The Magic and Mystery of Birds: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human by Noah Strycker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Noah Strycker has been utterly besotted by birds for as long as he can remember. This passion has taken him to some of the remotest parts of the world, Antartica and the Falklands, to the Galápagos, one of the richest for all sorts of wildlife. His travels mean that he has seen a vast number of species from the ubiquitous pigeon that can travel vast distances to the same place each time, huge murmurations of starlings, magpies that can recognise themselves and bower birds that construct the most amazing structures to procreate. His studies and thoughts show that we have as many similarities as we do differences.

Strycker has drawn together a lot of interesting analogies and observations of our feathered friends. There is a lot of recent cutting-edge science in here too and subjects as varied as game theory and intelligence. He has made it easy to read as he peppers the text with lots of personal anecdotes and humorous stories about some of the mad things he has done in the name of research. Quite impressed by this and will definitely be reading his latest when it is out on breaking the record of spotting the most number of species in a year. 3.5 stars.

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The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recently widowed from an unpleasant husband, Cora Seaborne has moved from London to the Essex parish of Aldwinter with her son and friend Martha. It is a time of exciting scientific change and discovery as people realise that fossils pose as many questions as they answer. Women have started to play a limited role in the discovery of these almost supernatural creatures finding the bones scattered below cliffs as they erode. Her arrival in the wilds of Essex happens around the time that a folktale has come back to life and the village and people of the Blackwater estuary are living in fear of the Essex serpent once again.

The fear is brought to life with the discovery of a drowned man, naked with his head rotated almost 180 degrees and a look of terror in his eyes. One man who sees the parish crumbling in their faith is the vicar, Will Ransome, they start to resort to pagan superstitions and pure cold fear of what may lurk in the waters. Cora arriving in his parish adds to his challenges as she declares that science offers as many explanations as religion does to their present threat. Their relationship sparks fierce debate and unspoken attraction, but Cora has another that is besotted by her, Luke Garrett, a surgeon of some note, who affection is not returned. Will they be able to understand what lurks in the Blackwater, and will they resolve the relationship to something more amiable?

Perry has set the story in a time where society is undergoing huge social changes and scientific understanding is growing and challenging the status quo of the state. There is a lot to like about this, the story is richly imagined, full of detail and with a gothic sub note all the way through, the strained relationship between Cora and William adds greatly to the story too. However, I did feel that there were too many characters in the story as it flipped back and forward between London and Essex. The plot had a little too much going on as well, but the various sub plots did add the necessary depth. Glad I have read it and would suit those that like Victorian dramas.

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Until We Are Free: My Fight For Human Rights in Iran by Shirin Ebadi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Iranian people that I have met have been generally warm, friendly and welcoming. The country that they come from though is one of the most authoritarian on the planet with the invasive and pervasive monitoring of the population by the Ministry of Intelligence and draconian religious enforcement by the countries spiritual leaders. This powerful and emotive book is the part of the life story of Dr Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian activist and human rights lawyer. She is a strong willed and a lady of immense personal integrity and she has challenged every step of the way the total power that Iranian state thinks it should have.

She has fought tirelessly over the years for the elements in society that we take for granted; democracy, freedom of speech and most importantly in that country equality. Her work for those at the very bottom of society, the plight of Baha’is and women has been an inspiration across the globe, so much so, that she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her relentless work. This did not go unnoticed by the authorities and the Ministry of Intelligence. They bugged her offices and home and made sure that her activities were disrupted and her and her staff and family were intimidated frequently. One man, Mahmudi, seems to have made it his personal mission to hound her to the end of the earth. Little did she know at the time, but a trip to Majorca would be the last time she saw her beloved country.

This book is very moving, not only do we get to see the side of Iran that few of us know about, but we see just how fractured it has become under the continuing despotic leadership. Ebadi writes with a passion and eloquence about her circumstances, the constant hounding that her husband and daughters have had to endure because of the stand that she has taken and the situation in the country. She is even intimidated by them whilst in exile. I would urge people to read this, not just to get an insight to another country in turmoil, but to see what the true face of humanity is and the courage of a woman who has chosen to stand up for her beliefs.

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Linescapes: Fragmentation and Connection in the Natural World by Hugh Warwick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since the last Ice Age mankind has shaped and changed our landscape in a multitude of ways. Some of these layers of history have vanished and can only be detected by the latest in archaeological techniques. However, there are other changes that we have made that are still visible even thousands of years after they have been created. It is these lines of roads, hedges, walls, canals and railways that criss-cross our landscapes and have sliced and diced them into ever smaller fragments that Warwick is interested in. Modern agriculture has decimated the wildlife across our land, a theme picked up by John Lewis-Stempel in the Running Hare and Stephen Moss in the Wild Kingdom, thankfully it is these linescapes that can offer a sanctuary to our much-beleaguered wildlife.

To discover how our wildlife is faring Warwick takes to the highways and byways, climbs the high grounds by the walls, peers into the hedges, wades through the ditches, floats lazily along a canal, treads carefully along our railway lines and walks warily under the pylons. Some of these lines, the roads in particular, is utter carnage for mammals and birds in particular, in other places wildlife is just about clinging onto existence too. There are some success stories, the industrial might of the canals faded long ago, and rather than being grubby dirty places as Warwick is expecting, they are now havens for all sorts of aquatic creatures and even the exotic blue darts that are kingfishers have made their home there. Simple changes can have a massive effect, just by not cutting a verge can improve life for invertebrates and the birds that feed off them immeasurably. The power lines that stretch across our landscapes claim a fair number of causalities but the space below them is being used to create something called the Natural Grid. Inspired by the report Making Space for Nature by Sir John Lawton this concluded that SSI’s were too dislocated and were accelerating the decline of wildlife generally; where the Natural Grid comes in is to ensure that the land beneath the power lines is managed effectively with wild flowers and plants to act as feeding stations.

Linescapes is a timely book, Warwick pulls together a lot of disparate elements of the landscape and tries to make us think about them in a cohesive way. There are examples of where good practice can make such a difference and he even visits the Devil’s Punchbowl in Surrey to see what a properly planned change can be like. The time is now to make properly considered changes, and they need not be big changes to make a real difference to our beautiful countryside and natural world.

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This Census-Taker by China Miéville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A boy lives with his mother and father high in the hills in an unfinished house. His father is a key maker, who often has to quickly produce keys for strangers who knock at the door. They rarely descend to the village to see the others so he has a lonely life. Until one day he appears in the village alone, traumatised and very scared, claiming that he has just witnessed a murder. Left alone with a parent who is become more deranged he feels more and more isolated. That is until another stranger knocks on the door; this time he isn’t here to request a key, but to elicit information and determine facts. Is he friend, or foe, or something that will challenge everything.

This is strange, in the way that only a Miéville book can be, things that are clear become muddied and aspects that were crystal clear become opaque. There is a lot of subtle terror and creepy moments in this story as well as elements of mystery. It feels to like there is a underlying vein of magic to the world he has created. I like books with messy endings, but this didn’t feel that it was resolved though. It is good but not at the same level as his great books like The City and the City, Railsea and Perdido Street Station which seriously mess with your head.

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The Village News by Tom Fort
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The English countryside has many quintessential images, the patchwork of fields, lanes with high hedges and sleepy villages nestled in between hills and dales. The village or hamlet has been a place of habitation for many hundreds of years in this country, a place that was deeply rooted in the locality, made from the materials that surrounded it and with a strong connection to the landscape. Some outgrew their original layout into towns and a few into cities, but the vast majority have remained as villages.

The role of the village has changed dramatically in the 20th and into the 21st Century; what once was a place where people rarely ventured from and generally lived all their lives, had a busy and purposeful existence, has now become a quaint place for commuters to live and second home owners to visit occasionally. Tom Fort wonders if there is still a life and soul to village life, and decides that the best way to find it is to climb on his faithful bicycle and go and find out for himself. Visiting villages from Foxton in Cambridgeshire to Pitton in Wiltshire, he considers at how village life has evolved and changed over the past 6000 years in our country. He visits the villages where there is still an active community and others where people hardly talk at all.

Fort writes in an amiable way that makes him quite endearing as he travels to all the village that add to the story of rural life. He mixes historical detail with encounters and personal anecdotes of his own village life when he was growing up and now in the village of Sonning Common. Rightly, he has a rant over the way that the homes that they build in villages now days completely lacking in any design and originality and any nod to the local area they are being built in and are just homogenised layouts repackaged by a marketing department to suit. There are no dramatic revelations in here, just a warm nostalgia for the past days with an acknowledgement of the positive and negative progress of life today in the English village. Really enjoyable read.

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Signal Failure by Tom Jeffreys
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

One November morning Tom Jeffreys’ lifts his overloaded rucksack onto his back and starts walking the 119 miles to Birmingham from Euston Station with the intention of seeing for himself the effects the proposed new HS2 railway route will have on our country and landscape. High Speed 2 (HS2) is the new railway that will link London to Birmingham with further extensions planned to Leeds and Manchester. Even though the construction has been approved by parliament, the exact details of the route have not been finalised and are still open to modification and a fair amount of objection from residents. Supposedly work will begin this year…

He will pass out of the dynamic cityscape of London, onto what feels like the endless sprawl of suburbia and into the patchwork of fields and copses that make up our green and pleasant land. On the way he will meet locals who think it is a good idea, some who are so despondent with the plans that it has driven them to contemplate suicide, conservationists who are horrified with the impact on the wildlife and ancient woodland, which someone with a spreadsheet thinks can be just replanted with no ill effects… On the walk he hurts his knee, gets lost several times even really close to his home, consumes several pints in a variety of pubs, camps in fields and back gardens and gets spooked by a horse.

Jeffreys’ has blended the narrative of his walk, along with the history of the route with a contemporary view of the natural world that will be affected. He has been inspired by some fine authors, including Macfarlane and Jamie and it is written with wit and self-depreciating humour all the way through. More importantly this book is a polemic against the project that has really become a white elephant. It has reached such a momentum now that we are at the point where no one wants to stop and say – do we actually need this? Part of that is because of the vested interests of those that stand to make a lot of money from it and partly from those in charge who have a lot of political capital invested in it, was not surprised to read that some MP’s that have supported the project have managed to ensure that the route does not pass through their constituency. A sizable proportion of those he meets on the walk are not convinced that it is needed, many who are upset are those have moved out from the city to the relative peace of the countryside and are not looking forward to the construction nor the high speed trains running. However, there are some who think it is a good idea and will bring benefits. Definitely worth reading if you are concerned about the impact of the route.

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The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America’s UFO Highway by Ben Mezrich
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Chuck Zukowski has been fascinated by UFO’s for years. A computer programmer and geek, he has managed to persuade his family to accompany him on the trips out to Colorado visiting the locations of sightings and reports. However, things are about to take a disturbing turn as he begins to read about reports of horses and cattle that have been mutilated in very strange and inexplicable circumstances. Seeing the deceased animals on a ranch with a terrified owner adds a dramatic edge to the macabre scene.

What starts out as a weekend hobby though rapidly becomes an obsession that takes up all his free time and ever increasing amounts of his bank balance as he heads to locations across Utah, Colorado and Kansas seeking details and meeting the folks that have seen these strange lights and experienced strange things. The more he finds out the stranger things become. He starts working with the Mutual UFO Network, an organisation that his sister, Debbie, also is associated with and discovers that all suspicious sightings are reported to the Bigelow Aerospace Company, a mysterious organisation founded by Robert Bigelow to begin the private exploration of space, but who seem to have feelers into other pies now. His journey into the unknown takes us to sacred Indian sites, into forests seeking the source of strange lights in the sky, the infamous Roswell and to the very edge of Area 51.

There are moments of genuine bafflement as to what is going on; is it just government programmes or something of greater significance. He is trailed by SUVs with tinted windows and federal plates with the sinister ‘men in black’ guys who do their best to put him off continuing investigating the unexplained… I do like to read the odd conspiracy theory book, sometimes just for the entertainment factor. Mezrich thankfully lifts what could be a dull story about something that you really cannot get a handle on, to something quite readable and quite dramatic at times. Fairly sure there isn’t visitors from elsewhere, but there is definitely something happening with government heavies all over these reports and sightings.

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