Anyone who reads this blog (thank you to you all), will know that I buy and acquire a lot of books, so this week is quite appropriate for non-fiction November, it is New To My TBR. So have I bought any books in November, yes of course…
So here are all the non-fiction books that I bought this month that I haven’t read before:
Nature Writing for Every Day of the Year by Ed. Jane McMorland Hunter
Enjoy a whole year of the very finest nature writing, with one carefully selected piece to savour every day.
This beautifully illustrated daily anthology brings you the very best of nature writing from around the world and through the centuries, from Pliny the Elder’s Natural History to modern authors such as Helen Macdonald and Robert Macfarlane. Encompassing fact and fiction, essays and field guides, letters and diaries, it’s a rich banquet of prose, the perfect companion to help your mind escape into the world of nature every day.
It contains descriptions of nature in all its Virginia Woolf on snails, Kenneth Grahame on the charms of a riverbank, Willa Cather on the rolling American prairies, and, via L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables on Octobers. David Attenborough pops up to talk about our responsibility to the natural environment, Edith Holden provides evocative descriptions from The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady , and Henry David Thoreau, of course, sends dispatches from Walden Pond . We meet Rudyard Kipling’s jungle animals and Jack London’s wild dogs, and Mark Twain explains why a camel is not jumpable.
Keep this wonderful celebration of nature by your bedside and it will become the perfect start or close to each day of the year.
The Hawaiian Archipelago: Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands by Isabella Lucy Bird
Isabella Bird visited the Sandwich Islands in 1871, when she was forty. Her letters home to her sister Henrietta have a remarkable freshness and spontaneity, and reveal the transformation of a Victorian invalid into a fearless horsewoman and enthusiastic mountain-climber, who thought nothing of riding for miles soaked with rain and fording terrifyingly swollen rivers. She undertook a thirteen-hour unaccompanied trek to the summit of the extinct volcano of Mauna Kea, revelling in the security with which she was able to travel and camp out without guides or companions. At the end of her stay she was able to make the perilous ascent to the summit of Mauna Loa, the largest volcano in the world, camping for the night on the edge of the crater, at nearly 14,000 feet.
Lore Of The Land: A Guide to England’s Legends, from Spring Heeled Jack to the Witches of Warboys by Jennifer Westwood & Jacqueline Simpson
Where can you find the ‘Devil’s footprints’? What happened at the ‘hangman’s stone’? Did Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, ever really exist? Where was King Arthur laid to rest? Bringing together tales of hauntings, highwaymen, family curses and lovers’ leaps, this magnificent guide will take you on a magical journey through England’s legendary past.
Then We Sailed Away by John Ridgway, Marie Christine Ridgway & Rebecca Ridgway
In October 1993 the Ridgways closed their school of adventure and left their croft on the west coast of Scotland to embark on an 18-month adventure voyage to the Pacific and back in their yacht, the “English Rose VI”. This is the story of one family’s dream to “get away from it all”. It tells how John Ridgway, his wife Marie Christine, their daughter Rebecca and their adopted Quechua Indian daughter Elizabeth decided to weather violent storms, tempestuous arguments and everyday domestic life against a backdrop of not-so-ordinary locations: an Atlantic crossing; the Caribbean; the Panama Canal; the South Sea Islands; South America (including a trip to Peru where Elizabeth has a moving reunion with her family); and Antactica.
I Came, I Saw: An Autobiography by Norman Lewis
With dry, laconic wit, Norman Lewis remembers his transformation from stammering Welsh schoolboy to worldy wise, multilingual sergeant in the Intelligence Corps, on the cusp of becoming a writer. With a calm, observant gaze from the start, the young Norman moves from Spiritualist parents in Enfield to live with supremely dotty aunts in Carmarthen, whose baking of a weekly cake to feed the jackdaws gives the book its title. Escaping his eccentric family by marrying the daughter of a Sicilian associate of the Mafia, Norman made a living as a wedding photographer and by dealing in cameras, while restoring and racing Bugattis for pleasure. Here we see his first journeys in Spain, Cuba and the Yemen and a wartime spent in Algeria, Sicily and Italy, all of which acted as an apprenticeship for his career as one of the twentieth century’s greatest travel writers.
Honey and Dust: Travels in Search of Sweetness by Piers Moore Ede
After being seriously injured in a hit and run, Piers Moore Ede went to work and recuperate on an organic farm in Italy. There he met a beekeeper, Gunter, who showed him, for the first time, the wonders and magic of the beehive. Battling depression and afraid to face the future, Piers finds a renewed sense of purpose through his work with the bees. Up close amongst the highly organised life of a hive, he realises that somehow honey might be the salve that can help him. Back in England Piers, still only in his mid twenties, decides upon a quest to seek the most wondrous honeys in the world. From the terracotta bee jars of the Lebanon to the clay cylinders of Syria, slowly his personal tribulations dwindle into perspective against the backdrop of the fast-shrinking traditions of the honey-farmers. Hunting wild honey from cliffs with Gurung tribesman in Nepal, and in vast jungle trees with Veddah tribesmen in Sri Lanka, Piers draws close to the very origins of life. But honey itself is the real luminary of Honey and Dust – honey, the wonderful invigorating golden manna that Virgil believed was of divine origin. Honey and Dust is about the world’s oldest and purest food. But it also a personal quest of healing, an attempt to regain a sense of place in the world. Meditative, and keenly observa
Into the Heart of Borneo by Redmond O’Hanlon
The story of a 1983 journey to the center of Borneo, which no expedition had attempted since 1926. O’Hanlon, accompanied by friend and poet James Fenton and three native guides brings wit and humor to a dangerous journey.
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron
Byron’s The Road to Oxiana is considered by many modern travel writers to be the first example of great travel writing. It is an account of Byron’s ten-month journey to Persia and Afghanistan in 1933-34 in the company of Christopher Sykes. Byron had previously travelled to widely different places; Mount Athos, India, the Soviet Union, Tibet. However it was in Persia and Afghanistan that he found the subject round which he forged his style of modern travel writing, when he later came to write up his account in Peking, his temporary home.
Writer Paul Fussell wrote in his 1982 book Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between The Wars that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what “Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry.” Travel writer Bruce Chatwin has described the book as “a sacred text, beyond criticism,” and carried his copy “spineless and floodstained” on four journeys through central Asia.
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson
OBERT LOUIS STEVENSON was not only a gifted writer, he was also an indefatigable traveller. His thirst for adventure was formed by his boyhood visits to remote Scottish lighthouses, and he spent much of his life fleeing the rigours of both cold climates and social orthodoxy. Along the way he canoed through Belgium and France, booked passage to and across America, and finally famously settled in Samoa in the South Seas. The walking trip that Stevenson describes in Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879) was taken when the nascent author was still in his twenties and pining for a lost love. Accompanied by Modestine, the eponymous donkey he hired to carry his camping gear, the journey proved both challenging and charming. The book is infused with all of the qualities that make Stevenson the most popular of humour and humanity, poetry and perspicacity, ebullience and intelligence. And his timeless exhortation continues to inspire all true For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake.
An Area of Darkness by V.S. Naipaul
Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man and a deluded American religious seeker. An Area of Darkness also abounds with Naipaul’s strikingly original responses to India’s paralyzing caste system, its apparently serene acceptance of poverty and squalor, and the conflict between its desire for self-determination and its nostalgia for the British raj. The result may be the most elegant and passionate book ever written about the subcontinent.
Monet in the 20th Century by Various
An illustrated examination of Monet’s work between 1900 and 1926, which sets the paintings in a personal as well as an historical context. The authors also assess the artists public persona and his personal and professional strategies. The text is designed to accompany an exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in September 1998.
Tibetan Foothold by Dervla Murphy
Tibetan Foothold is Dervla Murphy’s account of the day-to-day life in an orphanage for Tibetan children in the refugee camps of Northern India in the 1960s. Dervla vividly describes the children’s lives in squalor while a handful of dedicated volunteers do their best to feed and care for them, attempting to keep disease at bay with limited resources. Dervla’s heart-rending account is interwoven with her own observations on the particular cultural and social problems associated with trying to help a people who have lived in isolation from the rest of the world, and she becomes a perceptive witness to the inner realities and sometime inadequacies of aid work.
Leaves from the Fig Tree by Diana Duff
Raised by eccentric grandparents at Annesgrove, an Irish stately home, Diana Duff grew up surrounded by family ghosts, banshees and buried treasure. At 18, Diana entered the glamorous world of 1950s Kenya, becoming a stand-in for Grace Kelly before embarking on a career as a nurse. After marrying a young officer in the Colonial Service, Diana spent her nights shivering and alone, gun in hand, as the Mau Mau rebellion threatened to engulf her. Moving to Tanganyika, Diana went on to found the first inter-racial nursery school in East Africa before a transfer saw the family shifting to South Africa in the 1960s at the height of apartheid.
London is a Forest by Paul Wood
Can a city be a forest? At first glance, this does not chime with our childhood idea of the `wild wood’ – a dark entanglement of trees, where humans fear to tread. But a forest does not need to be dense and impenetrable, and it’s not unheard of for people to live in them either. In London, 8.6 million people are crammed into just 600 square miles alongside 8.3 million trees, and millions upon millions of other plants, insects and animals. According to one UN definition, this makes the city a forest. The Forestry Commission agree, describing London as the world’s largest urban forest. And it’s a very special, urban forest at that. Following a number of trails through the rich diversity of London, this book will look closely at the urban forest, our relationships with it and attitudes towards it and will uncover the fascinating stories and secrets it holds. Through these paths that meander through the urban forest, author Paul Wood explores its geography, its past and future, and looks at the remarkable variety of life supported in this unique metropolitan ecosystem. From the edgelands to the beating heart of the clamorous 21st century megacity, a wealth of arboreal details, history, legend and anecdotes will be revealed along the way. You’ll discover some of the species found here, and the people who have helped to shape this remarkable environment over many centuries. Complementing the trails, Wood will look in more detail at the fascinating stories of some of the iconic, and some of the more hidden species that define the urban forest. These will include familiar tree species like the London Plane, Oaks, Cherries and Hornbeam, alongside the rare Wild Service Tree and the surprising Tree of Heaven. Other inhabitants of the forest such as parakeets, urban foxes and, of course, humans will also be featured.
The Isle of Purbeck in Pen & Ink by Roy Carr
The Isle of Purbeck is a fascinating part of Dorset which is a little paradise and a delight to both local people and visitors. This easy-to-read book is full of all the information needed to offer the reader, or would-be explorer, a feel for an island full of beauty, history, archaeology, architecture, mystery and legend. As armchair reading, it is designed to inspire the wish to discover new places or capture memories and in the field it is an essential companion for a walk. It is especially useful as a guide to new visitors. The book embraces the magnificent Jurassic Coast from its sandy beaches to its cave-ridden limestone and chalk cliffs, broken only by sheltered caves. Inland, the ridges, valleys and rolling heartland offer picturesque views and are a haven for wildlife. Iconic, stone-built villages abound, most with accompanying church and manor house, adding their own characteristics to the surrounding countryside. Many are depicted in over 300 meticulous illustrations and maps for which an explanation is given in hand-written text. The drawings were created from the author’s direct experience of countless walks and thorough investigation of Purbeck over a number of years.
Travels as a Brussels Scout by Nick Middleton
In a modern rendition of the Grand tour of Europe, Nick Middleton set out to seek the truth behind the myths we British like to propagate about our European neighbours….. The Belgians are boring, the French eat nothing but Frogs legs and garlic and the Germans are officious and efficient. He followed a trail of contemporary sights and experiences that every well-rounded Eurocitizen should encounter think of the British and to see how different or alike we all are now that we are linked by a common market.
Uneasy Rider by Mike Bryan
In this offbeat and original road book, cultural observer Mike Bryan takes issue with the traditional idea that the “real” America is to be found somewhere on our scenic backroads. He argues instead that it is right out in the open on the interstates, and he travels the big highways of the Southwest to prove the point.
Bryan engages motel operators, state troopers, and travelling salesmen. He discovers the world’s only “No Smoking” ranch; hobnobs with elusive novelist Cormac McCarthy; spars with Bob Sundown, who prefers his covered wagon to any car. Between encounters, he contemplates everything from America’s pioneering spirit to its history of road building. In the end, he discovers that the interstates, far from producing the homogenous society he feared, nourish a rich community of eccentrics. And that ultimately, as this deeply romantic travelogue shows, there is no such thing as an “ordinary American.”
Quite a lot… This doesn’t include the fiction I have bought or the two or three that I have read but never owned a copy of…
Any here that you’ve read or that take your fancy? Let me know in the comments below.
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