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Falling Away by David Banning

17/04/2023 / Paul / 0 Comments

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

The narrator, whose name we never learn, first had experience of ‘sleep falling’ back in the 1980s, it was a strange sensation that he had when he was sleeping that he was falling away. It went after a while until one day he was walking high on fells near Wansfell when he had the experience once again. It moved from falling to other hallucinations that then started to invade his reality.

The place he lived in was a bit of a dive, but given how little he can afford, beggars could not be choosers. There was a small gang of youths that used to hand around the bottom of the stairs including someone he called the Chicken Lady. The walls of the flat were paper thin so he was often kept awake by the amorous couple above him. He had decided to quit his job and on the last day drank way too much.

For the Christmas break, he heads down south to Brighton to visit his parents. As he reached the South Downs he has an unnerving experience in the mist. He had never been overly close to his parents, his dad in particular, but they had always got along. But the relationship was changing as his father slowly succumbed to dementia. Now out of work, he starts to drift around, watching the horrors of the modern world unravel around him, poaching free wifi from a building nearby and slowly losing the perception to understand dreams from reality.

He decides to start a new life. He passes the few possessions he doesn’t feel he needs anymore and buys a ticket to the lake district. He switched off his phone and hoped that he could just vanish. It was time to begin a new life…

I liked this, even though reading it I made me feel unsettled too. I have lived through the bigger events in the book, and like the narrator, they discombobulated me a bit at the time. The plot is not hugely strong. It has a mix of nature and psychogeography and it floats along like a feather being buffeted by the breeze and that was part of its charm to me. It had echoes of All The Devils Are Here by David Seabrook. It felt slightly surreal at times and occasionally dreamlike as you lived some of the main character’s life. I don’t know the author very well but we have had a little correspondence, but reading this felt a little autobiographical. I don’t know whether or not he had experienced some or all of these things himself but reading it made me think that he had.

Nomad Century by Gaia Vince

14/04/2023 / Paul / 4 Comments

4 out of 5 stars

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

The science is irrefutable now; we have looming the biggest catastrophe that mankind has faced. Though some still choose to deny it, clinging to the conspiracy theories that abound, that this is merely a blip in the climate of the planet. In the context of the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history, it is no time at all, but the effects will still affect us all.

Last year (2022) parts of the Indian sub-continent reached a shade under 50C and we even saw 47C in Europe. The heat cause wildfires, droughts and flash flooding in other parts of the world. Most importantly it showed us the places where people are not going to be able to live in the very near future.

But what is being done about it? Well sweet FA at the moment…

There is a lot of hot air, ironically, but very little concentrated and focused effort to curb our addiction to fossil fuels and keep that global temperature rise under that critical 1.5C. What is needed is a global effort to manage and mitigate the problems that will be coming our way. One of the biggest is going to be the migration of people fleeing from their homes and looking for somewhere to live.

In this equally fascinating and terrifying book, Vince writes about how human migration and our adaptability are what made us so dominant on this planet. She lays out the reasons why we should see migration as a positive and not a negative and how the influx of people will actually solve a lot more problems that it will cause. There are numerous examples of systems that countries have adopted that have worked and how we can apply those to other countries in the more temperate lands.

This book by Gaia Vince should be essential reading for most politicians. Sadly I can’t see them doing it though, as they are too compromised by the rich and powerful who have a vested interest in keeping the present system. I fear that it will lead to huge conflicts as people are left with no choice in what they had to do to survive.

Whilst I can’t say this was a book that I liked, who can find any cheer in the impending climate doom? It was a book that I thought was really well written and comprehensive in its outlook. The masses of people suffering because they cannot live in the place they were born and being forced to move to the parts of the planet that can support them is going to make for troubled times and we need to have proper plans in place to deal with it.

More Numbers Every Day by Micael Dahlén & Helge Thorbjørnsen

13/04/2023 / Paul / 8 Comments

Welcome to Halfman, Halfbook for my stop on the Blog Tour for More Numbers Every Day by Micael Dahlén & Helge Thorbjørnsen and published by Monoray.

About the Book

How many steps have you done today?
How many emails answered?
How much money have you spent this week
And how many hours have you slept?

Welcome to the numberdemic, where a deluge of figures, stats and data manipulate your every move. From the way you work, date and exercise to the products you buy and the news you read, numbers have worked their way into every part of our lives. But is life better this way? How are all of those numbers affecting us?

With fascinating, sometimes frightening and sometimes shrewdly funny research, behavioural economists Micael Dahlen and Helge Thorbjørnsen explain why we’re so attached to numbers and how we can free ourselves from their tyranny. Along the way, you’ll learn why viral videos, however inaccurate, become more convincing with every view; how numbers can affect the way we physically age, if we let them; why the more films you rate the less impressive you’ll find them and how numbers that ‘anchor’ themselves in your brain can affect the size of your mortgage – plus much more.

Sharp, insightful and totally engaging, MORE. NUMBERS. EVERY. DAY. is your vaccination against a world obsessed with numbers.

About the Authors

Micael Dahlen is Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, with a particular interest in what makes us happy. He is the author of several books and an acclaimed public speaker.

Helge Thorbjørnsen is Professor of Marketing at the Norwegian School of Economics. He is curious about human behaviour and decision-making, particularly when technology is involved.

My Review

Do you remember the days when the only way that you would find out that a restaurant wasn’t that great was if you had been yourself or a close friend had recommended that you avoid it. Now you can google a town and find all the places that you might want to eat at and alongside everyone is a rating that a member of the public has graded it. We naturally gravitate towards those that have a higher rating because that’s where we feel we will have the better experience.

But what if the number that you are seeing isn’t telling the whole truth? Have the glowing five-star reviews been placed by friends of the owner? Have the dreaded one-star ratings been added by rivals with the intention of making their own establishments seem better by comparison?

What is real and what is pure manipulation on the part of the algorithm? Welcome to the numberdemic…

In this entertaining book, Micael Dahlén & Helge Thorbjørnsen talk about how the obsession with numbers for absolutely everything in our lives is beginning to cause problems and how we can be aware of it and make those subtle adjustments to free ourselves from this new tyranny.

Coving all manner of subjects from how the number a sportsman wears can affect his performance, the age when we suddenly feel older, how the number of likes on a social media channel is affecting the mental health of teenagers obsessed with how their image is projected to the wider world. Numbers can affect our health too, from step counting every day, to wanting to beat personal bests each time we run or lift weights and they have sensible suggestions on how to manage your very personal data. They explore just how we can be swayed by numbers in our relationships and experiences, and just how true a number actually is.

I found this book an enlightening experience. The authors have an easygoing and entertaining style of prose, which for me made this hugely complex subject quite accessible rather than diminishing it. And most importantly it made me think about the way that I see this data when I am looking for something specific. I read, rate and review a lot of books, and giving the book that I have just read a mark out of five seems very mean sometimes. When looking at other reviews of books or items that I am going to buy, I have for a long time dismissed the glowing reviews and the ones slating the product as outliers and this book has given me a better insight into how to take the numbers we are presented with. As the quote goes, there are lies, dammed lies and statistics…

Don’t forget to visit the other blogs on the blog tour

Buy this at your local independent bookshop. If you’re not sure where your nearest is then you can find one here

My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Tours for the copy of the book to read.

Pharkamon by Almudena Sánchez Tr. Katie Whittemore

11/04/2023 / Paul / 0 Comments

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

I am generally a fairly pessimistic character, never wanting to see the positive of a situation, always cautious with regards to the possibilities of what might happen. Sometime I think that it is depression, but having read this, I know now that I have never suffered from depression.

In this short book, Almudena Sánchez has chronicled her decent into the pit of depression. Until it arrived in her life she thought it was just a temporary phase that people could snap out of. It turns out that she couldn’t. It consumed her, utterly. So much so that there were points that she wasn’t even able to wash her hair in the shower. The shower head felt like it weight 100kg and she was unable to lift it.

The most poignant description she has of it, is that it is like having a relationship with the dead. How every much you reject them, they always return.

There are parts of this that are utterly grim to read as she frequently stares into the abyss that is her depression. But in amongst these dark clouds are crepuscular rays of light from those friends and medical professionals that were caring for her. It was that and her books that got her through and out of the other side. As you join her all the way through her depression she is lyrical and lucid even though some of it was written during treatment.

I can’t really say that I liked this, some of it is shockingly honest reading. But I hope that her words and description of the tsunami of emotions that she endured may yet help someone else who is living their own hell in their own mind.

My 2023 Reading Intentions – March Update

09/04/2023 / Paul / 2 Comments

Just before the end of each year, I set my intentions (here) on what I want to read and any other book-focused ideas that I want to do for the next coming year. We have just passed a quarter of the way through the year so I thought that I would do a little update. It was also prompted by Rebecca’s post here as she updated us on hers.

I am posting this today as it is my Blog Birthday! It has been running since 9th April 2016!

Blogging

Still blogging and trying to post three times a week at the moment. Minor hiccup the other day when the blog was down for the weekend, and given the response I had from the technical help I will probably migrate away next year

Books

Review Books

I have read 21 review books so far this year and still have four to write reviews for!

My Own Books

I have only read seven of my own books this year, most photo books that I have kept…

Library Books

I have read 26 library books this year and got my total down to 44. Still keep reserving them though…

Reading Plans

Female Authors

I have read 19 female authors so far this year and that equates to 35% of the total.

BAME Authors

I have already reached nine BAME authors! Should achieve my target of twelve by June at this rate.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Have read six SF/F so far this year with a small pile from the library and a number of review copies this is well on target.

Fiction

Have read six fiction so far this year with a small pile from the library and a large number of books that I have bought, this is well on target.

Poetry

I have read seven poetry books this year, helped by the Rathbones prize as they had the whole lot in Poole library

Photobooks

Have read one per month so far. Have managed to pass two on too.

Literary Awards

I have read all of the poetry from the Rathbones prize and a few from the Stanfords, but still have three left to go for the 2023 shortlist, two of which I haven’t got yet.

Challenges

The World From My Armchair Challenge

I have only read one towards this challenge so far, and I still have some amendments to do to my list and I still haven’t written my blog post about it either… Not going well.

Nature Challenge

I have read five out of the twenty-four books in this challenge to date. Really need to read three this month to get on target though!

20 Books of Summer

As I am writing this it is pissing with rain. Not summer yet.

Other Bookish Stuff

Cataloguing Books

Nope. Not started. Have decided to do it on a spreadsheet though as that is my preferred way of managing it.

Spreadsheets

I actually wrote a blog post on how I organise my spreadsheets! It is here. Let me know if you’d like a copy of the template and an example of them, let me know. I am just thinking about the changes that I want to make and other ways to improve them.

Bookshelves

I have bought more books. On Tsunduko now covers the front of one bookshelf…

The Travel Writing Tribe by Tim Hannigan

07/04/2023 / Paul / 4 Comments

4 out of 5 stars

I have always been a reader reading mostly pulp fiction thrillers, what are now considered sci-fi classics such as Asimov and Clarke and various other things that have long since slipped my mind. I have no idea what made me pick it up, but the first travel book that I read was A Year In Provence by Peter Mayle and I loved it.

My next few visits to the library now involved visiting the travel and guidebook sections where I would pick up a book that looked interesting. I read Tom Vernon about him pedalling slowly around France on a bike, Nicholas Crane as he cycled up Kilimanjaro and to the centre of the earth with his brother and life in an Italian Village with Anne Hawes.

I had discovered a new genre and I wanted to explore a whole world from my armchair.

Tim Hannigan had a similar experience to me. He discovered travel writing and it opened a whole world for him too. He wanted to discover more about these books and authors and as I was reading all sorts of books he was exploring the back catalogues of the travel writing canon and discovering the greats, Murphy, Leigh Fermor, Thesiger, Theroux, Thubron and Raban to name but a few. But more than that he wanted to live these adventures, and write his own travel book to put alongside those other authors in his collection. It didn’t happen though, but he did end up writing guidebooks.

Travel writing has fallen out of favour to a certain extent. There are still wonderful places like Stanford’s that stock almost exclusively travel books in their shops and have the Stanford Dolman Award for the best writing and it is a prize I have helped judge twice. I think that he is correct about the way that nature writing is taking over some of the literary landscape that travel writing used to occupy as there is quite an overlap. The Wainwright prize used to be for UK travel and natural history, whereas it is now seen as primarily a nature prize, which I find a shame really.

So where is travel writing going from here? It is a question that Hannigan tries to answer in this book. To seek those answers he meets with a dozen or so different travel writers. Some are from when it was at its height and some of the newer writers and who are finding different paths to follow and write about in the modern world. He poses similar questions to each of these authors that he meets and debates about whether there is a future for travel writing, and if so what that future might be.

I thought this was a fascinating study of one of my favourite genres. I think the days are long gone of the colonial style writer, invariably white, male and public school and Oxbridge educated and it is moving to writers who are more sensitive to other cultures and have a different perspective. It does need to evolve too from that older style and you can see that with the new newer writers who are being published by the few publishers still releasing new travel books. It is an exciting time and I am still going to keep reading it to discover more about this world we live in.

March 2023 Review

04/04/2023 / Paul / 2 Comments

Well, March was a good reading month. I managed to read a total of 18 books in the end, with three of them reaching 4.5 stars. Natural history has just reached the top of my genre chart too, with six, the same as fiction. Faber are top of my publishers list probably because of the poetry. I only bought 29 books too..

Books Read

Taxtopia – The Rebel Accountant – 4 Stars

Another Gulmohar Tree – Aamer Hussein – 2 Stars

Falling Away – David Banning – 3.5 Stars

The Women Who Saved the English Countryside – Matthew Kelly – 3.5 Stars

The Road: A Story of Romans and Ways to the Past – Christopher Hadley – 4 Stars

These Envoys of Beauty – Anna Vaught – 4 Stars

The Last Sunset in the West: Britain’s Vanishing West Coast Orcas – Natalie Sanders – 3.5 Stars

Nightwalking – John Lewis-Stempel – 4 Stars

Cane, Corn & Gully – Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa – 3 Stars

Manorism – Yomi Sode – 3 Stars

Quiet – Victoria Adukwei Bulley – 3.5 Stars

Afropean – Johny Pitts – 4 Stars

In the Shadow of the Mountain – Silvia Vasquez-Lavado – 3.5 Stars

The Travel Writing Tribe – Tim Hannigan – 4 Stars

Extraordinary Clouds – Richard Hamblyn – 3.5 Stars

Book(s) Of The Month

Nomad Century – Gaia Vince – 4.5 Stars

Two Lights – James Roberts – 4.5 Stars

One Place De L’Eglise – Trevor Dolby – 4.5 Stars

Top Genres

Fiction – 6

Natural History – 6

Poetry – 6

History – 5

Travel – 4

Memoir – 3

Fantasy – 3

Science Fiction – 3

Photography – 2

Environmental – 2

Top Publishers

Faber & Faber – 4

Simon & Schuster – 3

Particular Books – 2

Allen Lane – 2

Little Toller – 2

William Collins – 2

Monoray – 2

Summersdale – 1

Sandstone Press – 1

Fum D’Estamps Press – 1

Review Copies Received

The Possibility of Life: Searching for Kinship in the Cosmos – Jaime Green

Once Upon a Raven’s Nest: A Life On Exmoor In An Epoch Of Change – Catrina Davies

Shaping the Wild: Wisdom from a Welsh Hill Farm – David Elias

Cry of the Wild: Tales Of Sea, Woods and Hill – Charles Foster

In Sardinia: An Unexpected Journey in Italy – Jeff Biggers

Minor Monuments – Ian Maleney

Library Books Checked Out

The Lost Rainforests Of Britain – Guy Shrubsole

One Thousand Shades Of Green: A Year In Search Of Britain’s Wild Plants – Mike Dilger

Spring Rain – Marc Hamer

Between The Chalk And The Sea: A Journey On Foot Into The Past – Gail Simmons

Am I Normal?: The 200-year Search For Normal People (And Why They Don’t Exist) – Sarah Chaney

Ten Birds That Changed The World – Stephen Moss

Sarn Helen: A Journey Through Wales, Past, Present and Future – Tom Bullough

Books Bought

Better Than Fiction: True Travel Tales from Great Fiction Writers – Ed. Don George

Walking With Plato: A Philosophical Hike Through the British Isles – Gary Hayden

Almost French: A New Life in Paris – Sarah Turnbull

Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire – Simon Winchester

Best of Lonely Planet Travel Writing – Ed. Tony Wheeler

The Last Overland: Singapore to London: The Return Journey Of The Iconic Land Rover Expedition – Alex Bescoby (signed)

Travels With Epicurus: Meditations from a Greek Island on the Pleasures of Old Age – Daniel Klein

A Rose for Winter – Laurie Lee

Prehistoric Britain from the Air – Janet & Colin Bord

Spain – Jan Morris

Three Rivers Of France: Dordogne, Lot, Tarn – Freda White

Italian Journeys – Jonathan Keates

From Source to Sea: Notes from Walking 215 Miles Along the River Thames – Tom Chesshyre

Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth – J.R.R. Tolkien

Poets of the Great War: Edward Thomas – Edward Thomas

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals – Oliver Burkeman

Jumping Ships: The Global Misadventures of a Cargo Ship Apprentice – David Baboulene

Prehistoric Dorset – John Gale

Fresh Woods Pastures New – Ian Niall

The Cuckoo in June: Tales of a Sussex Orchard – David Atkins

Mysterious Britain: Ancient Secrets of the United Kingdom and Ireland – Janet & Colin Bord

Ley Lines: Their Nature and Properties : A Dowser’s Investigation – J. Havelock Fidler

Human kind: A Hopeful History – Rutger Bregman

Period Piece – Gwen Raverat

Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change – Jared Diamond

Green and Pleasant Land: Best-Loved Poems of the British Countryside – Ana Sampson

The Lost Whale – Hannah Gold (signed)

Time Junction – Helen Solomon (signed)

Wild Embers: Poems of Rebellion, Fire and Beauty – Nikita Gill

Any from that huge list that take you fancy, let me know in the comments below

April 2023 TBR

03/04/2023 / Paul / 2 Comments

Tiny bit late posting this! Sorry. Here is the list of books for my April TBR that I hope to make serious inroads into. We’ll see…

Still Reading

Notes from the Cévennes: Half a Lifetime in Provincial France Adam Thorpe

One Place De L’Eglise: A Year Or Two In A French Village Trevor Dolby

Blog Tour

More Numbers Every Day: How Data, Stats, and Figures Control Our Lives and How to Set Ourselves Free Micael Dahlén & Helge Thorbjørnsen

Review Books

Isles at the Edge of the Sea Jonny Muir

The Wonderful Mr Willughby: The First True Ornithologist Tim Birkhead

The House of Islam Ed Husain

Three Women of Herat: Afghanistan 1973-77 Veronica Doubleday

Polling UnPacked: The History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls Mark Pack

On the Scent: Unlocking The Mysteries Of Smell – And How Losing It Can Change Our World Paola Totaro and Robert Wainwright

The Serpent Coiled in Naples Marius Kociejowski

Swan: Portrait of a Majestic Bird, from Mythical Meanings to the Modern Day Dan Keel

Seining Along Chesil: Voices From A Dorset Fishing Community Sarah Acton

Handbook of Mammals of Madagascar Hardcover Nick Garbutt

RSPB Handbook of Garden Wildlife: 3rd edition Peter Holden & Geoffrey Abbott

Falling Away David Banning

The Angel Of Santa Sofia Josep M. Argemí Tr. Tiago Miller

Reconnection: Fixing our Broken Relationship with Nature Miles Richardson

One Fine Day: A Journey Through English Time Ian Marchant

Coast of Teeth: Travels to English Seaside Towns in an Age of Anxietyy Tom Sykes

The Possibility of Life: Searching for Kinship in the Cosmos Jaime Green

Once Upon a Raven’s Nest: A Life On Exmoor In An Epoch Of Change Catrina Davies

Shaping the Wild: Wisdom from a Welsh Hill Farm David Elias

Other Books

The Last Overland: Singapore to London: The Return Journey Of The Iconic Land Rover Expedition Alex Bescoby

A Walk in the Park: The Life and Times of a People’s Institution Travis Elborough

Wanderers: A History of Women Walking Kerri Andrews

Far From The Light Tade Thompson

The Lost Rainforests Of Britain Guy Shrubsole

The Treeline: The Last Forest And The Future Of Life On Earth Ben Rawlence

Iconicon: A Journey Around The Landmark Buildings Of Contemporary Britain John Grindrod

Rosewater Tade Thompson

Challenge Books

The Overstory Richard Powers

Bloom: From Food to Fuel, the Epic Story of How Algae Can Save Our World Ruth Kassinger

Poetry

The Catch Fiona Sampson

Photobooks

Hide and Seek: The Architecture of Cabins and Hideouts Sofia Borges, Sven Ehmann & Di Ozesanmuseum Bamberg

The intention of shorter TBRs seems to have gone! I read 18 in March so Would like to do the same again in April.

Any that you’ve read or that take your fancy let me know in the comments below.

Taxtopia by The Rebel Accountant

31/03/2023 / Paul / 4 Comments

Welcome to Halfman, Halfbook for my stop on the Blog Tour for Taxtopia by The Rebel Accountant and published by Monoray.

About the Book

The Rebel Accountant has broken ranks to share his journey from clueless naïf to skilled tax consultant – and in doing so blows the lid on the murky world of making the tax burdens of the ultra-wealthy disappear. In the topsy-turvy world of tax avoidance, you can get richer by buying a yacht, the world’s biggest exporter of coffee is Switzerland, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump and the Duke of Westminster often pay less tax than you do.
Written with sharp wit and over-brimming with inside secrets, the anonymous author shows us that not only does the global tax system encourage dubious practice which favours the rich, but that it was specifically founded with that in mind.
If you suspect that tax is a rigged game, a con, designed to fleece the little guy, you are about to find out just how shockingly true that really is.

About the Author

No one knows the true identity of THE REBEL ACCOUNTANT… But we do know he’s a chartered tax advisor who has worked widely behind the scenes in London and Australia, everywhere from major accountancy firms to tiny start-ups. He chose his career because he loves to be creative.

My Review

Tax is one of those things that I have paid since I started working many many years ago. Every month without fail the PAYE pops its head up and snaffles a chuck of the money that I have earnt that month. I am not unhappy about it, it has after all paid for my three children to be educated at minimal cost to me, pays for the roads that I drive on and paid for the ongoing treatment that Sarah has had for cancer.

It is something that I am happy to pay for as I know that it has wider benefits for society as well as myself. There are a number of people though who want to enjoy similar benefits as I do. These people are often wealthy and regardless of the way that they have accumulated their money, do not want to be encumbered with taxation. If they are in that tiny group of people who are so mind-bogglingly rich that they are often very reluctant to part with any of their money at all.

The Rebel Accountant has been one of the professionals who has helped this class of people evade and avoid anything that looks like a tax. So much so that someone with vast sums can often pay much less tax than you do in a year. They do this in several ways, firstly by employing clever people to find the loopholes that in the extremely complex tax systems, secondly but just not bothering and most infuriatingly, they gamed the systems to ensure that the people who have to pay taxes are you and me and not them.

I think that was his intention for those reading this book to be made very angry. And having read it I can confirm that it does. The entire taxation system is utterly broken and it isn’t helped by the endemic corruption of our political system that helps those with money get more and keep more. This will be at the expense of our society too if steps are not taken to address it. Even given the subject matter, it is quite an entertaining read; he is that rarest of people, an accountant with a bone-dry sense of humour. There was never a point when he ventured into the arcane depth of tax law, rather it was kept at a level that almost everyone would be able to understand. Don’t read this and weep, read this and start to put pressure on our political leaders.

Don’t forget to visit the other blogs on the blog tour

Buy this at your local independent bookshop. If you’re not sure where your nearest is then you can find one here

My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Tours for the copy of the book to read.

These Envoys of Beauty by Anna Vaught

30/03/2023 / Paul / 7 Comments

Welcome to Halfman, Halfbook for my stop on the Blog Tour for These Envoys of Beauty by Anna Vaught and published by Reflex Press.

About the Book

These Envoys of Beauty is writing straight from the heart. Over twelve essays, Anna Vaught uses her relationship with the natural world to explore themes of loneliness, depression, and complex and sustained trauma within the family home, issues that shaped her early life and continue to have a far-reaching impact decades later.

Vaught writes about how she oriented herself to the natural world and lived within it while growing up in a rural home; about wishing trees, talking streams, and her early knowledge of plants, animals, and botanical names; about her passionate relationship, even when very young, with foraging and what was edible, how things smelled, licking the rain from leaves, drinking, growing, and cooking. She writes about how nature fed and feeds her imagination, and how it gave her hope of something different beyond the world she experienced as a child and young person.

About the Author

Anna Vaught is an English teacher, young people’s mentor, Creative Writing teacher and author of several books, including 2020’s novel Saving Lucia (Bluemoose) and short fiction collection, Famished (Influx).

Her shorter and multi-genre works are widely published in journals, magazines, anthologies and the national press. She has been a Bookseller columnist and still writes regularly for them, while she is currently a columnist for Mslexia. Her second short fiction collection, Ravished, was published by Reflex Press in 2022, and 2023 will see four books: memoir, These Envoys of Beauty (Reflex Press), new novel The Zebra and Lord Jones (Renard. UK and commonwealth; Zebra is currently on US submission), plus The Alchemy, her first book about writing.

Saving Lucia will be published in Italian by Milan’s 8tto edizioni as Bang Bang Mussolini. She is a guest university lecturer, tutor for Jericho Writers, super-nerd, volunteer with young people, mental health campaigner and has recently established the new #Curae prize for writer-carers with industry-wide support. She works alongside chronic illness and is a passionate campaigner for mental health provision, including in the publishing industry.

My Review

Slowly people are learning to reconnect with nature. Whether it is forest bathing, meditation or wild swimming, it has helped numerous people deal with the stresses and strains f modern life. For some people that connection has been a lifeline for almost all of their lives. Anna Vaught is one of those who have sought comfort in the world around her away from a horrid childhood and parents that barely loved her.

To have depression is, in my experience, to experience things through a glass darkly

In these twelve short essays, she takes us back from some of the trauma that she suffered as and child and into adulthood, and the methods and techniques and places that she used in trying to heal herself and her mind. She coped with all that that happening by examining in almost forensic detail the world around her, discovering that gorse flowers taste of coconut, smelling the spicy scent of a cowslip as she lies alongside it and burying her head in violets trying to shut away the world.

What you do not know until you grow up a bit more is that the world is full of weirdos like you: water lovers, chuggers in the mud, wailers in the field where the cows have been. That is an encouraging thought

Vaught is honest and open in her writing and this means that this is not the easiest book to read, but it is so worthwhile. There are lots of painful memories in here; it is bad enough reading about them, let alone imagining what it must be like to live through what she did. But there is also hope in here; each chapter is an exploration of her emotions and feeling as well as outlines on how she coped and got through it all. Might not be for everyone, but for those looking for a glimmer of light in a bleak place, this book may have some of the answers that you need.

I never wanted the answers: I wanted questions so big that you could not possibly find answers

Don’t forget to visit the other blogs on the blog tour