Category: Review (Page 8 of 130)

As usual, I have scoured the catalogues for all the books that pique my attention I only managed to find 16 catalogues this time, so this may be updated as the others are published. So without further ado, here are the books:

 

Bloomsbury

Vulture Capitalism – Grace Blakeley

How To Be A Citizen – C.L. Skatch

Wild Service – Nick Hayes

Cold Kitchen – Caroline Eden

On This Holy Island – Oliver Smith

Cypria – Alex Christofi

The Tomb Of The Mili Mongga – Samuel Turvey

Warming Up – Madeline Orr

Potholes & Pavements – Laura Laker

Groundbreakers – Chantal Lyons

Cull Of The Wild – Hugh Warwick

Wild Woman – Philippa Forrester

Stowaway – Joe Shute

 

Bodley Head

Great Britain?: How To Get Our Future Back – Torsten Bell

 

Canongate

Poyums – Len Pennie

Between Britain: Walking The History Of England And Scotland – Alistair Moffat

We Are Electric; The New Science Of Our Body’S Electrome – Sally Adee

Your Wild And Precious Life: On Grief, Hope And Rebellion – Liz Jensen

The Laws Of Connection: The Transformative Science Of Being Social – David Robson

 

Chatto & Windus

Not The End Of The World: How We Can Be The First Generation To Build A Sustainable Planet – Hannah Ritchie

 

Chelsea Green

Hedgelands – Christopher Hart

 

Duckworth

The Lost Carving: A Journey To The Heart Of Making – David Esterley

The Case For Nature: Pioneering Solutions For The Other Planetary Crisis – Siddarth Shrikanth

Understorey: A Year Among Weeds – Anna Chapman Parker

 

Elliott & Thompson

Sunken Lands – Gareth E. Rees

In All Weathers – Matt Gaw

The Way Through The Woods – Rebecca Beattie

Infinite Life – Jules Howard

This Allotment – Ed. Sarah Rigby

Radical Rest – Evie Muir

A Day In The Life Of The Green Economy – Dharshini David

The Centre Must Hold – Ed. Yair Zivan

 

Eye Books

Local – Alastair Humphreys

 

Faber & Faber

The Rising Down: Lives In An East Sussex Landscape – Alexandra Harris

How To Win An Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler – Peter Pomerantsev

The Vast Extent – Lavinia Greenlaw

The City Of Today Is A Dying Thing – Des Fitzgerald

Back To The Local – Maurice Gorham & Edward Ardizzone

Blossomise – Simon Armitage Ill. Angela Harding

 

Fitzcarraldo Editions

The Observable Universe – Heather Mccalden

 

Granta

All Before Me: A Search For Belonging In Wordsworth’S Lake District – Esther Rutter

The Flitting – Ben Masters

 

Headline

Who Owns This Sentence? – David Bellos And Alexandra Montagu

Kersten’s Lists – François Kersaudy

A History Of The World In 47 Borders – Jonn Elledge

Lvoe Ii – Atticus Poetry

Return Of The Aubergine – Sophie Grigson

 

Hurst

The Algorithm: How Ai Can Hijack Your Career And Steal Your Future – Hilke Schellmann

Orwell’S Ghosts: Wisdom And Warnings For The 21St Century – Laura Beers

Sorry For The Inconvenience But This Is An Emergency: The Nonviolent Struggle For Our Planet’S Futur – Lynne Jones

The Great Indian Food Trip: Around A Subcontinent À La Carte – Zac O’Yeah

Italy In A Wineglass: The Taste Of History – Marc Millon

 

Jonathan Cape

Rapture’s Road – Seán Hewitt

The Book Forger – Joseph Hone

Ruin, Blossom – John Burnside

The Book-Makers: A History Of The Book In 18 Remarkable Lives – Adam Smyth

The Roads To Rome: A History – Catherine Fletcher

 

Little Toller

Set My Hand Upon The Plough – Enid Barraud

 

Octopus Books

I Can Hear the Cuckoo – Kiran Sidhu

 

Oneworld

Who Owns The Moon? :In Defence Of Humanity’S Common Interests In Space – A.C. Grayling

 

Profile Books

Exhausted: An A–Z For The Weary – Anna Katharina Schaffner

The House Divided: Sunni, Shia And Conflict In The Middle East – Barnaby Rogerson

The Language Puzzle: How We Talked Our Way Out Of The Stone Age – Steven Mithen

The Return Of The Grey Partridge Restoring Nature On The South Downs – Roger Morgan-Grenville And Edward Norfolk

Possible: 16 Ways To Net Zero – Chris Goodall

In The Long Run The Future As A Political Idea – Jonathan White

The High Seas: Ambition, Power And Greed On The Unclaimed Ocean – Olive Heffernan

Rumbles: A Curious History Of The Gut – Elsa Richardson

The New Breadline: Hunger And Hope In The Twenty-First Century – Jean-Martin Bauer

Amuse Bouche: How To Eat Your Way Around France – Carolyn Boyd

The Accidental Garden – Richard Mabey

 

Quercus

Four Shots In The Night – Henry Hemming

Riding Route 66: Find Myself On America’S Mother Road – Henry Cole

My Family And Other Seedlings: A Year On A Dorset Allotment – Lally Snow

 

Reaktion Books

Saving The World: How Forests Inspired Global Efforts To Stop Climate Change From 1770 To The Present – Brett M. Bennett And Gregory A. Barton

All Mapped Out: How Maps Shape Us – Mike Duggan

Behind The Privet Hedge: Richard Sudell, The Suburban Garden And The Beautification Of Britain – Michael Gilson

Who Killed Cock Robin?: British Folk Songs Of Crime And Punishment – Stephen Sedley And Martin Carthy

 

Riverrun

Every Living Thing: The Great And Deadly Race To Know All Life – Jason Roberts

 

Salt

Shadow Lines – Nicholas Royle

 

Sort Of Books

Cairn – Kathleen Jamie

 

There are some really good books coming out and if I had to say which one I am most excited about it would have to be Kathleen Jamie’s.

Any here that you like the look of? Let me know in the comments below.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

What comes to mind for you when you see a swan? For me, there are several things. Firstly, they are sparklingly white, secondly they seem to glide effortlessly through the water, hardly making a ripple and thirdly they are absolutely bloody enormous!

Whilst I am always pleased to see a swan glide past on the River Stour near me, I am not as obsessed as Dan Keel is with this magnificent bird. They have enthralled and captivated him since boyhood and he has spent hours studying them to write about and more recently take photos of them.

This book is a finely crafted mix of his observations and encounters with the folklore, myths, art and culture of them. The chapter titles include The Aviator, The Lover and The Fighter. He expands on these subjects by keeping a diary of a swan nesting near him, describing how these birds fly and how they defend themselves in the wild.

I thought that this was really well done. If you are remotely interested in all of the wildlife that inhabits our ponds and rivers then the swan should be counted equally with birds like of the kingfisher. Keel has a passion for these huge birds and this is very evident in each chapter. There were lots of facts about swans that I was completely unaware of and he even busts some of the myths about them too. (They can’t break your arm!). I thought this was definitely worth reading.

4 out of 5 stars

I suspect that I am like most people, I try to recycle as much as I can, I have general recycling, a box for batteries and defunct electronics, bags for scrunchy and soft plastic and we have one of the hot bins that makes vegetable peelings into fine compost. But I still have to throw stuff in the regular bin, not everything can be recycled as yet sadly.

But what happens to that stuff that the council collects every other week? I suspect that I am like most people and think out of sight out of mind and move on to the next thing in my life. One man who wondered just what happened to the rubbish he and his family were creating was Oliver Franklin-Wallis, who decided to follow his nose for a story.

In this book he goes to the municipal waste sites in the UK, to see what the waste industry does with the tonnes of stuff we throw away. But this isn’t just a UK issue, the 8 billion of us in the world generate millions of tonnes of waste and a lot of this is shipped around the world to countries that have ended up dealing with it, so he heads out to Africa to see where the ultra-cheap clothes end up after people have worn them a handful of times and onto India to see the enormous landfill sites there and the people picking through the rubbish with the hope of scraping a living.

As well as following the rubbish trail, he looks at how companies are twisting some of the recycling that we think is doing good to their own ends and profit margins. It makes for quite shocking reading, but a little part of me isn’t surprised in some ways. He also makes a visit to Sellafield, passing the armed guards at the entrance to see what we are doing with the waste from nuclear plants. This deadly radioactive material still has the possibility of harming 300 generations later so what we do with it has to take into account a changing world. Terrifying stuff.

This is a really important book, even though it isn’t the most pleasant of reading material. Franklin-Wallis is a tenacious researcher, prepared to go where most won’t and isn’t afraid of asking difficult questions to those that he meets. He doesn’t always get the answers he is looking for, which in its own way speaks volumes. Well worth reading and I am so glad that this book doesn’t come with a scratch and sniff card…

4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Dervla Murphy is legendary in the genre of travel writing. The book she is best known for, Full Tilt, is the record of her ride from Ireland to India. It was something that she wanted to do from the age of 10 when the dual presents of a bicycle and an atlas gave her this idea. Because she had to look after her mother she wasn’t able to do this until the age of 32.

She kept a diary and was persuaded to write it up and send it to a guy called Jock Murray. The rest is history and this was the first of 27 books she wrote over the course of 50 years of her travels all over the world. She travelled simply, preferring to be on her trusty bike, Roz and relying on the hospitality of the people that she encountered on her journeys. Having a daughter didn’t stop her and Rachel would become a companion on her travels in later stories.

This book is a compilation of all the books that Murphy wrote. Crowley has separated the books out into the decades that they were written and picked her favourite passages from this book. For me, it shows two things, her evolution as a writer and the way she changes from somebody being amazed by all the things she saw to someone who became appalled by the poverty and injustices of the world.

If you are a fan of Dervla Murphy then I would say this is an essential addition to your collection. Highly recommended.

4 out of 5 stars

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

As people are discovering, the time spent walking in nature is not wasted at all. It gives you head space and connecting with the sights smells and sounds of the outdoors is good for you. Sadly the state of the wildlife in this country is pretty poor.

Discovering what is in your local area and repeatedly going back to see what changes on a daily or weekly basis is a way of getting a richer experience of the wild around you. This is what Nick Penny did, he took almost daily walks along a short stretch of the River Nene in Northamptonshire. The more time he spent there, the more he heard and saw. He has a particular interest in the Kingfisher, the iridescent blue bird that most people have never seen. But if you know where and how to look these amazing little birds are suddenly there.

This book is a diary of the sights and sounds of his walks along the river. There are days when he sees lots of activity and other days when not much happens, such are the trials of wildlife watching. But those days can still refresh the spirit and that comes across in his writing. But this is not just about the river, he heads out into the countryside in the hope of finding cuckoos and nightingales as well as getting up way too early to go and hear the dawn chorus.

I thought that this was a wonderful book. Penny has managed to capture the things that he saw and heard on a daily basis quite eloquently. I liked the diary form too, that record of everything that he saw, for me, has a sense of grounding and it shows what you can find if you take the time to discover to fully explore your local patch

As I sit writing this review, I am listening to the sounds that Penny has recorded of the birds throughout the year. He brings his knowledge as a musician to this book too, and the sounds that he has recorded of specific birds and some of the dawn and evening choruses that he heard whilst researching this book. You can follow the link in the book and I thought this gave an excellent extra dimension to his writing. I can recommend this, primarily for the inspiration that it has given me to go out and find out more about the nature where I live in Dorset.

Listen to the sounds here They are well worth it.

Call of the Kingfisher – Audio Recordings

4.5 out of 5 stars

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

I have been going to Cornwall for holidays for many years now. I think that it is quite a special place, with beautiful coasts and dramatic landscapes. The side I see has always been the tourist side. However, for those that live there, it is very different. Love the county, its landscape is bleak and dramatic or small and cosy – provided you know where to go.

They are overwhelmed with tourists for half the year, and when they all depart, the income dries up and they have to scratch a living until the next season. Even if you do manage to earn a living, the chances of being able to afford a home there now are very slim. The tsunami of second homeowners with plenty of cash to spare means that most properties have been priced out of the locals price range. This is a subject that has been written about in the excellent Undercurrent by Natasha Carthew.

The place is almost an island, the border of the Tamar rises in the north of the county leaving the peninsular to only be joined at the top and because of this it doesn’t quite feel like England. How we perceive it as outsiders has been fuelled by many things including writers who have given us the image of a wild land and people.

What the county is, is an enigma.

The people best placed to answer what the county now is are the Cornish. Tim Hannigan is a Cornish man who grew up and worked there, before heading off around the world to write guidebooks and who now lives in Ireland. This gives him a unique perspective on the place, seeing it from the outside with a travel writer’s eye and knowing what makes the place tick.

How we perceive the place is very much different from the reality, and he takes time to show that as he moves through the literary landscape as he zigzags across the county on his walk. Not only do you get a journal of what happens that day to him on his walk, but he digs through the history of the places that he walks, lifting gems from history and folklore to tell us about. I thought that the folklore stretched way into the past, but it seems that it was mostly invented by two gents in the 1800s!

Not quite English, always Cornish.

I thought that this was well worth reading. Hannigan manages to describe the modern enigma that is Cornwall perfectly. The writing is really good regardless of whether he is describing the walking, the places that he passes and the people that he meets or his own hinterland. This isn’t a romantic view of the county either, you can sense his pride in the county as he tells of the parts that he loves and is fiercely critical of some of the problems that the county finds itself in. You almost certainly have a view of what Cornwall is, but it is like a kaleidoscope, with different people seeing different things from their perspectives. And in some way, it is all of those things and not at the same time.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

For too long we have cast aside nature, beating it into submission or just obliterating it, but the tide is turning and people are seeing that we cannot carry on like this forever as we will be deeply affected too. We are intrinsically linked to the natural world, after all, we are all part of the same ecosystem.

But where to begin? If you have been in a bookshop recently, you’ll have noticed that the range of nature books has grown exponentially over the past decade. This has been ably assisted by the Wainwright Prize. People became more aware of nature during the pandemic when they could head out on their sanctioned exercise and the sensory stimulation did them the world of good.

Nature’s Wonders is an introduction to the wonders that you can discover if you feel so inclined. The book is split into seasons and in each, Adams has selected various things to look out for in each. Some of these items are easier to find than others! So in spring, there are essays on bluebells, black caps and brimstone butterflies. In summer she suggests, chafers, foxgloves and taking the time to smell the scent of summer.

Autumn brings dramatic changes to the landscape and the essays include listening to the deer rut, the sound of the crickets in meadows and spotting the winter migrants such as fieldfares. Winter is the time for frosts and long shadows, but if you know where to look the last of winter brings out the celandines.

I really liked this book. If you are expecting in-depth guides on each of the fifty subjects that are written about in this book, then this is the wrong book to start with. Rather, it has been written to inspire people who are not sure about the natural world to take the time to go and find the things written about within and hopefully use it as a stepping stone to your own discoveries.

4 out of 5 stars

The act of pilgrimage was stopped in 1538 when Henry VIII banned it as he crushed the Catholic church just so he could marry someone he fancied. The act of walking as part of people’s faith was gone in this country. It still happens in Europe, there are many well-known routes that are still walked, even to this day.

The discovery of a map in the Bodleian Library showed a faint red line linking together the towns and villages of a route from Southampton to Canterbury. It had been long forgotten but was thought to be the recommended route people walked to visit the shrine of Thomas Becket. Given the almost complete lack of knowledge, the decision was taken to rename it the Old Way.

Having learnt about this pilgrim route, it was something that Gail Simmonds really wanted to do. It was walking over her favourite landscape, chalk downland and it was something that she felt that she wanted to undertake alone.

This is the story of her journey.

I really liked this travelogue of Simmonds’s modern pilgrimage from Southampton to Canterbury. It is split into four parts due to the various restrictions and lockdowns that took place at the time (remember those days?). This was more than a five-hundred-year-old route through, the landscape she is walking through is thousands of years old and if you know how and where to look, its secrets can be revealed. With her background in medieval history research into a locale is something that she is an expert at and in my opinion, Simmonds manages to get the right balance between the travel and history. Her writing feels that you are accompanying her on this walk rather than being given a list of things that happen on her journey. Can highly recommend this.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

Of all the weathers that we experience, wind is the only one that we can hear and feel but not directly. I do think I can see the wind when I see trees being buffeted, or crows dancing in the wind. It is caused by the movement of air from one part of the planet to another, flowing from high-pressure points to low-pressure points in the search for equilibrium. Even though the air never stops moving, there are days when it can be utterly still and as blissful as they are surreal.

This flow of air around the planet affects everything. It creates waves, erodes mountains, moves vast quantities of dust from Africa to the Amazon and has created and formed economies and human culture. Along with earthquakes and volcanoes, winds in particular forms can be the most destructive things that we have on this planet. As a hurricane or typhoon, they can flatten buildings, toss cars in the air like confetti and as tornadoes, obliterate everything that they touch.

Humans have understood this phenomenon for millennia now. Wind has pressed it’s way into folklore and culture and has been used in warfare and has driven people mad.

I really liked this, the cultural history of wind is a wide-ranging subject that Pryke has managed to condense into this fascinating book. The prose feels authoritative without reading like an academic book. It is really nicely produced with high-quality pictures making it a fine addition to the Earth Series of books.

 

4 out of 5 stars

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

When a lot of people think about travel, the thought of pristine beaches in subtropical climes springs to mind or the hardy travel writer who is battling through some unexplored part of the globe. But travel writing can be just as relevant and interesting much closer to home.

In this book, Johno Ellison is very close to his home, in fact, he grew up alongside the River Wharf that is the subject of the book. It is a journey he had undertaken before many years ago, but for this, he wanted to retrace the route taken by Victorian author Edmund Bogg to see what had changed in the 120 years.

It is a fairly short river and he decides to wild cam for some of the route as well as popping in to see family and friends en route. He samples many beers in the pubs he passes including some that he frequented in his youth. As he was a local resident when growing up, there are lots of personal anecdotes that add depth to the walk and he explores the local folklore of the places that he walks through.

I really liked this. Learning about a tiny part of the UK that I knew almost nothing about was fascinating. He is an engaging writer too, filling the pages with the history of the river, an account of his walk. I did like that he made it clear in the text when he returned to fill in the gaps in the narrative; not all travel writers do that and sometimes it is glaringly obvious that they returned later. If you want a well-written book about a tiny part of Yorkshire then this is a good place to start.