This is the early stage of a hunt for our favourite nature book – we can all nominate books up until the end of 30 November, and then it will be up to a bunch of learned judges (apparently) to decide on the shortlist of 10 for a public vote in January which is when it gets really interesting.
It might be worth nominating a book but it’s rather unclear how the experts will take any notice of your suggestions! I honestly don’t know how I would pick one book, indeed it would be very difficult to pick 10, and it wouldn’t be much easier to pick 100!
I can imagine I’ll be blogging about the shortlist in the new year.
And, this nomination process ends at the same time as you need to submit any images for the Bird Photographer of the Year contest – see here.
And you have to decide who gets your vote in the Birdwatch votes too – see here.
Busy, busy, busy!
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Simply impossible to choose a single book, I have so many. Sad really.
At least the task is made slightly easier by the restriction to UK based authors but there is still an awful lot of choice, especially as nominations can include fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose, adult and children’s literature. How on earth to judge between ‘the Wind in the Willows’, the poems of John Clare or ‘the Life of the Robin’ – to name but three examples? It will be very intriguing to see what ends up on the short list.
I’m not sure of the value of such things as this. I suppose it may bring a really good nature book to someone’s attention and fire their enthusiasm. Wouldn’t it be useful to have age ranges? One of my favourites, The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner is a fairly dense book all about the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant on the Galapagos finches. It’s not going to appeal to younger readers for which my choice would be The Wind in the Willows.
I’m inclined to agree with Peter Jones. How can you compare Inglorious (an inspirational campaigning tool) to such as Donald Watson’s Hen Harrier monograph?
There ought to be categories perhaps? I’d probably nominate a different book each day for a week and much would depend on frame of mind or mood and whether I was considering fact or fiction.
Silent Spring would be a good candidate but is ineligible. As relevant now as it was back in 1962? What has history taught us ….