Orison for a Curlew by Horatio Clare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of the world’s rarest birds is the Slender-billed curlew. It breeds in Siberia in the brief summer and then heads south across the vast landscape to over winter in the much warmer Mediterranean region. It used to be a common enough bird, being seen often in Italy and Greece as well as the Balkans on the wetlands and estuaries. Then within a few years it stopped being a regular sight and almost vanished completely, just the odd speculative glimpse, but nothing confirmed. Horatio Clare wants to see if this fine bird has become extinct, or if there are the still some around. He travels from its wintering sites across Europe meeting conservationists who are trying their best to save habitats and creatures across a landscape undergoing dramatic changes.

Too much certainty is a miserable thing, while the unknowable has a pristine beauty and a wonder with no end.

Clare is engaging with all those he meets as he crosses Europe looking for these elusive birds and talking to those that remember them returning in the winters. It is quite a moving book as he searches for the elusive curlew and considers the reasons behind the decline. There are echoes of his book, A Single Swallow, and it is written in the same lyrical style, making this a joy to read. If it has one tiny flaw it is that it is very short, it felt like it took no time at all to read. 4.5 stars

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Long Way Back by Charley Boorman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

I first came across Charley Boorman when he appeared on our screens with Euan MacGregor in their epic travel adventure Long Way Round where they rode motorbikes from London to New York via Russia. Since then I have watched and read about all his travels and adventures all around the planet all through Africa and racing from Paris to Dakar. All of these have involved motorbikes to a greater or lesser degree. He was employed by Triumph to be an ambassador for them and involved in promoting their bikes. He was whisked off to Portugal to ride and be involved in the launch of the new Tiger Explorer when he was involved in an accident between a Mercedes and a wall. The impact broke his right ankle and smashed his fibia and tibia in his left leg. The damage was so severe that no one knew if he would lose his leg, let alone know if he would be able to walk or ride his beloved motorbikes once again.

From this dramatic and frankly traumatic start, Charley tells us the story of his long road to recovery. He does not hold much back telling you about his injuries, the number of operations and dealing with all the medical professionals for each of his injuries. He uses his time while recovering to look back on his childhood memories; his earliest moments spent on two wheels, to those significant moments that his father arranged which helped kickstart his career on the screen. After the accident, he had to cancel numerous events and he relives the time he has spent on motorbikes heading around the world on various escapades with the wonder if will ever be able to do it again.

I have been a fan of Boorman for a number of years now, he comes across as a genuinely good guy with as much as a sense of adventure as fun. He writes in a chatty style and is always honest about how he is feeling from the lowest moments and fears to the high points. He is eager to get better, and even while in a cast manages to get himself into scrapes still. Definitely a book for his fans, but there is enough in here to keep most people interested. There was a tantalising hint of a new adventure too; I hope that they do it.

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On the Marshes by Carol Donaldson
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 marshland of the north Kent coast has long been recognised as one of the most important natural wetlands in Northern Europe and it is thought to host around 300,00 migrant birds as they travel from Africa to the Arctic, the marshes are also a natural flood protection for London. There are many positives to modern living, warm and dry homes, running water, electricity and fast internet. However, some choose a simpler life, and Carol Donaldson was one of those. Working for the RSPB on the Thames Estuary she lived in a caravan beneath a willow. It could be tough at times, cold winters froze the pipes, storms would frequently knock out the electricity, but within a few feet of the door, she was immersed in the local landscape. This uncomplicated life was about to come to an abrupt end; her relationship with her partner Connor was unravelling and the powers that be decide that she cannot live in her caravan anymore. She is about to be evicted.

The wild beauty of the marshes has drawn many who wish to live on the fringes of society or escape from the claustrophobia of London. It is a classic edgeland landscape that has the remains of industry, World War Two relics and homes in amongst the creeks and marshlands. It is across this landscape that Donaldson begins to travel, partly to escape her painful memories, partly to find others who have made this their home but also to reacquaint herself with the seascape. It is a place that still faces battles though; having stopped the airport being built, the people who have come here for the tranquility of being near water will face increased pressure from corporate and government interests.

Weaving together a personal story of an author seeking comfort from the natural world is a popular genre these days which has its roots in H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald. Donaldson’s writing is gentle and fluent, taking as much care over the describing the bleak landscape as she travels on foot and by boat, as she does when opening up about her past and the new direction that she wants to head. Her encounters with friends and strangers who live all over the region from Gravesend to Whitstable about the way they make their livelihoods make for equally stimulating reading. It was also interesting to learn about a landscape in the UK that I knew almost nothing about, in particular about the long history that has happened there. It has a stunning cover too, another great book from Little Toller.

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A Goddess in the Stones: Travels in India by Norman Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

When people visit India, a country with over 1 billion people, their senses are assaulted by the mass of humanity, smells, colours and sights in a country that is full of life. The religions and spiritually of the country adds to the cacophony of noise as they go about celebrating the living and the dead. People from the Adivasi tribes that made up seven percent of the population of India. These peoples and the places they lived were in constant danger of being swamped by the remainder of India. This is Lewis account of his visit in the 1990’s to find these people and record the things that made them different and distinct.

Lewis’ journey to see these tribes takes him away from the regular tourist haunts. Heading far from the beaten track to Orissa and Bihar in the north-western part of India, he reaches there at a time of heightened tensions and violence from a caste war. Seeking a local guide Lewis starts to venture into the jungles in search of the tribes that he wants to discover before the modern world subsumes them. He meets the Muria people who survive by eating crocodiles, monkey and insects, a tribe who marry their teenage boys off to older women. There are the Mundas who still hunt with bow and arrow, and who find laughter offensive and a tribe that may be related to Australian Aborigines and the Bonda who wear jewellery passed down from relatives and precious little else.

His evocative writing style brings alive the assault on the senses that India is, you feel that you are there standing amongst the grime and swirl of people. The writing is detailed without being cumbersome and his ability to draw out the stories from the people of the tribes that he meets lifts this book from good to great. This is the first Norman Lewis book that I have read and it will not be the last.

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Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Most people who try to predict the future get it spectacularly wrong. One person didn’t though; Agnes Nutter, witch. The book she left in 1655, The Nice and Accurate Prophecies, had been written shortly before she exploded and ruined several people’s days. But then they had been out to ruin hers. It not only predicts the day the world will end, it knows the precise time. Which if you’re interested, it will be next Saturday, shortly after tea…

Rewind several years though, and we first come across Crowley, an Angel who did not fall from heaven, more saunter vaguely downwards. He is charged with ensuring that the child Anti-Christ is delivered to the nunnery where he will be exchanged with the son of an American diplomat who is just about to be born. Crowley and Aziraphale, an angel, and after 6000 years of knowing each other, more of a friend now. They have planned that the Anti-Christ grows up never being able to decide between Good and Evil, hopefully postponing the end of the world. Except there is a muddle up. The family destined to get Warlock, receive a normal boy and Adam Young grows up in Lower Tadfield, utterly unaware of his potential powers.

If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.

The world is changing fast though with the approaching Judgement Day. Armies are amassing, the four bikers of the apocalypse, War, Death, Famine and Pollution are assembling, the hell hound is summoned. All of these individuals are being pulled to the military base of Lower Tatton and are being pursued by the last remaining member of the Witchfinder Army, Newton Pulsifer and the multi-great granddaughter of Agnes Nutter, Anathema Device. Will Adam use his powers to bring about the end of the world…

Armageddon only happens once, you know. They don’t let you go around again until you get it right.

I first read this many years (ok decades) ago, as I was a committed Pratchett fan. I really could not get along with it back then, having ventured out of the safe(ish) Discworld, I wasn’t keen on the dark elements that Gaiman had brought to the narrative. In 2013, the next Gaiman book that I picked up was The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Something in that book clicked for me and I have ended up reading and loving all of what I have read of his so far. Then Terry died in 2015, and I decided to complete my Discworld collection and read all of his books that I had not read.

This was one of them. This time I loved it.

To have the chutzpah of taking an epic prediction of the end of the world and inject lots of absurdity into it takes some doing and Pratchett and Gaiman managed to pull this one off. The humour is still school boyish though, something that they alluded to in the introduction in my edition. It lacks character development, but the interplay between them, in particular, Aziraphale and Crowley is quite something. Having come to love Gaiman’s writing now, I can see each of their voices woven through the narrative. Sadly this was the only collaboration that they did that made it print, it does make me wonder just what else they could have produced given time. Brilliant and destined to become a classic.

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Pedal Power: Inspirational Stories from the World of Cycling by Anna Hughes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Since the bike was invented it has provided people with opportunity. It provided people who could not afford expensive methods of transport with a means of travelling further than they previously were able, it gave women freedom and has provided an energy efficient method of transport all over the world. The simple two wheeled machine has given us a plethora of bike types now. You can buy a cheap steel bike for a small amount of money or you can spend a large fortune on the latest carbon framed road bike that is almost light enough to float. We have mountain bikes, tourers, BMX, recumbents, folding bikes and the saddleless trials type. All of these bikes have their owners who have taken them to all of the continents, to some of the highest points on the globe and there are those who have gone to the furthest point from the ocean. Many have taken them around our planet, partly to break records, sometimes just for the hell of it. We have one of the world greatest sporting spectacles in the Tour de France, there is the insanity of the rampage downhill event and the metronomic velodrome.

Hughes has pulled together lots of stories on cycling heroes into this book. You can read about stars of the cycling world such as Froome, Wiggo and MacAskill as well of those who are not as well known, like Sunny Chuah and CK Flash. We hear about one guy who rode up Mont Ventoux on a Boris bike and tries to return it to London before he is penalised, another who attempts to cycle to Hawaii and tales of some of the fastest on two wheels. Most importantly we learn how the simple gift of a bicycle can give people so much opportunity through the work of World Bicycle Relief. This book is full of inspiring people who have seen their lives changed by the simple act of turning a pedal, or used it to change other lives. It is a great book for the bike nut in your life.

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