I’m not very familiar with Richard Fortey, not having read any of his previous books nor, as best as I can recall, seen him on TV. So I came to read his book of memoirs uncluttered by preconceptions. This book is about Fortey’s childhood through to young adulthood and about the role of natural history…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Riches not beyond measure
I occasionally update you on the impressive scale of my earnings as a writer. I started doing this because of trolling by shooters about how I was coining it in! But I’ve noticed that quite a lot of people think that every book one writes pays for an expensive new car. This is the latest…
Sunday book review – The Swallow by Stephen Moss
On a cold, rainy winter’s day it’s cheering to think that Swallows might be back with us in a couple of months. I look forward to that but in some ways I enjoyed the last chapter of Stephen Moss’s latest (or have I missed one?) book the most because he takes us to Africa where…
Sunday book review – Wild Farming by Robin Page
It would be fair to ask what this book is about: and that is a question to which there is no easy answer. The first part of the answer is that it is not the book pictured above envisaged by booksellers (eg see here, here, here), and indeed Quiller (the intended publisher) who claimed Wild…
Sunday book review – Birds of Chew Valley Lake by Keith Vinicombe
Chew Valley Lake, CVL to its friends, has been an important part of my life – for a period of just about five years it was where I wanted to be, with my binoculars, in any spare moment. That was nearly 50 years ago and the journey to CVL was then a 40-minute cycle ride…
Reminder – these were this blog’s books of 2020
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This appeared in mid-November – in time for you to use it as a reminder and perhaps a guide to Christmas presents but too early to catch every 2020 book. You can’t win them all! I’ve reviewed over 40 books here this year – a record. Here’s where I reveal my shortlist of eight books…
Book review – Back to Nature by Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin
This is a very good book – and although Chris Packham is a mate of mine, that isn’t why I think it is a very good book. It’s a book about conservation issues now, and it needs to be read widely. But this isn’t a book solely by Chris, it is co-authored with Megan McCubbin…
Sunday book review – Mammals of Ethiopia by Trevor Jenner
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Reviewed by Tim Melling Ethiopia has a remarkably rich mammal fauna including a number of iconic endemics like Ethiopian Wolf, Mountain Nyala, Bale Monkey and Gelada. This new guide is exactly what visitors to this region need to find and identify the mammals of this region. It is attractively laid out and brimming with useful…
Guest blog – Natural Remedies – Gender and Pathography in Nature Writing by Jennifer Thompson
Jennifer Thompson is an ecologist and writer based in Devon. Her work has featured in print and online, including Nature Makes Us Better and Oh Magazine. If not writing, you’ll find her by the sea with her head in a book. She has just completed an MA in Travel and Nature Writing at Bath Spa, and…
Your views on book reviews here
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I asked you a variety of questions about the book reviews on this blog and these were your responses. From the results below I take it that you generally like the reviews, find them useful and they steer your purchasing decisions a bit – at least a bit. Q1: My blog, Standing up for Nature,…