Category: Review (Page 17 of 132)

Welcome to Halfman, Halfbook for my stop on the Blog Tour for Tree Glee by Cheryl Rickman and published by Welbeck.

About the Book

Written by Positive Psychology practitioner and long-time tree-lover Cheryl Rickman, Tree Glee explores how trees can become an essential tool in our wellbeing toolkit, helping us to feel better in a variety of different and fascinating ways.

Looking at the psychology behind our fascination with trees, and the science behind how they comfort, restore and revitalise us, Tree Glee examines what we can learn from the wisdom of woodlands to improve our own wellness. Alongside this, Cheryl explores the importance of trees in our leafy suburbs and urban landscapes, sharing magical stories of remarkable ancient trees across the globe and invites readers to reflect on their own personal ‘treestory’.

Featuring captivating photos and chapters on forest bathing and nature therapy, woodland wellbeing and tree mythology, creative activities and conservation initiatives, Tree Glee is part ode and love letter to trees, part practical wellbeing guide and nature-connection manual and part call to action. The book explores how by deepening our appreciation and connection to trees and by celebrating and protecting them, we can flourish together.

About the Author

Cheryl Rickman is a proud tree-hugger and advocate for the power of nature as a healer and energy-giver. She is also a Sunday Times best-selling author and a qualified positive psychology practitioner. Cheryl specializes in writing empowering, practical books to help people fret less and flourish more and is a well-being ambassador for the Network of Wellbeing. She owns a small parcel of ancient woodland in the Hampshire countryside with her partner.

My Review

There are two places that I know I will always find relaxing, being alongside water and in the middle of a woodland. I don’t know exactly why that is, it may be that the sound of water and the susurration of the wind as it passes through the leaves or something else entirely. I love the way that the light is dappled by the leaves in the summer. Even when I am in a woodland in winter, I love the structure of the trees with their starker shapes against a crisp blue sky.

Another tree and woodland enthusiast is Cheryl Rickman. In this book, she takes us on a journey through a tree-lined path. Beginning with why we need trees, especially in the digital age and why we have such a strong association with them. Even having pictures of them in a room or on a screen can have a beneficial effect on a person’s well-being. They are not just for looking at though, touching and smelling trees and leaves can have similar effects. It is thought that this is because of deep-rooted neural wiring that reminds us how they have fed, sheltered and kept us warm for thousands of years.

The second section is about how we connect again with the natural world and trees in particular. This part is more about practical things that you can do to increase this, including making time to notice the tiny details as well as games and fun things to do with small children and families. The final part of the book is talking about what we can do to help maintain and improve the environment for them, after all, we are all interlinked and our longevity depends on them.

I liked this a lot. It has got the balance right between inspirational writing, solid scientific basis and practical well-being suggestions. I know that not everyone is for me, but I have made a note of a few things to do in 2023. Her enthusiasm for her woody subjects is evident throughout the book, and I am slightly jealous of her as she even owns a little piece of ancient woodland. If, like me, you don’t own your own copse, then grab a copy of this book and head to your nearest woodland to luxuriate in the natural cathedral of trees.

Don’t forget to visit the other blogs on the blog tour

Buy this at your local independent bookshop. If you’re not sure where your nearest is then you can find

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 only been to Croatia once. We had a lovely holiday, the only sour moment being when my wallet was nicked in Spit when were there for the day. We visited various spots including a beautiful national park where we had one of the largest thunderstorms that I personally have ever known. The family that owned the place where we stayed were all lovely and there was no hint of the atrocities that took place there when the region descended into war in the early 1990s.

Mary Novakovich has a very different experience of the country though, her parent were born there but ended up in the UK leaving behind many relatives. She first visited in 1976 to stay with family when the country was still ruled by Tito, Even though she had been brought up in a Serbian-speaking household, she realised that she was going to struggle to understand these relatives that she had never seen before. They were equally bemused by this girl who had a funny accent, It was quite a culture shock for both sides of the family, but they all made memories that they still recalled many years on.

It would be another 28 years before she returned.

Her mother, Jelka would accompany her on this trip in 2004. She has a list of places that she wants to go to with the hope of unravelling some of her family histories a bit more. Being older and wiser she could appreciate the beauty of the place and especially the food much more. She is revelling in the chance to discover more about the country and has a list of things to do. Her mother has other ideas though and it leads to quite a strained trip at times.

She heads out there again in 2009 with her mother, but in 2011 she arrives in the country with her husband. He had heard so much about the place and this was his first time there. They arrived to find there was a wine festival taking place. Somehow they managed to be free of hangovers in the morning and set off on their travels around Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and into Hungary. She manages to get to meet and see people that she didn’t have the opportunity to do on earlier trips. Her final visit was in 2019 just before travel became almost impossible because of the pandemic.

I did like the layering of her travels in the region. Some of the visits may have been short, but it added depth to the work she was doing as she pieced together her own family history. I felt that I became part of her journey of discovery of her family and the place where they still lived. I liked her writing style too, she is open and honest about the many tragedies that have befallen the country and the horrid events that the people, including her family, have suffered. She is a sensitive traveller too, noting the strides that have been made since the wars whilst acknowledging the raw feelings and hurt that still lie just under the surface. I really liked this, it is an insight into a country by an author who brings it to life.

4 out of 5 stars

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

We went to Greece for the first time this year, not on the mainland, but rather on the beautiful island of Corfu. We loved it and want to explore another part of this country at some point in the future. Jennifer Barclay has lived there for a number of years and this is her fourth book about the place.

A chance meeting with a Greek-American hotel owner whilst walking on the island of Karpathos gives her an opportunity to work on the island for a summer. She offers to help him with running his beach taverna. She heads back to Tilos to collect her dog, Lisa and a tent and returns to the remote bay to begin working.

Getting down to the beach involves driving down, what sounds a heart-stopping trackway. But the beach is beautiful and well worth the effort to get down there. She helps in the kitchen and waitresses for the customers that are coming for food and drinks. A rival taverna opens up next door and the people that run that establishment are not particularly pleasant, taking some of their customers and occasionally threatening them.

It is hard work, especially having to clean and sort the guests in the rooms that Minas has in the village. But she enjoys it, learning how to cook some of the dishes and fitting in her regular paying job as an editor whenever she can. Before it gets really busy in August she has time to go swimming each day and to absorb the atmosphere of the island and make friends with some of the locals.

I really liked this latest book from Jennifer Barclay. It is different from her earlier books as this is about her time spent over the summer working for Minas in his taverna alongside what sounds like a heavenly beach. These types of travel books are more about the people rather than the place and the host of characters that she comes across working in the kitchen do not let us down in this book. I like her writing style too, it is a nice blend of conversation coupled with moments of beauty as she describes what she sees on her time off. If you want to spend a few hours on a Greek beach, without leaving your armchair, then I can recommend this.

4 out of 5 stars

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

In 1716 Mary Wortley Montagu travelled across Europe to Istanbul. She was there as the wife of the British ambassador along with a sizeable entourage to represent Britain’s interests in Turkey. This position that she held meant that she could get to meet people in positions that normal travellers would not be able to entertain, such as empresses and sultans.

This book is a collection of her letters that were sent to a variety of people and were subsequently collected together to make this book up. I don’t know the name of the people that were the recipients of these letters, but I can guess with the number of nobility scattered amongst the names that these were the great and the good of the society of the time.

The thing that I liked most about the letters is the incredible detail of the places and people that she encounters on the way there and in court life. There are details of her seeing whirling dervishes for the first time, the description of a dress that was dripping in gems and diamonds as well as the mundane and the most recent gossip she is gathering and passing on to her friends.

I thought that this was a well-written insight into life at the beginning of the 1700s. She is an astute observer of life in the court as well as shining a light on the almost unknown lives of Turkish women at the time. Her views on life are refreshing too, given the time this was written, though she does carry the deeply held views of similar members of her class in society of the time. The afterword by the late great Dervla Murphy adds context to just who this lady was. Well worth reading, not just for its historical importance, but as a unique travel book of its time.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

Even though I have read bits and pieces about Hampstead Heath, a couple of books on the people that head to the ponds on a regular or daily basis to take a dip and it has come up in books on spies, both fictional and real-life examples. My mum and dad are both Londoners and I have been there many many times. But I have never been there.

Located four miles from the centre of London it is eight hundred acres of green space. It is not manicured by legions of gardeners, rather it is a place that most Londoners can get to on a tube that feels like the countryside. There are hills and lakes, rolling grasslands and wild parts (well for London anyway).

It is a place that Hunter Davies has known for a very long time. He was born in Scotland, but his home for the past six decades has been within walking distance of the Heath. This book, set over a year of life on the Heath and during the pandemic, is both a love letter and a eulogy to the place that he loves deeply.

Each chapter takes us to a specific place beginning of course with the swimming ponds. We meet some of the characters on the heath from the dog walkers to the rich and famous and the hippies that are using the space for their own particular ends. There are several visits to the pubs, he wanders along the pergola, a generally unknown spot as well as visits to the sheep that are making an appearance now.

I must admit I did think that this would be more natural history focused than it is, but that said I found this as informative as I did entertaining. Quite a pleasant surprise. It is a part of London that I know very little about so every page had some anecdote or snippet of information that I had not come across before. I liked the way that he explored different parts of the heath rather than just his regular haunts, but it is the places that he visits every day that you come to understand why he loves the place so much. If I had one minor gripe, I thought that the name-dropping did get a little tiresome.

3 out of 5 stars

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

It has been a long time since I fished but the last time I did so was on the shores of Loch Lochy. Didn’t catch a huge amount, but we did have to odd success. It never really caught (sorry) my attention enough to carry on, but I can see why some people fall for it.

Andrew Douglas-Home has been in a fortunate enough position to have been able to fish some of Scotland’s best salmon rivers, in particular the Tweed. He would spend all day fishing as a child from the land that his father owned. When not fishing there, he would be able to cast his line at other places around Scotland that other family members owned. He did take it all for granted, especially the fish that he could land back in the 1960s in numbers that have never really been seen since.

This book is a series of short essays about his life spent fishing in all manner of places, but primarily on the rivers of Scotland. Woven into these short stories of a life spent thigh-deep in water is a glimpse into his family life from a child who would visit 10 Downing Street to see his uncle who just happened to be Prime Minister at the time. We learn a little about his wife and sons including the tragic loss of one of them as well as some of the insights that he has learnt from life.

He comes across as a good custodian of the land that he owns. There are a number of essays about the decline of the salmon and wildlife in general and has come to realise that the things that we have been doing to the environment are having a huge effect on the livelihood of the salmon. Some of his points made sense, but I did completely disagree with him about the introduction of beavers.

I quite liked this overall. He is not too bad an author and this is a fairly easy read. He is in a very privileged position, he knows it but does try to play it down in the prose. I think that he is slightly obsessed with his chosen sport. If you are not heavily into fishing with a sprinkling of hunting then this might not be for you.

4 out of 5 stars

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

Back in 2020, the world reached one of its pivotal moments in history. As the novel coronavirus swept around the world from China, countries dealt with the pandemic as it breached borders. In March of that year, the UK was put into lockdown and a plethora of rules and restrictions were put into place.

People coped with it in different ways, but one of the most noticeable benefits was that people began to notice the natural world once again. Matthew Yeomans was one of those who was discovering the natural world again. It was on one of his permitted walks that he had walked from a housing estate into a woodland. The beauty of it overwhelmed him and it was at that point that he decided that he wanted to write about the trees and woodlands of Wales.

But what was he going to write about? An idea formed; he would walk through the ancient and modern forests of his home country and write about them. He began to plan a route that in the end would take him on a series of routes from the border in England in the south, along the spine of the country to the west coast before heading inland and north. The route he chooses takes him past and through the history of the country from the ancient druid that the Romans feared, to the decays remanets of the industrial past.

He is joined by friends on some of the walks, old friends who provide good company and drinking partners. On others, he undertakes them alone which gives him time to think about his and our relationship with the natural world. A relationship that is under threat more than ever before.

The only way to save the world is to fall in love with it again – Brian Eno

Yeomans has a subtle and dry humour in his prose and has written an entertaining book that I really liked. His lockdown project to walk through the ancient and modern forests of Wales was something that gave him a sense of purpose, but he is also aware of the benefits that he gets from walking through these woods. This book calls for you to do the same and wallow in the peace that comes from being in a woodland or forest.

4 out of 5 stars

This book is a good reminder that the past is a foreign country. Even though she was born and grew up there, she has Saro-Wira has lived most of her life in the UK. Whilst she returned regularly after her father was murdered, she hadn’t returned for a long time.

Returning there became safe after a change of government and this would be the opportunity to see her home country through adult eyes and see if she could find the things that her late father loved so much about the place.

It is a place that is full of life and people and noise and smells and brings the memories flooding back. Growing up there she was not allowed the freedoms that she now had to travel all over the country and find family members and speak to all manner of people. Having lived away from Nigeria for a while gave her an insight into the pulse of the country and its foibles and strengths.

She comes to realise what her father loved and hated in equal measure about the country. The corruption is rife, from the very top to the bottom and even though the politics is cleaner than it was, there is still a dark undercurrent. I really liked this book, the writing shows the passion that she has for Nigeria still and she is a great describer of the characters that she meets, both family and the people in the street. Even though this was published nearly 10 years ago, this is still worth reading for an insider’s view of Nigeria.

3 out of 5 stars

Following the tragic loss of his wife, Theo Byrne has to bring up their son, Robin alone. He is not a normal child by any means, he has an intensity about him that he channels into whatever project he is interested in at the time. Because he is unconventional, he doesn’t really fit in with school either and when events come to a head, they make the decision to home school.

This will be a tough call as Byre is a promising young astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets. As a way of distracting his son from the destruction that the human race is wreaking on this planet, he takes Robin to these other worlds where they try to imagine where life is so very different. He is offered treatment for Robin, which involves using psychoactive drugs and the memory patterns of his late mother. It is a risky decision, but he decides to proceed. Robin blooms under the treatment, but neither of them comprehends the implications of a decision Theo makes…

This is the first book by Richard Powers that I have read. Whilst I have heard lots of good things about him, primarily about his book, The Overstory, I had no idea what to expect. Mostly I liked it, he has a way with words that made this an easy book to read, even though you are reading about complex ideas, emotions and thoughts. I thought the plot was pretty good too, but I had a problem with a couple of elements of it that I will not elaborate on as they will involve spoilers. I am definitely going to read The Overstory based on what I have read here.

4 out of 5 stars

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

The Po is Italy’s longest river. At a smidgeon over 400 miles, it is almost twice as long as the Thames. In Italy, it is as iconic as our river too. It passes through 13 provinces as it flows from its source in the Alps to the delta in the Adriatic Sea. It has been a place that has witnessed a lot of history too, and the delta is the second largest in the Mediterranean.

It is this delta that he begins his journey from the sea to the source. He is bobbing around in a small boat trying to determine what is land and what is the sea. He passes little islands, called bonelli, that are formed and reformed by the sea and river each day. It used t be inhabited, there are buildings on the shorelines, but these are just shells now. All he can hear is the splash of fish and the calls of birds as he heads. This melding of sea and shore will set the tone of his travels upriver.

He is expecting a clearly defined river with banks that cut through the landscapes of Northern Italy. But he doesn’t find that. Instead, the same blurring of land and riverscape comes to define his journey. Finally making it out of the delta with its many tributaries he arrives in the region known as Polesine. Here the river is finally one channel, but it is still discombobulating as the banks are higher than the land around and he has to climb to see the water flow by.

He works his way upstream talking to the locals and teasing out the stories that this river has held onto and still has to tell. These stories have left traces in the culture and the people like the river itself have changed course in the landscape. We will learn about the amber that came down the river from the Baltic, to be worked on by Bronze age artisans and the puppeteers of the La Bassa Reggiana region. He is shown where to look to see the remains of old settlements and see the castle and fortresses where battles once took place.

I really liked this. Jones is a writer who is passionate and interested in the place that he has chosen to make his home. He doesn’t look at the places he travels to with rose-tinted glasses, rather he has that objective insight that you can only get from being an outsider. There are too many travel books out there that are mostly history and I think that he has got the balance of travel, anecdote and historical background about right too, he uses it to set the context of where he is. If you want a book about north Italy that is not about Venice then this is a great book to read.