I have reviewed 52 books on this blog this year – a wide-ranging varied selection including many high quality works. If you are looking for a Christmas present for a nature-loving naturalist then this list might give you some ideas and I’ve whittled it down to a shortlist of 10 books that most impressed me before plumping for the best, just in my opinion, of them all. Here is the full list in alphabetical order by author, with links to my reviews:
Ponds, Pools and Puddles by Jeremy Biggs and Penny Williams – review
Change Everything by Natalie Bennett – review
The Last Crow by Bob Berzins – review
The Little Book of Fungi by Britt A. Bunyard – review
Seabirds Count by Daisy Burnell et al. – review
Cuckoo by Cynthia Chris – review
Birds of Louth by John Clarkson and Phil Espin – review
The Tree Atlas by Matthew Collins with Thomas Rutter – review
Nature Notes by Tim Deane – review
The Volunteers by Carol Donaldson – review
The Little Book of Beetles by Arthur V. Evans – review
Landscape Change in the Scottish Highlands by James Fenton – review
Search for the Shadow Wolf by Derek Gow – review
Bird Day by Mark E. Hauber – review
Wild Service edited by Nick Hayes and John Moses – review
Legacy by Dieter Helm – review
Enjoying Birdwatching in Cumbria and Lancashire by David Hindle – review
Purposeful Birdwatching by Rob Hume – review
Local by Alastair Humphreys – review
Cairn by Kathleen Jamie – review
The Mushroom Guide and Identifier by Peter Jordon and Neville Kilkenny MacDonald Lockhart – review
The Good Slug Guide by Jo Kirby – review
Another England by Caroline Lucas – review
Groundbreakers by Chantal Lyons – review
Stoats, Weasels, Martens and Polecats by Jenny Macpherson – review
The Flitting by Ben Masters – review
England’s Green by David Matless – review
The Return of the Grey Partridge by Roger Morgan-Grenville and Edward Norfolk – review
Natural Causes by Stephen Mills – review
The Tories – a tragedy by Henry Morris – review
The Migration Ecology of Birds (2nd edition) by Ian Newton – review
Birds and Flowers by Jeff Ollerton – review
Chris Packham’s Birdwatching Guide – review
The Last of its Kind by Gisli Palsson – review
Great Misconceptions edited by Ian Parsons – review
The Little Book of Spiders by Simon D. Pollard – review
Protected Species and Biodiversity by Tim Reed – review
The Vanishing Mew Gull by Ray Reedman – review
Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie – review
Robin Prytherch A Life with Buzzards by Lyndon Roberts – review
What the Wild Sea Can Be by Helen Scales – review
The Lie of the Land by Guy Shrubsole – review
The Little Book of Trees by Herman Shugart and Peter White – review
The Small Game Hunter by Peter Smithers – review
Solvable by Susan Solomon – review
The Little Book of Butterflies by Andrei and Alexandra Sourakov – review
The Peregrine Thief by Alan Stewart – review
Wetland Diaries by Ajay Tegala – review
Wild Shetland by Brydon Thomason – review
The Joy of Birdwatching by various authors – review
Under the Changing Skies by various Guardian authors – review
Nature’s Ghosts by Sophie Yeo – review
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Shortlist for my Book of the Year 2024
I have picked my book of the year, but I’ll reveal that right at the end of this post.
Is it even sensible to pick books of the year? If you have been waiting for a small book packed with interesting facts about spiders, an account of the birds in a small part of Lincolnshire or a guide to how the planning system treats wildlife then the books that deal with those topics may be, far and away, your books of 2024.
And I haven’t read every ‘nature’ book going. thee are a lot of them about. Stephen Moss’s list and mine overlap but not hugely!
I read and review books that I am sent and ones I buy. If I haven’t reviewed your book this year then that is because your publisher didn’t send it to me, or I turned down the offer to receive it, and I didn’t go out and buy a copy because I had plenty on my plate. There are a few books which I wish I had been sent but wasn’t.
I’ve reviewed many books published by smaller publishers as well as many from the big outfits. There are plenty of very fine books published by smaller firms and some poor books published by the larger ones. I’ve also reviewed a few books published outside the UK.
At this time of year I look back on the books I’ve read and try to judge them by their impacts on me – was I interested, challenged, informed? Very clearly, that makes these choices personal ones because what I find interesting you may not, and what I find challenging may seem commonplace to you.
Here, though, are my top 10 books of the year (still in alphabetical order by author) so my Book of 2024 is one of these;
- Search for the Shadow Wolf by Derek Gow – review (The author’s best book so far – how wolves have been a part of our culture and history even though they are no more found alive in this land)
- Legacy by Dieter Helm – review (How to live sustainably – a top economist lays it on the line)
- Purposeful Birdwatching by Rob Hume – review (Give birdwatching a bit of thought and it is all the more enjoyable)
- Local by Alastair Humphreys – review (There is plenty of interest within a cycle ride of your home)
- The Good Slug Guide by Jo Kirby – review (How you will reduce their impacts but never get rid of them completely)
- Groundbreakers by Chantal Lyons – review (As much about our species as about Wild Boar and a deserved winner of the British Ecological Society Marsh Award Ecology Book of 2024 (announced 29 November))
- The Flitting by Ben Masters – review (A son discovers an interest in butterflies as his butterfly-keen father is dying)
- The Return of the Grey Partridge by Roger Morgan-Grenville and Edward Norfolk – review (A project on the South Downs which has created a wild Grey Partridge shoot)
- The Lie of the Land by Guy Shrubsole – review (A fine exploration of some of the issues over land ownership and custodianship)
- Nature’s Ghosts by Sophie Yeo – review (hauntingly well written)
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Covers?
I’ve rated all of the reviewed books’ covers as well. Although you can’t judge a book wholly by its cover (or its title) you can expect to see something that tells you about the book that lies between the covers. I’m looking for a cover that is attractive (or if not, then striking) and which informs (it would be odd for a cover to be full of birds if the pages are not) and which in some way captures the tone and mood of the writing. That isn’t easy to do – and it must be easier for some books than others.
Authors rarely have a great deal of say over the covers of their books so here we are looking at the decisions of the publisher.
The default score that I have given covers this year is 7/10 which sends, I hope, the signal that most book covers are attractive and do the job of giving an impression of the contents fairly well. There are only seven books with lower scores and another 25 with higher ones which reinforces that impression.
My bugbear with book covers is when they approach being advertising hoardings with somewhat meaningless few-word recommendations from people of whom we are supposed to have heard. The place for recommendations, preferably several-word ones which might be intelligible, is the back cover. Many a fine cover is wrecked by these quotes.
Here are three examples of covers from my top 10 books of the year which scored 10/10, 7/10 and 4/10 respectively.
Search for the Shadow Wolf:
This is the only cover to which I gave 10/10. I think it’s superb (and the book is very good too). If I saw it in a bookshop (remember bookshops?) I’d pick up the book. But even this book has three one-word recommendations, thankfully small, littering its otherwise beautiful cover. I’d give it 9.85/10 but it is the best, cleverest, most beautiful cover of the year.
Nature’s Ghosts:
The title is intriguing, and makes complete sense once you’ve read this cracking book but it needs the subtitle, clearly shown here, to reassure you that this is about nature. The cover is clean with a tasteful and somewhat ghostly colour-scheme. Even the two quotes are more informative than usual though the badge of being longlisted for the Wainwright Prize is a blot on the cover. I gave it 7/10.
The Lie of the Land:
A very fine book which was, for what it’s worth, runner up in my list of books this year. A cracking read once you get past this butchered cover which has too many words, from too many people, in too many colours, in too many sizes, of too little relevance and which simply destroy the underlying very beautiful image. My review says ‘One could almost decide that the cover was wittily allegorical and a comment on the triumph of the profit motive over natural beauty.‘. I gave this cover a mark of 4/10.
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Previous Books of the Year on this blog
This year’s chosen Book of the Year joins these past selections;
2023 Traffication by Paul Donald – review
and Cry of the Wild by Charles Foster – review
2022 In Search of One Last Song by Patrick Galbraith – review
2021 The Implausible Rewilding of the Pyrenees by Steve Cracknell – review
2020 Red Sixty Seven curated by Kit Jewitt – review
and Cottongrass Summer by Roy Dennis – review
2019 Green and Prosperous Land by Dieter Helm – review
2018 Wilding by Isabella Tree – review
2017 Sky Dancer by Gill Lewis – review
2016 Fingers in the Sparkle Jar by Chris Packham – review
2015 The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks – review
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And so, which is my Book of the Year for 2024? No doubt in my mind this year because this book made a big impact on me, and I know it has on several others who have read it. It is:
The Flitting by Ben Masters (Granta).
This book is unhesitatingly my book of the year. It is beautifully and movingly written and brings nature (mostly butterflies) and literature (although I can live without Virginia Woolf) into the personal story of the relationship between the author and his dying father.
I know quite a few people who have read it (partly because I have been plugging it to my friends and family since reading it) and no-one, so far, has come away bored or unmoved.
Buy it as a present for some people you love over Christmas and they will thank you for it.
This book should be shortlisted for prizes and win at least one of them.
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If you’ve only just noticed that I write book reviews, around one a week through the year (but not every week and sometimes there are several on a Sunday) and want to keep in touch with them, then an easy way to do so is to subscribe to my free monthly newsletter which will zoom into your inbox on 21st of each month with links to conservation news and views as well as links to the past month’s book reviews by me – sign up here.
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Its odd that a book with 33 words on the cover is regarded as ‘wordy’ and scores 4/10 and yet another that scores 10/10 has 48 words on the cover! I think the wolf cover is ghastly – it looks like graffitied road kill – but it’s all down to personal taste and any book is only as good as its contents. I’ve ordered the slug book, not because I am trying to get rid of them, but simply because they fascinate me. Thank you for publishing your helpful book reviews.
Thanks for all the links to your reviews and your yearly summary. I will have to spend some time exploring here.