Category: Review (Page 3 of 130)

4 out of 5 stars

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

Winter is a season people love and hate. Some love the cold bright days and the twinkling of lights in what seems to be an increasingly longer Christmas period. For others this is the worst time of the year, the days are short and grey, the lack of sunlight opening out to depression in the form of SAD.

Personally, I like all of the seasons for different reasons, but do hate what feels like the relentless grey that we sometimes get over the winter. Helen Moat is one of those who hates winter, the relentless gloom causes her severe anxiety. This book is her journey over three winters to see if she can overcome it.

Normally her anxiety builds from October; the long days of summer are over, the heat is fading and soon the clocks will change once again. This October is stranger than most. It is 2020 and I am sure we can remember what happened that year… She has managed to escape with her husband to Wales in their campervan where the lockdown and contact rules dictate who can do what and when. The weather causes them to cut short their break, something they come to regret as the further lockdowns that happen later in the year mean they can’t get away again.

But this year is different, this is the year she wants to break her fear of this season. It is a journey that will take her to Lapland and Japan, finding out how other cultures deal with the season of winter.

Moat learns that the people in the far north rarely suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) even though their day can be as short as six hours long. She is fortunate to get a trip out there as a freelance travel journalist. The -20C temperature will take a bit of getting used to…

She brings back to the UK what she has learnt over there, light from candles and a wood burner helps with the ambience as she learns to celebrate the small things; hot soups, cakes and getting outside into the natural world and adopting the Scandinavian policy of ‘bunkering down’. She uses the dark nights to slow down and reflect and consider how it was starting to work for her.

Mot reached her third winter. The summer had been great and she loved the time she spent with friends on patios drinking wine and watching the bats swoop by. In September her and her husband head to France. She was trying to postpone winter by trying to find the later summer sun, but she knew that she had to face the physical and figurative darkness.

Moat is fortunate enough to get a commission to write about Japanese food, Not only was she going to a place that she had always dreamed of visiting, Japan. Moat has always strived for perfection in her life, but it would be here that she would learn about the Japanese beauty of imperfection – Wabi-Sabi.

Being there is unsettling and alien. Only having three words in Japanese meant that communication was mostly laughing and gestures. She learns so much about the culture, their respect and awe for the natural world, but it also teaches her that all things must change and each season is treated with equal weight. She would bring home mental skills that would help her cope with winter at home.

I thought that this was really good. It is a journey in many senses, but it is mostly about her understanding and coming to terms with winter. She comes to understand why the winter is so hard to cope with and explains the methods she has found to mitigate her worries. Her trips abroad were fascinating and I felt that I had learnt a little more about the places she went to. If you have a thing about the darkest part of the year then I would really recommend reading this. It is worth reading in conjunction with Wintering by Katherine May too.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

Who doesn’t love a quiz? A well-written one has something for everyone, easy questions to give a little confidence to participants, harder questions for stretch people and the occasional tough question to sort the experts out. Up until now, I hadn’t read Prisoners of Geography, so before starting working my way through this, I read that book. It was eye-opening, but also a reminder of just how fast things can change in geopolitics!

Anyway, to the quiz book. There are about 300 questions, puzzles and word games in total to answer. These have been divided into nine sections below and these are my scores:

Americas – 33 right

Asia – 40 right

Europe – 50 right

Africa – 37 right

Middle East – 33 right

Latin America – 52 right

Oceania – 27 right

The Poles – 43 right

Space – 29 right

Some of them were fiendishly difficult, but thankfully some of these questions are fairly straightforward so most people should be able to score some marks. I did well in some regions and poorly in others. The story of my school life! I did think that I should have done better in America, but then I remembered just how little Americans know about the rest of the world, so didn’t feel too bad then.

I did surprise myself with some of the answers I got right though. Advantage of having read a lot of non-fiction over the years. It would have been nice to know what the total number of marks available per section was, but then I would know just how badly I performed! It was a great bit of fun though.

4 out of 5 stars

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

Some people can’t abide insects or other types of creepy crawlies, but having read this beautifully made book, I can’t understand why they wouldn’t find these types of animals fascinating.

There is one insect or minibeast per week to learn about and the authors have chosen all types from all over the world. There are spiders, ants, bees, butterflies and even a praying mantis. There are details on their lifecycle, the folklore and the way that humans need these animals as part of a complete ecosystem.

I did have a few favourites from the selection; the Hummingbird Hawk Moth, the Dark-Edged Bee-Fly, Rose Chafer and the Peacock Jumping Spider.

I really liked this book. There are lovely illustrations throughout by Lesley Buckingham of each of the insects, but the best bit is being able to scan the QR code to go to the Batsford website to watch a short video of each of the minibeasts in question. Even if you are not into bugs, I would still recommend this, after all none of them in the book are going to bite!

4 out of 5 stars

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

Greece has been the origin of many things that we take for granted now; democracy, philosophy and rational thought are some of them. The culture and people have persisted from ancient times until the modern day, though they have reinvented themselves time and time again. Its wider influence on other cultures was totally undervalued until this slim book by Robert Byron.

At its heart it is a travel book, there are accounts of the places they go to, the people that they meet and the things that they experience on Mount Athos. But this is also far more than travel writing

As the forty miles stretch out, only a shadow in the haze remains, outlined in the silver gleams of the farther sea; spreading then to a farther shadow – the mainland.

In here Byron celebrate the uniqueness of Greek Orthodoxy, the remoteness of the monasteries and describes the characters that he meets that have chosen a spiritual life over a more secular existence. Him and his fellow travellers are really privileged to be able to do this and take photos of these places that were rarely seen by outsiders.

David and Mark are the companions that are with him on this trip, and they are fortunate to also to get to see some of the religious relics that the monasteries are custodians for. Byron is a sharp observer of the landscapes that they travel through, recounting details that most people wouldn’t ever notice. He describes the meals that they have in such a way hat it made me a little hungry when reading it.

All along above the twining river floats a verdian haze. Far away rise the parallel hills, deepest sapphire, sweeping high and regular as far as the eye can see, with the black and white clouds rolling up, and their shadows like foreign armies traversing the plain. In all lurks the colour of light, of the fire of the earth, burning in watered leaf and sodden plough, catching even the sounds as they run hazard through the air, this colour which Greece knows and other lands do not; and which Greeks have bought to rest, not in stone, but paint.

I really liked this book. Byron’s writing has an intensity to it at times, almost like you are being baked in the Mediterranean sun alongside him. Occasionally it felt like an information dump as he writes about a specific monastery and wants us to know all the facts he uncovered in his visit. I can forgive him for that as when he writes well it soars. I will be bumping The Road To Oxiana up the list.

4 out of 5 stars

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

The first thing that came to mind when I saw that this book was about algae, was algae blooms, (the clue is very much in the title). These are happening much more frequently now, caused by the excess runoff from farmland which goes into rivers and then the sea, where the resulting growth can cause horrendous problems with life in the area affected.

But algae are so much more than that. To begin with, none of us would be here without algae. They converted the poisonous atmosphere of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen and other gasses into oxygen. It took a couple of billion years, mind, but gave us an atmosphere we can breathe and equally importantly, a protective ozone layer.

That is simplifying it though. The first chapters of the book describe in detail the hell that the planet was at the time to a place where life stood a chance of surviving. All from these tiny pieces of slime. It is a wonder. Not only can we credit slime with giving life a chance to flourish on our planet initially, but it is still helping life exist here still. Algae are everywhere, and I do mean everywhere…

In some weird symbiosis with fungi, they make a new species called lichens, which can be much more than those grey patches that you find on walls. Seaweeds are algae and can be found in sushi, and ice cream as well as being a food in their own right, fat choi and laverbread are two examples. It has widespread uses around the world from fertilizers to animal fodder, it is used as a thickener and another algae is starting to be used as a replacement for oils as it can be used for the production of ethanol and other fuels.

I thought that this was a fascinating book. It opened my eyes to the critical role that algae have played in making our world habitable. It has great benefits, but too much of it can be a bad thing. Kassinger is an engaging writer and comes across as having endless enthusiasm about her subject. If you want to know more than you ever though possible abut algae then start here.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

Normally memoirs follow a timeline of events in a person’s life, with some flashbacks to add context. However, this memoir is unlike any other memoir that I have read before. Instead, it is a collection of figments and fragments of memories written in short essays, poems and snippets of prose.

He recalls the memories from his childhood when his mother separated from his father. He moved in with his new stepdad and hated being there to begin with, but slowly he got used to it. There are stories of love lost and gained as he heads off with an on / off girlfriend to the place where every young couple is making out; the beach. He soon discovers that sand gets everywhere…

Forest fires are a common occurrence in the region. He notes that people either stop and stare at the flames in fear or are captivated by them. There are those that are moved to warn others and pass buckets of water in the vain hope of extinguishing the flames. I didn’t know this, but it is an ancient country; there are dolmens in the hills from thousands of years ago. They are near pine forests where men occasionally go to kill themselves.

There are some real gems in here. I particularly like what he did when taking photos of tourists who were full of self-entitlement. However, as much as this book is about him and his experiences, he manages to capture the essence of Catalonia in this short book. It is a region of Europe that isn’t quite Spain and isn’t quite France but has its own strong identity in the region that crosses the border. I liked the mix of pieces in here, the longer essays work well with the shorter prose. I did feel that I didn’t get to know the author that well in this book, I only got to see glimpses of him in this kaleidoscope of his life. Well worth reading though

 

Three Favourite Essays

A Woman’s Death

Scriptorium

A Rough Calligram of a Silhouette of my Town

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

I laugh every time I see the Calvin & Hobbs cartoon above as it tells me two truths about our endless fascination with the possibility of life somewhere in this vast universe;

1. Given a lot of the really dumb things that we do as a species so are we actually that intelligent?
2. If there were some super bright entity that is capable of interstellar travel, why would it be interested in the likes of us?

It was something that Douglas Adams alluded to when one lot of aliens turned up but wanted to take the whales…

This fascination of life being out there somewhere has captivated scientists for hundreds of years, all the way back to Galileo and Copernicus. But as scientific understanding grew of how life appeared on this planet and the way it fluctuates from masses of plants, insects and large creatures to extinctions and back again with a different type of life adapts to the changed conditions.

The discovery of other planets orbiting stars in the ‘Goldilocks zone’ that might, just might, have the right conditions based on what we know about the Earth has driven research, intensive scanning of the heavens and intense speculation of what might or might not be out there.

We have not found any evidence of life outside this small blue dot that we’re on. However, there is speculation still that some of the moons around the planets in the solar system might. As you’d expect, the question as to whether there is life elsewhere doesn’t really get answered in this book, but that is not the whole point of it, this is an exploration of what they might be like if we were to come across another species.

Green has split the book up into six chapters, Origins, Planets, Animals, People, Technology and Contact, and in each draws from science and science fiction as to the things that life is capable of creating. I have always had an interest in it since I downloaded the SETI program many years ago. Strangely enough, I didn’t find any signals from any aliens when running that software, but the possibility that I might keep me interested for a long time. I thought that this was a very accessible book on a subject that I had not read much about before. Worth reading if you have an interest in the possibilities of life.

I like doing these as it gives me time to reflect on what I have and haven’t achieved over the past twelve months, what is working and what isn’t. It is often why certain things stay the same and there are tweaks to certain intentions. This is why I call them intentions too, they are not hard and fast rules to stick by, the main intention is to read and enjoy it rather than obsessively trying to reach targets. I have reduced the number of books I read last year and will be sticking to the same target of 150 (ish). This I can cope with, given everything that has gone on this year and still isn’t over, reading 150 books over a year is much less stressful than 190 unsurprisingly…

My rule of thumb is to read whatever takes your interest, don’t be told what to read. If you have been recommended something and don’t like it, then stop. Make your own reading journey. Not everyone can like the same book and as strange as it sounds, everyone reads a slightly different book!

I have been thinking about supporting a charity that is aiming to get books into people’s hands who for whatever reason do not have the opportunity to get them. I like the sound of what Bookbanks, are doing and will see if I can support them in a small way next year.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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!

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

Female Authors

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

Poetry

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

 

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

 

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.

 

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!

 

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!

 

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!

 

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.

 

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.

 

What aims or intentions do you have for next year? Let me know in the comments below or post a link to your post on your blog.

 

4 out of 5 stars

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

It was an inauspicious start, an advert in  the Agony column of The Times. It read:

Exploring and sporting expedition, under experienced guidance, leaving England June, to explore rivers Central Brazil, if possible ascertain fate Captain Fawcett; abundance game, big and small; exceptional fishing; ROOM TWO MORE GUNS; highest references expected and given. – Write Box X, The Times, EC4

He wrote for particulars and after a little consideration, applied and was selected. His main qualifications were his age, 24 and his school, Eton.

They departed and undertook a fairly uneventful trip on a liner to Brazil. They had a telegram asking them not to undertake the search for Fawcett, with the threat of legislation being passed to hinder them. They stopped at Lisbon, Madeira and Tenerife and not having the strongest sea legs, he found the trip to be full of tedium. Nine days later they arrived at Rio as the sun was setting. Officials boards the ship to examine passports where they encounter the mind numbing pedantry of the minor official. They were eventually allowed to depart and readied themselves to depart to San Paulo in the morning.

Reader, they didn’t…

They finally departed after several false starts and lots of procrastination. The guy who was their main contact was Major Pringle. One morning there were two cars there to take them and a lorry had been provided for their baggage. The description of the journey sounded terrifying. Though I am not sure what was worse, the local driver heading towards them at full speed or the bridges they were crossing. It was an alien place, though he noted that the birds seemed familiar and yet utterly different at the same time. They would take lunch at different places on the trip, but invariably it was the same, rice and beans with roast meats.

Their first main stop is in Goyaz. It is a strange place where not much happens and even that happens very slowly. They end up becalmed there for a while and Fleming begins to suspect that their fixer, Major Pringle isn’t as committed to their quest as they had been led to believe. Fleming sets about trying to prove this with a false despatch that he had written for the papers back in the UK and getting Major Pringle to approve it. After another wait, they were finally allowed to proceed into the jungle.

There is a short journey by road again and they finally get to board the boats that will take them into the jungle. The batloa were 30′ clinker boats that leaked lots. They learned to settle into a routine, mostly to relieve the monotony of spending three weeks in a small boat. Fleming is amazed by the birds and wildlife that she sees from the gunwale.

They come across some of the Carajas Indians. Fleming admires certain parts of their features and describes a little of their life, but does note that they are staying with them and he isn’t seeing them in their camp, so his perception of them is skewed a little. He is entranced by the giant otters of the Amazon two of which they capture. They see alligators frequently on the river and in the spirit of the time, shoot a few…

The expedition is left in the lurch when Major Pringle has a change of heart over his commitments to the expedition and quits it to head back downstream in the smallest canoe. They were going to have to go it alone in the jungle searching for traces of Fawcett.

Since the dawn of time (whenever that was) this patch of the earth’s crust had been green and empty; it was green and empty still. Aeons had passed there unregarded. And now here were we, stealing minutes under the nose of eternity, counting our pretty swag in a place where a century was hardly legal tender. In all this there was a comforting sense of the ridiculous.

They decided to split the expedition into two; one half was going to continue on the rive and Flaming would join the land party. They come across another tribe called the Tapirapes. They are as curious about their Western visitors as Fleming’s party is about them. It was as Fleming was trying to get to sleep one night that he realised how futile the drive to find these three men who had disappeared seven years before, was. It wasn’t going to stop him though.

Progressing through the jungle was hard work though. Most of the time it was impenetrable and they could only move after a lot of frenzied macheting. They come across another river and camp and eat well. Another of the party is not well enough to carry on, so he heads back with the Indians who have accompanied them on their journey so far. In the end the jungle won, so they decided that the easiest way to progress was to wade up the river. (As can be seen on the cover of this edition).

They reach a point where they can’t really proceed any further because of the river. An enormous storm is a reminder of the power of nature and they make the sensible decision to turn back. It is a decision that Fleming knows saved their lives.

They return to the mission base and catch up with Major Pringle. He was still angry for various reasons, but not as angry as Fleming was when he found out that Pringle had not forwarded on the missives that he had written for the Times. Pringle hadn’t opened them, but he didn’t trust the contents so he heads off to the British consul, where he hope that his reputation can be kept. Fleming’s part ends up chasing him along the river in another boat with the intent of getting there before him. The race is on…

I thought that this was a really enjoyable travel book. You can tell that Fleming is a child of the British Empire with some of his prejudices, but generally he is sympathetic to the Brazilians, in particularly the Amazon natives. It is a great example of how not to plan an expedition. They took lots of unnecessary risks and were stitched up by their local fixer. All of these things contributed to it nearly becoming as big a disaster as Fawcett’s expedition.

Fleming is a good writer too and this is an engaging travel book with quite a lot of jeopardy! Though how he compares to his brother Ian, I have no idea as I have not read any of his. Another fine addition to the Eland catalogue

3 out of 5 stars

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

Some people are born to climb mountains

Phil Gribbon is one of those people. He has a hugely impressive CV; he has over 100 first alpine ascents of mountains in the Arctic, has led expeditions in Greenland, America and Canada; has written for various illustrious publications and was awarded the Polar medal. Somehow he also had time to be a physics professor.

This book is a series of essays of his recollection of climbs and expeditions that he undertook over a number of years. Some of the essays are several pages long and others are just over a page. There are photos in the centre of the book and they have included sketches made by Gribbon throughout the book.

I thought that this was an interesting book. There are moments of exhilaration and awe that he feels as he makes his climbs. But these expeditions can be dangerous and he writes about a couple of tragic events – a reminder that however prepared and experienced that you are, it may not be enough.

His prose is crisp and he writes in a matter-of-fact style, as well as a bone-dry humour and a very healthy respect for the place that he is climbing. If you are looking for a book that is full of superlatives and eloquent prose about the mountains, then this might not be the book for you. Instead, it is recollections of memorable climbs that he has undertaken all over the world.

It is only a small thing, but I wasn’t keen on having the synopsis and who’s who at the beginning of the book in two different sections, I personally would have preferred the intro and context at the beginning of each essay. flipping back and forwards to see who was with him in each was a little tiresome.

That aside, if you have a love of mountains then this should be on your reading list.