Category: Review (Page 2 of 132)

A recap of what I set out to do last year and a summary of how badly it went…

Blogging

As I said last year, I have always tended to think of myself as a reader who blogs rather than just a book blogger. I have never had a huge following on social media, there are some out there who have 100K followers which is just staggering. I tend to have a niche reading interest, which may reflect my much lower following too. It has changed since I started, even what I thought were popular bloggers seems to have slipped from the limelight. Probably because everyone seems to be chasing the latest trends. I have never been that fashionable so I will keep doing what I am doing.

Still here and still blogging. I have found a better routine for note taking for review books that seems to be working well. Just need to work on the backlog. How do people out there deal with unsolicited books? Read and review or pass on if not interested?

Books

Review Books

I am forever grateful for every single review copy that I receive. I am making a concerted plan to work through all of the review books that I have been sent and much reducing the number that I request still further. That said, I would be delighted to receive some of the books that were on my anticipated list… However, it is not a deal breaker, books that I really want to read I can get from the library or buy if necessary. I am hoping to read and review at least 60 books next year from that list.

I did manage to read 32 review books over the course of 2025. This was much less than I had been aiming for mostly because of the next category.

My Own Books

I have been cataloguing the books that I have in the past few months, and have found numerous duplicates. Some I am keeping for one reason or another and I have passed on quite a lot so far. There are a few more to go, so keep an eye on my social media channels. The plan is to buy fewer books (HA!!) and I have been keeping a tally of book that came in and left the house for good. I can share those figures in my 2024 review, they are quite scary!

I did manage to read 59 of my own books that had been anguishing on shelves for far too long over the course of 2025. Plus there were four that I had borrowed (from my daughter) that I read for the bookclub!

Library Books

I have got further down on the number of library books that I have out on both cars and have just under one shelf now. There is going to be a bit of a bump as the books I have reserved a while back finally turn up but I am aiming to get it to around 30 fairly soon.

I did manage to read 55 library books over the course of 2025. This was way more that I was intending to do, and was caused by a lot of reservations that then other had reserved!

Reading Plans

I am fairly happy with the mix of books that I am reading at the moment. I feel that I got the balance right between travel writing and natural history books last year, but as these make up the bulk of my collection, then I want to read more of them. I also want to read more science fiction and fiction, because, hey, why not? I also have some other intentions detailed below, that whilst not set in stone, I would like to achieve.

This kind of worked, and kind of didn’t as the need to read some other books took over! Still the same plan for this year though

Themed Reads

This was an idea that I had a little while back, to pick a theme each month and read three or four books on that chosen subject from my gargantuan TBR. So next year I am going to do it. Here are the themes that I have picked for 2025.

Architecture
Art
Business / Economics
Environment
Food & Drink
History
Language
London
Maths
Memoir
Venice
Walking

This was based on an ide to read about a particular subject with a wider context. I did manged two books from the three that I wanted to some months and other months failed miserably! Not intending on doing it this year, but will probably do it in 2027

Female Authors

I am going to keep my target of reading women authors at 40% for 2025.

I made 36%, or 54 female authors this year. A little disappointed with this.

Ethnic Minority Authors

I had my target set to 12 last year and I am going to set the same again for 2024. Slowly more ethnic minority authors are being commissioned in the genres that I like reading, but it is sadly too few still.

I ended up reading 15 which I am really pleased about

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Aiming again to average at least one a month for this. Science fiction is good for expanding the mind and as Terry Pratchett says: Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.

I ended up reading 14 Sci-Fi and fantasy over the year.

Fiction

I don’t read or buy a huge amount of fiction, but I do have a lot around that I have acquired or been sent. This year I am going to make an effort to read at least one fiction book a month. I probably won’t review them, but it depends on the book.

I ended up reading 13 fiction books over the year.

Poetry

I am aiming to read one poetry book a month this year again.

Succeeded in this intention!

Literary Awards

Last year I was a bit better at reading some of the shortlisted books from my favourite prizes (as usual). I did manage to read some from the minor prizes too, but still have a long list of books that I haven’t quite got to read yet… The same list of prizes from last year:

Wainwright
Stanford
Royal Society
Baillie Gifford
Arthur C Clarke

I would like to read some of the winners from other prizes too, including:
The Republic Of Consciousness Prize
Rathbones Folio Prize
Women’s Prize for Fiction
Jhalak Prize
The Portico Prize

I did read a few of the books that appeared on these prizes, but as ever, not as many as I hoped. Aiming to read the Stanford’s 2026 list this year as I actually had all the books!

Challenges

I have concluded that challenges are great but they can distract me from reading the backlog that I have. I am going to stick to the 20 books of summer as I use that to clear a particular genre. I read fiction in 2024 and I am aiming to read science fiction for 2025.

The World From My Armchair Challenge

My ongoing challenge is to read a travel book set in or that passes through every country, sea and ocean in the world. I did slightly better at this in 2024 as I read four books for the challenge. I have twelve lined up for this and there will be an update on a blog post sometime in the first part of the year.

Had meant to read 12 but only read three! Three! There is this year…

20 Books of Summer

This is run by the blogger, Cathy of 746 books. I normally sign up to read 20 books and will do so again this summer. I did manage to read all 20 books this year too, but finished the last well into autumn!

I read about ten by end of the year. But they were big chunky sci fi books so…

Other Bookish Stuff

Cataloguing Books

I am still cataloguing books! I have completed all nine that were in the original post, and have added in two more with another about to be filled soon. I have 2610 according to my spreadsheet and 312 of those are signed. According to the list I have read 882 and not read 1727! I thought I had read more of them than that!!! The spreadsheet is set up with a shelf number so I can find books when I need them!

This is ongoing. I am not trying to find some of the books that I thought that I had, but may well have been passed on. The search continues.
Totals now stand at
Total 2475
Read 812
Unread 1662

Spreadsheets

I wrote about this back in 2023 here. I have now made further refinements and will write another post about these changes early next year. (It was going to be this year, and I have the notes to type up, but not done it yet). My main master sheet works so much better than before!

This is an ongoing irritative process and I am still tweaking them as I go along.

Bookshelves

I wrote a blog post showing all my shelves here. I have drawn up a plan for what genre of books that I want on what shelf and still have not sorted it out! There are gaps on the shelves that I need to start shuffling around based on the plan. Let me know if you want to see more of my bookshelves in a blog post.

Not really got to this as yet. If we ever move this will get sorted properly (plus I need to clear another 400 books or so…)

Planning Matrix

To try and get a grip on what books I want to read and when I have started to do things on what I call a Planning Matrix. Yes, it’s another spreadsheet and it is based on the set-up that I have developed, but uses a grid to collate what categories a particular book fits. I am finding it quite useful so far. If you want to hear more about it, let me know and I will include it in the spreadsheet post next year.

On its fourth version at the moment. I keep thinking I am going to have to change to a database at some point…

3 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

At the age of ten, Mia Corvere witnesses her first execution. It is a moment that will change her life and her destiny forever. The desire to have retribution against those who slighted her family burns fiercely within her.

To do so she must embrace that fury and become a weapon without equal. She decides that she must join the Red Church of Itreya and become one of their very best assassins. However, surviving a building full of murderers is going to take some doing…

Her and her fellow acolytes’ training is intense, bloody, brutal and relentless. She makes friends with some of them, others she is ambivalent about, and there are others that will become enemies for life…

The training covers every method that they can think of for killing people, but the Red Church has another range of methods of death that their imaginations have not even considered yet.
Not every acolyte will make it to the end of the course and be in the final selection. The rate of attrition is high for failure, and they have to be aware that things that they have recently learnt will be used against them. She doesn’t know if any of her friends will be there at the end, let alone if she has enough mental strength to pass the course.

It is a fast-paced and thrilling ride. There were parts of this book that I liked, the imagination it takes to come up with this assassin’s church and the world-building I particularly liked. The plot is half decent, too. I could predict some of the outcomes, main character, first book in a series, etc, etc, but not the journey that he drapes around the characters, to the ending. There were parts I wasn’t that keen on, it is incredibly violent, so might not be for everyone. He is also keen on info dumps, and I thought that these got in the way of the plot sometimes. Most annoying were the footnotes; I’ve grown up reading Pratchett, who was a master at them, but Kristoff’s were huge and, in my opinion, mostly unnecessary. So overall, not bad, but I’ll probably not bother to read the rest in the series.

3 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Who says that blokes don’t read romance? That is quite a few of you then… Romance is the genre that I deliberately avoid, or more appropriately, run screaming from the boudoir… However, this is one of the fine offerings from the British Library’s Tales of the Weird Series, and the title Doomed Romances bring a whole different connotation to the word…

The Invisible Girl by Mary Shelley

This is the first Mary Shelley story that I have ever read! It is a strange tale of love and loss with whispers of folklore ad fairy tale woven in. But the strongest theme is the gothic melodrama that permeates the prose completely.

Carmilla by J. Sheridan le Fanu

A very gothic melodrama with vampires. I felt it was very overwritten; why use one word when you could use twenty instead? There is a strong lesbian theme between the daughter and the lady who is staying as a guest in the house.

Mr. Captain and the Nymph by Wilkie Collins

Somewhere in the Pacific, a ship encounters an island. The natives that live there seem friendly and welcoming, so the sailors go ashore, and it allows them to restock supplies. Alongside the main island is another, and they are curious as to what or who is on there. The natives strongly recommend that they do not set foot on the island as it is the home of a sorcerer, and it is a taboo for anyone else but him and the nymph to be there. The captain of the ship is told about her, and when he sees her through the telescope, he becomes besotted. So much so that he is brave and foolish enough to venture onto the island…

Little Woman in Black by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Miss Sarah Pawlett was engaged to be married to Lord Bellenden. The relationship was a little unusual as she wasn’t from the aristocracy, as would be expected at the time. But this didn’t deter, Lord Bellenden.

The only problem, though, was that Sarah was head over heels in love with another actor called Ned Langley. Plus, there was a sense that she was being watched continually, and there was a small lady dressed entirely in black who sat in the same seat for every performance each night.

Who this lady was, though, would soon be revealed…

White Magic by Ella D’Arcy

I wasn’t overly enamoured with this story. It is a conversation between the narrator and their friend, but having read it twice, I wasn’t completely sure what was going on or what were the subtleties of the plot.

The Tiger Charm by Alice Perrin

This is a story set in the time of the British Raj in India. A blustering colonel sets out on a tiger hunt, dragging his wife with him. They are separated after an incident and she ends up switching to another elephant and then they are separated. When she returns, he accuses her of all sorts of transgressions that might have taken place with her new companion in his drunken rant. He still wants to shoot a tiger, though, so he sets out with her companion, with a darker motive in mind…

One Remained Behind by Marjorie Bowen

A student called Rudolph is desperate to acquire a grimoire, a book full of magic and ancient rituals and ends up arguing with an antique bookseller whose shop it is in. With a trick and some emotional blackmail, he manages to make the book his.

He wastes no time in using the book to gain fame and fortune. However, he had not ever thought through the consequences of his actions, and it all starts to unravel.
I really liked this story a lot. There is something quite satisfying about Karma…

The Lady of the House of Love by Angela Carter

I thought that this was the story that best suited the title of the book, Doomed Romances. The young lady is in a decrepit mansion with a crone as a servant. There is an innocent young soldier who stops for the night. There is a building tension as I, the reader, can second-guess his possible fate.

That said, I didn’t find it that scary. But it does have a brooding intensity that made it my top story in the collection.

The Glass Bottle Trick by Nalo Hopkinson

This is a really dark story about a man who has been widowed twice before and is now married to his third wife. They had married fairly quickly after meeting and courting, and were soon to learn that his moods were dark and his temper short.

Passing on her news was going to be a challenge that she wasn’t sure she could do…
I thought this was an incredibly intense and fast-paced story.

Could You Wear My Eyes? by Kalumu Ya Salaam

I thought that this was a well-crafted story about a man who thought that having his late wife’s eyes implanted to replace his.
What he didn’t realise was what the effect of seeing everything from her perspective would be like…

I’ll Be Your Mirror by Tracy Fahey
A story of love, anatomy and discovery by a woman who becomes obsessed by an anatomical Venus, a life-sized wax model. Very much more macabre than romantic, and has a very dark plotline.

Dancehall Devil by V. Castro
I thought that this was probably the closest story in the book to horror. A woman has just entered a club and she is approached by a man who has absolutely no idea what her has just let himself in for…

3 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Fred Fredricks has an important delivery to make to someone on the moon. It is his first time there, and everything about the trip is strange. On the space flight over, he meets Ta Shu, a celebrity travel reporter and feng shui expert who agrees to meet with him again later in their visit to the moon. It is all going well until Fredricks meets the recipient of the package he is delivering, and it rapidly goes horribly wrong.

Fredricks is taken into custody following the incident. As he is an American and working for a Swiss company, there is a diplomatic standoff. Somehow, he manages to escape and joins a lady called Chan Qi, who is being sent back to Earth. They travel back with Ta Shu to China, where they evade the authorities on arrival and head to a safe house for a while. After being couped up, it gets to them, and they make a miscalculation on just how close the people looking for them are. They have to go on the run again, but they know the authorities are closing in on them.

One of the myriad factions in the Chinese security services that is sympathetic to Chan Qi has made the decision that they would be safer back on the moon and not be a distraction to the other factions on Earth. Once again, they are dispatched back on a space flight to stay in a super-rich gentleman’s called Fang Fei’s place. He is a businessman, and he has a separate base on the moon.

Even though she is 238,000 miles away, there are still people after her. They decide to hitch a ride with a couple of helium miners to an even more remote part of the moon. She decides that this is the time to send a coded message to her supporters in China, to add to the disruption as a power struggle for the president of China begins.

I have tried to keep the plot details as sparse as possible, to minimise spoilers, but there are a few. I would say that I liked rather than loved this; I had expected it to be entirely set on the moon, and was a little disappointed that it wasn’t. I would have liked it if Fred’s character had played a larger role in the story too; he was there as a bit of a stooge to the main character, Chan Qi. I felt it could have been a bit shorter, too. There were times when it dragged a bit, until the last quarter, when it flew by. Not bad overall, but not the best of his that I have read.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Be a traveller, not a tourist, is a phrase that is often attributed to the late Anthony Bourdain. But is there a difference between a traveller and a tourist, though? Some people think that there is, and surprise, surprise, others don’t… Though I do like Paul Theroux’s definition: Tourists don’t know where they have been, travellers don’t know where they are going.

Daniel Maurer considered himself a traveller, following in the footsteps of Bourdain, but it slowly dawned on him that maybe he was just a tourist.

Travel for almost everyone stopped during the pandemic. It took a while, but the world slowly opened up again, and Maurer became, not by choice, a digital nomad.

He ends up in Mexico and tries to find an authentic town to live in that isn’t overrun with tourists (sic). In this modern world, just the mention of a place can see massive crowds of people flocking to visit. This can have an enormous detrimental effect on the are and the people when this happens.

He is only moderately scathing on travel influencers and the lack of transparency that they have with regard to their sponsors. He is even less enamoured by AI assistants, seeing them as boring, predictable and often error-prone.

Being a travel nomad puts him in the gig economy. Yes, living is much cheaper in Mexico than in the States, but getting paid work meant that he had to lower his prices.

Moving on to Argentina, he finds that having dollars in his pocket means that he can live like a king. However, he soon learns to keep quiet about this as Argentinians are suffering from the effects of high inflation. As the economy there slowly implodes, he decides that he would be better off in Spain, the home country of his mother.

It is another country that is suffering from a massive hike in tourists and all of the accompanying problems that they bring with them. This is a phenomenon that is happening all around the world at the moment as locals struggle to cope with increasing self-entitled tourists. Instagrammable sites are super popular and these are now getting restrictions on the number of visitors that can attend.

The arrival of lots of digital nomads means that the local economies have changed completely. Rents and other expenses rise dramatically, locking out locals from the homes that they need. We have seen this effect in Cornwall and other places in the UK. Countries that were once offering golden visas are quietly dropping them. Plus, there is a concerted effort in Europe to restrict the number of short-term rental properties available.

During the time that he spends in Barcelona, he comes to see for himself how the tourists or guiri, and they are known there, are becoming less and less welcome. The city is beginning to restrict how many shops selling tourist tat are allowed. In July 2024, there was a huge protest against tourism; visitors were squirted with water pistols and attractions were cordoned off with fake police tape.

‘The idea of ‘I’m not like the others’ is very egocentric,’ Pardo said. ‘I think it isn’t possible nowadays to come to Barcelona and not be a tourist. If you come, you must accept it: you are just another piece of the mass. And it’s not each person, it’s the mass that is killing the city.

Cruise ships are also becoming a target for locals’ ire. The island of Ibitha can get three huge ships a day, and these can bring 10,00 disembarking from the ships. 10,000! This huge influx of people, coupled with the fact that the ships pollute a lot, are not particularly green and sustainable. Some countries are now starting to limit the number of ships docking and are insisting that low-sulphur fuels are used to combat pollution.

Other places are pushing back on anti-social behaviour too, restricting drink sales for example. In a twist of irony that you couldn’t make up, the anti-tourism protests have become a tourist attraction in their own right.

Like in other countries, migration is becoming a political hot potato, and this is causing some countries to lurch towards right-wing parties. Strangely, though, the predominantly right-wing capitalist system demands that low-paid workers exist to maximise company profits and executive pay. Utterly mad system when you think about it.

Maurer visits Expo 2025 to see what the future of travel offers from a corporate point of view and would it would look like. Having read his description of the event, I think it sounds horrendous… Whilst tech and apps could offer assistance in finding lovely places to visit, it struck me most as being a way to fleece consumers from increasingly larger sums of money.

One good this was that countries are now offering regenerative tourism. You help in some way or other, and you are granted benefits in kind. Key to it is that you are helping the area that you are staying in, rather than money disappearing into the corporate coffers.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell – Edward Abbey

How do we answer that Maurer poses at the end of the book:

Can we learn to move as thoughtfully as we can, as carefully as we can?

I thought that this was a really interesting book. Through numerous examples, he asks some very thought-provoking questions about the nature of travel and tourism and it made me think about just how it is affecting people and places that are becoming inundated with thousands of people on a regular basis.

I do feel, though, that he didn’t fully answer the question that he posed in the book; so, what do we do about travel? Not that this is a fault, he wants you to think about the consequences of what you do and where you go and the choices that you make. We have to make sensible and sustainable decisions going forward.

If you like to travel, then this book would be a great place to start before you book that next flight or holiday.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Like all good plans, the idea for this trip formed over a few beers one evening. With his friends, Danny, they had been putting the world to rights before Danny finally got around to asking him the question that had been distracting him for a while. Had he heard of Interrail? Quite a daft question to ask a travel writer.

Of course, he had.

The reason for the question was that Danny had seen that they were having a half-price sale to celebrate 50 years of the service. Danny had the idea that they should spend an entire month travelling around Europe. He was so enthused by the idea he had even broached the subject with his wife and been given a provisional pass.

They bought tickets there and then on the bench in Soho Square, before heading to Stanford’s to get a couple of maps. It didn’t take them long to concoct a plan, and they both knew the destination: Istanbul.

Sadly, a half-price Interrail ticket wouldn’t let them go on the horrendously priced Orient Express. Instead of spending vast amounts of time sorting their itinerary out, they decided to let serendipity reign and follow their instincts and the tracks. This, they hoped, would add a level of jeopardy to the trip and help them see a completely different range of places and people.

They arrived at St Pancras for the Eurostar in good time. There was a slight concern that their first destination, Paris, had been on fire because of riots. They were both slightly apprehensive as they disembarked the train in the station.

However, all seemed well as they alighted in Paris and they headed to their hotel, which just so happened to be in the same area that George Orwell stayed in many years before. They had a night out on and returned late to the hotel. Strasbourg was tomorrow’s destination and they had a train to catch early afternoon.

This was the beginning of the long winding route that would take them across Europe on their way to Istanbul. They pass through Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria; almost exclusively on trains, but with one trip on a bus because of strikes. It makes for entertaining reading, too, which, if you have read any of Chesshyre’s work before, you’d be familiar with. They get on really well and their account of their travels out there did make me laugh a lot at times.

After they reached Istanbul, Danny had elected to fly back home to relieve his wife from looking after the three children. Chesshyre was going to have to make his own way home, a challenge he relished. Rather than go back the way he had come, he chose a route that would take him through Greece, across the Adriatic to Italy and along one of the world’s most beautiful railway lines in Switzerland and then onward to the Netherlands.

I have read a number of Chesshyre’s books in the past, so I was really looking forward to this, and I am glad to say, it didn’t disappoint at all. It is both an entertaining and informative read. He has a keen eye for detail and particularly likes the variety of stations and the architectural differences they have. I haven’t expanded on the events of the route, because I think that this is something you should read and discover for yourselves when you read it. This is something that I can wholeheartedly recommend that you do.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Unless you are a geologist or a quarryman, most people don’t think about rocks at all during their day. I know I am one of those people. I may take more notice when out and about, but then we’re spoilt here on the Jurassic coast. Rocks are the very foundation of our planet, our homes and our cities. They have been venerated by our ancestors for millennia too, hence why Anjana starts this book at some of the most famous rocks in the world, Stonehenge.

Why these stones were erected in this way and for what purpose, we will never really know, though modern archaeology and theories have gained a little insight into the Stone Age mind. We do know the use of some of the stone artefacts left behind, though. These tools were made by Mesolithic humans and are instantly recognisable as the shape and functions are still valid today. There is a photo of a beautiful banded gneiss mace head found in the Thames in the book. The rock it was made from is 2.7 billion years old.

That is quite an age for a rock; however, the oldest rock on Earth discovered so far is 4.4 billion years old. This fact staggered me, as this must have been one of the first rocks to solidify from lava. The zircon in the rock acts as a record of how old they are and allows scientists to look back in time. The ancient gneiss of Canada is found in more than its geological records. The rock can be found in the creation stories and rituals of the First Nation people there.
Continental drift was originally proposed as a theory in the early 20th century, but it was first proven in 1957 and is now known as plate tectonics. The speed of movement is mm per year for the fastest plates and almost no movement for others. Except for some that then, when they do move, go so quickly that it causes earthquakes and tsunamis and are a reminder that for all man’s mastery over the planet, we’re only here for a short time, and our existence is very short compared to the rocks beneath our feet.

Indigenous people coped with this natural onslaught by performing rituals to Mother Earth. Seeing the planet as a female is very common in these cultures; Gaia, Bhumi Deu and Pachamama are just three examples. Their creation stories go some way to explaining the seismic activity in these areas that the local population could understand. The ancient reverence that the New Zealand people have for a rock called Pounamu is carried forward to the rugby team, who have a Māori stone that all players touch before a game. A similar reverence for Mother Earth, but with very different rituals, can be found in her own faith, Hinduism. Mother Bhumi is the earth goddess who must be treated with due respect and not be injured by people’s labour.
Rock has a timeless quality about it; probably because geological time is on a completely different scale to human time. Our three score and ten is a mere blink of an eye compared to 55 million years or longer.

Walking into a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt is walking deep into the past. Not just the historical elements, the hieroglyphs and the way that the tomb was carved from the rock, but the limestone rock itself has its own story to tell. Rocks can bring trouble to people, too, not just from falling on people. There is arsenic present in the Himalayas, and the silt that washes down to Bangladesh causes all manner of health problems. The discovery of gold in the West of America caused the obliteration of a number of First Nation tribes in the region because of greed.
The rock that started Khatwa on her geological journey came from a volcano in the Tsavo National Park over three decades ago. She picked up this vesicular basalt whilst on a family holiday and from that moment on was hooked on rocks and has made a career from it. These deadly natural phenomena are some of the most dramatic natural processes of geology we can see in certain places around the world. The closest I have knowingly been to a volcano was when on holiday in Sicily. We didn’t get to go and see Etna, whilst there, maybe another day. If you want to have red hot rocks thrown at you, then the place to go is Iceland; genuinely the land of ice and fire.

Being classed as a space invader is not a reference to a slightly rubbish game of the 1980s, but a phrase that she is told about as she walks through the Chilterns. It is a phrase that hang heavily with her as she goes on to write about the way that colonial invaders have taken over land and resources in Brazil and other parts of South America and the efforts that the indigenous people are taking to push back and reclaim what is rightfully theirs.

Sedimentary rocks are formed from organic matter or minerals that have collected in a depression. As layers form above them, they are crushed and become rock. This process takes millions of years, but the formations that it creates are magnificent. Khatwa is in Petra looking at the rocks there, they are multicoloured, with strips of yellow, pink, white and orange, and are a thing of beauty. Leaving Petra through the narrow gorge of Siq is an experience that she has never had before; the way that the light flows around the rock is exquisite.
The Arches National Park in America is home to a number of First Nation Tribes who consider the landscapes as portals. The photos in the book only hint at how stunning they are. The reverence that they hold for the arches shows a deep spiritual dimension for the place and the rocks from which they are created from. Sadly, this often clashes with the Western view that can only see these as a source of income and possible scientific gain.

She is searching for fossils on the beautiful beaches of West Dorset. They get lucky and find an ammonite and the vertebra of an ichthyosaur. Both have been in and become part of the rocks for millions of years. Even though I have looked on the same beaches a few times, I still haven’t found either yet!
Rocks have been a constant in her life, as well as giving her qualifications and a career; they helped her get through a traumatic breakup when she was a young mother.
Rocks also undergo traumatic changes during their incredibly long life spans as they are absorbed into the crust and subjected to massive temperatures and pressures. These forces change their structure and composition to become something better and stronger after. We can have a similar recovery from life events, becoming more resilient after them.

Mountains are large and immovable objects, and people tend to see them as indestructible. They are, but also they aren’t. Something as simple as water can break them; constant freezing and thawing over countless years cracks the mountain into boulders, stone and sand, and couple that with erosion, then they do not stand a chance with geological time. Sometimes the roots of these once great mountains are the only things left. New York is an example, and the grey slate quarries in the Welsh hills are two that she explores in the book.
Erratics are those boulders that are found on the surface but are utterly different to the underlying bedrock. Nobody really knew how they had got there, so all sorts of folkloric stories were invented to explain how they arrived there. Most of them had some variation of the devil throwing them, but there are other local variations. The real explanation is much simpler: glaciers carried these enormous stones to their new resting places, but it took quite a while for science to work it out.
I must admit I don’t think about rocks a huge amount. I like looking at them when we are out and about, particularly the rocks along the beautiful Jurassic Coast in my home county. I am always a little concerned about how long the cliffs are going to last at West Bay, though.

What Khatwa does in this book is to blend the hard science of geology with the softer, more human story and how indigenous people have seen the rocks in their landscapes as an almost living entity. The rocks have whispered their own stories to the people that lived around them, and they, in turn, have made them central to their culture.

One generation of rock equals many, many generations of humans, but in a kind of strange way, the collective memory of humans overlaps the rock era. What I liked most about this book is that it opened my eyes to a new way of looking and thinking about the way humans have and need to co-exist with the landscapes around them in this only planet we have. I thought this was well worth reading.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

When I was going to school, which feels like a hundred years ago, having any label associated with you would make you a target for bullies. Back then, these labels were demeaning and patronising, and if you weren’t one of the cool kids and didn’t fit in with most of the regular students, your difference made you a target.

Even if you didn’t have a label, some kids found it really difficult to fit in with the majority of pupils. You either were lonely, or if lucky, you might find a small niche group that has similar interests. I was one of those pupils, and Joe Harkness was another. Joe has been diagnosed, and that has helped him come to terms with the way he is. I haven’t gone down that rout,e and at the moment, I am not considering following up on this. In those days, you’d be considered odd. Nowadays, in this partially enlightened time, you can get a diagnosis that is covered by the broad description of neurodivergent.

This book is Harkness’s journey into nature with his and other people’s neurodiversity. He conducted lots of interviews with people who work in all sorts of roles in nature and the conservation world. A lot were conducted face to face, but time and other circumstances meant that some took place online or by other methods. A lot were happy to share their names, details of where they worked, and any specific diagnosis, and some chose to remain anonymous. The conversations are about how they cope with life, work, the universe and moths…

There is almost no research into the effects that nature has on those with neurodiversity diagnoses. But where there have been studies, most concentrate on younger people. That is understandable, but it does miss swathes of people out. The studies showed that neurodivergent young people could concentrate much better when in a woodland setting when compared to an urban setting.

The natural world is seen as a non-judgmental space; it doesn’t tell people off, and it forgives. A balm for neurodivergent individuals. For them, being in nature is stimulating, but not excessively so. ADHD and autistic people tend to explore rather than exploit an environment, and it is a reminder of how indigenous people treat the landscape around them.
He considers if working in the conservation sector is good for neurodivergent people. Jobs in the UK are either government or NGO (RSPB and so on), and these are wide-ranging and varied. These roles can be especially suited to autistic people, the daily routines and rituals can remain the same, but the day varies because the location is different, the wildlife they observe changes, different weather and seasonal variations. The conservation sector is inherently caring; they are trying their best to look after the planet after all. There is nominally a chain of command, but this is often circumvented as the person with the best ideas and experience often takes the lead.

I thought that the Out Of The Box chapter was really interesting. He is looking at the theory that ADHD and autism are superpowers. Harkness’ initial opinion is that they aren’t. However, he talks to people who feel that their ability to hyperfocus on a task gives them a noticeable edge for certain skills, bird song identification, for example. Another individual he speaks to has dyslexia, and they feel that this gives them an ability to distil ideas that they then become meaningful and understandable to many others. Someone else has the ability to walk around a nature reserve once and have a map imprinted in their memory.

Lots of people have very niche specialist interests, some of which Harkness talks about with them. A good organisation can harness this mix of skills and by having both neurodivergent and non- neurodivergent staff will make for a stronger and more balanced team. One individual Harkness interviews, went from almost being excluded at school to creating a $50b scheme for mangrove restoration. And this is one of many stories of the successes of neurodivergent people working in conservation.

Even though things are improving for neurodivergent people, the barriers for some to gain employment in the conservation sector are sometimes set really high. It is difficult to gain entry when it feels like some of these decisions have already been taken prior to interviews. Having to undertake voluntary work in the sector only works when you have a supportive and fairly wealthy family. Should they overcome these hurdles a get the job, a starting salary of £18k is laughable but very common. So if you’re a female, neurodivergent and coloured, then it is almost impossible to be able to get a job, which hence why there are only 6% coloured people working in conservation. Less than 50% of the organisations have anything resembling an equality, diversity and inclusion policy (EDI). Link that to endemic institutionalised racism, and it isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Companies have a legal requirement to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ when employing people to ensure that all employees have a level playing field. However, the term ‘reasonable ‘ is very broad… Sadly, making a potential employer aware of your disability is a sure-fire way to not get the job. Harkness himself has had mixed responses and support from employers in the past and outlines the good and the bad. He does hear the horror stories and also writes about the organisations that are doing things really well. He notes that for some neurodivergent people, it is the interactions that they have with other people that is the problem, not the interactions that they have with nature.

Harkness looks at some of the well-known conservation organisations and their policies and, more importantly, their actions on EDI and neurodiversity. He even gets to talk to a government department about their policies. It was interesting to see that a substantial number of people who were responsible for this also have neurodivergent conditions. The better organisations use a workplace passport scheme for all employees; this makes it fair and reduces discrimination in the workplace.

Harkness also contacts a number of smaller conservation organisations to find out how they manage neurodivergent staff. About 50% of those he had contacted replied to him, and of those, they had policies and processes in place that helped neurodivergent staff to integrate and feel valued. Some of these conservation charities are tiny, only having six staff in some cases, so the office rules that bigger organisations have don’t really apply in these instances.

A friend of my wife runs a forest school, and until I read the chapter in this book, I must admit I didn’t really know a huge amount about it. The non-threatening environment works for everyone, especially the kids. He also visits a care farm that takes in kids who don’t really fit in the regular school system. If only more kids had these opportunities.

His final chapter talks about stories having a beginning, middle and end. Except life isn’t like that, especially if you’re neurodivergent or have ADHD, it is a super nova of themes, ideas, and threads to be followed. This book had come about from someone mentioning to Harkness that most people in the conservation sector were neurodivergent.

Overall, I thought this was a very interesting and informative book about how neurodivergent people can thrive in nature-centred organisations. Provided the organisation that they work for has put in place sympathetic schemes and systems for them. The thing to remember is that these systems work perfectly for ‘normal’ people too, unlike the other way around. Most of the people that Harkness has spoken to, to create this book, have had a positive experience with how they are treated, but there is the odd horror story in here! If you are or know anyone who is neurodivergent, then I think that you will find, as I did, this to be an informative and useful book. Bravo to Harkness for writing something that is very close to home and outside his comfort zone.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

The Cloud is America’s biggest employer; it provides numerous goods and services to those left in society who can still afford it. It is so large that it has to a greater extent replaced government, and its warehouses are self-contained towns with accommodation, security, and facilities built in. Gibson is the owner of this business and built it from nothing. Some of his personality quirks are evident in the way that the business functions, but he is probably one of the richest men on the planet, so he doesn’t care what people think about that. He has a terminal illness that is focusing his mind on who will take over after him.

To get in as an employee means passing a test, and the company decides on what you will be doing based on the results of that test and your previous experience. Paxton, who has been down on his luck after the Cloud took his design and made it theirs without paying him, has decided to join. He passes the test and is annoyingly allocated to security; he’d rather have been in picking. Zinnia joins at the same time and is allocated a position in picking, but there are hints that she has an alternative agenda.

Their first day there is really tough. The training has given them an outline of what is expected, but the reality is so much harder, especially for Zinnia, who is picking. Her performance is constantly monitored for speed and accuracy. However, her role is not the only one that is monitored, for all staff, their company-issued smart watches track their exact location, what they spend in the company stores, and they are not allowed to leave their accommodation without wearing it.

They soon settle into the daily grind: wake, work, eat, sleep, repeat. The days become weeks, and these then stretch into months. As they get to know each other, their relationship blossoms to an extent, but they still keep some of their innermost thoughts very secret, especially Zinnia, who is at the Cloud for ulterior motives.

This book was quite a ride! It is a thriller wrapped in a dystopian tale of untrammelled corporate power. The Cloud company has effectively replaced the American Government following social unrest, riots and then pretty much societal collapse. This corporation that Hart has dreamt up has certain similarities to a certain emporium that is well known but not always well loved. On that he has layered big brother surveillance and control, an evil narcissist boss in the style of Bond villains and near-future technologies.

I thought that the plot was fairly good, and it was really fast-paced. There wasn’t much character development, but then I wasn’t expecting it in a thriller like this. Even though I really enjoyed the book I always feel that after reading dystopia, we need those in power to read them too and begin the process of making changes so that there are more checks and balances in the vast power that corporations and their owners have. Though until they stop funding the politicians that make the rules, I can’t see this changing any time soon!!

4.5 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

It feels like we have been in a living hell for the past decade. The rise of populism and nationalism in numerous countries across the world is driven by divisive figures who are being funded by unaccountable billionaires who have their own agendas for world domination. Having a malleable population who are susceptible to the fears that inflamed by the rhetoric by these individuals leads down a path that I thought that we’d never see again after the 20th century.

So how do we go from what feels like a proper democracy to a fully-fledged dictatorship?

According to Temelkuran, there are seven distinct steps on this path from democracy to dictatorship. She writes this from the experience of having lived through the coup in Turkey and the yearning that she has to live back in her home country once again. In each step, she explains the warning signs that she saw and how they can differ in each country.

She documents how an unknown political party in 2002 began a movement for the ‘real people’ of the country. They claimed all the way through this process that they were the true representatives of the country and that it was their aim to fix the dysfunctional problems that the country had. They won the elections, and seventeen years later, they are still there. They have changed everything for the worse…

These themes are present in all political systems around the world, and the UK is not immune; Farage and Brexit come to mind. The problem is that the mainstream politicians don’t really have any answers to some of the intractable problems that are facing our society at the moment. Educated individuals with liberal and progressive views are portrayed as enemies of the people who do not understand. The new politicians demand respect; they do not think about earning it, and it is a one-way street, too. They show no respect for other views. People who do not show respect or deference to them are held in contempt and often threatened.

It is only later that the ‘real people’ come to understand that they have been fed a lie. The truth that these politicians spout changes constantly; a figure who is seen in a glowing light at the beginning can become an enemy overnight. No one dares question the narrative, so they get away with it.
Temelkuran looks at how the populists control the narrative, attacking the character rather than having a rebuttal to the discussion, claiming things that are true when they aren’t, because lots of people think that (commonly known as sheeple).

The narratives that populists have are often seen as infantile. But it gives them the ability to arrange the narrative to suit their agenda. Trying to pin them down to anything is like trying to nail a jelly to a wall. If you choose not to follow the party line, you become a target for all their ire. This is something that Temelkuran has been on the receiving end of. These people are slippery bastards.

Another crucial indicator in the slide to dictatorship is the erosion of shame and empathy. This can be seen in the shocking response to the plight of refugees and migrants who are fleeing wars and other conflicts. People have a very fluid relationship with the truth, hence the rise of the most ridiculous conspiracy theories, including one where a lad had to prove that he was a student at a school that suffered a mass shooting after the trolls in the gun lobby claimed it was a hoax and he was an actor.

Popularists rely on distractions. They say something controversial and watch as the media furore kicks off and people get agitated by it, then as people are concentrating on that change something fundamental to suit them. Later on, when it has all died down, declare that neither side is in touch with the ‘real people’. It is, of course, all nonsense, but it means that the changes they made have slipped by, unnoticed by the majority.

When they are in power, authoritarian leaders ensure they are involved in everything and that you only get something if the leader has approved it. Even the wealthy stay wealthy if he wants them to remain that way, Russia under Putin is a good example of this. As their power grows, it becomes easier to change the rules to suit themselves and the opposition is left voiceless and often imprisoned…

With right-wing authoritarianism comes hard-line misogyny; women start to lose control over how they can look after their bodies; birth control and abortion are obvious indications. If you don’t fit their ideal image as a citizen, then they don’t want you. The harassment and then beatings of those who don’t conform are first reported as ‘isolated incidents’ but they are not. They are part of a concerted campaign. If you are audacious enough to bring up these attacks, then you are the person seen to be dividing and polarising the country and not understanding the values of the ‘real people’.

It all comes down to dictators wanting idealised citizens who conform to the ‘great’ leader’s vision or cause. Though what that actually is or means is almost never communicated to anyone, as it can then be moulded and changed at their whim. AS with all dictatorships, the rules that apply to the majority of the population don’t apply to the elite, as Temelkuran finds out one day for herself.

Dictatorships have no rigid or set ideology either. They morph and reshape the agenda as it suits them. It reminds me of Animal Farm and the way that the messages to all the other animals kept changing throughout the story. The situation seems laughable, but as the grip of the dictator increases, the laughter becomes a poison in its own right.

She visits a Greek island; from there, she can see her hometown, Izmir. It is a place she misses with all her heart, but she knows that until there is a regime change in the country, she will never be able to return.

I found this a shocking book in lots of ways. I knew that Turkey was a dodgy democracy because of the issues that they had when they had it is mind to join the EU and couldn’t or wouldn’t change the way they were doing things. I wasn’t aware of just how far down this path they had ventured. Temelkuran clearly loves her country and is mournful about the way it has gone and that she no longer can live there, having been brave enough to stand up to the authorities there.

More shocking though, is when I used this prism to look at how far down this path we and other countries had gone. I really hope it is not too late…