Category: Book Musings (Page 23 of 31)

Today is the publication day for the paperback of Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton. For those of you who haven’t read it yet, here is an extract:

Earth Calling

Drifting through interstellar space, three light-years out from the star 31 Aquilae, the Neána abode cluster picked up a series of short, faint electromagnetic pulses that lasted intermittently for eighteen years. The early signatures were familiar to the Neána, and faintly worrying: nuclear fission detonations, followed seven years later by fusion explosions. The technological progress of whoever was detonating them was exceptionally swift by the usual metric of emerging civilizations.

Metaviral spawn chewed into the cometry chunks that anchored the vast cluster, spinning out a string of flimsy receiver webs twenty kilometers across. They aligned themselves on the G-class star fifty light-years away, where the savage weapons were being deployed.

Sure enough, a torrent of weak electromagnetic signals was pouring out from the star’s third planet. A sentient species was entering into its early scientific industrial state.

The Neána were concerned that so many nuclear weapons were being used. Clearly, the new species was disturbingly aggressive. Some of the cluster’s minds welcomed that.

Analysis of the radio signals, now becoming analogue audiovisual broadcasts, revealed a bipedal race organized along geo-tribal lines, and constantly in conflict. Their specific biochemical composition was one that, from the Neána perspective, gave them sadly short lives. That was posited as the probable reason behind their faster than usual technological progression.

That there would be an expedition was never in doubt; the Neána saw that as their duty no matter what kind of life evolved on distant worlds. The only question now concerned the level of assistance to be offered. Those who welcomed the new species’ aggressive qualities wanted to make the full spectrum of Neána technology available. They almost prevailed.

I hope that you enjoyed that. I loved this book when it first came out, and you can read my original review here

For the past couple of years, I have seen the hashtag for the #20BooksOfSummer appear in my Twitter Feed at the beginning of June. This is a challenge that is run by Cathy at 746 Books and you can read more about her here. I like challenges as they can often get you looking at books that you wouldn’t necessarily consider. I have one that I created for a group I run on Good Read that is prompting you to pick books that have won or been shortlisted for prizes. Anyway back to this one. The aim of it is to get you to read 20 books that are on your TBR and you have from the 3rd June to the 3rd September to do so.

This year I have decided to join in.  So far I am a week late starting, but I have picked my 20 books from the various piles I have lying around the house and they are here below:

We are off to Sicily this summer and five of my pile are books about that island:

In Sicily by Norman Lewis

Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons: Travels in Sicily on a Vespa by Matthew Fort

Sicily: Through the Writers’ Eyes by Horatio Clare

Bitter Almonds: Recollections and Recipes from a Sicilian Girlhood by Mary Taylor Simeti

The March of the Long Shadows by Norman Lewis

Three from the Wainwright Prize Longlist:

Underland by Robert Macfarlane

How To Catch A Mole And Find Yourself In Nature by Marc Hamer

Ghost Trees: Nature and People in a London Parish by Bob Gilbert

Then four books that have a mountain theme

White Mountain: Real And Imagined Journeys In The Himalayas by Robert Twigger

Limits of the Known by David Roberts

Just Another Mountain by Sarah Jane Douglas

Everest England: 29,000 Feet in 12 Days by Peter Owen Jones

Three by the brilliant writer, Raban, that I have been meaning to review for far too long:

Coasting by Jonathan Raban

For Love & Money  by Jonathan Raban

Hunting Mister Heartbreak  by Jonathan Raban

Lastly, five books that have a watery theme:

A Raindrop in the Ocean: The Extraordinary Life of a Global Adventurer by Michael Dobbs-Higginson

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

Still Water: Reflections on the Deep Life of the Pond by John Lewis-Stempel

The Chronology Of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch

So there we go. Nineteen non-fiction and one novel. Have you heard of any of these? Has anyone read any of them?

You can find out more about 20 Books of Summer at Cathy’s blog and see who else is participating with the challenge here. Or follow the #20BooksOfSummer hashtag on twitter to see weekly progress from all those taking part.

This is the first time that I have ever done anything like this as I normally plan what I am going to read on a spreadsheet and change it as things evolve over the month. But after a couple of positive comments from other bloggers, I thought that I would reveal what is on the TBR for June. I have split them into sections, Blog Tours for those that I have to read for a particular date, library books that are due back or have reservations on them. Then onto review copies and a section that I have called wishful thinking as I would love to get to them but with everything else going on, it probably won’t happen!

Blog Tours 

Trading in War: London’s Maritime World in the Age of Cook and Nelson by Margarette Lincoln

Rough Magic: Riding the World’s Wildest Horse Race by Lara Prior-Palmer

Bird Therapy by Joe Harkness

The A to Z of Skateboarding by Tony Hawk

Library Books

Tiny Churches by Dixe Wills

These Darkening Days by Benjamin Myers

The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (And Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did) by Philippa Perry

White Mountain: Real And Imagined Journeys In The Himalayas by Robert Twigger

Defender by G X Todd

One Man And A Mule by Hugh Thomson

Review Books

Limits of the Known by David Roberts

Vickery’s Folk Flora: An A-Z of the Folklore and Uses of British and Irish Plants by Roy Vickery

The Sea That Beckoned by Angela Gabrielle Fabunan

The Unlikeliest Backpacker: From Office Desk to Wilderness by Kathryn Barnes

All Together Now: One Man’s Walk in Search of His Father and a Lost England by Mike Carter

The Seafarers: A Journey Among Birds by Stephen Rutt

Sunfall by Jim Al-Khalili

Tempest: An Anthology        Edited by Anna Vaught & Anna Johnson

Still Water: Reflections on the Deep Life of the Pond by John Lewis-Stempel

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

The Sea: A Celebration of Shorelines, Beaches and Oceans by Isobel Carlson

Wishful Thinking

The House of Islam by Ed Husain

Chasing the Ghost: My Search for all the Wild Flowers of Britain by Peter Marren

Origins: How The Earth Made Us by Lewis Dartnell

Quicksand Tales: The Misadventures Of Keggie Carew by Keggie Carew

Revenger by Alastair Reynolds

The Shadow Captain by Alastair Reynolds

Origins: How The Earth Made Us by Lewis Dartnell

The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea

When: The Scientific Secrets Of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink

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

A Raindrop in the Ocean: The Extraordinary Life of a Global Adventurer by Michael Dobbs-Higginson

Golden Hill by Francis Spufford

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett

In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott

Coasting by Jonathan Raban

So that is it. If I spent less time on twitter then I might make some inroads into the backlog. Any on there that you have read, or want to read? Let me know in the comments below.

May always seems a long month, however, the advantage of a long month is more time for reading, especially when you have two long weekends! Somehow I got through 21 books in the end and here they are. First up is the debut book from Alex Woodcock, King of Dust it is about his journey around the South West looking for churches that have Romanesque architecture. A really enjoyable book about a subject that I knew very little about. Stunning cover too.

Any home in the UK could be subject to a natural disaster, but when you can see your approaching meter by metre, it must be unnerving. In The Easternmost House, Juliet Blaxland talks about living on the east coast that is being eroded at a dramatic rate. Well worth reading. The other side of the country, Eat Surf Live is a book about the culinary and other delights of the Cornwall by Vera Bachernegg & Katharina Maria Zimmermann.  A beautifully produced book. Alo on the subject of food, The Picnic Book by Ali Ray is a celebration of outdoor food and is packed with recipies and places to visit.

Money is the lubricant of modern business and Dharshini David takes us on a journey that The Almighty Dollar takes as it wends its way around the world.

Only squeezed in one fiction this month, and it was the second book that I have read by Fredrik Backman. Wasn’t that struck on A Man Called Ove, but My Grandmother Sends Her Regards And Apologises was much better.

I read three natural history books this month, Hare by Jim Crumley which was very good, but espresso sized. The Good Bee is a celebration of the black and yellow creatures that we are far more reliant on that we realise and Alison Benjamin & Brian McCallum have written a book that celebrates them. The Way Home by Mark Boyle is a memoir about his life off-grid in Ireland. An interesting read.

My Poetry book this month was Take Me To The Edge by Katya Boirand. As you can probably see from the cover, this is not a conventional poetry book. Boirand has taken five words that were given to her and made a poem from them. Each poem is accompanied by a portrait of the provider.

Modern life is a cacophony of noise, alerts from phones and an ever-crowded planet we barely have any time for ourselves. Michael Harris’ book, Solitude is about removing external distractions and concentrating on the matter that is important to you at that moment. Interesting read.

Following on from that I read four science books.  Aurora by Melanie Windridge is about those magical lights that hang over the northern and southern hemispheres and the science behind them. Linda Geddes’ book, Chasing The Sun is about the source of our energy at the centre of the solar system and how we have evolved hand in hand with it over the millennia. Also, I read two of the new ladybird Science expert series Consciousness by Hannah Critchlow and Genetics by Adam Rutherford. Both concise books on their subjects.

Three more travel books this month. First was Bodie On The Road about Belinda Jones adoption of a rescue dog and her travels up and down the west coast of America. An enjoyable and unchallenging read. More reportage than travel, Gatecrashing Paradise by Tom Chesshyre is about the paradise island of the Maldives as he peers behind the luxury apartments. Finally, I read a book that the author, Gabriel Stewart sent me. Called I Went for a Walk. It is about his attempt to walk 1000 miles and some of the personal challenges that he faced doing it.

I hadn’t had many five star reads this year so far and then get three this month, Seashaken Houses by  Tom Nancollas, Earth from Space Michael Bright and Chloe Sarosh and finally Life at Walnut Tree Farm Rufus Deakin and Titus Rowlandson. All very different and all brilliant.

April was a reasonable reading month, managed to get through 17 books in total, helped by the long weekend at Easter. Still have a massive backlog of books to read, not helped by buying more!

The AA sent me The Woman Who Rode A Shark. Primarily aimed at children, this book by Ailsa Ross & art by Amy Blackwell tells the stories of 50 women adventurers who have made a difference.

I actually read quite a lot of fiction this month too, South of the Border, West of the Sun was one that I found for a friend and before posting it off to her, read it. I think that it has been my favourite Murakami so far. I read Grief is a thing with Feathers when staying with my wife’s aunt one weekend. I liked it but didn’t love it like some people. Managed to get a copy of Lanny by Max Porter from the library. This story of a boy called Lanny and his place in the natural world has a dark undercurrent of folk horror. I really liked it.

I also read most of the shortlist from the Wellcome prize, including these two fiction offerings, Murmur by Will Eaves and My Year Of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. Murmur was the winner of the prize, in the end, but of these two I preferred the other!

The remainder of the shortlist were The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein, Mind on Fire by Arnold Thomas Fanning which is about his descent and recovery from mental illness and Heart by Sandeep Jauhar which is fairly self-explanatory. All were worthy inclusions to the shortlist but my favourite of these, and our Shadow Panel winner was The Trauma Cleaner. Not one to read when you are eating your lunch though.

Gabriel Hemery’s new book, Green Gold is a fictionalised account of the of a Victorian Plant Hunter called John Jeffrey. He has based the story of actual correspondence from the Association that sent him to the west of America in the search of plants and conifers. I thought it was really good.

I had read David Bramwell & Jo Keeling’s book called The Mysterium and realised that the library had The Odysseum. This is about Strange Journeys and things that have happened to people. Not bad overall.

Out of the Woods is a blend of memoir and natural history as seems to be the fashion these days. This by Luke Turner is also an exploration of his bi-sexuality and how he spends time in the forest to get some comfort amongst the trees.

This month poetry book was Sincerity by the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. I have only read a couple of her works before but thought this was really good too.

Chris Mullin has written some of the best political diaries of recent years seen from the perspective of the back benches and a brief spell as a Junior Minister. This is a step back and a look at his time as a journalist, his first political stirrings, his marriage and now retirement from political life. Not as good as the diaries, but still worth reading.

Kassia St. Clair’s book, The Secret life of Colour, was really good, so I was looking forward to her next book. I managed to get hold of a copy of The Golden Thread. This wasn’t too bad in the end, but it did have some flaws that showed that it might have been rushed to publication. Fantastic cover though

I have actually met Dan Richards and interviewed him for his previous book, Climbing Days. In fact, the cover of that book adorns the wall of my office with the striking image by Stanley Donwood. I was really pleased to be sent a proof of his new book, Outpost by Canongate. In this, he heads out to visit as many bothys as possible. These small shelters are for walkers and explorers to shelter in overnight before heading onward on their travels. An excellent book that shows how he is maturing as a writer too. Looking forward to hearing his next project.

Monisha Rajesh’s first book was about taking 80 Trains around the colourful country of India. Her next book, was the logical next step up from there, Around the World in 80 Trains.  She is an author that engages with the people around her as she travels and this makes it a far more interesting book to read. Well worth reading.

I first came across David Seabrook last year when I read, All the Devils are Here. In that, he mentioned a series of killings in London and it turns out there was another book that he wrote about those murders called, Jack Of Jumps. It makes for grim reading, but this is still an unsolved murder case even though there has been plenty of speculation as to who the perpetrator was, including Seabrook’s own idea in here. Fascinating, if grim, reading.

Not a bad month overall. My book of the month was Outpost, which I would urge you to read if you can. Are there any here that you have read? Or want to read?

A few other questions for you too:

1. Do you like the summing up posts?

2. Would you like to see a monthly TBR Post of what I am planning to read?

3. Would you like to see blog posts with a more general book centred theme rather than just reviews?

We are eight days into April already. It does mean that we have passed the equinox and the clocks have moved to Summertime. Spring is fully here now! Just here to sum up what I read in March and look ahead to April’s reads. Even though it is a long month, I only managed to read 16 books, probably because I spent waaaay too long faffing around on Twitter. So to the books.

Mark Beaumont is a machine and this book is proof of that. He originally broke the record for cycling around the world a few years ago and had subsequently lost it to other riders. Around the World in 80 Days was his attempt to not only get it back but to pretty much ensure that no one else would be taking it off him for a very long time.

I don’t read many graphic novels, but when I found this one by Neil Gaiman in the library it was a must. Really good as ever and reassuringly disturbing.

A couple of fiction book too this month, the first was Sight by Jessie Greengrass. This was longlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize and my library had it. Wasn’t overly struck by it, to begin with, but it grew on me a little more by the end. I was sent In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne. This is one of the books on the Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist and is it set over 48 hours in London. We join it as tensions rise with a looming clash between the locals and a right-wing march through their home. Fast paced and visceral in its language.

I have only read one of Julia Blackburn’s book before call Thin paths. This latest one of hers, Time Song: Searching For Doggerland is partly a memoir and partly a book about this vanished landscape that is now under the North Sea. Well worth reading.

Jeremy Robson has been a publisher for years sometimes working for others, but mostly working form himself. This book, Under Cover, is all about his life spent publishing all sorts of people with all types of books. Highly entertaining reading.

Orchid Summer can be best summed up as a plant addict travelling all around the country to find the plants that he loves.  Jon Dunn is the addict concerned and he manages to make this very readable.

Assurances        J.O. Morgan        Poetry

The Point of Poetry        Joe Nutt        Poetry

The premise of Not Working: Why We Have to Stop sounded really good when I saw it in the catalogue, but it really didn’t work for me for a variety of reasons.

Adam Rutherford is best known as the presenter of Inside Science on BBC Radio 4, but he also writes some really good books. The Book of Humans is his latest and it is a well-written pop science book about our genetic story. New out this month is another book on the subject of the moment, sleep. This time Guy Leschziner is looking at how our brains and mind works when we are sleeping in The Nocturnal Brain. The best way of finding out how most people function is to look at those who don’t function correctly when it comes to sleep.

There are times when real ife is stranger than fiction and The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre recounts one of those stories here. Oleg Gordievsky was a KGB officer but also was a spy for MI6. The secrets and opinions that he passed back to his handlers were key in the cold war. It has a very dramatic ending too and is possibly better than some spy thrillers that I have read in the past.

Eight was a tiny theme going on this month, and the next book Around India in 80 Trains does exactly what it says on the title. Monisha Rajesh heads to the country of her parents to discover the places that have made India and at the same time get the cultural experience turned up to 11. Well worth reading. I have her next book to read in a week or so.

I hadn’t intended on collection this range of Little Toller books but somehow have ended up with four of them now. Ah well. This copy of In Pursuit of Spring had gone all the way out to Canada and then got sent to me by Allison. In the spring of 1913, beginning on March the 21st, Edward Thomas sets off on his bicycle to head to Somerset to discover the places in the south that were showing the first signs of spring. I started the book on the 21st and read a chapter a day. He travelled through places that I grew up in and my family name even gets a mention too!

The Wild Remedy was my book of the month. It is a book that is a thing of beauty and needs to be read by those that have emerged from the Winter and are still feeling the effects of depression. It is very personal too as Emma recounts points when she was at her very lowest ebb.

Any of these take your fancy? Or are there any that you have read?

For such a short month, February seemed to last for ages. I spent a lot of time heading from Dorset to London too, three times for work and a couple for personal reasons, one of which was to judge the Stanford Dolman award. More on that in a later post, after it has been printed in NB Magazine. Anyway onto the books that I read in February. I managed to read 17 in the end. First up are my fiction reads

As well as the Stanford Dolman books that I was reading to judge, I also have read the Adventure travel shortlist and the next three are from that. A short book about a woman who inadvertently adopts a dog by Ishbel Holmes is as much about her torrid past as it is about Lucy the street dog. Really enjoyable and uplifting story. I have read one of Ben Fogle’s books before on Land Rovers, which was ok, but not brilliantly written. Up, about his training and successful attempt to climb Everest is a little better. I particularly liked the other side of the story told by his wife, Marina. It added a better depth to the story. As an adventurer, Levison Wood is hard to beat. He has walked halfway across Africa, across the rooftop of the world and through the jungles of Central America. This latest book of his travel around the Arabian peninsula doesn’t have a TV series to accompany it but is still worth reading none the less.

I found this via a Facebook group that I am in called A World Adventure by Book. In the post, Beth had listed 10 bookish facts about herself and you can read this here.  It was linked to a post that other bloggers and booktubers have made called 25 bookish facts about me. From what I can see I may have missed the boat on this one as a lot of them were around four years ago. However, I thought it was a good idea, and so have sat down and thought about what would be my bookish confessions and it tied in with a series of posts that I wanted to do in 2019 explaining why I am a reader and what makes me tick.

So here we go:

1. I have been a reader for as long as I can remember. I remember when I was eight I was given a book by my teacher at the time, Mrs Wilson. It was called The Otterbury Incident and the author is Cecil Day-Lewis. It was a book set in a fictional town in the aftermath of World War II. I sat down to read it after tea and pretty much inhaled the whole book that evening. Took it back the following morning and she didn’t believe that I had read it the previous evening, so I recounted the story. It kind of dawned on me then that I was a faster reader than most others.

2. If pushed I could probably narrow my favourite books down to 50 or so. But I don’t just have one favourite, so don’t ask.

3. The same applies to favourite authors. I might be able to narrow it down to two or three per genre, but every time a new author appears they get added on and none gets dropped. I am possibly slightly obsessive about reading every book that a favourite author has written.

4. I do like reading fiction, but the majority of my reading is non-fiction, in particular, travel, natural history and science. I have always tried to read the shortlists for my favourite prizes, The Wainwright and the Stanford Dolman, but until this year, never did I think that I would be a judge for one of them. I really enjoyed the experience and would recommend it if you have the chance.

5. I have been fortunate enough to have met lots of authors in my time and now have a lot of signed books. I mean a lot too. Horatio Clare was the last author that I met and I got him to sign eight of his books that I had taken up to London with me. I took a massive bag to the Wainwright Prize and came back with them signed too! I even have two signed Terry Pratchett Books that I have found in second hand and charity shops. Very lucky to have those. It might be coming to be an obsession.

6. I have nine bookshelves at home, most of which are double stacked. At the moment only one has some semblance of order on it, and that is the one where all my natural history and landscape books. All my Pratchetts are on one shelf with the Neil Gaiman books and some travel and a random selection of others. One day I will get a little bit more organised. There is no such thing as too many books, however, there is such a thing as not enough bookshelves.

7. I once set fire to a book. And it was a library book too! I was reading a book at the dining room table and managed to lean it back over the lit candle! Oops. The library staff were very good about it and managed to repair it.

8. I haven’t dared count the books around the house, but we are suffering from a severe case of tsundoku. I reckon that I must have over a 1000 books spread over the house ( and half a shelf on my daughter’s bookcase too). It does drive my long-suffering wife, Sarah, slightly mad… It is not hoarding, if it’s books, so they tell me.

9. The hardback / paperback / kindle / audiobook argument is ridiculous. I would rather see people reading in whatever format they choose, as it is the reading of different ideas and perspectives that is the important thing. I do have a preference to buy paperback books though as I can get slightly more of them on my shelves.

10. I am slightly addicted to spreadsheets for my numerous booklists. I have one for everything that I have ever read, one for my library book loans, one that has several publishers entire book catalogues that I am slowly reading my way through. There is another for the book challenges that I do every year, one each for the awards that I follow.

11. I won a prize at school for the best project for a write up for a week away that my year did in Wales. The prize was a book token and I bought an Arthur Ransome book, Missee Lee and I still have it.

12. I don’t think I read a lot, given the size of my backlog. Last year I read 200, but normally (if it is normal…) I read 190 per year.

13. I have not read a single line of Shakespeare since school. The dreadful English teacher we had then managed to put me off them completely. The same applies to classics like Jane Eyre. I just have no desire to read them at all. I read Of Mice and men for the GCE (yes I am that old) and have rediscovered the delights of John Steinbeck and similar authors like Geroge Orwell and Graham Greene

14. Discovering a new author to me  is a thing of joy,  it means that I have a whole backlist to explore

15. I don’t really have a favourite place to read, as I can read pretty much anywhere, but if I had one it would be the conservatory. I used to read in there, but there is a drum kit in there at the moment. That will be going soon, so I can get a chair to go back in there.

16. It is not just books I have a thing about, I really love bookmarks too. I have hundreds of them as I make a point of helping myself to them when in bookshops and libraries. I have got all sorts, some beautiful and some not quite so practical, I even have a Chinese brass one that sits with part of it over the spine. I am not a corner folder as some are. My feeling is that if it is your book you are fully entitled to do exactly what you want to it. However, if it is my book that you have borrowed, then I expect you to look after it, return it and ideally return it undamaged.

17. I am fortunate to receive a lot of review copies through from publishers generous to send me them. Some of them I keep and I donate a lot to my local library after I have read them so others can borrow and enjoy them.

18. I am a big advocate for libraries and have two library cards. They are the best free bookshops in town. Not only do you get to take a book away with you gratis, but the author gets a little payment for each and everyone that you borrow. I am a member of the committee of the Friends groups for my local library too and we try to organise things for members every other month, support the library by buying covers for donated books and so on. Visit your library as the more people that use them means that it will be harder for the government to get rid of them; they are a vital resource for all of society and civilisation.

19. I rarely read hyped books. Mostly because they are in genres that I am not that worried about, but also because I have found the ones that I have read in the past have not been worth it.

20. I spend way too long on Good Reads. It is not a site for everyone, but it has been great to organise my virtual shelves into some order.

21. Love bookshops and could spend far too long in them, and too much money. I have pretty much stopped buying books off Amazon now, using them for second-hand books only. Support your local independent bookshop they are a vital resource for your community too.

22. I used to struggle through and finish a book, but with soooooo many to read, a book has to really prove that I need to read it. I give them three chapters or around 50 pages before setting it aside. Sometimes I will pick it up again, but more often than not I won’t. The flip side is that I won’t slate a book, but as a reader I reserve the right not to like it.

23. I buy a lot of books to give away to people as presents. No surprise there, I make sure I buy the nicely presented hardback book and before wrapping it up, I read it. I thought I was the only one to do this. Turns out I am not and this seems to be a thing with others too. When my children were younger they would occasionally tell the recipient of the gift that ‘dad’s just read that’… Ah well.

24. I love Terry Pratchett’s books and when he passed away I was genuinely was upset about that. He is a genius for comedy and parody and has an ability to hold a mirror to modern society to show our flaws and good points. I have got all the Discworld series but still have not finished them. Had been meaning to do it a couple of years ago and finally last month I got back to reading them. This year I will finish the books that I have not read from the 41 in the series. Then I intend to start them again as they give me so much reading pleasure.

25. I will often have five or six physical books with me at any one time.

Today is the publication day of The Pull of the River by Matt Gaw in paperback. Here is the interview that I did with him when it came out in hardback and first appeared on NB Magazine.

Thank you for writing an entertaining book with a refreshing take on the natural world

Thank you for your support and kind words Paul, it was strange sending the book out into the world – like sending a child to school and hoping it doesn’t get bullied!

Of all the rivers you paddled and talked about in the book, which was your favourite?

It’s really hard to say, I know it sounds a bit of a cop-out answer, but all of the rivers were special in their own way. Each has its own character, its own history. There were definitely highlights though. When we paddled the Wye, it was glorious weather and it really is a beautiful piece of water – running through gorges and wooded valleys.

But I also have a special place in my heart for the Lark, my local river. We canoed it in December and January, sleeping in hammocks as the temperature dropped to -7 and sections of the river were really neglected – straightened, hemmed in with concrete and full of litter. But seeing it flow through my home town it is a reminder of how adventure can be closer than you think. I guess it sums up for me how rivers can be secret windows into a different world.

Have you got any other rivers in mind to paddle this summer?

Yes, I’ll be heading down to the Dart at some point and I also want to go north to find some wild water. I’ll also be paddling some of the rivers that are closer to home. There are still some in Suffolk I haven’t been on and it’s always fascinating to re-explore places you thought you knew.

Making your own canoe as James did, is not going to be for everyone; are there ways that people can try out canoeing relatively inexpensively?

Yes definitely! There are lots of clubs up and down the country where you can learn or rent canoes or kayaks (whatever floats your boat). And if you don’t want to join a club, there are many stretches of river where you can hire for a few hours or even a week – they’ll supply everything you need.

And what sort of equipment would you recommend for those who were wishing to make the investment to start off with?

We were definitely unprepared when we started out. We borrowed life vests and paddles and stowed all our stuff in carrier bags. We eventually upgraded our kit (after learning the hard way) but it doesn’t have to be expensive. In terms of essentials, life vests are a must and I’d recommend good dry bags and a swim case for your phone. If you want to hit the water in the winter I would also invest in a drysuit: it’s the most expensive piece of equipment we bought but well worth it.

 If you could canoe some of the rivers in Europe, what rivers would be top of your list?

I would love to paddle the Danube. Not only is it somewhere that John MacGregor (who pretty much founded modern canoeing) explored in the Rob Roy, but it is such a varied landscape. I’ve got my eye on some North American rivers too, places that are boundaries and frontiers I just find so interesting.

I think that you are one of the first new clutch of authors from Melissa Harrison’s excellent seasonal anthologies to have a book come out from there; who else would you like to see have an opportunity to write a book next?

It’s hard to choose as there were so many wonderful writers in those anthologies. I am so grateful to Melissa and Elliott & Thompson for including me with them. I would definitely love to see more work from Nicola Chester and Kate Blincoe – two writers who have inspired and supported me.

Do you have somewhere particular to write, or are you an author who can write anywhere?

I can, or try to, write anywhere. I guess I’m nervous about putting writing on a pedestal.  I am currently trying to sort out a better space at home but I do worry that if I only write in one place I’ll find it easier to avoid it!

If you were to recommend three natural history books, what would they be?

For me A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold was formative, and I go back to it now. That line, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds” still resonates.

Notes from Walnut Tree Farm is probably my favourite book of Roger Deakin’s and again, something I often return to. It really evokes a wild life.

And, I’m not sure if I could call it a straight natural history book, but I often find myself thinking of Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. That sense of flight from the world, a keenness for adventure and experience is inspiring, even if does turn into a tragedy.

Do you have a second book in the pipeline yet?

Yes, I’m really excited about it. It’s a project I’m working on with Elliott & Thompson and due out in autumn 2019.

Which author(s) do you turn to for inspiration?

There are many, both non fiction and fiction. Paul Evans (Field Notes from the Edge), Amy Liptrot (The Outrun), Roger Deakin. But also Annie Proulx, Graham Swift, Andrew Michael Hurley and Daisy Johnson.

What book are you currently reading?
I’m reading a couple. Animals Strike Curious Poses by Elena Passarello, which is a wonderful collection of essays about different animals that have been named and immortalised by humans. I’m also devouring Daisy Johnson’s new novel Everything Under, which comes out this summer. I love the sense of river damp it evokes. Takes me right back to the canoe.

Nigel Barley was born in Kingston-on-Thames in 1947 and studied Modern Languages at Cambridge before completing a doctorate in Social Anthropology at Oxford. He taught at University College London and the Slade School of Art before joining The Department of Ethnography at the British Museum in 1988 where he remained for some twenty years. After several academic works, he wrote The Innocent Anthropologist in 1983. It contradicted so many cherished assumptions that it led to calls for his expulsion from the professional body of anthropologists. He remained, however, and now the book has been translated into some twenty-five languages and is often the first work embraced by students of anthropology in their studies. He left the Museum in 2002 and is now a professional writer, living in London and Indonesia. His most recent work is Island of Demons, a fictionalised treatment of the life of the painter Walter Spies.

Eland have just re-published two more of his books, A Plague of Caterpillarss and Not a Hazardous Sport to go with The Innocent Anthropologist that they republished back in 2011

1 Have you been back out to Cameroon since the books were written?

I went back some years later when there was a prospect of making a film about the Dowayos. The film never came to anything but there had been enormous changes.

2 Does the Dowayo society still exist, or has it been subsumed into wider Cameroon society?

There was a refugee problem, MSF were running a big operation and warring factions from Chad had all been lumped together in one place and were killing each other. With Boko Haram now operating further north and anglophone fighters further south, I imagine those changes have continued. For anthropologists, the world is actually a much more dangerous place than it was when I was young. There are more guns and more political resentments about.

3 You mentioned in the first book that you had to post the films back to the UK. Did you loose any when you did this?

Extraordinarily, I never lost a single film – though many arrived without stamps – these having been reacquired by postal officials along the way. Since then, I have lost many myself, having left them in university slide projectors or publishers’ offices.

4  Did you ever get to witness the ceremony that you went back out to Cameroon for?

I never did get to see the actual circumcision though I saw it mimed as part of other ceremonies.

5 Was the African bureaucracy one of the worst that you encountered?

Cameroonian bureaucracy was absolutely the worst as it was conducted with extreme bad humour. In Indonesia, I once spent three weeks getting an official letter from a ministry, confirming that I didn’t need a letter from that ministry but even the civil servants thought that was funny and we laughed about it.

6 Were there any stories that you had that didn’t make it into the book?

When I went back the last time, our luggage was impounded at the airport. We finally discovered that this was because our reason for visit was described as ‘making an ethnographic film’. The officer in charge read it as ‘making a pornographic film’.

7 Have you ever been on a horse since Indonesia?

Never! And never will again. I have been on an elephant. Much better!

8 Did you ever bring other people back to the UK to experience some of our life here, or were the Torajan the only tribe?

The Torajans were the only ones I actually brought back but, naturally, I have met lots of people from distant parts who happened to be in London. I once found a family of Indonesians from one of the more remote islands lost on the Circle Line and brought them home and they stayed for two weeks.

9 Are you still in contact with any people from the villages that you visited in the three books?

Not with anyone from Africa but I am still in contact with Torajans. I added a postscript to ‘Not a Hazardous Sport’ about that.

10 In the modern interconnected world, do you think that anthropology still has things to discover?

Anthropology is no longer about finding people who are still ‘uncontacted’ but of finding better ways of understanding what it means to be human. I’ve always been obsessed with the question of why anthropologists work on people they know nothing about as professional strangers rather than acting as their own ethnographic informants on the places they grew up in and know perfectly. One of the ways I tried to deal with that is in a book called, ‘Coronation Chicken’ trying to see my own childhood (50’s and 60’s Southern England) as a foreign country.

11 Do you think that anthropology will look at the tribes that now exist in the subcultures of cities?

It’s already doing that.

12 Are there any societies that you wished you had been able to visit in an anthropological capacity?

The real challenge would be ET. That would put all our assumptions, won over millennia of exploration, back in the melting pot.

13 If you have an opportunity to travel without doing fieldwork, where do you like to go to?

I always travelled seeking to find the place where I felt I truly belonged. For me, I discovered it in Indonesia. I love it and feel very much at home there. It’s beautiful, the food is great and the people are the nicest in the world.

14 Which author(s) do you turn to for inspiration?

Nowadays, I’m more a novelist than an anthropologist or a travel writer, so I like to travel in the imagination. For anthropology, it was Claude Levi-Strauss that brought me to the subject though I ended up approaching it from a very different angle than he did. I still feel we have much to learn from his vision of the world and I wrote a piece about that for his hundredth birthday. It appeared under the heading, ‘Levi-Strauss Lives’. Unfortunately, he had died the day before. The best novelistic travel writer is Anthony Burgess who spent years in Malaya and Brunei but with a very novelistic eye. His ‘Malayan Trilogy’ and ‘Earthly Powers’ confront the difficulties of intercultural understanding as well as any anthropology ever did.

15 If you were to recommend three books, what would they be?

‘Earthly Powers’ by Burgess, Totemism’ by Levi-Strauss and ‘Primordial Characters’ by Rodney Needham.

16 What book(s) are you currently reading?

I’ve just finished ‘Pagan Light’ by Jamie James about the place of Capri in the Western imagination and some of the extraordinary characters that it attracted.

17 Do you have a favourite place to write?

At home in London. I’ve always been baffled by authors who go off to the Outer Hebrides or Tierra del Fuego to write. I’ve tried that. You spend two-thirds of the day keeping yourself fed and watered and, after writing two sides, you find you simply cannot write another word until you go and look something up at the British Library or go to one to of the major museums to see something crucial in the flesh. An exotic location is just a distraction. At home, you have everything you need already about you and you just have to have the courage to face the tyranny of the blank page without alibis.

18 Do you have another book in the pipeline?

I’ve just finished a book called’ The Ethnographic Seraglio’ about a 19th century English trader in the Indian Ocean who tried to establish himself in his own kingdom on a desert island with his 14 exotic ‘wives’. It ended badly, but I don’t need to tell you that.

Thank you to Nigel Barley for taking time to answer my questions and to Steph at Eland for arranging it all.