4 out of 5 stars

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

I haven’t seen many owls, mostly because they tend to be fairly elusive and nocturnal. I have heard a few Tawny’s in the woods near home, but never been fortunate to catch sight of one.

But I have been lucky enough to see a handful of barn owls and two short-eared owls that are resident nearby. Atkin is the same, she has been hearing Tawny Owls whilst in her attic room in her house in the Lake District, but hasn’t seen any as yet.

It is thought that Tawny Owls are the most common of owl species, but nobody actually knows as they are so difficult to spot! Then one evening around the solstice, she sees a Tawny Owl. It is a magical time of the year, everything feels like it is turned up to 11, and this was quite a special moment.

In the spring of 2020, the world changed. Lockdown because of the COVID-19 virus meant that we were only permitted outside for exercise for one hour a day. The skies cleared of aircraft, and there were almost no cars on the roads. Nature began to claim back some of the spaces that we had dominated for so long. It was on one of these permitted exercises that she sees another Tawny Owl. It was to become a regular sighting on her and her partner’s walks.

Their walks start to take longer so they can enjoy seeing these birds, they notice the bird songs from others too, downloading an app to help them identify the songs.

Her three tips for seeing owls:

1. 1. Live near them
2. Walk around at different times
3. Pay attention.

They then spot two owlets, one sadly has fallen from a nest box, and they can see the other in the next box as it moves around. They then find a dead owl and she buries it in her garden and then worries as to whether there won’t be another to take over the territory. She needn’t have worried as there is another in the area come the next spring.

It feels like her heart is full of owls.

One of her fears when younger was being afraid of being in the dark. She needed a night light for a long time. She moved to London, and it was never dark there. However, moving to the Lake District was where she learnt to love the dark and all the creatures that inhabit the night.

Atkin is someone who needs space. She can spend time with people, but it takes mental energy that she doesn’t always have. Tawny’s are similar. They come together to raise a brood, but it affects them both and they need to be apart for the rest of the year.

She sees the owlets again. But there are three of them this time. She learns what they can do at that age, and it reminds her of her own limitations with the body that she has. She is often thought of as a night owl, being most lucid between 10 pm and 2 am. She stays in bed until late morning, which can make very early medical appointments a tough call.

As the owlets begin to fledge, they leave the nest book. Atkin has to look very carefully for them now, as they just disappear as they branch hop. It is a learning process, though, and she develops the skills to find other owls in her local area. It can be incredibly frustrating, though, as they are rarely in the same place each time, and that ability to vanish doesn’t help! They are becoming more independent, but will still snuggle together for security. It won’t be long before their parents drive them away to make their own way in the world.

I liked this book a lot. Her previous book concentrated on her chronic illness, but this feels more like a nature diary that has been transformed into narrative prose. The chapters are short and focused, concentrating on a moment that is important to her at that particular time. It reads very differently from other nature memoirs that I feel can be contrived. What comes across in this is her feeling of wonder for these beautiful birds and the empathy she has in wanting them the survive and thrive. Great stuff.

5 out of 5 stars

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

My parents are both from London, my father was born next to a pub in Fulham and my mother was born in the Royal Borough of Kensington. Her mother was a Cockney and all my grandparents lived in London in Putney and the Wandsworth Bridge Road. London has always had a special place in my heart.

I have always loved the names of some of the areas in London, Ladbrook Grove, Perivale, Cricklewood, Cockfosters and of course Burnt Oak.

The Elms family are Londoners through to their very core. He can trace his family back to Fredrick Elms, son of Eliza and father unknown and who was delivered in the Uxbridge Union Workhouse in 1862. Further digging into the roots of his family tree would lead back to Wiltshire. It adds fuel to his theory that as people migrate into London, they settle in the part of the city that faces the part of the country they come from.

His family is a blend of this London Mix along with dashes of Romany and Yiddish. For their sins, they are all almost supporters of QPR…

It just goes to show that all that cockney bollocks about Bow Bells is just that: Londoners are Londoners; choose the streets and they will shape you.

This is a book about memories, and he remembers the significant buildings from his childhood. They have been torn down, and London constantly reinvents itself. Cinemas are now evangelical churches. He almost never went to the theatre. Re recalls those who would do card tricks on the public and would always win. He mentions those dodgy shops that looked like they were selling quality goods, until you opened the plastic bag that they had sold you and realise that it was just crap inside.

London used to be full of secrets. If you lived there, you knew them almost by osmosis. There are less secrets now everything can be found on a search engine, but some can still be found if you know where to look.

He witnessed things that were eye-opening in different parts of the capital and is scared for life after a football exhibition that he went to. I thought that the chapter on travelling around London is great. It also shows just how effective a properly thought-out and subsidised transport system is. It is the lifeblood of this city.

His chapter about food in London is excellent. It brought back so many memories of my childhood food. I even ate in the Won Kei restaurant in Chinatown in my late teens. I remember the waiters being brusk and abrupt, but thankfully don’t remember them waving cleavers at us!

The swirl of different cultures in the city meant that life wasn’t always rosy. He documents some of the wilder moments of city life, including football matches where violence would erupt around him. This was a time where a single moment could become a trigger point and recounts a memory watching a battle between miners and the police; they both paused and separated to let a family pass, before carrying on scrapping again.

London will definitely exhaust you, but you can never exhaust London.

Elms particularly likes London at night. The darkness hides the grime, and the neon lights brighten the place up. He knew, though, that it could be deadly, even though most of the time the nights out were dark and anarchic and feral and fun. AS he reached his teenage years, he discovered music and the sexual awakening that came along with it. The evenings out now are much more expensive and he missed the fug that hung around in the rooms. These places had a lot of character and not a lot of decorum…

Some people never leave London. His aunt Nell died in the same house where she was born 90 years earlier. Those who do find a reason to leave often end up at the coast to gaze at the waves.

Elms thinks that London is the greatest city in the world. He is certain of this as he has lived in Spain for a period and always returned to his home city. Where you live in London is important to Londoners; small distances make for big differences. But where to live when he leaves home, so many options and ironically so few choices. He ends up living with Sade (!!) for a while until fame pulls her away from him.

But what is most evident throughout this book is that London is his home, and it is as much a part of him and his family as they are a part of London.

As much as I love Dorset, London still has a special place in my heart. This book is a love letter to his favourite city, his home city. It is a wonderful book, I loved it. It is full of details of London that only someone who spends 24 hours a day there and has lived their life in this city. I would urge you to get a copy and read this as soon as you can.

I know I am now chasing shadows, know that this wonderous warren is not the shameful, disgraceful, lustrous, lustful place it once was, but then nor am I.
This is my home town. My home, my town.

4 out of 5 stars

I am old enough to have to have grown up in the 1970s and 1980s. I grew up in leafy Surrey and the north then for me was a place that was almost a foreign country. Catherine was growing up in the north, and had all the pressures of life there to contend with and this is her story of her time.

Beginning in 1976, a summer I remember being so very hot and long, it would be the last time she would spend with both her parents at their home in Sheffield. Having parents that had separated and divorced back in those days was really unusual, it would be a while before I would find out that my dad is a divorcee.

I remember the Yorkshire Ripper being a news story at the time. He claimed he was offering a public service by ridding society of certain types of women. He killed at will, with women of any profession, though and was a brutal psychopath. It was horrible but not a threat to a lad growing up in Surrey. For Taylor and her contemporaries, the threat was real, so much so that she wasn’t allowed to walk home alone.

What we did have in common was the spectre of nuclear Armageddon. For me, the fear was real, and as the two super powers jostled for supremacy. I thought I would hear that public announcement, ‘Mine is the last voice you will ever hear’ For Taylor, though, she was seduced by the non-violent protest at Greenham Common by thousands of women. She is an extra in the film Threads, a story about a nuclear strike on Britain, and to be honest, it sounds pretty grim. It horrified the audience that watched it in 1984

This isn’t just a story of the age, though; this is a personal memoir. We read about the relationships that came and went and friendships that deepened. She goes to University and works part-time in a knife factory. She has major health issues that she is convinced she is not going to survive.

Life, thankfully, continued, but she had an unexpected pregnancy. Taylor is going to have to make some difficult decisions. As her degree finishes, she applies for a job in a bookshop. She got the job along with another girl and began work in the travel section, She really wanted to work in fiction where she could put her English degree fully to use. At the end of the trial period, only one of them would be kept on though.

In amongst all of this, there is a tragedy. A friend of hers, Rosa, who she shared a house with, dies, Theo out pouring of grief from friends and family makes for painful reading. Her life is punctuated with the events of the time that I remember, too. Where and when I heard them was a different context to her, but they were equally memorable for me as well.

This is an honest and raw memoir. Taylor had a tough life emotionally, and this is eloquently recounted in this book. It also shows that we all have a story to tell, not just the rich and famous and that these stories need to be heard by everyone. This is well worth reading.

4 out of 5 stars

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

Taking a journey across a country on a well-known or well-travelled road is a classic travel trope. Route 66 in America is one of the famous ones, and a lesser-known one in the UK is the Run To The Sun where lots of people in camper vans head down the A303 in the vain hope that they will find the sun out when they get there.

Taking a road trip around Wales is not something that I even knew about, let alone though possible. But this is the road around Wales is the road that Jones has chosen to ride his scooter along. It is a good choice of road too, it crosses the entire country, winds its way through industrial landscapes, skirts mountains and passes through numerous towns and villages.

Jones thinks that it will be the best way to discover just how is in the 21st century. There is one element of jeopardy though, will his scooter, which he has christened, Gwendoline, make it?

He begins the journey in Cardiff, the capital of the country for almost no time at all. There is a juxtaposition between the shiny new parts of the city and older, more run-down parts near the docks. It doesn’t take much to see the poverty that still exists in certain areas. He ends up taking a photo of a couple celebrating their engagement in Ynysangharad Park at the bandstand for a reason that he isn’t expecting at all!

He moves onto the Rhonda Valley, a place that has changed dramatically. The trees were cleared initially for livestock and industry and the population growth was huge. The residents still there are now being offered free trees to plant in their little bit against climate change. He finds in all the places he travels through that there is lots of community spirit. He does note that in a lot of places, that hope and optimism have often moved on though.

Many places he passes through are a bit jaded and run down and he is often disappointed in little ways. However there are high points of his trip too, watching red kites being fed is spectacular if bloody, and the monument at Aberfan to remember those lost in the disaster leaves him utterly lost for words.

The north of Wales is spectacular and he even runs out of superlatives when describing the scenery. Though trying to look at the countryside whilst riding means he has to try and avoid tractors. However, the thing that gives him an even bigger shock is the price of tea and Welsh Cake! Leaving Snowdonia means that the journey is almost at an end. As the road follows the River Conwy the road twists less as it reaches the coast.

I really liked this, Jones is an engaging writer. While he is Welsh by birth, he has travelled enough around the world to give him an outsider’s perspective on his home country. If you want to read a modern view of this tiny county and the challenges that it faces, then you can’t go wrong with this.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

Even though we call this place Earth, it is like us, around 70% water. The TV programme, Blue Planet was right. Water is a strange substance too, we rely on it utterly for life and we would only last a few days without anything to drink. And yet too much of it can kill us. Science is slowly learning that we water in many more ways, rather than just consuming it. Scientists are learning that being nearby, in, on or even underwater can have remarkable benefits for our health and wellbeing

This is the first time that I had read this book, and what Nichols was writing resonate with me, As well as Woodlands, one of the places that I can feel calm is next to water, be it a gently babbling stream, or sitting by the sea with a bag of chips listening to the waves against the pebbles on West Bay beach. Just bliss. And that is what this book is about, aptly captured in the title of the first chapter, Why Do We Love Water so much?

And why do we?

Nichols sets about to explaining the latest understanding what the effect of being in the presence of water has on our mind and mental health.

Even though the science of the brain has advanced tremendously in the past two decades, we are still metaphorically dipping our toes on the very edge of this ocean of knowledge. We understand a lot, but there are still so many unanswered questions. Even though we don’t understand the processes all the time, they can see the effect that near water has on the brain chemistry and the way that we respond can be monitored.

He details just how the brain senses and understands the colour blue and how it is calming when compared to other colours in the spectrum. Fitting blue lights in Japanese train stations reduced crime and stopped all suicide attempts. Scientists can now measure the amount of catecholamines in the body when immersed in water and have proven that the reduction in this chemical is similar to the amount found during relaxation and stress. There is a small in near Santa Crus which has utilitarian rooms that are right next to the ocean. Artists and others use these to clear the cobwebs from their minds and reset their creative abilities. I particularly liked his use of giving blue marbles away which represent where we live, when you look through it, it feels like you are beneath the water with the light being split, and as a reminder to be grateful for all we have. He has given away one million blue marbles now.

Nichols moves between real-life examples and onto the science as they understand it at the moment. He has an engaging writing style and I understood most of the time what he was talking about, with only the odd moment of misunderstanding on my part. I thought the whole subject of how the mind reacts to water to be endlessly fascinating and the book was full of moments where it really made sense. If you are curious about why we still have an aquatic blue mind, I think that you will find this absorbing too.

Imagine being in charge of and responsible for the biggest country on the planet. You have the ability to obliterate life many times over at short notice. The weight on your shoulders would be immense. Some rise to this challenge. Others don’t.

In all of this daily pressure, Obama wanted to see a daily snapshot from the people that live in the country that he loved. His postroom was under the commands of a lady called Fiona, and between her and her staff, they would deliver him ten letters a day from people from all over America.

These people would write to him for all types of reasons. Some were writing to say thank you for something, some were asking for help and others were expressing an opinion. Others were writing to criticise something about his or his policies. The letters were selected by Fiona to give an unfiltered cross-section of feelings from the American public in each daily selection.

A selection of the letters that he received have been reproduced in this book. There are neatly typed ones on headed paper, hand written notes from children and hurriedly scribbled messages. Some of the letters would be passed to the relevant departments with a note to address that particular issue from the writers or to examine the policy that had caused the angst. They have also included some of the replies that he sent back to the authors.

The author of the book talks to some of those people that were lucky enough to receive a reply from Obama finding out about the wider story that prompted them to write in the first place. She finds out that those who did get a reply treasured them, even some of the cynical Republicans.

I read this book in between the 2024 election and the inauguration of the most recent incumbent to the position, (or should that be encumbrance?) and the difference between the two men could not be more stark. Obama is full of compassion and empathy for his fellow citizens, curious about why they have written and eager to help where he could. Sadly some of those that wrote were beyond his help. It does make for painful reading at times.

Throughout the book, Laskas fills in the gaps, gives details of how the system worked and interviews the team that got those ten letters in front of the president.

I really liked this and it is one of those books that I wish that I had read much earlier, but it got buried in a pile… If you want a reminder of what a president who is there to serve his people is like, then read this.