Category: Review (Page 16 of 132)

3 out of 5 stars

When the sun goes down, you’d think that there would not be much to see for the wildlife spotter, no need for a pair of binoculars, just a torch to see where you’re going. But it is not like that at all, you need to take a little time for your eyes to adjust to the dark. Strangely enough, it is a similar time from sunset to dusk.

All the nighttime creatures appear from the shadows, and now your eyes are used to the dark you’ll be able to see them. And your binoculars will still work fine, they will take all the light around and concentrate it into your eyes. As the brain cannot get all the information it needs from your eyes, it will heighten your other senses, so you may begin to hear and feel things that you might not have been aware of before.

But how to navigate in this environment?

In this book, Chris Salisbury has pulled together lots of advice and suggestion for activities for children of all ages (even big children) on subjects such as the night sky, how to find animals in the night and the skills and tools that you need to navigate without light. I didn’t think that this was a bad book overall, I am not really the target audience which it was aimed at. I skim-read the activities that he included for encouraging both children and adults to embrace the dark, that said if you are looking to lead these sorts of activities then this would be an excellent resource.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

It has reached the point in the UK where the state is the all-seeing and all-knowing entity that watches all its citizens. Every single thing you say or do or post is recorded and the state has unlimited access to your innermost thoughts. Almost all the population has accepted this, partly as society is the safest it could be in history.

The state wants to respond to any potential threat to the security of itself and the population, and whilst interrogating a dissident, Diana Hunter, she dies in custody. This is the first time that this has happened and they need a top investigator to find out what exactly happened; the trusted state inspector Mielikki Neith is assigned to the investigation.

Immersing herself in the neural recording of the investigation, she slowly starts to realise that things are not as they seem. Rather than just finding the lady who passed away, she finds a number of different characters from an alchemist to an artist. Circling below these characters is an entity that calls itself Gnomon; Neith doesn’t know what it is but it is very much not of this time.

Nothing is as it seems and as she tries to untangle the complex web inside the neural recordings, she at last gets a glimpse of the real Diana Hunter. It comes to her that they hold snippets of the answer that she must decode. But doing that will reveal to her the perilous state that the System is in and if she can do anything about it.

I liked a lot of things about this book. I liked the way that society has been constructed and the all-seeing ‘System’ guides steers and watches, always watches the populace of the UK. I thought that the technologies enabling Neith to see inside Hunter’s mind were as fascinating as they were terrifying. The pervasive state is a disturbing mixed bag of a utopian/dystopian future, there is still those who wish to circumvent it.

I did think that it had a few flaws though. It is mind-bendingly complex and deeply layered and it took me a while to work out who was who. It did feel a bit overwritten too and could have been shorter in my opinion with a much tighter plot. I won’t expand on the plot too much as that would spoil it for anyone else wanting to venture into this weird world, but I did like it, once I had formed my mind around the convolutions. It might be a bit overwhelming for some people, but be patient with it and it will reward you as a reader.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

My name is Sicelo Cabangani Mbatha. My wilderness name is Bhubeselimnyama – Black Lion.

Probably the most dangerous animal that we have in the area is the adder, provided you can find one when they are out from the spring onwards. We don’t have to be wary of properly dangerous animals like lions or crocodiles. Where Sicelo Mbatha lives though these animals are just a fact of life, something that was brough home to his when his cousin was taken by a crocodile when crossing a river.

It was as if I could sense the unbounded wonder of nature and life and earth. I wept because I did know how else to respond

It didn’t make him want to go to the city, he wanted to stay in the Zulu homeland where he grew up, the draw of the natural world was too great to resist. He grew up as a child of nature, living a life that had been carried on that way for generations and learning it from the elders as they sat around the fire in the evening.

He began his working life, as many his age do, as a cow herder and it was being outside that reinforced his desire to become a game ranger. He passed his qualifications but did not have the money to be able to carry on his studies, so ended up working as a volunteer at the Mduba compound. It was here that he was to learn a lot of the skills, lion tracking, and monitoring rhino, that he would take through his career.

He would then become a trainee guide and best of all this was a paid position so he could properly support his young family. He thrived in this new position and learnt so much about the practical skills required in running a wilderness school. But it didn’t give him everything that he need, so when a position came up at Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife he applied and got it. It would be there where he would learn the next set of skills and become closer to the wilderness of Africa.

I really liked this account from Sicelo Mbatha of his life so far. It hasn’t been the easiest path that he has chosen to walk, but his heart is in the right place and he is happy with the choices that he has made. What comes across in the book is his passion for nature and all aspects of the natural world. At a deep level, he understands just how important it is to have a diverse world that is rich in specie, and that we as humans are just a part of that. Well worth reading to hear a new authentic voice in nature writing.

3.5 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

In the news recently was the announcement that the British government has given approval for the first coal mine to be opened in the country for decades. Provided you ignore the fact that burning coal is one of the worst ways of pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the powers that be said that this was going to be a carbon-neutral site. I was under the misbelief that the Tories didn’t like coal miners and this lot wouldn’t get irony if it ran them over in an MPV.

Coal mining is dirty and dangerous work and the men who used to do it in this country were a special breed. The places around the county that had pits used to be proud of what they did and the contribution that they made to the country and economy. It brings back memories for David Banning too, of his childhood and the family members that used to head below the surface to earn a living.

Reliving these memories with him feels like he is mining his past. He has uncovered various documents and photos to add historical context to his family story. His relative Sam Snaith was very elusive about his work in the pit, and Banning has pieced together a narrative from other contemporary accounts and tiny details that he did reveal.

But this isn’t a look back at the past through soot-flecked spectacles, Banning has something to say about the new coal mine at the stage of writing that was being approved. Even though it was claimed to be a British company creating British jobs, tracing the money showed that it was, as expected, located offshore. Things are never as they seem.

I liked this mix of memoir and personal family history set in the context of the mines of West Cumbria. It has a nice balance to each element of the book. Setting the future in the context of the past works really well too and whilst Banning doesn’t come across as angry when talking about the new mine, you can tell that he sees the project as futile and we are shredding what little is left of our reputation on the global stage.

Of all the 190 books that I have read in 2022, these are the ones that had covers that I liked the most. They are in no particular order and my favourite is at the bottom.

And here is my favourite

4 out of 5 stars

In the kind of sequel to Eagle Country, Seán Lysaght undertakes many trips into the region around the mountain of Nephin in Mayo. It feels untouched with its wide open areas of rivers and peat bog, but if you know where and how to look, you can see the faint presence of man in the area.

Rather than being there with a particular purpose in mind, he is there to understand the way that the natural world works in this part of Ireland. He is often alone but sometimes is accompanied by friends and his partner as he travels to his favourite parts of the region and discovers new places. He goes looking for his beloved eagles too, on the highlands of the region.

Even though there is a national park there, the whole region is remote. It has a huge variety of habitats, from mires to alpine heath and is populated by otters, badgers and mountain hares. There is an abundance of birds in permanent residence as well as a plethora of summer visitors. It faces the Atlantic Ocean and can be battered by the fierce storms as they roll in over the winter.

I really liked this book for a number of reasons. Lysaght has a gentle way of looking at this part of the world, he is precise in what he spots and writes about, but also takes the time to absorb being there and you feel like you are alongside him on the paths across the landscape. He is curious about almost everything that he comes across and this makes the book much better for it. If you want to read a nature book that is just about the wildness of the place then this is a good place to start.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

There is nowhere else on this planet that is like Madagascar. Separated from the continent of Africa and the sub-continent of India millions of years ago, the flora and fauna that evolved there, is unique. They have had enormous tortoises, and giant flightless birds in the past and the current animals that live there are equally strange. We are frequent visitors to Jersey and I always love seeing the lemurs that they have at the zoo there, especially the aye-aye.

But how did it get to the point? This is the subject of this book and Alison Richard will take us back aeons in time to describe the geology behind the creation of this place and then onto how the creatures and plants that ended up there evolved in their own unique way to solve the problems of being on that part of the planet at that particular time.

Humans were relatively late arrivals on this island, the first footprints dating back to a mere 10,00 years ago. There are very few sites of these ancient humans, but it is through more will be discovered now the experts know what they are looking for. People arrived from Africa and from across the Indian ocean. They had a small impact, to begin with, but that has changed as the island has reached the modern age.

I thought that this was an interesting book. To call this well-researched would be an understatement, Richard has been going there since the early 1970s and knows it inside out. The place is an anomaly in so many ways and Richard does a great job of conveying just how unusual almost everything is there. It is not written in dry academic tones, rather the prose is very readable and accessible to the general reader. If you want to know about the long history of the fascinating place, this is a good place to start.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Iceland is a place of ice and fire, it has a brief summer before the long winter draws in again and the winter storms bring the snow back. It sits above two of the tectonic plates and this means there are continuous earthquakes and volcanos. The landscape is devoid of trees and it can look alien in appearance, I have seen amazing photos of the black sand beaches there.

She was only supposed to be in Iceland for a week or so, but when the anthropologist and filmmaker, Sarah Thomas went there in 2008, little did she know that she would be for another five years. She was seduced by its bleak and beautiful landscapes and whilst that was hooking her in, she fell in love.

She makes a home there, learning the language and the culture and understanding that the Icelandic people have a unique perspective on the world and life. They made her welcome, but being an outsider meant that it was a struggle at times especially when Bjarni was working on a trawler.

A significant part of the book is her relationship with Bjarni, he is like the island she has chosen to live on, slightly strange and enigmatic and their relationship builds with intensity until the point where it unravels. She writes with both passion and awe about the elemental place that she has chosen to live. There was something touching about this beautifully written travel memoir that really got to me, I felt that I saw the people and the place through different eyes with her insight. Well worth reading.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

I have travelled a little but not a huge amount for a variety of reasons, so have always enjoyed the view of another traveller from the comfort of my own armchair with a glass of something cold to hand. Of course. The stories that I have read over the years have varied from the fairly tame, where someone moves to another country with the grand aim of building a new life to those who live life right on the edge…

Tourists don’t know where they’ve been
Travellers don’t know where they are going – Paul Theroux

Each of those writers have put pen to paper to share those experiences and hopefully some of the things they have learnt they can impart to us. Eland have been scouring the out of print travel books for the past forty years and bringing them back to life in their wonderful editions. In the process of resurrecting these books, they have collected quotes from the very best travel writers and compiled them in this slender volume.

There are no foreign lands
It is only the traveller who is foreign – Robert Louis Stevenson

A wonderful selection of quotes and pearls of travel wisdom from many of the authors that I have read and many that I haven’t quite got to. They have been loosely grouped them into themes such as The Pleasures of the Road and Monotony and Excitement. I really liked them, there are some brilliant quotes in this book, some serious ones as well as others that made me chuckle a lot. If you know someone who loves travel writing, this is an essential book for their collection.

The worst trips make the best reading – Paul Theroux

3 out of 5 stars

Qian Julie Wang arrived in America in 1994 at the age of seven and has gone from being a privileged and relatively wealthy family in China to a family below the poverty line. They moved because of persecution by the state and t life that she knew there, she would never know again.

She couldn’t speak a word of English when she arrived and her parents were forced to work in the sweatshops of the city just to be able to survive. They lived hand to mouth, avoiding all people in authority with the hope of beginning a new life there. She is a bright girl and she is quick to learn the language, but most of the children in her class shun her, so she loses herself in between the pages of books.

Staying out of the gaze of the authorities isn’t easy though, and the family have some close calls, none more so when her mother is taken really ill. The family reached a point where not doing anything will cost her life and if they do seek help, it could fracture the family completely.

This is an interesting account of a girl growing up in America as an illegal immigrant. She somehow manages to find a path through childhood and has to grow up really quickly to be able to help her parents. It is quite a sad read in lots of ways, they were taken advantage of by all sorts of people and made to work for a pittance. Somehow they found a path through and this book is the result of her tenacity and desire to work for a top law firm in New York.