Category: Review (Page 74 of 132)

4 out of 5 stars

I don’t have a bucket list, (do have a bucket though), but one day I want to see the amazing natural phenomena that is the aurorae borealis. The haunting beautiful lights that hang in the skies of the northern hemisphere also have their south equivalent, the aurora australis. They have been known to humanity for millennia and have been a sense of wonder and inspired stories and myths of their creation. However, it is only in the past few decades that we have become to understand how they are created.

Melanie Windridge’s work as a plasma physicist means that she is well placed to reveal all that has been learnt about the science behind these beautiful lights. As well as a clear explanation behind the science of the northern lights, Windridge head north to experience them for herself. Her travels take her from Scotland to  Iceland, then Canada and onto Svalbard, where she sees the magnificent total solar eclipse. Also woven into the narrative is an exploration of the cultural effect that the light has had on the people that see them and how we have tried to replicate them and explain them before science.

This is a really nicely written book about the aurora. The science behind it is incredibly complex, the source of the energy comes from the solar wind and coronal ejections from our sun and the light is produced by the interaction between that and the trace elements in the upper atmosphere. I liked the blend of science, travel and history too; it shows that things should not be considered in isolation. The book had so photos of the auroras and her travels, but it would have been good to have more. Interestingly, you can see a certain amount with the naked eye of the aurora but when you take a photo then the true splendour is revealed.

5 out of 5 stars

Lighthouses lost a little of their romance when they became fully automated solar-powered machines. They have a long history though as beacons to guide sailors safely around the coast. Even with modern technology like GPS fitted to ships, they are still relevant and necessary. There are over 60 lighthouses in the UK, my nearest is in Portland Bill in Dorset. This is a coastal one, but this book is about the handful that are built on tiny outcrops of rock standing against the might of the sea and everything that is thrown at it.

Nancollas had originally trained as a building conservationist before falling for lighthouses and rock lighthouses in particular. All eight of the lighthouses that he writes about in here have stories still to tell. He is fascinated by the men who conceived and designed them to be able to face the strongest waves and winds, by how they were built and the ones that didn’t survive and were rebuilt. He teases apart their histories and heads out to sea to get first-hand experience as to what it was like to travel to these places. However, as resilient as they are,  they are not totally self-sufficient and still rely on care and maintenance from us. He even undertakes crash training in a helicopter simulator so he can travel out to stay in the Fastnet lighthouse for a week while a generator is serviced and rebuilt.

I thought that this book was excellent, it has a strong narrative like all good non-fiction should and it is well researched, not only from behind a desk but his experiences bobbing up and down on a boat travelling to visit them. It has a personal element too, not only is he obsessed by them, but he found a link to the construction of one of the lighthouses following some research into his family tree. I particularly liked the interlude where he visits the lighthouse in Blackwall, London where they experimented and tried various pieces of new kit out prior to dispatching them to the lighthouses around the UK. If you have a thing about lighthouses, then I’d also recommend Stargazing by Peter Hill too.

4 out of 5 stars

It is 900 years since the Ottoman Empire began and just over a century since it ended. You’d think that after 100 years there wouldn’t be much left to see of their legacy, but you’d be surprised. Travelling through the twelve modern countries that make up what used to be their territory, Alev Scott uncovers far more than she expects.

Scott, who is a half-British, half-Turkish journalist had begun her looking for clues for her story in Turkey, talking to the meld of populations that live there at the moment and whose ancestors had been drawn from the far reached of the empire to the capital. Then one day she was banned from returning to Turkey, just as she was beginning to consider it another home and an essential part of her identity. She ended up living on the Greek island of Lesbos, which is so close to Turkey.

But this journey is about the modern day as well as the past, as she travels from the streets of Jerusalem to the villages of Cyprus through Bosnia and Serbia and onto Lebanon and the other peoples who have been scattered amongst the region, some by choice and others forced to move from place to place for all manner of reasons. By, teasing out their stories, she realises that what she thought would be only fragments of the empire are still very much visible in the people.

It is also a personal journey of her own, discovering roots to her identity. Some of these take her back to her childhood memories and others remind her that she is not at the moment allowed freedom of travel in the region because of her view and desire to ask questions that the authorities don’t want to hear. Scott feels at home in these places and she gives a perspective of a part of the world that I haven’t yet been too. Scott has a really nice style of writing and I really enjoyed reading this book, however, it would have been good to find out more about the people their hopes for the future and where they hoped to be at some point in the future.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Elsa is seven years old and almost eight and she think that she has the coolest granny. In fact, she’s a superhero to her and her superpower is storytelling. Others take a very different view of her though, thinking she is either eccentric, but most people to be honest just think she is crazy. The story begins though with her grandmother having just been arrested for throwing animal poo at the police after they had broken into the zoo. She had only done it to try to cheer Elsa up after a really bad day at school. It worked, but Elsa’s mother was really not very happy about picking up her daughter and mother from the police station at 1 am…

Her granny has lots of secrets, one of Elsa’s favourites is the imaginary world of Miamas; in this world, she is taken on lots of quests and adventures and this helps her get over her parent’s separation and subsequent divorce. One day though, she hears another of Granny’s secrets that will rock her safe and happy world. She is left a pile of letters by her Granny that she wants her to take around to friends from the past, each one with a personal message to the recipient as well as sending regards and apologising for past deeds…

As Elsa starts to deliver these letters to people around the block of flats that they share, she begins to realise the connections between everyone around to her Granny.

It is a mix of fantasy and contemporary fiction that seems to work fairly well, though it isn’t always easy to see where the boundaries are and who can see the imaginary creatures that Elsa can see. Elsa seems much more advanced than any seven years old than I have ever known too and I would have liked more of the story leading up to this as her Granny seemed larger than life character. I thought that this was a much better book than his previous book I’d read, A Man Called Ove, which to be perfectly frank I just found annoying.

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 loved the sea and coast for as long as I can remember. Every day that you visit is different because one of the numerous factors has changed and I like the dynamics of the constantly changing light and tides. I would love to watch a winter storm from the cosy confines of a secure house too.  However, for some people there is too much change where the land meets the sea. On the very eastern cost of our country, erosion of the soft cliffs there is happening at a dramatic rate.

The house on the edge of the cliff was demolished this week, which means we are now the house on the edge of the cliff.

Juliet Blaxland is one of those living on this fast-changing coastline. Way back in time there used to be a village there and in 1666 the church succumbed to the waves. The battle between sea and land has continued until now. Back in June 2015, her house was 50 paces from the cliff edge. Now, it half that and getting closer year on year. One day their home will have to be demolished, they just don’t know when that day will be.

It is not just a book about the frightening rate of erosion, but about living a life in a place that she loves. Moves from wider contemplations on the rewilding of landscapes that mankind has realised that they cannot control to tiny details of day to day life and how that can affect our moods.  She has come to understand that we are momentary beings on a transient planet; our three score and ten on this rock are nothing when compared to the lifetime of the Earth, though it saddens her with the way that is changing so rapidly.

I am not sure that I could live with that inevitable feeling that your home is going to one day fall into the sea, they can lose chunks as much 3m in one single storm. Those that wanted to live closer to the sea are suddenly much closer than they ever thought that they would be. However, Blaxland is quite philosophical about the whole thing. I really liked this book, Blaxland’s writing is evocative, whether she is writing about the roar of a storm, jugs of homemade Pimm’s or the attempt to create a crop circle. She has a deep love of the coastal landscape she inhabits. They still live there and will do until the bitter end.

4 out of 5 stars

The hare is a creature that has been part of our natural landscape for time immemorial and has entered our cultural folklore too, however, few people have seen them, including me. In this charming little book, Jim Crumley recounts three occasions where he has seen this elusive and slightly magical creature, including seeing both species, the brown hare and mountain hare, where the snowline started.

This beautifully produced book is very short. I didn’t so much read it rather, rather inhale it. Crumley has a lovely turn of phrase and a keen eye so reading his books is always a pleasure. This one came from the library, but these are a lovely (if expensive) series of books that I can see myself collecting as I have just bought the one on the fox.

5 out of 5 stars

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

In December 1972 the astronauts about the Apollo 17 took a photo of the Earth. They were around 18,000 miles away at the time on their way to the moon. This image titled the Blue marble has become one of the most reproduced images in the world. It shows just how magnificent our tiny planet is and also just how fragile it is too.

The new book, Earth From Space, aims to show how our planet looks now using the latest high-resolution camera fitted to satellites. Split into four sections, Movement, colour, pattern and change, these images are just jaw-dropping. There are images from all over our planet on some of the most spectacular sights, both man-made and natural that they have found, from river deltas, to brand new islands created by volcanoes, a network of rice paddies to the latest technology in finding whales. There is an image showing the tidal range around Mont Saint Michel and even more spectacular the flow of current from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.

This is an amazing coffee table book with a solid five stars. I’m all out of superlatives for the images which really work in this large-format book. The text that accompanies them is useful but is primarily there as a foil for the photographs really. Some of the colours of the places that they take are amazing, not sure how much enhancement they have had though. It is also a timely reminder that we live on an amazing planet and we are as much as a part of the ecosystem as the microbes that permeate all levels of the world. There is no plan(et) B; if we ruin this one, we are all doomed.

4 out of 5 stars

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

He was beginning to think that his relationship with Alice was the one but all too soon it unravelled. Left alone, the thoughts in his head that had affected him since childhood began to return. Depression, guilt, religious confusion, abuse and the conflicts of his bi-sexuality, they were back again. This time he had a place of refuge where he could go to, Epping Forest. It was a place that would draw him back time after time.

It didn’t provide all the solace and comfort he needed though, some of that he would find in the arms of men and women after his relationship finished. Epping Forest is a place of secrets, there is obviously something about it that attracts a darker personality and it has a reputation for a place that men could go to find partners, especially when homosexuality was illegal. However, rather than finding demons in the woods, Turner used that time spent in the natural world to excise his own and it gives him the inspiration to begin to investigate a family secret from a few generations ago.

The ancient timbers of Greensted know no hypocrisy or bigotry, but are prayers carved from nature, as sacred as hymns.

The blurb describes this as an original book, and throughout a lot of the book, I’d be tempted to agree. Turner writes with a wonderful eye for detail and even though this is a very raw, honest and open memoir you do have to be broadminded for this. He asks searching questions of himself about his sexuality and how society treats those that do not fit conventional stereotypes. But the understorey of his memoir is the forest, how it lifts his mood when he visits, so much so that he ends up volunteering there. It is a great companion to Strange Labyrinth which is Will Ashon’s take on the same place and shows how people can have a deep attachment in a very different way to a place.

4 out of 5 stars

After his mother died when he was fairly young, Arnold Thomas Fanning had his first experience of depression. It didn’t last for long, but the seeds were sown. Fast forward to a decade later and Fanning was an up and coming playwright with lots of opportunities opening up. But at the same time, he was starting to suffer from delusions about his abilities and this rapidly became mania.

He had just given up a good job to give himself the time to write full time, but things weren’t going well. He was back living with his father who he had a difficult relationship with and he had just left an artist residency in disgrace. Very soon after that he had a total mental breakdown and was admitted into a secure unit where they began to treat him. After release he, went home with a bag of drugs, but there was to be much worse to come.

From there he descended further and further into his mental maelstrom. This book is his raw and brutally honest account of someone going through depression and all sorts of mental anguish. When it was happening he managed to alienate almost all his friends and family, ended up in several institutes and was prescribed a cocktail of drugs that they hoped would help him recover. It did reach the point where he stared into the abyss as he came very close to suicide, but he didn’t quite have the courage to do it that day. Might have been cowardice, but it saved his life that day.

The account is compiled from records and from what others have recounted to him, some of the episodes he has not been able to remember because of the illness. It doesn’t make for any less terrifying reading though. The fact that he has been able to get through his mental illness with a lot of help and write this book is a testament to his strength of character.

Mental health is important, if you are feeling depressed or anxious, then speak to someone who can help. This may be a family member, or you might be better speaking to an independent expert who will be able to help you. Do not ignore it.

4 out of 5 stars

During her final year at Columbia University, where she majored in art history, our unnamed protagonist lost both her parents. The inheritance that they left her means that she is financially stable, but she is utterly emotionally exhausted. She is in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and struggles to hold a job down for any length of time. She is not treated particularly nicely by her boyfriend and has a best friend who she has a difficult relationship with. To try and fill the enormous hole in her life she turns to a psychiatrist, Dr Tuttle to help. This doctor is hoping to help her with her insomnia and is more than happy to keep prescribing all manner of stronger and stronger sleeping and anti-anxiety medications. Having been fired from her latest job in a gallery she decides to ramp up the drugs and see if she can spend the next year mostly sleeping in her apartment.

Moshfegh has made this compelling read from what seems on the face of it a hollow premise of someone spending a year in a drug-filled sleep. Even though the two characters are not particularly likeable, I did feel that I had to admire the tenacity of the main character as she pursues the desire to alienate herself from the world rather than face the reality of her parent’s deaths and the swirl of modern life. Her friend, Reva, is as infuriating as she is funny, and she injects a necessary spark of humour into the plot. I liked this and I can’t really say why, but I think it is the writing that lifts this to a black comedic tragedy.