list and not nodded off, will notice that there isn’t exactly 100 books in here. And that is the point really, constraining yourself to a particular number for no apparent reason isn’t that helpful in the end. It doesn’t matter if your list of favourite books has 5 or 25 or 125 books on it, the important thing is that they are your favourites and have some personal significance to you.

What do you think of these lists of books?

Would any of these appear on your list?

Let me know what you think below.

This past year has been my best ever for reading and I finished 204 books. This was 4 more than last year. and 14 ahead of my Good Reads Target. So here are my stats for the last years reading.

My pages read was 51495 in total, and my monthly average of books was 17, just ahead of last years, 16.7. This broke down into these monthly totals:

January – 20

February – 17

March – 16

April – 17

May – 21

June – 17

July – 17

August – 16

September – 17

October – 16

November – 17

December – 13

The split of books read

Male Authors – 136

Female Authors – 68 i.e. 33%

This was 2% down on last year’s reading

Review Copies  – 90 (last year was 109)

Library Books – 89 (last year was 73)

Own Books– 25 (last year was 18) I still really need to read more of my own books that I have bought.

 

Non-Fiction – 160 – 78%

Fiction – 29 – 14.5%

Poetry – 15 – 7.5%

 

Stars Awarded:

5 Stars – 16 Books
4.5 Stars – 20 Books
4 Stars – 71 Books
3.5 stars – 51 Books
3 stars – 34 Books
2.5 Stars – 9 Books
2 Stars – 3 Books
1.5 stars 0 Books
1 stars – 0 Books

 

Genre

I use a spreadsheet to keep a note of the types and genres of books that I read. There are detailed below:

These are my favourite covers of the books that I have read over the course of 2019. They are in no particular order, but the one at the bottom is my cover of the year. The way I see it, the cover of book has one job only and that is to be catching or attractive enough to make me want to pause, pick them up and then make me want to read it. In my opinion, all of these covers do that.

And my cover of the year has to be Underland. Like all of Stanley Donwood’s images it is just staggering

I have been through all of the 2020 publishers catalogues that could lay my hands on and 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 and sci-fi in there.

 

Allen Lane

The Future of Food: How Digital Technology Will Change the Way We Feed the Planet by Caleb Harper

Rivers of Power: How a Natural Force Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World by Laurence C. Smith

Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild by Lucy Jones

The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil Price

English Pastoral An Inheritance by James Rebanks

The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World  by Sarah Stewart Johnson

 

Arrow

Threads by William Henry Searle

 

Bloomsbury

Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale by Adam Minter

Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Village by Lamorna Ash

Nothing Ordinary: A Still Life by Josie George

Fewer, Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects by Glenn Adamson

Last Train to Hilversum: A journey in search of the magic of radio by Charlie Connelly

The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple

A Savage Dreamland: Journeys in Burma by David Eimer

Tangier: From the Romans to The Rolling Stones by Richard Hamilton

Wanderland by Jini Reddy

On the Trail of Wolves by Philippa Forrester

His Imperial Majesty: A Natural History of the Purple Emperor Butterfly by Matthew Oates

Tracking The Highland Tiger: In Search of Scottish Wildcats by Marianne Taylor

Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots by Kate Devlin

 

Canongate

Rootbound: Rewilding a Life by Alice Vincent

Department of Mind-Blowing Theories by Tom Gauld

Island Dreams: The Mapping of an Obsession by Gavin Francis

 

Elliott & Thompson

Cabinet of Calm: Soothing Words for Troubled Times by Paul Anthony Jones

We’re Living Through The Breakdown: And Here’s What We Can Do About It by Tatton Spiller

It’s the End of the World: But What Are We Really Afraid Of? by Adam Roberts

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

Under the Stars: A Journey into Light by Matt Gaw

Cauld Blasts and Clishmaclavers: A Treasury of 1,000 Scottish Words by Robin A. Crawford

 

Faber & Faber

The Accidental Countryside by Stephen Moss

Thinking Again by Jan Morris

The Magicians by Marcus Chown

The Remarkable Life of Numbers by Derrick Niederman

 

Gollancz

Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds

 

Hamish Hamilton

Bad Island by Stanley Donwood

 

Harvill Secker

Italian Life by Tim Parks

 

Head of Zeus

We, Robots by Simon Ings (ed.)

Trains, Planes, Ships and Automobiles: The Golden Age 1919–1939 by James Hamilton-Paterson

Money for Nothing: The South Sea Bubble and the Invention of Modern Capitalism by Thomas Levenson

Democracy on Leave: How Dark Money, Lobbying and Data Are Destroying Politics by Peter Geoghegan

The Colour of Sky After Rain: China in My Time by Tessa Keswick

The Book Of Kells by Victoria Whitworth

 

Headline

A Good Neighbourhood by Therese Anne Fowler

 

John Murray

The Stonemason: A History of Building Britain by Andrew Ziminski

Rag and Bone: A Family History of What We’ve Thrown Away by Lisa Woollett

The Last Whalers: The Life of an Endangered Tribe in a Land Left Behind by Doug Bock Clark

 

Jonathan Cape

Greenery by Tim Dee

The Martian’s Regress by J. O. Morgan

Tongues of Fire by Seán Hewitt

Last Harvest: The Fight to Save the World’s Most Endangered Foods by Dan Saladino

 

Little Toller

Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty

 

Michael Joseph

A History of Britain In 12 Maps by Philip Parker

Wild Silence by Raynor Winn

 

OneWorld

The Wild Laughter by Caoilinn Hughes

How to Predict Everything: The Formula Transforming What We Know About Life and the Universe by William Poundstone

Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of a Common Fate by Mark Kurlansky

 

Particular

Lev’s Violin: An Italian Adventure  by Helena Attlee

 

Penguin

Agency by William Gibson

Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany by Uwe Schütte

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Licence to be Bad: How Economics Corrupted Us by Jonathan Aldred

 

Picador

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

The Economists’ Hour: How the False Prophets of Free Markets Fractured Our Society by Binyamin Appelbaum

A Place For Everything: The Story of Alphabetical Order by Judith Flanders

Wayfinding: The Art and Science of How We Find and Lose Our Way by Michael Bond

 

Profile

Something Doesn’t Add Up: Surviving Statistics in a Post-Truth World by Paul Goodwin

More: The 10,000 Year Rise of the World Economy by Philip Coggan

The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread – and Why They Stop by Adam Kucharski

Preserved Railways: Journeys Along the Resurrected Lines by Andrew Martin

Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused to Let Go by Emily Cockayne

I Saw the Dog: How Language Works by Alexandra Aikhenvald

X+Y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender by Eugenia Cheng

 

Pushkin Press

Those Who Forget by Geraldine Schwarz

 

Rider

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

 

Sandstone Press

Marram: Memories of Sea and Spider Silk by Leonie Charlton

Along the Amber Route: St Petersburg to Venice by C.J. Schuller

 

Tinder Press

American Dirt by Jeanie Cummins

 

Tor

Invisible Sun by Charles Stross

 

Transworld

Taking on Gravity: A Guide to Inventing the Impossible by Richard Browning

I Am An Island by Tamsin Calidas

 

Two Roads

Tall Tales and Wee Stories by Billy Connolly

 

W&N

Walking the Great North Line: From Stonehenge to Lindisfarne to Discover the Mysteries of Our Ancient Past  by Robert Twigger

Pluses and Minuses: How Maths Makes Practical Problems Simpler by Stefan Buijsman

 

Any that you’ve heard of?

What takes your fancy?

More importantly, are there any that I might have missed?

I am sure it was only last Tuesday that I did my October review. But another month has gone by and my daughter is playing Christmas music and there is one month left of 2019… I join in with the Good Reads challenge each year and set it to the same amount each time, 190. I normally finish with a day or so to spare. This year I finished a month, yes a whole month early. So I am taking December off. Only joking, still way too much to read, but I should crack the 200 books read barrier for the first time. Anyway, I am here to tell you about the books I read in November. I read 17 books by the end of the month and had some really great reads too.

       

Three bookish delight to begin with. First up is the latest from the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Shaun Bythell. In Confessions Of A Bookseller we have another year of his tale of battling against staff, Amazon and customers. I have a lot of books at home, and Tom Mole is another book addict. So much so that he actually teaches about it. The Secret Life of Books: Why They Mean More Than Words is his eulogy to these slices of tree that some of us are addicted to. The final one is another book addict, but about 18 Bookshops in the UK and America.  Anne Scott has written a beautiful book on her favourite shops.

Sharing food with friends and other is one of those things that you can do that will remain in people memories for a long time. Priya Basil asks questions about hospitality and its opposite, hostility in Be My Guest and how we need to focus on helping and providing for others.

Arthur Smith has one of those voices that sticks with you and I could hear it as I read his new book, 100 Things I Meant To Tell You. Often very funny and occasionally sad, this is a book full of wisdom and insight. Some of which you might even be able to use…

Maxim Griffin is worth following on Twitter. He has a unique way of creating art and I love his pictures. He came together with Gary Budden to produce The White Heron Beneath the Reactor, which is a slim psychogeography book about the spit of land off Dungeness.

Spending a year immersing yourself in the countryside and collecting herbs is not everyone’s idea of fun, but in Copsford, Walter Murray tells of the year that he spent doing just that, whilst living in an almost derelict house. Some wonderful moments in here.

 

   

I have had a review copy of Chasing the Ghost by Peter Marren for far too long. This is his story of searching for all the Wild Flowers of Britain and he had 50 left to see including the rare, Ghost Orchid. Well written as I have come to expect from Peter Marren and well worth reading. Kind of a natural history book as well as an adventure book, the new book by Tiffany Francis, Dark Skies: A Journey Into The Wild Night is a series of stories about venturing out when it is dark and not taking the torch.

   

Two poetry books this month, the first was the latest Alice Oswald, called Nobody and is a book length poem inspired by a minor character in the Odyssey. The second was called, Miles of Sky Above Us, Miles of Earth Below and is a take on modern life by Steve Denehan.

Fake news, trolling, denial of service attacks and bot farms are all things that we didn’t know about a decade ago. And now they are here, disrupting our democracy and causing all sorts of problems. Most of them are based in Russia or have strong Russian links, and Peter Pomerantsev is very well placed to write about what is happening in  This Is Not Propaganda. Genuinely terrifying stuff.

I have been fascinated by the night sky for a long time now and more so since my daughter took it as a GCSE. The Art Of Urban Astronomy is a beautifully produced beginners guide to the night sky.

I really enjoyed the first in this series, so was delighted to receive Peter F. Hamilton’s new book, Salvation Lost from the publisher. In this, it is discovered that the worst threat ever to face mankind from the supposedly benign Olyix. They plan to harvest humanity, carry us to their god at the end of the universe. I liked it but thought it was a bit slower-paced than the first one.

   

I only read Cider with Rosie a few years ago and rapidly went on to read the sequels, including As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. Loved them, so when I was offered a copy of the travel adventurer, Alastair Humphreys’ book I thought I’d did one off the shelf that I won a few years ago, As I Walked Out Through Spain In Search Of Laurie Lee. They are both very different journeys and in their own way eulogies to the original book.

My book of the month though was, Ness. This dystopian future is unlike anything I have ever read before. I won’t say any more than that. Amazing book from Robert Macfarlane and stunning artwork from Stanley Donwood all the way through.

As we hurtle towards the end of the year, I look back at all the books that I’d thought I’d get to and largely failed to do so. So many book but so little time. This month is a case of catching up on a couple of challenges that I have been doing and still have books to read for and trying to work my way through what is an ever-increasing review TBR!

 

Award Winner Challenge

The idea behind this was to choose books that were winners or long and shortlisted for a variety of types of literary prizes. The ones that I have left to read by the end of the year are:

On Beauty – Zadie Smith

Our Endless Numbered Days – Clare Fuller

The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

In the Days of Rain – Rebecca Stott

Blood on the Page – Thomas Harding

 

#20BooksOfSummer

Two left to go on this, (still!!!), even British it is almost winter…

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

When the Rivers Run Dry: Water – The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century by Fred Pearce

 

Library Books

Messy – Tim Harford

The Gentle Art of Tramping – Stephen Graham

Superheavy: Making And Breaking The Periodic Table – Kit Chapman

The Edge Of The World: A Cultural History Of The North Sea And The Transformation Of Europe – Michael Pye

 

Winter Themed

The Library of Ice – Nancy Campbell

The Nature Of Winter – Jim Crumley

Father Christmas’s Fake Beard – Terry Pratchett

 

Review Books

Time and Place – Alexandra Harris

The Many Lives of Carbon – Dag Olav Hessen, Tr. Kerri Pierce

Spinning Silver – Naomi Novrik

Stealing With The Eyes – Will Buckingham

The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey on Two Rivers by Moritz Thomsen

The Book of Puka-Puka: A Lone Trader in the South Pacific by Robert Dean Frisbie

Irreplaceable: The Fight To Save Our Wild Places by Julian Hoffman

Incandescent – Ann Levin

The House of Islam – Ed Husain

Blue Mind – Wallace J. Nichols

When the Rivers Run Dry – Fred Pearce

Wintering – Stephen Rutt

The Glass Woman – Caroline Lea

Vickery’s Folk Flora – Roy Vickery

Sunfall by Jim Al-Khalili

 

Own Books / Wishful thinking

The Art of Life Admin – Elizabeth Emens (To be read after Messy!)

The Wee Free Men – Terry Pratchett

 

Any there that you have read, or perhaps take your fancy (I know that some have been on previous TBRs!)

Another month passes, and there are a few more books read from Mount TBR. Only sixteen this month, which I was a little disappointed with, to be honest. Ho hum, this is a hobby at the end of the day and I primarily read for pleasure. I did read some really good books though, and here they are:

 

Who Owns England? is a loaded question, and it is a question that Guy Shrubsole has been trying to answer for years. Believe it or not, not one really know exactly who owns what for around 15 – 20 % of the land, but modern technology is starting to address this blank space. It is a polemic on how the elite and landed gentry have had it their own way for far too long and I would say it is an essential read for anyone interested in landscape.

   

I read two excellent fiction books this month, first up was Cynan Jones’ near future book set in the UK. It is suffering from freshwater shortages. Razor-sharp writing and almost poetic in its style. You can’t go wrong with a Benjamin Myers book, and the Offing continued that. Set just after World War II it is the story of a sixteen-year-old boy who doesn’t want to work in the pit and sets of from Durham to the Yorkshire Coast. It is there he meets Dulcie and she sees his potential and they form an unlikely friendship.

Effing Birds was one of my blog tour books, and you need to be pretty broad-minded to read this as it is a bit (sorry, a lot) sweary. Aaron Reynolds does not hold back and it is hilarious though.

This was one of the Royal Society Shortlisted book and it is a maths book. Some of you will run with horror from the room at the thought of maths, but I like reading them. In Infinite Powers, Steven Strogatz has written just how much the understanding of Calculus affects us in modern society.

     

I read three very different memoirs this month. First up is Lowborn by Kerry Hudson. This is a story of her childhood in poverty and at the very fringes of society and of returning to those places and memories. Well worth reading. The very slender book, Of Walking in Ice, is the story of Werner Herzog’s walk to Paris to see a friend who was very ill. Surreal at times, but I can see why it is a classic. Danie Couchman is one of the many who could not afford to buy a property in London, but she did make a home in a small boat on the London canal system and Afloat is her memoir about life there.

I was sent a copy of Tempest by Patrician Press. This is an anthology of short fiction, essays and poems about our present political ‘tempestuous’ times.

 

I read one book on The Making Of Poetry by the great Adam Nicolson. this book is about the short period of time that Coleridge and the Wordsworths were together in the West country and the creative force that this unleased. My poetry book this month was the acclaimed Hannah Sullivan’s Three Poems. Very different from other poetry books that I have read, this year.

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, there is quite a lot of politics going on at the moment. The root of what is going on though is very concisely summed up in The Three Dimensions of Freedom by Billy Bragg. Bit short, but still an interesting discourse.

 

Ross Barnet’s book, The Missing Lynx, is about the lost megafauna of the British Isles and contemplates the possibilities of bringing some of the larger predators back as part of a rewilding programme. Clearing The Air by Tim Smedley is the full story about what’s happened to the air we breathe.  the pollution and particulate matter and more importantly what we can do to bring back better quality air.

From the author of The Way of the World, Nicolas Bouvier, Eland has pulled together a collection of travel writings translated here for the first time into English. From the Aran isles in mid-winter to Xian, Korea to lowland Scotland, these essays are a flavour of a travel writer of the highest quality.

My book of the month was the fantastic Ring the Hill by Tom Cox. Loosely about hills, it is as wide-ranging as you’d expect from Tom as he writes about maps, hares and even ventures as far as the beach. Of course, we have a visit from his LOUD DAD too. Highly recommended. Read it soon.

Any of these that you have read? Or now want to read? Tell me in the comments below.

 

Another month passes and more books get finished, but the ever-looming TBR is always ahead. I did fairly well on my TBR list from October, reading 13 from the list and a couple of other additions getting to 15 books read, which is one below target. For those that don’t know it, it is Non-Fiction November too.  #NonfictionNovember is a month-long nonfiction reading initiative hosted by @abookolive. You can find her on #booktube to find out more. I will mostly be reading non-fiction as ever, but have a couple of fiction books that I am committed to reading. 

Anyway, onto my TBR for the coming month:

 

Blog Tours

Just the one this month, Miles of Sky Above Us, Miles of Earth Below – Steve Denehan

 

Library

Superheavy: Making And Breaking The Periodic Table – Kit Chapman

The Edge Of The World: A Cultural History Of The North Sea And The Transformation Of Europe – Michael Pye

Dark Skies: A Journey Into The Wild Night – Tiffany Francis

Buzz: The Necessity And Nature Of Bees – Thor Hanson

 

Review Books

Chasing the Ghost – Peter Marren

Ness – Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood

Be My Guest: Reflections on Food, Community and the Meaning of Generosity – Priya Basil

The Many Lives of Carbon – Dag Olav Hessen, Tr. Kerri Pierce

Salvation Lost – Peter F. Hamilton

Spinning Silver – Naomi Novrik

Stealing With The Eyes – Will Buckingham

The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey on Two Rivers by Moritz Thomsen

The Book of Puka-Puka: A Lone Trader in the South Pacific by Robert Dean Frisbie

Irreplaceable: The Fight To Save Our Wild Places by Julian Hoffman

Incandescent – Ann Levin

My Midsummer Morning: Rediscovering a Life of Adventure – Alastair Humphreys

The House of Islam – Ed Husain

Blue Mind – Wallace J. Nichols

When the Rivers Run Dry – Fred Pearce

Wintering – Stephen Rutt

The Glass Woman – Caroline Lea

Vickery’s Folk Flora – Roy Vickery

Sunfall by Jim Al-Khalili

 

Own Books / Wishful thinking

The White Heron Beneath the Reactor by Gary Budden & Maxim Griffin

As I Walked Out Through Spain in Search of Laurie Lee – P. D. Murphy

On Beauty – Zadie Smith

Our Endless Numbered Days – Clare Fuller

 

#20BooksOfSummer

Two left to go on this, though as I type this, even British summertime has now gone.

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

When the Rivers Run Dry: Water – The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century by Fred Pearce

 

Any there take your fancy (I know that some have been on previous TBRs!)

Welcome to my blog, Halfman Halfbook. I am one of the blogs on the tour promoting the AKE FESTIVAL, is Africa’s leading book festival and it will take place from 24^th – 27^th October 2019 in Lagos, Nigeria.  It is the most important book event on the African continent.

 Now in its seventh year, Ake Festival brings together the biggest and brightest names in the world of books from across Africa and the African diaspora. Showcasing the best contemporary fiction, non-fiction, poetry and thinking from Africa, the festival also plays host to film screenings, theatre performances, poetry readings, art exhibitions and dance performances from Africa’s biggest names. Inspiring people to engage with the power of books to inform, enlighten and inspire, Ake festival provides a platform for debates that challenge African norms, attitudes and traditions.

This year’s festival includes some of Africa’s most exciting contemporary authors, including Zimbabwe’s most important writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, Man Booker Prize 2019 shortlisted author Bernadine Evaristo who also founded the African Poetry Prize, the Sunday Times bestselling author of My Sister the Serial Killer Oyinkan Braithwaite, award-winning Angolan author Jose Agualusa, and Reni Eddo-Lodge the internationally acclaimed author of Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race.  

Other headline authors include Nnedi Okorafor Africa’s leading science fiction and fantasy author whose World Fantasy Award-winning novel Who Fears Death is currently being adapted for an HBO TV series. Ayobami Adebayo is the critically acclaimed author of Stay with Me, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Guardian Best Book of the Year.  Feminist activist Mona Eltahawy is the Egyptian-American author of the brilliant The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls.

The lineup also includes two authors who used their writing to tackle the 2014 mass-kidnapping of schoolgirls by terrorist group Boko Haram, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani author of the award-winning YA novel Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree, based on dozens of interviews with women and girls kidnapped by terrorist group and Helon Habila whose short and powerful The Chibok Girls was a Penguin special investigation publication. He will be discussing Travellers, his fantastic new novel

The festival theme this year is: Black Bodies | Grey Matter

Events will explore how our minds and bodies have impacted – and been impacted by the course of history. Colonialism, multiculturalism, internecine violence, organised religion, cultural attitudes and practices have all left their mark. While specific practices such as scarification and tattoos leave physical traces, colourism, stereotyping and gender non-conformity exert their influence on both psyche and soma. The interrogation of these issues will yield fascinating and illuminating insights. This theme, in the hands of Africa’s leading creatives and thinkers, will give rise to discussions and conversations that will enrich our understanding of the African condition.

Sadly I can’t go to this, but it does sound fantastic. I can share an extract from one of the authors, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi from her book, Manchester Happened

Blurb:

An ambitious and assured collection of short stories from the internationally acclaimed author of Kintu

If there’s one thing the characters in Jennifer Makumbi’s stories know, it’s how to field a question.

‘Let me buy you a cup of tea… what are you doing in England?’

‘Do these children of yours speak any Luganda?’

‘Did you know that man Idi Amin?’

But perhaps the most difficult question of all is the one they ask themselves: ‘You mean this is England?’

Extract:

Told with empathy, humour and compassion, these vibrant, kaleidoscopic stories re-imagine the journey of Ugandans who choose to make England their home. Weaving between Manchester and Kampala, this dazzling, polyphonic collection will captivate anyone who has ever wondered what it means to truly belong.

A clock across on a building claimed 8.30 in the morning but the sun was nowhere. The world’s ceiling was low and grey, the air was smoke-mist, the soil was black. After a silence of disbelief, Abu whispered, ‘Where is the sun?’ Ruwa laughed. ‘No wonder these people are just too eager to leave this place: the sun does not come out?’ ‘Sometimes it does. Mostly it rains.’ ‘All this wealth but no sun?’ ‘That’s why they love it at ours too much. Always taking off their clothes and roasting themselves.’ Abu wanted to stay on the ship until it was repaired but Ruwa, who had been to Manchester several times, held his hand and led him into Salford. Abu, twenty-one years old, gripped Ruwa’s hand like a toddler.

They set off for a seamen’s club, the Merchant Navy Club in Moss Side, where they would know where his friend, Kwei, a Fante from the Gold Coast, lived. Even though he told Abu, ‘Don’t fear; Manchester is alright even to African seamen. It even has African places – Lagos Close, Freetown Close – where Africans stay, I’ll show you’, they walked all the way from Salford to Manchester city centre to Moss Side because Abu would not get on a tram.‘I know how to behave around whites,’ he said. ‘I’ve been to South Africa.’ ‘The British are different, no segregation here.’ ‘Who lied you, Ruwa? Their mother is the same.’ For Abu, being surrounded by a sea of Europeans in their own land brought on such anxiety that for the first time he regretted running away from home. To think that it all began with a picture on a stupid war recruitment poster – OuR AllieS the COlOnieS. At the time, all he wanted was to join the King’s African Rifles and wear that uniform. To his childish eyes the native in the picture looked fearless and regal in a fez with tassels falling down the side of his face and a coat of bright red with a Chinese collar of royal blue edged with gold. That palm tree trinket on the fez with the letters T.K.A.R. – Abbey coveted it. He wanted to hold a gun and hear it bark, then travel beyond the seas and be a part of the warring worlds. He had heard his father talk about the European war with breathless awe. He had wanted it so desperately he could not wait four years until he was eighteen to enlist. In any case, the war might be over by then. Besides, at fourteen, he was taller than most people. And the British were notoriously blind. Often, they could not tell girls from boys. Also, they were desperate for recruits because recently some Kapere had started to ask men who turned up to enlist ‘Sex?’, which the translator turned into

‘Are you a man or a woman?’ The men just walked away: who had time for that? Unfortunately, a friend of his father saw him and pulled him out of the queue. When his father found out, he warmed his backside raw. That was when he swore to enlist in Kenya. After the war, he would come home elegant in his red uniform and fez and he would be made head of the royal army. Then his father would eat his words. With a few friends, Ssuuna had jumped on a train wagon and hidden among sacks of cotton. What he remembered most about that journey was not the incessant jarring and grinding or screeching of rail metal, but the itching of sisal sacks. No one had warned them that Nairobi was frosty in June, especially in the morning. The boys had never known such cold. They thought they would die. And then the British turned them away. Ssuuna was told to come back in two years – the British were blind by two years – and his friends were told to go home to their mamas! That was when his troubles began. Returning home was out of the question. Where would he say he had been? His father wanted him to stay in school, but studying was not for him. He wanted to be a soldier, shoot a gun, throw bombs and blow things up, and win a war. While they waited to grow up, Ssuuna and his friends travelled to Mombasa. Everyone said that there was more life in Mombasa, the gateway to the world.

Thank you Midas PR for the extract and I hope that the festival is a success.

Follow them on Twitter for more information:  @akefestival

Find the hashtag #akefestival to follow what is going on

 

It is the 70th Anniversary for The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival this year. It runs from 4 – 13 October 2019 . The Festival will bring more than 900 of the best writers, thinkers and performers of our time to the vibrant Regency town, setting the scene for once-in-a-lifetime conversations to take place over ten extraordinary days of unique experiences, critical debate and literary revelry.

For those of you that are regular readers and followers of the blog (thank you), you’ll know that I am a big fan of reading the tales of those that head out to explore our amazing planet. Some of the writers that are appearing are below:

Adam Weymouth
Monisha Rajesh and here
Alastair Humphreys and here
Levison Wood and here, here, here and here
Luke Turner
Emma Mitchell
Erling Kagge and here
Mark Boyle
Ben Fogle
Philip Marsden
Dan Richards

Click on the names to see my reviews on their books. One of the authors appearing is Raynor Winn. Her book, The Salt Path is a wonderful story of her walk around the South West Coast Path after they had been made homeless. My review is below:

The bad news came fast, Raynor Winn’s husband had just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, they had just lost a court case even though they had the evidence that they were not liable for debts and now the bailiffs were hammering on the door to take their farm and livelihood away. Their only income would be £48 per week. It is at times like these that some people would have a breakdown or consider a more permanent end to the problems, they didn’t; inspired by the book 500 Mile Walkies by Mark Wallington they decided that as they were homeless anyway they may as well walk the south coast path.

With the precious little money they have, they buy a new lightweight tent, a couple of sleeping bags and new rucksacks and drive the van to Minehead in Somerset as that is where all the guidebooks begin. Moth’s condition of corticobasal degeneration or CBD, meant that the doctor had advised him to take it easy and not to overdo it; probably not attempt a 630-mile walk around the spectacular coastline of the south-west. The first part of the footpath is probably the toughest section with the high cliffs and steep paths and it is a struggle for both, but Moth in particular. They have no money for official campsites, so wild camping was the way to go, ensuring that they found a place out of sight, and were packed up before they could be discovered in the morning.

They met all sorts of people of the walk, but telling those that they met that they were homeless would a lot of the time cause a lot of prejudice and they would be shunned, called tramps or worse. Sitting eating a shared pack of budget noodles when other are stuffing pasties and ice creams in, is quite soul destroying. However, there were others who would be prepared to help, providing hot drinks, paying for food, and even a millionaire wine importer who wined and dined them for an evening. One man they met on a cliff path told them about salted blackberries, picked right at the very end of the season just before they turned when the flavour was most intense and dusted with the salt from the sea they gorged on them whenever they could find them. They had completed a fair chunk of the route, before stopping and staying with a friend, earning a little money and starting to plan a future once again. Rather than head back to where they had stopped, they came to Poole and started from the other end walking through the Jurassic Coast back to the place that they had stopped a few months previously.

This is a heartwarming and inspiring story of a couples fight back against a life-changing legal decision that left them totally penniless. Winn writes with an honesty that is quite moving, she is open with her feelings and her thoughts about the people she meets on their walk and the events that led to them walking. There are some moments in here that may make you cry as well as some amusing anecdotes that will have you chuckling. What does come across throughout the book is the inner strength of Raynor and Moth, to overcome a financial situation that most could not recover from, the way that Moth manages to use the walk to improve his health and that being in the right place at the right time can offer an opportunity that can be life-changing. If there is one thing that can be taken from this, it is that there is nothing that human optimism can’t overcome.

You can find who is talking in the full programme here

Follow them on Twitter here: @CheltLitFest

See who is talking about it by searching for the hashtag: #cheltlitfest