Category: Book Musings (Page 26 of 31)

I’d read the shortlist, with my fellow bloggers chosen a winner, To Be A Machine, and I was fortunate to be invited to the prize announcement at the Wellcome Collection in London. As it costs a fair amount to get from Dorset to London, I’d thought that I’d make a day of it. Popped in to see Blake and Clare at Head of Zeus and then next tube stop was Matt at Duckworth. Had a very quick bite to eat and then headed north to see Simon at Big Green Books as I promised him I would pop in one day. Purchased his book, signed of course, and then headed south to Euston.

I was meeting up with two of my fellow bloggers from the Shadow Panel, Rebecca from Bookish Beck and Clare from A Little Blog of Books. Quick look around the shop and a natter over a coffee and it was time to head upstairs to the library and for the formal event to begin. Drinks were acquired and canapes consumed and we listened to jazz and shouted at each other over the noise. Edmund de Waal came on after around half an hour and started the preamble and introductions. Each of the judges introduced the books, presented the authors with a bouquet quoted from it. Photo’s (slightly blurry sorry) below:

and the winner was:

Which Max Porter accepted on behalf of Mark as his wife was in the process of giving birth to their second child. It was a highly amusing speech too. It was the one we picked too so we were quite chuffed, to say the least!

After the announcement had been made more drinks were brought around and the authors moved into the crowd to talk. Spoke to several of the authors and was even complimented by one on my review, which I probably blushed quite a lot at!

It was quite an experience and one that I feel privileged to have been invited too, we even got a free goody bag on the way out too. Overall a cracking day in London and I am hoping to be invited to another prize giving soon!

Apologies for being a bit late with this and being very quiet on the blog recently, almost immediately into April we went on holiday, so now have a pile of reviews to catch up with, but here is what I read in March. I managed 17 books in the end. Not as many as I had hoped for, other stuff kept getting in the way! 

There is a total mix of books this month, hopefully, something for everyone so here we go: 


I have been a huge fan of David Crystal for years, he has a knack of teasing out those etymology gems from our rich and varied language. What he has also done is to teach himself and other the best way of speaking to others, be it a small group in an office to a packed lecture theatre. This was one of the books and authors that was involved with Jewish Book Week and they were kind enough to send me a copy to review





Eland have been my publisher of the month in the profiles that I have been doing and you can read all about them here. Warrior Herdmen is one of the books that they have kindly sent me to review. This is the stories that Elizabeth marshall collected from her time spent with the Dodoth people who inhabited the northern fringe of Uganda. More anthropology than travel but fascinating none the less. 

 

Another one of the books and authors that was involved with Jewish Book Week and they were kind enough to send me a copy of this to review too. At the young age of fourteen, Laura Freeman was diagnosed with anorexia.While she let very little pass her lips in the form of nourishment, she still devoured books, and it was literature that was to hold the key to her recovery. Laura and her list of childhood favourite books has played a crucial role in her accepting that food is not something to avoid and can be enjoyed.






The final Jewish Book Week book that I was sent was The Ascent of Gravity by Marcus Chown. Gravity affects everything on this planet, but it was first understood only 400 years ago by Newton. Other have since broadened and deepened our understanding of this tiny, but significant force and Choswn takes us through the history and the most recent discoveries.






Undercover Muslim is about the troubled country of Yemen. Theo Padnos takes us into the coffee shops and backstreets where disillusioned young muslim men of the west seek some sort of spiritual aspiration in this society. One for my #WorldFromMyArmchair challenge too.








Surfing is a tough sport, so attempting it when you’ve had a hip replaced is beyond most people’s comprehension. Iain Gately is one surfer who has never ridden a tube, and it is one thing that he wants to do before he can’t surf any more. I really enjoyed this and it was nice to have a book written by a local Dorset author too.









Sometimes it is who you know, rather than what you know, that opens doors and opportunities and Clare had a friend had a contact in the Finnish Embassy. A message came via this link asking: We are celebrating a hundred years since independence this year: how would you like to travel on a government icebreaker? Horatio Clare jumped at the chance to spend 10 days on a modern Icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean. I love the evocative way that he writes about the sharpness of the ice, the clarity of the light and the noise as the frozen sea succumbs to the power of the ship Another good read from Clare and can highly recommend.



There are an awful lot of wild swimming books out there now, and I have read a lot of them. The classic Waterlog is still the one to beat though, but I still like to pick the others up and see where their aquatic adventures take them. It has a personal side as do a lot of natural history books these days, but then we are as much of this planet as the wildlife is. Thers is a deep melancholy and eloquence to Peter’s writing as even though he was better when he wrote the book, the spectre of depression is still a shadow in the background





In the urban sprawl, it is sometimes hard to see the natural world, but most people don’t realise that after an hour or so in the car from their front door they’d be able to see some of best examples of wildlife, woodlands and our finest natural landscapes. There is something in here for everyone, moorlands, coastal and wetlands, woodlands and even derelict industrial areas. Keep one in the glovebox of the car.

Lewis -Stempel is described as one of the best nature-writers of his generation, and he is very good, though I would argue that there are others that can carry that bough too. This is another sublime book from Lewis-Stempel to add to his raft of award-winning books. I really liked the diary format and the way that it is interspersed with folklore, poems, history, recipes and personal thoughts. Read it and you will want to own your own wood too.






Nestling in the foothills of the Himalayas in Yunnan Province lies the capital city of the almost forgotten Nakhi Kingdom, Likiang. This city was the home of the Nakhi. It was here that Peter Goullart went to live and work as a Chinese Industrial Cooperatives representative just before the beginning of World War 2. He paints a fascinating portrait of the people there uncovering the details that make the stories that he tells so compelling to read. Superb book






In Ground Work, Tim Dee has collated the thoughts and observations of thirty-one of the finest landscape and natural history writers around. This poetic and literary collection is the response to the threat that is being posed by the ‘soft-skinned, warm-blooded, short-lived, pedestrian species’ that has turned our present day into a new epoch; the Anthropocene. This new era is already causing chaotic changes to our weather systems, there is the steady creep upwards in average temperature across the globe as well as significant and it some cases catastrophic changes to our environments.



The Gathering Tide is Karen Lloyd’s journey around and across the dynamic sea and landscape of Morecombe Bay. Her evocative writing weaves together the physical journey on and around the sands, across the dunes and out to the islands and one kingdom, that poke their heads above the 10m tides. There are glimpses back into her past, fond memories of growing up in the area and meeting up with people whose livelihood depends on this coastline.

Where would you be without the internet? It is now one of life’s essentials along with power and water, and if you have teenagers then you know for them it is their lifeblood. The book covers the men who started the websites that now rule our lives and have permeated our existence in so many ways and we now rely on them. It is an interesting read, but he really doesn’t go anyway to address what needs to be done to curtail their power.

The first instance of the name Hamtunscir appeared in the 8th century, but there has been a human presence in the county of Hampshire since around 12,000 BC. People were communicating in a different way back then, but in this Langlands has scoured books and manuscripts to bring the very best of Hampshire writers and writing. There are the people that you’d expect, Jane Austen and Gilbert White as well as a raft of others including Wodehouse, Doyle and even Hardy who had ventured out of Dorset.  Nice collection of literature.



A Black Fox Running is a re-published edition with a stunning cover with a beautiful introduction by Melissa Harrison on how it inspired her to become a writer. It tells the story of Wulfgar, the dark-furred fox who roams far and wide over the wilds of Dartmoor and his battles with Scoble, an ex-veteran from the war with a drinking problem. It is not a children’s book, there are no compromises on death in this book, rather the writing is firmly grounded in the granite bedrock of Dartmoor bringing the natural world alive to the reader.

Jules Pretty walked along the shoreline of East Anglia in southeastern England over the course of a year, exploring four hundred miles on foot and another hundred miles by boat. It is a coast and a culture that is about to be lost not yet, perhaps, but soon to rising tides and industrial sprawl. It is a part of the world that has my roots in, as my paternal grandmother’s family come from Paglesham, though I have never visited it yet. I loved the photos in this book and the writing was considered without being too academic.

 February – the shortest month in the year, and somehow I managed to read 17 books… Not quite sure how. Was a good month too, my first two five star reads too along with some sci-fi, history, science and natural history. So here they are: 

This is the second in the Empire Games series and Stross has raised the stakes in this one. Multiple plot lines, the two America’s on the cusp of another nuclear war and the discovery of an alien series. Lost left unfinished ready for the next book.









I have only read one of Tom Cox’s books in the past, Bring Me the Head of Diego Garcia, but I had been hearing so much about this book, how it was funded in seven hours on Unbound, and how his proposal for a book could not fit in the neat boxes that marketing could understand. Not quite a natural history book, not quite a family memoir, not quite a polemic; what it is though is brilliant.

This is the latest book from Neil Ansell. It focuses on him returning to the same part of Scotland and also the way that his perception of the natural world is changing as his hearing slowly fails. Poignant and beautifully written.

Hadrian Wall is the 2000 year old frontier of the Roman Empire that you can still see across the landscape of northern England. More than that it tells the history of Roman ambitions and the stories of the people who lived there.









I finished this on the day that Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon Heavy Lifter blasted off from Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral and put a car into space. I loved the Don’t Panic message on the screen on the dashboard, but most impressive was the return of the boosters bask to Earth, landing in perfect synchronicity. This is a really good introduction to the current state of space technology and those seeing it as just another investment opportunity. There are going to be few winners and lots of losers in this very expensive game. One day this will all be history; but at this very moment, it is the future.

A book about a favourite author written by another favourite author. Crammed full of facts, it is enough to lift the heart of a depressed robot. A touching tribute to an author with an amazing imagination.









There is something about owls that has captivated us for millennia. The way that can float silently across a field or hunt in the dark has endowed then with mystical properties. Woven together with the touching story about her adult son’s illness this is a touching natural history book.

I have always loved woodlands and in this sumptuous coffee table book, Robert Penn shows how much life there is in one. Glorious pictures in here that you will want to return to again and again.









A book about books. What could be better? This was sent to me by the author along with her book on libraries and it is full of facts about how books are made, the smallest, the longest and the oldest. 









This is the companion volume to Claire’s book on books and it is just as wonderful as the other one. A cornucopia of snippets, facts and figures about libraries that bibliophiles will treasure. 












Poetry has a way of reaching into your very soul that fiction doesn’t always seem to manage and this is a collection by the anonymous author, lady Grey, has the capacity to do just that. 

The second sci-fi book that I read this month is a mass-murder mystery set in the universe that Reynolds has created. People are starting to die with increasing frequency as their implants kill them and no one knows why. Great stuff with some excellent tech and twists and turns.

 A touching story of a very strange family written in an engaging way, but there is a greater depth to the story as Gameson addresses the issues that all parents face as children grow up and change into adults capable of independent thought and now aren’t the person that you remembered. There are a variety of threads that start tangled and are brought together in unexpected ways. So very different to a lot of fiction that is out there and well worth reading.

There are still secrets that the universe is yet to relinquish and one the most mysterious is what lies in the 6-inch gap between your ears. If you want a well written popular science book on the possibilities and limits of intelligence, then you can’t go wrong reading this.








If you are wanting wide panoramas of the beautiful landscapes of the lakes then this is probably not the book for you. The majority of this book is about John caring for a young roe deer that was to become a great, semi-wild companion. Wyatt may not have had many possessions when he was a woodsman, but he had a life that had riches that no one else could buy.

A haunting bleak story about a Cornish fishing village with a lot of unrequited ghosts. Short and intense storytelling

A fascinating book, full of detail on a country that stepped into the abyss and almost took the whole of Europe with it. There are echoes in here that have a resonance today and we would be wise to remember.

I am please to announce that I am a supporter of Jewish Book Week:

It runs from the 3rd to the 11th March and there are lots more details of the events on the website here:

http://www.jewishbookweek.com/

And here are my five star reads for 2017, with my book of the year at the end of the list

 I first read this a long while ago and hated it. It wasn’t Pratchett enough for me but I have since discovered just how bloody brilliant that Gaiman can be. Time for a re-read. This time I appreciated the dark undertones and the almost schoolboy humour to the audacity of the book. One of the classics and I cannot wait to see the TV adaption

 This is a wonderful insight and a peek behind the scenes look at the tour de force that is Neil Gaiman. If you like anything that he has written or created, then this is one to read.

 Lois Pryce is a motorcyclist who decided to tour Iran on her bike. Alone. it is a wonderful portrait of a country that is a juxtaposition between moderate and hard Islamic influences. A fantastic travel book that ticks all the boxes.

Dave Goulson has an obsession with our little buzzy friends and in this book, he travels to places as exotic as Patagonia, Ecuador and California as well as heading to Salisbury Plain to discover what is happening to the worlds rarest bees. Without bees to pollinate our crops we are doomed, so his research is necessary and urgent.

 This is another superb book from Moss, but more importantly is it timely too. The state of the wildlife in the country is at a tipping point after decades of pummelling from chemicals and dramatic loss of habitat. This is a book to read if you care about the very future of our countryside.

Niemann’s soft lyrical voice has given us a really wonderfully written book on the ancient forests that dot our landscape, and the fight that people have undertaken to save them and bring them back from the brink of the abyss. We lose them at our peril

 Neil Gowers art makes this a thing of beauty. Not just a coffee table book either as Alex Preston’s prose shows just how passionate he is about our feathered friends.

Fifty years ago an unassuming book was published by J.A Baker and the way that people read and wrote natural history books was changed forever. he writes in an uncompromising way that you will either love or hate. This was the second time that I read this and I now appreciate just how good it is.

And my book of the year is

There are a lot of natural history memoirs out there now, The Outrun, H is for Hawk and so on. I have read almost all of them, but this unassuming book by Jessica J. Lee is one of the most beautifully written that I have read.

Read it and savour the beautiful, immersive and effortless prose.

As we are now in 2018, I thought that it was high time to tell you about my favourite reads from 2017. These are the books that I have given 4.5 or 5 stars to. These are in the order that I read them in last year, starting with the 4.5 star books:

If you haven’t come across Levison Wood then you really need to read his books and watch his documentaries. He is a modern-day adventurer who undertakes the most awesome of physical challenges. In this, he walks the length of the Himalayas and has a brush with death.

I have several Paul Theroux books at home, including a signed one, but this is the first of his that I read last year. He is a keen observer of the places that he visits and this is the first time he has turned his gaze on his home country. Enlightening and occasionally shocking it is a book that looks at the people and places of the deep south that are rarely seen and often forgotten

The border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic is a place that has seen a lot of tension and blood over the years. With the peace process having had a significant positive effect on the region, Carr decides to walk and paddle the length of it to take a gauge to the state of the nation. It is entertaining and informative and he rightly poses questions as to the impact that Brexit will have on the area.

Pete Brown is better known for his books on beer drinking and pubs, but this book came out of the book he was researching on cider when he realised that he had more notes about the places that the fruit for cider grew. If you want to know when is the correct time to wassail, and the long history of the orchard, this is a great book.

This is the second Levison wood book to make the list. As I said above he is the adventurer to watch and read. In this book, he walks 1800 miles through eight countries and can safely be considered to be one of the wildest places on the planet.

The third by Levison Wood is his first book. In this, he follows the source of the Nile right up to where it enters the Med. On foot. Great stuff

Iran is a country that has been under the grip of a fundamentalist Islamic regime for a number of years now and the oppression of people in the country is quite horrific. This is Dr Shirin Ebadi’s story of her fight for justice against a state that saw her as a trouble maker and sought to make her life very difficult. Moving and heart wrenching.

John Lewis-Stempel is one of our top nature writers at the moment and has won the Wainwright prize twice now. This short but sweet book is dedicated to that elusive and nocturnal creature the owl. Beautifully written, as I have come to expect, but way too short

If you haven’t yet read the Rivers of London series then you are missing out on a great urban fantasy series. This novella is a set on the Metropolitan Line where there has been an unusual spate of ghostly sightings. Thoroughly enjoyable escapsim.

Kapka Kassabova visits a place she left twenty-five years to see what has changed on the borderland between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. The writing is beautiful and she has a knack for drawing out the stories that people want to tell.

Partick Leigh Fermor was one of the greatest travel writers every, but very little was known about his wife Joan. In the book, Simon Fenwick sets about revealing some of her character and just what she meant to Paddy. Fascinating book about an enigmatic person

Finished my last book of 2017 a day or so ago and I am not going to finish anymore before the New Year, so time to do  a little analysis on last years reading

I read a total of 192 books at an average of 16 books a month. The total number of pages was 55873. 130 of the authors were male and 62 were female or in percentage terms, 32% of my reading was female authors. Aiming to push that to nearer 40% next year.

Nine books got five stars and I gave ten books 4.5 stars. Seventy-one got 4 Stars, forty-three 3.5 stars, forty-one 3 stars, eight 2.5 stars and nine were awarded 2 stars. No one-star books this year, so either I am becoming more selective or the quality of books is improving.

The breakdown in genres was as below:

The most read publishers are below. Good to see three independent publishers in joint fourth position, with others shortly behind

I have expanded on the spreadsheet for 2018, so looking to pull more data from the reading list as time goes on.

These are some of my favourite covers from all the books that I have read over 2017. They are in no particular order, but if they have one thing in common they are all striking and have that certain something that would make me want to pick them up and read them.