Category: Book Musings (Page 27 of 32)

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.

Even though I haven’t finished all the great books that were released in 2017, I have been scouring the recently released catalogues and now have quite a list of books that are being released in 2018 that look like they will be really really good and that I really want to read. 

A Shadow Above: The Fall and Rise of the Raven by Joe Shute
The Long Spring: Tracking the Arrival of Spring Through Europe by Laurence Rose
Catching Stardust: Comets, Asteroids and the Birth of the Solar System by Natalie Starkey
The Dark Stuff: Stories from the Peatlands by Donald S. Murray
Orchid Summer: In Search of the Wildest Flowers of the British Isles by Jon Dunn
All Among The Barley by Melissa Harrison
Outnumbered: Exploring the Algorithms that Control Our Lives by David Sumpter
A Black Fox Running by Brian Carter

A Library Miscellany by Claire Cock-Starkey

A Spy Named Orphan: The Enigma of Donald Maclean by Roland Philipps
Speech Odyssey: The Story of Vocal Communication – from Neanderthals to Artificial Intelligence by Trevor Cox
Buried Light: The Hidden Connections that Illuminate the World by Lewis Dartnell

The Valley At The Centre Of The World by Malachy Tallack

Pennyfarthing: The Great British Cycling Revolution by William Manners
Spaceport Earth: The Reinvention Of Spaceflight by Joe Pappalardo

Walk Through History: Discover Victorian London by Christopher Winn
Built for Speed: Bikes, Beers and Balls of Steel by John McGuinness

The Almighty Dollar: Follow the Incredible Journey of a Single Dollar to See How the Global Economy Really Works by Dharshini David

Quercus

Random House

The Wood: The Life & Times of Cockshutt Wood by John Lewis-Stempel
AIQ: How People and Machines are Smarter Together by Nick Polson and James Scott

Went to See Professor Alice Roberts speak last night about her new book Tamed. This is a wander back through history looking at the animals and plants that have been tamed by humans and have made a significant difference to the quality of human life.

She spoke for about two hours in total, explaining when it was thought that wolves first became dogs, the first appearance of wheat and how farming and farmers had migrated across from the near east and the fertile crescent and how the horse was tamed and became an essential part of the lives of  people of the steppe.

All these stories were supported by facts and details from archaeological evidence, the genome and historical records. Roberts spoke with authority and clarity all the way through and it was fascinating stuff. Really worth attending and I bet that there are very few writers who can command a sell out theatre. Naturally, I bought the book, and Alice kindly signed it for me.

As it is #NonFictionNovember I’d thought that I would do a Giveaway

I have a set of all three of the books by the late great Roger Deakin. He was a writer, environmentalist and founder of Common Ground. Waterlog is considered the book that sparked the interest in Wild Swimming. He is a beautiful writer with a keen sense of observation of the world around him.

They are second hand and are in good condition. This is a UK only giveaway. Just comment below and I will choose an entrant randomly next Friday Evening around 9pm