Category: Review (Page 92 of 132)

A New Map of Wonders: A Journey in Search of Modern Marvels by Caspar Henderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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

There was a time when humans had a natural curiosity and wonder for the world around themselves. Before Google, to find things out you actually had to go and learn them, experience them or find and read the book about it. Nowadays anyone with an interweb connection can quickly read up about anything about any subject. By having everything available at our fingertips has meant that information is transitory, read but never absorbed and more importantly as Henderson argues in this book, we have almost lost the ability to wonder.

People have wondered what is over that far hill and what lies just beyond the horizon for millennia now and the oldest form of this speculation was the map. These mappae mundi were the places where people’s imaginations could run riot, full of strange and magical creatures and of unknown lands, these were the internet of the day.

Should we want to look up from the blue LED glare of our screens though there is still a universe of wonder out there? Henderson takes us on a journey through what he considers to be some of the wonders still left in the world. Beginning with light where he explores from the photon to the black hole passing under the rainbow. He then moves within our body to discover more about the workings of the heart and brain. The chapter on the physical brain leads on to the concept of self as we currently understand it.

The final two chapters and my favourites were on how we see the world then and now and the wonderfully titled Adventures with Perhapsatron. Throughout the book, there are diagrams and illustrations to complement the text and I particularly liked the use of side notes to add a little extra depth, though the grey font wasn’t the easiest to read. Overall an enjoyable book.

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Eagle Country by Seán Lysaght
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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

When you think of eagles, you imagine them perched on an eyrie high in the Scottish mountains on the West coast. They are majestic birds, soaring over the landscape with almost nothing to fear; except us. The sight of the magnificent sea eagles enthralled him when Lysaght first encountered them in Norway almost twenty years ago. They used to inhabit Ireland too, and as he walks the remote coast and hills and pours over the maps he starts to see the place names that they inspired such as Crag of the Eagle and Eagle Ridge. It was time to get outside.

The best way to get a feel for the country though is to walk through it, climb the ridges and wander the rugged coastline. His walks are often undertaken alone, sometimes with Jessica, his wife, and occasionally with others. His keen eyes see the wildlife as he walks, watching the aerobatics of the ravens, tracing the gulls following the boats out to sea, finches as they buzz over the moors. He is searching for sites that could be or may once have been eyries. Every now and again a raptor lifts into the air, often he sees them being mobbed, yet they are always masters of the air.

He passes houses that have carved stone eagles on the gate posts and as he walks in the rugged landscape scoured by Atlantic, it prompts him to look back to the past to the time when eagles were often seen, collecting the stories from locals and writers that last saw eagles in the Nineteenth century. Their absence today is the result of habitat destruction and persecution. Even today raptors are still poisoned and shot and those with vested interests ensure that the people responsible do not get the punishment they deserve.

On one side, the stream ran into the moss and then re-emerged from the tips of the moss as glistening green-tinted teardrops.

Until I picked this book up, it had never crossed my mind that there were or had been eagles in Ireland too. Sadly there are still not many, there have been a few introduced and the odd one or two have drifted across the sea from Scotland. There are just about hanging on in a landscape devoid of their prey and habitat. Lysaght is also a poet and this book reinforces my own hypothesis that poets write fantastic non-fiction (Kathleen Jamie and Paul Farley to name but two) so his mastery of the language and the descriptions of the coast and hills that he walked looking for eyries is quite special. This is the tenth book in the superb Little Toller Monograph series and is another beautifully made book. It has wonderful atmospheric photos that frame the beginning of each month of walks showing the stark beauty of the land and seascape of this coastline. Loved the hand-drawn maps too, they have a certain charm. Can highly recommend this.

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Hope In The Dark by Rebecca Solnit
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For centuries people have revolted over the control that the state or other powerful individuals have tried to exert over the people. People can only be told what to do so much. I Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit concentrates on the past five decades of activism against the state about all manner of issues. Sonit acknowledges the huge political thinkers who have shaped some of the politics that happen today.

It is an interesting polemic against the vested interests and the present economic system and is written with a clarity that I have come to expect from Solnit. It is a bit dated now, but sadly almost all of the salient points that Solnit makes are still valid. The message though is still clear; never, never give up hope. The smallest actions being carried out by you can be multiplied up into the tens of hundreds of people doing the same thing does have an effect. The rise of website and action groups like 38 Degrees and Avaaz are the testimony to this; exerting pressure on corporations and governments does get through, it is an irritant that they ignore at their peril. I particularly liked the way that think global, act local, can be turned on its head; by thinking local acting global is the replication of the same protest all around our planet. I would love to see a re-write of this to know exactly what she thinks about Trump, can’t imagine it will be complimentary…

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Rule 34 by Charles Stross
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To call it a dead end job would be an understatement, policing the weird and sordid life of internet porn was like being in the U bend of her career as all the unpleasantness of life flowed past. This was DI Liz Kavanaugh’s life now, but when a fetish nut dies on her watch, the Rule 34 squad goes from an irrelevance to high profile. This first death is just the tip of the fatberg as more start dying in the most bizarre ways possible and the more Kavanaugh finds out about the case and the links to organised crime, the less she wants to know…

This is loosely a sequel to Halting State with Kavanaugh being the only character who has made it from that book. There are all sorts going on in this future police thriller; in it, he crams all sorts about the possibilities of pervasive state monitoring, a psychopath loose and the way that the criminals work across states. The writing point of view doesn’t always make it the easiest book to read, however, it is highly entertaining with some typical surreal moments and the pace varies from sluggish to fairly brisk. I liked it but didn’t love it.

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Amzing bookpost this week. Thanks to Olivia at Jo Fletcher Books, Jamsin at Bloomsbury, Bethan, Josh at Faber  fot this small pile of books

The Dun Cow Rib: A Very Natural Childhood by John Lister-Kaye
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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

For the last 40 years, John Lister-Kaye has run the Aigas Field Centre, an old Georgian manor house just to the west of Inverness and set in the beautiful highland landscape. Lister-Kaye discovered the place in the mid-1970’s and since then has made this a world leading and award-winning centre for environmental education. This latest book, The Dun Cow Rib tells the story of the long and winding route that he took to get there.

Born in 1959 to John and Helen, he was the latest member of an ancient family were landowners in Yorkshire with active financial interests in mining and quarries. He had a fairly happy childhood playing in the local countryside and keeping pigeons until he was sent to boarding school. He really could not get along with the head there. After a couple of incidents, one of which was a prank, the other of which was nothing to do with him, he was asked to leave, much to his father’s fury at the school and the head in particular. This meant that he had to go to another school and fortunately he ended up at Allhallows School on the Devon and Dorset border. For Lister-Kaye this was a lucky break as he was right on the doorstep of Lyme Regis and the wilderness that was the undercliff. He joined the natural history society and by the time he finished at the school, he was totally and utterly in love with the natural world.

He longed to do something in the natural world, but his father lent on him heavily to accept a post at a steelworks as a management trainee. He did go and hated it, turning more against working in unsustainable industries after the massive oil spill in the Isles of Scilly in 1967. Shortly after that, an opportunity arose to work with the now famous author Gavin Maxwell on a book on mammals and opening a zoo on Skye; he quit and moved to Scotland. Both projects were abandoned after Maxwell was diagnosed with cancer and died after a short illness. The thought of going by to a desk job was too much to bear, so he stayed in Scotland and wrote The White Island, a book about the short but intense time spent with Maxwell. From the book came another opportunity and Highland Wildlife Enterprise was formed with the help of Richard Frere and this was what was to become the Aigas Field Centre.

I quite liked this book, he writes in an interesting and entertaining way about all the events in his early life and it is full of amusing anecdotes and snippets. He had a privileged upbringing, he is a baronet after all, and he loved growing up with his grandparents at the manor house where the Dun Cow Rib was always hanging from a chain. He had a distant relationship with his father but was much closer to his mother. She suffered from severe health problems with her heart, caused by an illness when she was a child and exacerbated when she gave birth to John and managed to live much longer because of the efforts of Paul Wood and Russel Brock, two cardiologists who worked at the cutting edge of heart surgery, this book is a tribute to her from him. Having read the Douglas Botting book in the last month, it was useful to find out his side of the story of his brief work with Gavin Maxwell too. I have only read one other of his, The Gods of the Morning, and will be adding some of his others to my reading list.

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The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

The bad news came fast, Raynor Winn’s husband had just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, they had just lost a court case even though they had the evidence that they were not liable for debts and now the bailiffs were hammering on the door to take their farm and livelihood away. Their only income would be £48 per week. It is at times like these that some people would have a breakdown or consider a more permanent end to the problems, they didn’t; inspired by the book 500 Mile Walkies by Mark Wallington they decided that as they were homeless anyway they may as well walk the south coast path.

With the precious little money they have, they buy a new lightweight tent, a couple of sleeping bags and new rucksacks and drive the van to Minehead in Somerset as that is where all the guidebooks begin. Moth’s condition of corticobasal degeneration or CBD, meant that the doctor had advised him to take it easy and not to overdo it; probably not attempt a 630-mile walk around the spectacular coastline of the south-west. The first part of the footpath is probably the toughest section with the high cliffs and steep paths and it is a struggle for both, but Moth in particular. They have no money for official campsites, so wild camping was the way to go, ensuring that they found a place out of sight, and were packed up before they could be discovered in the morning.

They met all sorts of people of the walk, but telling those that they met that they were homeless would a lot of the time cause a lot of prejudice and they would be shunned, called tramps or worse. Sitting eating a shared pack of budget noodles when other are stuffing pasties and ice creams in, is quite soul destroying. However, there were others who would be prepared to help, providing hot drinks, paying for food, and even a millionaire wine importer who wined and dined them for an evening. One man they met on a cliff path told them about salted blackberries, picked right at the very end of the season just before they turned when the flavour was most intense and dusted with the salt from the sea they gorged on them whenever they could find them. They had completed a fair chunk of the route, before stopping and staying with a friend, earning a little money and starting to plan a future once again. Rather than head back to where they had stopped, they came to Poole and started from the other end walking through the Jurassic Coast back to the place that they had stopped a few months previously.

This is a heartwarming and inspiring story of a couples fight back against a life-changing legal decision that left them totally penniless. Winn writes with an honesty that is quite moving, she is open with her feelings and her thoughts about the people she meets on their walk and the events that led to them walking. There are some moments in here that may make you cry as well as some amusing anecdotes that will have you chuckling. What does come across throughout the book is the inner strength of Raynor and Moth, to overcome a financial situation that most could not recover from, the way that Moth manages to use the walk to improve his health and that being in the right place at the right time can offer an opportunity that can be life-changing. If there is one thing that can be taken from this, it is that there is nothing that human optimism can’t overcome. 4.5 stars

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The Man Who Climbs Trees by James Aldred
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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

It has been a long while since I climbed a tree, but in my childhood, I spent a fair amount of time climbing and occasionally falling out of trees. There were one or two that were particularly good to climb or hide in and several that we tried and failed at. To reach the top of a small tree felt like an achievement, even though the heights weren’t that high, it felt like you were on the top of the world. James Aldred began the same way, climbing trees in the New Forest until at the age of 17 he went with two friends to ascend using rigging and climbing gear to climb a tree where the lower branches were totally out of reach from the ground. At this point, he was hooked and knew what he wanted to do.

Now he climbs trees that are over 150fit high using high tech equipment, taking up cameras and assisting the wildlife cameramen for the BBC and others that are looking to film what goes on up in the canopies of the global forests. With some other expert climbers, he has ascended one of the highest trees in the world, peeking above the treeline around 300 feet up. The risks are enormous, one mistake and it is all over, but it is a job that he loves with a passion. It has taken him to forest all around the world, he has seen animals that have enthralled and amazed him, slept out under the stars many times, been bitten alive by all manner of insects and in on very scary moment was attacked by a harpy eagle. He wouldn’t change it for the world though.

Aldred has been very fortunate to work with some of the very best in the wildlife film industry and the stories that he tells in this book will enthral and entertain you.
I am not too bad with heights, but some of the trees Aldred climbs are quite staggering, though the thought of sleeping in the canopy, very securely strapped in, of course, does appeal quite a lot. It is a book that can be categorised in a few ways, but definitely, a book that is worth reading.

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Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Joe and Clarissa are picnicking when they hear cries from a hot air balloon that was descending nearby. The man controlling it had tried to get out, the rope had caught round his leg and it was rising again dragging him with it. A few men converge on the balloon, grabbing hold of the ropes hanging down to try to hold it down, but one by one they drop off. One man, John Logan, hangs on for as long as he can before he drops off at a height that can only be fatal. They rush to him to see if they can help, but it is too late.
 
In this intense moment, the other man who got to the body at the same time asks him to pray about the situation, but Joe flatly refuses. Jed Parry though is a man possessed, he thinks that something has passed between him and Joe and in the moment that they shared that Joe has fallen deeply in love with him. He thinks nothing more of it and heads home but is slightly disturbed when he receives the first phone call from Parry at 2 am. From this moment Parry begins stalking Joe, writing letters to him, leaving countless messages on his answerphone and standing outside his flat. Joe is severely unnerved by it and Clarissa thinks he is losing his mind but the police aren’t interested as he has done nothing wrong
 
He meets with Parry briefly, but it only exacerbates the situation. Pushed to that absolute limit, Joe snaps and sets about taking matters into his own hands. Then he gets a phone call from Clarissa; Parry is with her and wants Joe to come home to talk.

McEwan has written a book about those suffering from de Clerambault’s syndrome a delusional disorder where an individual thinks that person is infatuated with him or her, thankfully it is rare, but as McEwan does in this book when coupled it with religious fervour, it has a deeply sinister edge. There is plenty of tension in the plot as Parry becomes more extreme in his actions to be with Joe. It is very creepy, as McEwan manages to convey just how disturbing stalking is for any victim of it. There are a couple of sub-plots that really didn’t add much to the story either. However, there were several details that I couldn’t get along with, in the book; I didn’t quite understand as all these men ran to save the balloon with the child in, how they knew each other almost immediately, the balloon is described as a helium balloon later in the book too. Not bad, but could have been so much better.

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