Of all the 190 books that I have read in 2022, these are the ones that had covers that I liked the most. They are in no particular order and my favourite is at the bottom.
And here is my favourite
Page 28 of 185
I finished 190 books in 2022, the same as 2021 and many other years previously. I did reach my Good Reads Target again. Here are my stats for the last years reading.
My total pages read was 50636 (29 pages less than last year!) and my monthly average of books was 15.8 again. This broke down into these monthly totals:
January – 18
February – 15
March – 16
April – 15
May – 16
June – 17
July – 18
August – 16
September – 16
October – 16
November – 14
December – 13
Author Splits
Male – 117
Female – 73 38% of the total
BAME – 12 6% of the total
Sources
Review – 78
Library – 82
Own – 30 copies
Genre
Non-Fiction – 156
Fiction – 17
Poetry – 17
Random Stats
Longest Book – Putin People by Catherine Belton – 624 pages
Shortest Book – Garden Bugs by Marianne Taylor, Stephen Message – 12 pages
The total cost of the books read was £3,324.41
Most Read Author
Emma Newman with four books read
Stars Awarded:
5 Stars – 9
4.5 Stars – 12
4 Stars – 82
3.5 Stars – 52
3 Stars – 32
2.5 Stars – 3
2 Stars – 0
1.5 Stars – 0
1 Stars – 0
Genres
I use a spreadsheet to keep a note of the types and genres of books that I read. These are detailed below:
| Natural History | 38 |
| Travel | 26 |
| Poetry | 17 |
| Memoir | 14 |
| History | 14 |
| Science | 9 |
| Fiction | 9 |
| Environmental | 7 |
| Science Fiction | 6 |
| Photography | 5 |
| Books | 4 |
| Mental Health | 4 |
| Social History | 3 |
| Art | 3 |
| Landscape | 3 |
| Language | 2 |
| Fantasy | 2 |
| Folklore | 2 |
| Weather | 2 |
| Miscellaneous | 2 |
| Biography | 2 |
| Gardening | 2 |
| Technology | 2 |
| Economics | 1 |
| Cycling | 1 |
| Military | 1 |
| Britain | 1 |
| Spying | 1 |
| Engineering | 1 |
| Conspiracy Theories | 1 |
| Food | 1 |
| Architecture | 1 |
| Maths | 1 |
| Politics | 1 |
| Dorset | 1 |
Publishers
These are the number of books read by each publisher. Eland were top last year. but only six of the top ten were independent this year
| William Collins | 9 |
| Faber & Faber | 8 |
| Bloomsbury | 8 |
| Gollancz | 6 |
| Eland | 6 |
| Unbound | 5 |
| Elliott & Thompson | 5 |
| Little Toller | 5 |
| Jonathan Cape | 4 |
| Profile Books | 4 |
| Canongate | 4 |
| Picador | 4 |
| John Murray | 4 |
| Quercus | 3 |
| Duckworth | 3 |
| Saraband | 3 |
| Allen Lane | 3 |
| Head of Zeus | 3 |
| Bradt | 3 |
| Riverrun | 3 |
| Summersdale | 3 |
| Pan Macmillan | 2 |
| Hodder & Stoughton | 2 |
| Mudlark | 2 |
| Basic Books | 2 |
| Headline | 2 |
| Michael Joseph | 2 |
| 3 Of Cups Press | 2 |
| Amberley | 2 |
| Birlinn | 2 |
| Aurum | 2 |
| Granta | 2 |
| Simon & Schuster | 2 |
| Lund Humphries | 2 |
| W&N | 2 |
| Fly On The Wall Press | 2 |
| Fum d’Estampa Press | 2 |
| Bantam Press | 1 |
| Welbeck | 1 |
| Mudlark Press | 1 |
| Octopus Books | 1 |
| Sceptre | 1 |
| Thames & Hudson | 1 |
| Longbarrow Press | 1 |
| The Dovecote Press | 1 |
| Reaktion Books | 1 |
| Two Roads | 1 |
| Alien Buddha Press | 1 |
| Vintage | 1 |
| Stonechat Editions | 1 |
| Old Street | 1 |
| WH Allen | 1 |
| Oneworld | 1 |
| Viking | 1 |
| World Editions | 1 |
| Northus Shetland Classics | 1 |
| Yellow Jersey Press | 1 |
| Chatto & Windus | 1 |
| Short Books | 1 |
| Corsair | 1 |
| Halsgrove | 1 |
| Icon Books | 1 |
| Oxford University Press | 1 |
| Welbeck | 1 |
| Harbour Books | 1 |
| September Publishing | 1 |
| Particular Books | 1 |
| 4th Estate | 1 |
| BBC Books | 1 |
| Haus Publishing | 1 |
| Self | 1 |
| Mainstone Press | 1 |
| Melville House | 1 |
| Cassell | 1 |
| Harper Collins | 1 |
| Pelagic Publishing | 1 |
| Dovecote Press | 1 |
| Hutchinson Heinmann | 1 |
| Harvill Secker | 1 |
| Calon Books | 1 |
| Transworld | 1 |
| Rider | 1 |
| Chroma Editions | 1 |
| Daunt Books | 1 |
| UIT Cambridge | 1 |
| Chelsea Green | 1 |
| The History Press | 1 |
| Mitchell Beazley | 1 |
| Ebury | 1 |
| Penguin | 1 |
| GMC Publications | 1 |
| Jonathan Ball | 1 |
| Pan Macmillan | 1 |
| Atlantic Books | 1 |
| Salt | 1 |
| Sandstone Press | 1 |
| Phoenix | 1 |
| Doubleday | 1 |
| Gallery Press | 1 |
Here is my review of my intentions that I laid out last year in italics and how I did underneath them.
Blogging
I have always tended to think of myself as a reader who blogs rather than just a book blogger. This is partly why not every single book that I read gets a review written for it. And in the past year, there have been occasional moments when I have thought about stopping blogging. There have been various reasons for this, partly it sometimes feels like a job, where I think that reading should be a pleasure, secondly that I am not sure if I am having that much of an impact when I see others who have 10,000 plus followers on their various social media platforms. That said, I have been doing this for five years now (in April 2021 and I missed it) so I am going to keep going.
I am still blogging! And I am still going to keep going too. I posted 178 times over the year or almost every other day. So, I am happy with that.
Review Copies
I am grateful for every single review copy that lands on my doormat. Thank you to all publishers and publicists that keep filling my bookshelves. I am sorry that I can never read them as quickly as I would like, hence why I have quite a big backlog. I am going to try not to ask for too many this year, partly because of space issues, but also because it is not fair on them to send me a book and I take waaaay too long to get around to reading it.
I read 78 review books in the end over 2022 which I am really pleased about. Of which 40 were published in that year. However, there were 35 review books published in 2022 that I got sent that I haven’t quite got to yet…
My Own Books
I have a lot of books at home and I mean a lot. Nine bookshelves in total as well as lots of Tsundoku around… I seriously need to make a list of the books that I want to read and pass on to family, friends and donate to the library and start reading them to relieve some of the pressure on my creaking bookshelves. I really need to stop buying books too, but can’t see that happening any time soon… This is something that a fellow blogger, Lisa of Owl Be Sat Reading, (https://owlbesatreading.wordpress.com/) is doing this year, Follow the hashtag #BeatTheBacklog on Twitter to
I didn’t end up taking part in Beat the Backlog in the end. I did read 30 of my own books last year but ended up keeping most of them!!
Library Books
I do have far too many library books out, and I am finding that having a full card means that you don’t get that chance to pick things up at random as there is no room. I would like to get from 100% to around 75% or ideally 50% full on my two library cards
My total number of library books read was 82 in the end. I still have 46 out…
Female and BAME Authors
I have been hovering around the 35% mark of female authors read each year and I am hoping to get to 40% this year. I am aiming to read more by BAME authors too. I have a number at home lined up, but I kept a list from the Observer that I will be picking others from.
My total number of female authors I read was 73 which equates to 39%. I am happy with that. I read 12 BAME authors too which was the target that I set
Poetry
I didn’t manage to read twenty-four poetry books in 2021 so I am aiming to read eighteen poetry books in 2022. If I read more that will be great. I found a copy of A Poem For Every Night Of The Year in a charity shop and I am aiming to read a poem from that every day too.
I did finish the Poem for every night of the year, but didn’t read every day for a variety of reasons. This bought my total of poetry books to 17. One short of my target!
Literary Awards
Last year I was a bit rubbish at reading some of the shortlisted books from my favourite prizes (again). I get too distracted by other books! Would like to have read all the books from the past three or four years on both the Stanford and the Wainwright prizes by the end of 2022.
Wainwright
Stanford
Royal Society
Baillie Gifford
Arthur C Clarke
I would like to read some of the winners from other prizes too, including:
Republic Of Consciousness Prize
Rathbones Folio Prize
Women’s Prize for Fiction
Jhalak Prize
The Portico Prize
Not totally sure how many I read from various prizes this year as I haven’t totted it up (that is another for the spreadsheet next year) but I think it was around twenty books.
Challenges
I quite like book challenges. It is a way of finding new books that you might not have come across before to fit a particular brief. It kind of follows my philosophy of reading widely and reading deeply.
The World From My Armchair Challenge
My ongoing challenge is to read a travel book set in or that passes through every country, sea and ocean in the world. I and about a third of the way through and even though I thought I could complete it in four years, I didn’t. It is not a problem, I am going to keep going with it and if possible I’d like to read another 20 books towards it.
In the end I read six. (pathetic I know) Not as many as I had hoped because the nature challenge (below) was huge.
Nature Challenge
I recently joined a nature book group on Facebook and they are setting a challenge for 2022 to read 45 books that meet particular categories or themes! I have a spreadsheet. The scary thing was that I already have 37 books that meet the challenge
I ended up reading 44 out of 45 books for the challenge. The one I didn’t get to was The Overstory, which is huge!
Read the Decades Challenge
This is for a group that I kind of still run on Good Reads. At the moment, I haven’t got the mental time and energy to keep it going and the other moderators have to a certain extent dropped by the wayside too. But I do set up a challenge each year for the few members that still participate. All this is, is to read a book from each decade from the 2020s going back as far as you like.
Never did this in the end because of family, life and work etc, etc, etc.
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Aiming again to average at least one a month for this. Science fiction is good for expanding the mind and as Terry Pratchett says: Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.
I ended up reading 8 last year. Not as many as I hoped, but more than I expected to. I have a big pile lined up for 2023 though!
Photobooks
I have bought an awful lot of art & photobooks in the past year (some of which are shockingly valuable) and I want to read some of these books next year. Aiming to read at least six.
Ended up reading nine in the end. Still have lots more that I want to read (and have bought)…
Other Bookish Stuff
As I mentioned above, I have a lot of books around the house. Even though I know a lot of what I have read in the past, when I am perusing charity shops and second-hand books shops, I have been known to buy the odd duplicate. Sometimes this is deliberate, it is in better condition or signed etc, etc. Sometimes I do not realise that I already have a copy and then find the earlier purchased copy… So, what I want to do this year is to actually catalogue my books, partly so I know what I have at home, but also, I have an idle curiosity to know just how many books are sharing the house with me. Does anyone use a book cataloguing app that they can recommend?
Did I catalogue all my books so I can tell you exactly how many I have scattered all around the house? No.
The main way that I manage my reading is through Good Reads, but as a backup I use spreadsheets. This is mostly for security, so I don’t lose records of all that I have read and want to read. The way I have configured them means I can extract a lot more data than I get from Good Reads. At present I must have around 30 different spreadsheets that all do different things and what I want to do is start to combine them to get down to about five or so. I have always tried to keep the layouts very similar so I can cut and paste between them easily and that is another thing that needs a little bit of tinkering…
I did make some major amendments to the way I do spreadsheets for managing the process for my reading and that has worked well. I will do a blog post on this in the new year.
Another month passes and this one is always the strangest of them. I had a slower reading month for one reason and another. but did reach my Good reads Target of 190 right on the last day of the year. I knew this would be the case as I was reading two books that had a daily reading. Have got some underway to leap ahead in the new year.
A thank you too, to the few of you that come and read my mutterings and reviews. I know that there are not many of you, but thank you for all your comments and conversations. Anyway, to the books:
Books Read
Remainders Of The Day: More Diaries From The Bookshop, Wigtown – Shaun Bythell – 4 Stars
Once Upon A Tome: The Misadventures Of A Rare Bookseller – Oliver Darkshire – 3.5 Stars
West Cumbria Mining: The Silence Between The Shadows – David Banning – 3.5 Stars
Word Perfect: Etymological Entertainment For Every Day of the Year – Susie Dent – 4 Stars
Swifts and Us: The Life of the Bird that Sleeps in the Sky – Sarah Gibson – 4 Stars
I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain – Anita Sethi – 3.5 Stars
The Wheel of the Year: A Nurturing Guide to Rediscovering Nature’s Seasons and Cycles – Rebecca Beattie – 4 Stars
Ephemeron – Fiona Benson – 3 Stars
A Poem for Every Night of the Year – Allie Esiri – 3 Stars
On Travel and the Journey Through Life – Ed. Barnaby Rogerson – 4 Stars
True North – Gavin Francis – 4 Stars
Book(s) Of The Month
I had two five star books this month. Both are very different and excellent in their own way and I cannot recommend them enough:
The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us – Nick Hayes – 5 Stars
Smelling the Breezes: A Journey through the High Lebanon in 1957 – Ralph Izzard & Molly Izzard – 5 Stars
Top Genres
Natural History – 38
Travel – 26
Poetry – 17
Memoir – 14
History – 14
Science – 9
Fiction – 9
Environmental – 7
Science Fiction – 6
Photography – 5
Top Publishers
William Collins – 9
Faber & Faber – 8
Bloomsbury – 8
Gollancz – 6
Eland – 6
Unbound – 5
Elliott & Thompson – 5
Little Toller – 5
Jonathan Cape – 4
Profile Books – 4
Review Copies Received
Handbook of Mammals of Madagascar – Nick Garbutt
We Saw It All Happen – Julian Bishop
Library Books Checked Out
Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine – Anna Reid
Circles and Tangents: Art In The Shadow Of Cranborne Chase – Vivienne Mary Light
Elegy For A River: Whiskers, Claws And Conservation’s Last, Wild Hope – Tom Moorhouse
We, Robots: Staying Human In The Age Of Big Data – Curtis White
The Golden Mole: And Other Living Treasure – Katherine Rundell
In the Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage – Silvia Vasquez-Lavado
The Women Who Saved the English Countryside – Matthew Kelly
Books Bought
The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors – David George Haskell
The Twelve Birds of Christmas – Stephen Moss
Favourite Middle Eastern Recipes – Pat Chapman
Terminal Zones – Gareth Rees
In the Catacombs: A Summer Among the Dead Poets of West Norwood Cemetery – Chris McCabe
The Old Weird Albion – Justin Hopper
Feral Borough – Meryl Pugh
The Girl Who Forgets How To Walk – Kate Davis
Out For Air – Olly Todd
Nemesis, My Friend: Journeys Through the Turning Times – Jay Griffiths
The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin
Weymouth And Portland At War: Countdown to D-Day – Maureen Attwooll & Denise Harrison
Weymouth: An Illustrated History – Maureen Attwooll & Jack West
Given Ground – Roger Garfitt
Nature’s Child – John Lister-Kaye
Telling the Seasons: Stories, Celebrations and Folklore around the Year – Martin Maudsley
The Valleys – Anthony Stokes
Taste:My Life Through Food – Stanely Tucci
A House by the Shore – Alison Johnson
Turning the Tide on Plastic: How Humanity (And You) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again – Lucy Siegle
Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now—As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It – Craig Taylor
River Diary – Ronald Blythe
How Not to Travel the World: Adventures of a Disaster-Prone Backpacker – Lauren Juliff
The Epic City – Kushanava Choudhury
A Small Place In Italy – Eric Newby
My Early Life – Winston S. Churchill
The Song of Stone – Iain Banks
The Cloudspotters Guide – Gavin Prettor-Pinney
Botanical Folk Tales Of Britain And Ireland – Lisa Schneidau
Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole – Susan Cain
Ancient Monuments and Stone Circles: Photographic Memories – Les Moores
Circles And Standing Stones – Evan Hadingham
Into Iraq – Michael Palin
Wild Light – Angela Harding
Malarkoi – Alex Pheby
Any that you have read>? O take you fancy? Let me know below
Another year dawns and I am starting with a more restrained TBR for January.
Still Reading
The Travel Writing Tribe: Journeys in Search of a Genre – Tim Hannigan
Haunters at the Hearth: Eerie Tales For Christmas Nights – Ed. Tanya Kirk
Gnomon – Nick Harkaway
Review Books
The House of Islam – Ed Husain
The Wonderful Mr Willughby: The First True Ornithologist – Tim Birkhead
Asian Waters: The Struggle Over the South China Sea and the Strategy of Chinese Expansion – Humphrey Hawksley
What Remains?: Life, Death and the Human Art of Undertaking- Rupert Callender
Handbook of Mammals of Madagascar – Nick Garbutt
We Saw It All Happen – Julian Bishop
Millstone Grit – Glyn Huges
Swan: Portrait of a Majestic Bird, from Mythical Meanings to the Modern Day – Dan Keel
The Peckham Experiment – Guy Ware
Dandelions – Thea Lenarduzzi
Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It – Erica Thompson
Other Books
Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses To Rural England’s Colonial Connections – Corinne Fowler
Walking With Nomads – Alice Morrison
Restoring the Wild – Roy Dennis
Challenge Books
The Overstory – Richard Powers
Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide – Bill McGuire
Bloom: From Food to Fuel, the Epic Story of How Algae Can Save Our World – Ruth Kassinger
Science Fiction / Fantasy
Robot Overlords: Robots Never Lie – Mark Stay
The Crow Folk – Mark Stay
Babes In The Wood – Mark Stay
Fiction
The Metal Heart – Caroline Lea
Poetry
England’s Green Zaffar Kunial
Photobooks
England on Fire: A Visual Journey through Albion’s Psychic Landscape Stephen Ellcock& Mat Osman
So there we go, just a few this month. Any that you have read or now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.
These are my reading intentions for next year
Blogging
As I said last year, I have always tended to think of myself as a reader who blogs rather than just a book blogger. This still stands and with everything that has been happening recently in my family life, I want to rediscover the pleasure of reading. It feels like it takes me much longer to review a book than it does to read it, so I have concluded that I am still going to be reviewing books, but am going to scale back on the number that I write. Any book that has been sent to me for review, or that I have requested, I will write a longer review. Others may get a mini-review in the monthly round-up and fiction and poetry may or may not get reviewed at all.
I have a couple of things lined up on the blog for next year, the first is called A Bloggers Reading Journey, where One or two bloggers each month will tell us about some of the key moments in their reading life to date. The other is that I want to write a blog post each month on something that interests me, rather than just concentrate on reviews.
Books
Review Books
I am forever grateful for every single review copy that I receive. Thank you to all the publishers and publicists that make opening a small rectangular parcel a thrill. I am still happy to be sent books, but I am going to scale back the number of books that I request for some of the reasons mentioned above, I take way too long to get around to reading them and I have run out of space! (A perennial problem for book lovers). Aiming this year to work through some of my backlog too.
My Own Books
I have bought a lot of books in the past year and got a couple more bookshelves too. However, this has not reduced the number of Tsundoku… Am I going to stop buying books? Probably not, but I do need to catalogue, sort and reduce the books that I have so I end up with just the books I want to keep.
Library Books
I do have far too many library books checked out, and I am finding that having a full card means that I don’t get that chance to pick things up at random when I visit the library each week, as there is no room. I have got one card down to 75% but I still have lots of reservations! Improved from last year, but still a way to go.
Reading Plans
I am fairly happy with the mix of books that I am reading at the moment. I read a lot of natural history books in 2022 but felt that I didn’t read enough travel writing. So next year I want to read a roughly equal amount of travel books (I have bought a lot of them after all!!). I also want to read more science fiction and fiction, because, hey, why not? I also have some other intentions detailed below, that whilst not set in stone, I would like to achieve. I also want to have more themed reads, so reading three or four books with a common subject matter. For example, I have several books on London and a few now on Venice and Naples.
Female Authors
This year I have read 72 female authors, which equates to 37%. I am going to set my target to 76 female authors, which is 40%. Given the genres of the books that I read, most seem to be male, it is changing but not fast enough.
BAME Authors
I had my target set to 12 last year and I am going to set the same again for 2023. Slowly more BAME authors are being commissioned in the genres that I like reading, but it is sadly too few still.
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Aiming again to average at least one a month for this. Science fiction is good for expanding the mind and as Terry Pratchett says: Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.
Fiction
I don’t read or buy a huge amount of fiction, but I do have a lot around that I have acquired or been sent. This year I am going to make an effort to read at least one fiction book a month. I probably won’t review them, but it depends on the book.
Poetry
I didn’t quite reach 18 poetry books in 2022, but I am going to set the same target again. I have decided that unless I am sent a poetry book to review, I will just be reading these for the pure pleasure of reading.
Photobooks
I have bought an awful lot of art & photobooks in the past year (some of which are shockingly valuable) and I want to read some of these books next year. Aiming to read at least one every month.
Literary Awards
Last year I was a bit better at reading some of the shortlisted books from my favourite prizes (as usual). I did manage to read some from the minor prizes too, but still have a long list of books that I haven’t quite got to read yet… The same list of prizes from last year:
Wainwright
Stanford
Royal Society
Baillie Gifford
Arthur C Clarke
I would like to read some of the winners from other prizes too, including:
Republic Of Consciousness Prize
Rathbones Folio Prize
Women’s Prize for Fiction
Jhalak Prize
The Portico Prize
Challenges
I quite like book challenges. It is a way of finding new books that you might not have come across before to fit a particular brief. It kind of follows my philosophy of reading widely and reading deeply.
The World From My Armchair Challenge
My ongoing challenge is to read a travel book set in or that passes through every country, sea and ocean in the world. I have now read 80 of around 220 of the countries and oceans and would like to get to halfway through next year. It has taken much longer than I thought, for a variety of reasons, but it was always going to be a long-term thing.
Nature Challenge
The group that I am in on Facebook is doing another challenge this year that I will probably take part in. I have just about finished this year, but at 45 books was a bit hard going in amongst everything else. Here is the grid:
20 Books of Summer
This is run by the blogger, Cathy of 746 books. I normally sign up to read 20 books and will do so again next summer. I normally end up reading half the 20 that I pledge to do though.
Other Bookish Stuff
Cataloguing Books
Meant to start doing this in 2022, but never quite got around to it. So inevitably I did end up buying a few duplicates by accident as I can’t always remember what I have bought in the past, so really must do this. I have downloaded a couple of apps now for my phone (Book Catalogue, My Library & LibraryThing) and will have a play around with them. I have been adding to a list on a spreadsheet which has helped.
Spreadsheets
I took the plunge and reconfigured the way I do my spreadsheets last February and have a much-improved format that I now use and I have used it for the past ten months. Generally, it works very well and gives me a consistent way of working and extracting meaningful data. Now, I need to tweak it a bit to make it slightly easier to use. I will do a blog post in 2023 showing what I do with them and how the various parts work.
Bookshelves
I need to sort mine out! I have ten full or partly full around the house and as you can probably guess there are books everywhere and whilst some stuff is sorted into the correct locations, there are other bookshelves that have a random collection of stuff. Again, I will try and do a blog post of the state of them and then hopefully another later in the year, and be able to show a bit of organisation on them!
What are your reading intentions or goals for 2023?
4 out of 5 stars
In the kind of sequel to Eagle Country, Seán Lysaght undertakes many trips into the region around the mountain of Nephin in Mayo. It feels untouched with its wide open areas of rivers and peat bog, but if you know where and how to look, you can see the faint presence of man in the area.
Rather than being there with a particular purpose in mind, he is there to understand the way that the natural world works in this part of Ireland. He is often alone but sometimes is accompanied by friends and his partner as he travels to his favourite parts of the region and discovers new places. He goes looking for his beloved eagles too, on the highlands of the region.
Even though there is a national park there, the whole region is remote. It has a huge variety of habitats, from mires to alpine heath and is populated by otters, badgers and mountain hares. There is an abundance of birds in permanent residence as well as a plethora of summer visitors. It faces the Atlantic Ocean and can be battered by the fierce storms as they roll in over the winter.
I really liked this book for a number of reasons. Lysaght has a gentle way of looking at this part of the world, he is precise in what he spots and writes about, but also takes the time to absorb being there and you feel like you are alongside him on the paths across the landscape. He is curious about almost everything that he comes across and this makes the book much better for it. If you want to read a nature book that is just about the wildness of the place then this is a good place to start.
4 out of 5 stars
A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.
There is nowhere else on this planet that is like Madagascar. Separated from the continent of Africa and the sub-continent of India millions of years ago, the flora and fauna that evolved there, is unique. They have had enormous tortoises, and giant flightless birds in the past and the current animals that live there are equally strange. We are frequent visitors to Jersey and I always love seeing the lemurs that they have at the zoo there, especially the aye-aye.
But how did it get to the point? This is the subject of this book and Alison Richard will take us back aeons in time to describe the geology behind the creation of this place and then onto how the creatures and plants that ended up there evolved in their own unique way to solve the problems of being on that part of the planet at that particular time.
Humans were relatively late arrivals on this island, the first footprints dating back to a mere 10,00 years ago. There are very few sites of these ancient humans, but it is through more will be discovered now the experts know what they are looking for. People arrived from Africa and from across the Indian ocean. They had a small impact, to begin with, but that has changed as the island has reached the modern age.
I thought that this was an interesting book. To call this well-researched would be an understatement, Richard has been going there since the early 1970s and knows it inside out. The place is an anomaly in so many ways and Richard does a great job of conveying just how unusual almost everything is there. It is not written in dry academic tones, rather the prose is very readable and accessible to the general reader. If you want to know about the long history of the fascinating place, this is a good place to start.
I have been through all of the spring 2023 publishers’ catalogues that could lay my hands on (24 so far). I have listed all the books that I really like the look of. The majority on this list are non-fiction, as you have probably come to expect by now, but there is a smattering of fiction, sci-fi and the odd poetry in there.
Abacus
Hidden Valley: Finding freedom in Spain’s deep country – Paul Richardson
Migrants: The Story of Us All – Sam Miller
Follow the Money: How much does Britain cost? – Paul Johnson
Glowing Still: A woman’s life on the road – Sara Wheeler
Edgeland – Sasha Swire
Spies: The epic intelligence war between East and West – Calder Walton
The Crisis Of Democratic Capitalism – Martin Wolf
Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals And The Dream Of A World Without Democracy – Quinn Slobodian
Free And Equal: What Would A Fair Society Look Like? – Daniel Chandler
Twelve Words For Moss: Love, Loss And Moss – Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: A Story Of The Information Age, In Five Parts – Scott J. Shapiro
The Half Known Life – Pico Iyer
The Core Of An Onion – Mark Kurlansky
Operation Chiffon – Peter Taylor
The Book Of Wliding – Isabella Tree
The North Will Rise Again – Alex Niven
The Deadly Balance – Adam Hart
Into The Groove – Jonathan Scott
One Thousand Shades Of Green – Mike Dilger
The Bridleway – Tiffany Francis-Baker
Avocado Anxiety – Louise Grey
Gathering Places – Mary Cowell
Cuddy – Benjamin Myers
Attack Warning Red – Julie McDowall
Being Human – Lewis Dartnell
Shaping the Wild – David Elias
We Are Electric: The New Science Of Our Body’S Electrome – Sally Adee
Grounded: A Journey Into The Landscapes Of Our Ancestors – James Canton
Wolfish: The Stories We Tell About Fear, Ferocity And Freedom – Erica Berry
Why Women Grow: Stories Of Soil, Sisterhood And Survival – Alice Vincent
Beastly: A New History Of Animals And Us – Keggie Carew
The Memory Keeper: A Journey Into The Holocaust To Find My Family – Jackie Kohnstamm
Homelands: The History Of A Friendship – Chitra Ramaswamy
Cacophony Of Bone – Kerri Ní Dochartaigh
Black Ghosts: Encounters With The Africans Changing China – Noo Saro-Wiwa
In Her Nature – Rachel Hewitt
It’s Not About Whiteness, It’s About Wealth: How the Economics of Race Really Work – Remi Adekoya
Wounded Tigris: A river journey through the cradle of civilisation – Leon McCarron
Métropolitain: An Ode to the Paris Métro – Andrew Martin
The Case for Nature – Siddarth Shrikanth
The Possibility of Life – Jaime Green
AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future – Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan
British Woodland: Discover the Secret World of Our Trees – Ray Mears
The Russia Conundrum: How the West Fell For Putin’s Power Gambit – and How to Fix It – Mikhail Khodorkovsky (with Martin Sixsmith)
The Bleeding Tree: A Pathway Through Grief Guided by Forests, Folk Tales and the Ritual Year – Hollie Starling
And Then What? Inside Stories of 21st Century Diplomacy – Catherine Ashton –
The Future Of Geography: How Power And Politics In Space Will Challenge Our World – Tim Marshall
Taking Flight: A Celebration Of The Miraculous Phenomenon Of Flight – Lev Parikian
A Day In the Life Of The Global Economy – Dharshini David
Free to Obey: How The Nazis Invented Modern Management – Johann Chapoutot Tr. Steven Rendall
Enchantment: Reawakening Wonder in an Exhausted Age – Katherine May
Shy – Max Porter
Emotional Ignorance – Dean Burnett
On Being Unreasonable – Kirsty Sedgman
Ten Birds That Changed The World – Stephen Moss
Floodmeadow – Toby Martinez De Las Rivas – Male
We Saw It All Happen – Julian Bishop
The Naming Of Moths – Tracy Fells
In Yellow Evenings – Jordi Larios Tr. Ronald Puppo
Pharmakon – Almudena Sánchez Tr. Katie Whittemore
Spring Rain – Marc Hamer
Stone Will Answer – Beatrice Searle
Head of Zeus
Quantum Radio – A.G. Riddle
The Best of World SF Volume 2 – Various
Alien Worlds: The Secret Life Of Insects – Steve Nicholls
Stuck Monkey: How The Things We Love Are Killing the Environment – James Hamilton-Paterson
The Known Unknowns: The Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos – Lawrence Krauss
The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey – Tim Hannigan
The Vanished Collection – Pauline Baer de Perignon Tr. Natasha Lehrer
Between the Chalk and the Sea – Gail Simmons
The Long View: Why We Need to Transform How the World Sees Time – Richard Fisher
The Queen of Codes – Jacki Ui Chionna
Who Cares – Emily Kenway
The Red Hotel – Alan Philps
Steeple Chasing – Peter Ross
Rivets, Trivets and Galvanised Buckets – Tom Fort
If Nietzsche Were A Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity – Justin Gregg
Defeating The Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail In The Age Of The Strongman – Charles Dunst
Nuts And Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed The World (In A Big Way) – Roma Agrawal
Echolands: A Journey In Search Of Boudica – Duncan Mackay
Hands Of Time: A Watchmaker’S History – Rebecca Struthers
Undercurrent: A Cornish Memoir Of Poverty, Nature And Resilience – Natasha Carthew
The Tidal Year: A Memoir On Grief, Swimming And Sisterhood – Freya Bromley
Plotters: The UK Terrorists Who Failed – Lizzie Dearden
Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World’s First Modern Computer – Kathy Kleiman
How To Fight A War – Mike Martin
Hermit: A memoir of finding freedom in a wild place – Jade Angeles Fitton
Sea Bean: A Beachcomber’s Search for a Magical Charm – Sally Huband
How to Build Impossible Things: Lessons in Life and Carpentry – Mark Ellison
Wise Gals: The Spies Who Built The CIA And Changed The Future Of Espionage – Nathalia Holt
Unravelling The Silk Road: Travels And Textiles In Central Asia – Chris Aslan
The Jay, The Beech And The Limpetshell: Teaching My Kids About Wild Things – Richard Smyth
Across A Waking Land: A 1,000-Mile Walk Through A British Spring – Roger Morgan-Grenville
India Uniform Nine: Secrets From Inside A Covert Customs Unit – Mark Perlstrom And Douglas Wight
Here Comes The Fun: A Year Of Making Merry – Ben Aitken
The Life Cycle: 8,000 Miles In The Andes By Bamboo Bike – Kate Rawles
Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time – Kapka Kassabova
Urban Jungle: Wilding the City – Ben Wilson
One Midsummer’s Day: Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth – Mark Cocker
List to follow!!
What is it that will last?: Land and tidal art of Julie Brook – “Julie Brook, Simon Groom, Alexandra Harris, Kichizaemon XV, Raku Jikinyū and Robert Macfarlane”
Sleeping Beauties: The Mystery Of Dormant Innovations In Nature And Culture – Andreas Wagner
Black Ops And Beaver Bombing: Adventures With Britain’s Wild Mammals – Fiona Mathews And Tim Kendall
The Battle For Thought: Freethinking In The Twenty-First Century – Simon Mccarthy-Jones
Goodbye Eastern Europe: An Intimate history of a Divided Land – Jacob Mikanowski
Chicken Boy: My Life With Hens – Arthur Parkinson
Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us – Jake M. Robinson
Reconnection: Fixing our Broken Relationship with Nature – Miles Richardson
Common Or Garden: Encounters With Britain’S Most Successful Wild Plants – Ken Thompson
Tree Stories – Stefano Mancuso
The Observant Walker: Wild Food, Nature And Hidden Treasures On The Pathways Of Britain – John Wright
George: A Magpie Memoir – Frieda Hughes
Is Maths Real?: & Other Questions That Reveal Mathematics’ Deepest Truths – Eugenia Cheng
The Invention Of Essex: The Making Of An English County – Tim Burrows
My Russia: War Or Peace? – Mikhail Shishkin Tr. Gesche Ipsen
Astray: A History of Wandering – Eluned Summers-Bremner
Travellers Through Time: A Gypsy History – Jeremy Harte
Wind: Nature And Culture – Louise M Pryke
Yew – Fred Hageneder
Red Dog Books
Brittany: Stone Stories – Wendy Mews
The Nature Chronicles – Ed. Kathryn Aalto
Singing Like Larks – Andrew Millham
Two Lights: Walking through Landscapes of Loss and Life – James Roberts
Real Dorset by Jon Woolcott
One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi And The Vanished World Of Jewish Rhodes – Michael Frank And Maira Kalman
Lost In The Lakes: Notes From A 379-Mile Walk In The Lake District – Tom Chesshyre
Blue Machine – Helen Czerski
Mother Tongue: The surprising history of women’s words – Jenni Nuttall
On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe – Caroline Dodds Pennock
It’s back! One of my favourite prizes has just announced its shortlist of books for the award. They have scaled back the number of categories this year, I guess they are feeling the pinch along with everyone else. But I am thrilled that they are still going, even in a lesser form. So here are the books:
The Last Overland – Alex Bescoby
In 1955, Attenborough, then a young TV producer, was approached by six recent university graduates determined to drive the entire length of ‘Eurasia’, from London to Singapore. It was the unclimbed Everest of motoring – many had tried, none had succeeded. Sensing this time might be different, Attenborough gave the expedition enough film reel to cover their attempt. The 19,000-mile journey completed by Tim Slessor and the team captivated a nation emerging from postwar austerity. Tim’s book, The First Overland, soon became the Bible of the overlanding religion. Inspired by the First Overland, Alex made contact with now eighty-six-year-old Tim and together they planned an epic recreation of the original trip, this time from Singapore to London. Their goal was to complete the legendary journey started more than sixty years ago in the original Oxford Land Rover. In awe of the unstoppable Tim, and haunted by his own grandfather’s decline, Alex and his team soon finds themselves battling rough roads, breakdowns and Oxford’s constant leaky roof to discover a world changed for the better – and worse – since the first expedition.
I am really looking forward to reading this. It ticks three boxes for me, travel, Land Rovers and epic adventure. Didn’t realise that it was a C4 series until a friend let me know., and I am going to have to get hold of the first book to read too!
High: A Journey Across the Himalayas Through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and China – Erika Fatland
The Himalayas meander for more than two thousand kilometres through many different countries, from Pakistan to Myanmar via Nepal, India, Tibet and Bhutan, where the world religions of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism are interspersed with ancient shamanic beliefs. Countless languages and vastly different cultures exist in these isolated mountain valleys. Modernity and tradition collide, while the great powers fight for influence.
We have read about climbers and adventurers on their way up Mount Everest, and about travellers on a spiritual quest to remote Buddhist monasteries. Here, however, the focus is on the communities of these Himalayan valleys, those who live and work in this extraordinary region. As Erika Fatland introduces us to the people she meets along her journey, and in particular the women, she takes us on a vivid and dizzying expedition at altitude through incredible landscapes and dramatic, unknown histories. Skilfully weaving together the politics, geography, astrology, theology and ecology of this vast region, she also explores some of the most volatile human conflicts of our times.
With her unique gift for listening, and for storytelling, she has become one of the most exciting travel writers of her generation.
I have her first two books and this was on my TBR already, but I am probably going to buy a copy of this
The Po: An Elegy for Italy’s Longest River – Tobias Jones
A captivating journey along the iconic River Po and through Italian history, society and culture.
The Po is the longest river in Italy, travelling for 652 kilometres from one end of the country to the other. It rises by the French border in the Alps and meanders the width of the entire peninsula to the Adriatic Sea in the east. Flowing next to many of Italy’s most exquisite cities – Ferrara, Mantova, Parma, Cremona, Pavia and Torino – the river is a part of the national psyche, as iconic to Italy as the Thames is to England or the Mississippi to the USA.
For millennia, the Po was a vital trading route and a valuable source of tax revenue, fiercely fought over by rival powers. It was also moat protecting Italy from invaders from the north, from Hannibal to Holy Roman Emperors. It breached its banks so frequently that its floodplain swamps were homes to outlaws and itinerants, to eccentrics and experimental communities. But as humans radically altered the river’s hydrology, those floodplains became important places of major industries and agricultures, the source of bricks, timber, silk, hemp, cement, caviar, mint, flour and risotto rice.
Tobias Jones travels the length of the river against the current, gathering stories of battles, writers, cuisines, entertainers, religious minorities and music. Both an ecological lament and a celebration of the resourcefulness and resilience of the people of the Po, the book opens a window onto a stunning, but now neglected, part of Italy.
I read this back in September and thought it was really good. My review is here
The Slow Road to Tehran – Rebecca Lowe
One woman, one bike and one richly entertaining, perception-altering journey of discovery.
In 2015, as the Syrian War raged and the refugee crisis reached its peak, Rebecca Lowe set off on her bicycle across the Middle East. Driven by a desire to learn more about this troubled region and its relationship with the West, Lowe’s 11,000-kilometre journey took her through Europe to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, the Gulf and finally to Iran.
It was an odyssey through landscapes and history that captured her heart, but also a deeply challenging cycle across mountains, deserts and repressive police states that nearly defeated her. Plagued by punctures and battling temperatures ranging from -6 to 48C, Lowe was rescued frequently by farmers and refugees, villagers and urbanites alike, and relied almost entirely on the kindness and hospitality of locals to complete this living portrait of the modern Middle East.
This is her evocative, deeply researched and often very funny account of her travels – and the people, politics and culture she encountered.
‘Terrifically compelling … bursting with humour, adventure and insight into the rich landscapes and history of the Middle East. Lowe recounts the beauty, kindnesses and complexities of the lands she travels through with an illuminating insight. A wonderful new travel writer.’ Sir Ranulph Fiennes
I thought that this was another really good book when I read it back in July, but I still haven’t typed my notes up into a review as yet! Oops
Crossed Off the Map: Travels in Bolivia – Shafik Meghji
Blending travel writing, history and reportage, Crossed off the Map: Travels in Bolivia journeys from the Andes to the Amazon to explore Bolivia’s turbulent past and contemporary challenges. It tells the story of the country’s profound and unexpected influence on the wider world over the last 500 years – fragments of history largely forgotten beyond its borders. Once home to one of the wealthiest cities on Earth, Bolivia kickstarted globalisation, helped to power Europe’s economic growth and trigger dynastic collapse in China, and played host to everyone from Che Guevara to Butch Cassidy.
The book also explores how ordinary Bolivians in and around the world’s highest city, largest salt flat, richest silver mine and most biodiverse national park are coping with some of the touchstone issues of the 21st century: the climate emergency, populism, mass migration, indigenous rights, national identity, rapid urbanisation, and the ‘war on drugs’.
In its pages, award-winning journalist and travel writer Shafik Meghji illuminates the dramatic landscapes, distinct cultures and diverse peoples of a country that – in the words of one interviewee – ‘was the building block of the modern world, but is now lost in time’.
This looks really good, but haven’t got a copy of this as yet. Might have to buy this one too.
Walking with Nomads – Alice Morrison
Adventurer and TV presenter Alice Morrison takes the reader on three remarkable and inspirational journeys across Morocco, from the Sahara to the Atlas mountains, to reveal the growing challenges faced by our planet.
Accompanied only by three Amazigh Muslim men and their camels, Scottish explorer Alice Morrison set off to find a hidden world. During her journey along the Draa river, she encountered dinosaur footprints and discovered a lost city, as well as what looked like a map of an ancient spaceship, all the while trying to avoid landmines, quicksand and the deadly horned viper.
Few places better illustrate the reality of climate change and the encroachment of the desert than a dried-out riverbed, but this also means a constant search for the next source of water. Meeting other nomads as they travel, Alice also gets to hear a side of their lives few ever access, as the women would never be allowed to speak to men from outside their community. They explain the challenges of giving birth and raising children in the wilderness. As the journey continues, Alice learns to enjoy goat’s trachea sausages, gets a saliva shower from Hamish the camel as he blows out his sex bubble, and shares riddles round the camp fire with her fellow travellers.
Walking with Nomads reveals the transformative richness of the desert and the mountains, providing a total escape from everyday concerns, but it also shows how the ancient world of the nomad is under threat as never before.
I really enjoyed her first book, My 1001 Nights that I reviewed here. I have this from the library and I am going to bump it up my list to read
My Family and Other Enemies: Life and Travels in Croatia’s Hinterland – Mary Novakovich
My Family and Other Enemies is part travelogue, part memoir that dives into the hinterland of Croatia. Mary Novakovich explores her ongoing relationship with the region of Lika in central Croatia, where her parents were born.. ‘Lika is little known to most travellers – apart from Plitvice Lakes National Park and the birthplace of Nikola Tesla’ she says. ‘It’s a region of wild beauty that has been battered by centuries of conflict. Used as a buffer zone between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires for hundreds of years, Lika became a land of war and warriors. And when Yugoslavia started to disintegrate in 1991, it was here where some of the first shots were fired.’
Shipped off to Lika as a child during the supposedly golden years of Tito to stay with relatives she barely knew, Novakovich has been revisiting Croatia ever since, researching the story of her family’s often harrowing life: in 1941 her aunt was the only survivor of Serbs massacred by Croatian fascists; and her mother saved her grandmother from being buried alive when she was thought to be dead from typhus.
Amidst adversity there is resilience and laughter, too, with plenty of light to balance the shade. Eccentric and entertaining characters abound, showing typically sardonic Balkan humour. And, this being the Balkans, much of daily life revolves around food, which features prominently. Throughout, aspects of Croatian history that relate to Lika are woven into the narrative to give the story some much-needed context. And in recounting her own family’s tumultuous history, Novakovich opens up a world that is little known outside the Balkans, telling the stories of people whose experiences weren’t widely reported at the time, when the devastation in Croatia was superseded by the Bosnian conflict and media attention moved elsewhere.
More of a family memoir than strictly travel, Mary’s book is still worth reading for a good insight into the people of Croatia. My review for this is here.
In The Shadow of the Mountain – Silvia Vasquez-Lavado
You don’t conquer a mountain. you surrender to it one step at a time.
Despite a high-flying career, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado knew she was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, and hiding her sexuality from her family, she was repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child.
When her mother called her home to Peru, she knew something finally had to change. It did. Silvia began to climb.
Something about the sheer size of the mountains, the vast emptiness and the nearness of death, woke her up. And then, she took her biggest pain to the biggest mountain: Everest. The ‘Mother of the World’ allows few to reach her summit, but Silvia didn’t go alone. Trekking with her to Base Camp, were five troubled young women on an odyssey that helped each confront their personal trauma, and whose strength and community propelled Silvia forward…
Beautifully written and deeply moving, In the Shadow of the Mountain is a remarkable story of compassion, humility, and strength, inspiring us all to find have faith in our own heroism and resilience.
This has been on my TBR for a while now. My library has a copy which I have ordered now.
Some thoughts
I thought that this is a really good shortlist. There are five women authors this year compared to two on last year’s shortlist. There are also eight books rather than five too. Of the three that I have read so far, Rebecca Lowe’s is my favourite, but I am going to get hold of the others to make a considered opinion. I have been a judge twice on these awards and picking a winner is not always easy, so I am not going to commit to a favourite until I have read them all.
Has anyone else read any of these? If so what did you think of them?
Does anyone fancy forming a little group to shadow-judge these?
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