3.5 out of 5 stars

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

I have a bucket but have never bothered with a bucket list. If I were to have one though, seeing orcas would be fairly high up on it. I had always thought of them as exotic creatures. To find them you would have to locate them on the pacific coast of America or head to the very stormy southern ocean. Turns out we have a pod of Orca just off the coast of West Scotland.

Dr. Natalie Saunders first came across them when she joined the crew of the HV Silurian in the hope of spotting these magnificent creatures for the purposes of study. There are about 50,000 of these animals left in the oceans and they are under threat continually from man. There are more than one species of orca and each region has a particular speciality in behaviour and diet.

The west coast pod is tiny compared to some of the other pods around the world. There are only 8 individuals left now and from what scientists can gather, they don’t seem to be producing any calves. But for how much longer is one of the things that we do not know. It is most likely they will go extinct in the area in the coming years.

The book is split into two sections, the first covers detail on each of the individual orca that makes up this pod, including some that are known to have died or have not been seen for a long time. The second section is Saunders’s account and diary of her 2014 trip where she first came across them

If you want to know a bit more about the orca then this is a good place to start. It is informative and well written and full of fascinating details. I did have a few minor issues with it though. Firstly, I didn’t think it went into as much depth as I would have liked, I know some of that is because studying these is not easy and that anything learnt is a reminder that we know so little. Secondly, I felt there could have been more on what we could do with regard to helping them, consumer and political pressure can change things after all. That said, I still liked this book, and if you are intrigued about these creatures then this is a good place to start.

4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Screens dominate our lives these days. A tiny beep and we are picking up these tiny miracles of modern technology and seeing why it needs our attention this time. This draw of the bright LED lights is steadily diminishing our attention span and ability to pay attention to the things that surround us.

Dawn moves at about 1000 miles an hour across the land at the equator and slows the closer you get to the poles. Knowing when the light would fade and when it would return the following day was hugely important to people. I have a thing for sunsets. If the sky looks good then I head out to a favourite spot to watch the sun disappear over the horizon. I find it a magical time.

There is something about the twilight that allows the past to slip into view more clearly, the way that this day has slipped over the horizon with its tail still visible.

James Roberts will head out to his garden in the summer at 4 am to watch the stars fade as the sun begins to rise. As the light increases, the birds begin to wake, singing to celebrate the dawn, rooks launching into the air to survive another day. He needs those few minutes in the morning or evening each day for his own internal daily reset.

The book is full of his keen observations of the world around him, whether he is searching for curlews at dusk, walking across a field as the building storm turns the sky to hammered lead. He sits in the boughs of an old yew watching the sun melt the frost away or seeing a raven and a peregrine spar. Aside from these observations, are his thoughts on his family and the challenges that he has to deal with recently and he thoughts on the bleak outlook for the wildlife of his local patch.

Stories twist and turn like memories. They sometimes shift places or bubble out of nowhere.

This is two books deftly blended into one, Firstly it is a look back at his past as he recounts how he discovered the abundance of wildlife on one of his first trips abroad and the pain he feels in not being able to see that same abundance in his home country of Wales. The second half is his reflections on his life at the time he was writing this and as his wife goes through cancer treatment. He is open and vulnerable about his feelings all the way through that I felt that I was reading his very personal diaries. Roberts has such a way with words and this is such a beautifully written book.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.