Thanks to Ian Carter, this blog has reviewed more books than ever in 2017 – I think there were 37 in all.

For a change I have simply chosen my favourite three books of the year here. A favourite book is a very personal choice.  These then are my personal choices but I have expanded on my reasons for choosing them below.

Let’s do them in reverse order….

 

….drum roll…

 

Third choice

 

Flight Lines by Mike Toms – see review here

 

Well written, beautifully illustrated and cleanly designed.

This is a book of which to be proud if you have had anything to do with its production.

 

 

Flight Lines: tracking the wonders of bird migration by Mike Toms is published by the BTO.

Second choice

 

The Butterflies of Sussex: a twenty-first century atlas by Michael Blencowe and Neil Hulme – see review here

Although it looks like a county butterfly atlas this book is far more than that. It has fantastic photographs and a text which is full of information about butterfly behaviour and ecology.

A quite superb book – and a notch above county bird atlases.

 

The Butterflies of Sussex: a twenty-first century atlas by Michael Blencowe and Neil Hulme is published by Pisces Publications (which is an imprint of Nature Bureau).

 

 

 

 

 

 

and…

 

…bigger drum roll…

 

 

 

Book of the Year

Sky Dancer by Gill Lewis – see review here

A book about a subject close to my heart, but that’s not why I chose it.

Gill Lewis writes beautifully and often about ecological subjects, of which this is clearly one.  In this book for young people, she weaves an interesting story, with believable characters around the subject of raptor persecution.  This book will reach many young people and inform them about the issues in our hills.  If our generation hasn’t sorted these issues out, then this book will help equip another generation to take on the task.

 

Sky Dancer by Gill Lewis is published by OUP

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