I’ve been catching up with John Riutta’s recent book reviews on The Well-read Naturalist. I read all of his book reviews even those that are rather local to his part of the world, of northern Oregon. I read them because they are so thoughtful and so well written. I sometimes feel I’d rather read John’s…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Sunday book review – Skylarks with Rosie by Stephen Moss
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This is a book about lockdown and the fact that it has appeared well within a year of the start of UK lockdown last spring is quite an achievement by the author and the publisher – so, well done both! This is essentially a diary of how Stephen Moss, author, broadcaster and naturalist (particularly birder)…
Sunday book review – Restoring the Wild by Roy Dennis
Roy Dennis is a ‘name’ in ornithology and nature conservation – he was the warden of the Fair Isle Bird Observatory from 1964-70 (following Ken Williamson and Peter Davis), the RSPB’s person in the Highlands (under various job titles) from 1970-90 and, ever since, an independent conservationist mostly involved with species reintroductions and habitat restoration….
Sunday book review – A Curious Boy by Richard Fortey
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…
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…