You can’t go wrong if you slap a gorgeous Audubon on the front of your book and this Arctic Tern is one of my favourites (see p77 Remarkable Birds, which also has an Audubon on its cover). It’s a good start and there are more Audubons sprinkled through the 368 pages of this attractive and…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Mark Avery is not yet reading…
I have a pile of books to review as lots of publishers delayed publication until September and so there is now a flood. There will be two books reviewed on this blog on Sunday to enable me to keep my head above the rising tide; Dominic Couzens’s A Bird a Day and Hugh Warwick’s The…
Sunday book review – Bringing Back the Beaver by Derek Gow
Derek Gow is sometimes described as a force of nature, and this book demonstrates that he most certainly is a force for nature. It’s a good read – very entertaining, very informative and the views of someone who knows what’s what. It is an entertaining book – there are lots of stories about who did…
Sunday book review – Net Zero by Dieter Helm
This book arrived in the post out of the blue from the publisher, probably because they had spotted that I have favourably reviewed two previous books by Prof Helm, Natural Capital and Green and Prosperous Land, and they were right to bank on my admiration of this further volume. It contains the same mixture of…
Sunday book review – The Consolation of Nature by Michael McCarthy, Jeremy Mynott and Peter Marren
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It was the best of times (the most glorious spring ever), it was the worst of times (a tiny virus had cut us off from normal life) but these tales of three naturalists capture the contradiction that many of us experienced. Were we allowed to enjoy ourselves when hundreds were dying? Was it OK to…
Congratulations!
Congratulations to Benedict Macdonald and Dara McAnulty for winning their categories of the Wainwright Prize. Ben’s book, Rebirding, won the new category for global conservation. Dara’s book, Diary of a Young Naturalist, won the category for UK nature writing.
Sunday book review: Framing Nature by Laurence Rose
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There seems to have been something of a flood of very good books for me to review here recently, and here’s another one (and there are some more in the pipeline). Laurence Rose’s book is a thoughtful and well-informed look at nature conservation in the UK and every few pages I was thinking ‘That’s a…
Sunday book review – Orchard by Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates
This book is about an orchard and its wildlife. Month by month the two authors describe aspects of the orchard’s year. It sounds a nice place with its ancient trees and rich wildlife. As you travel through the pages then you may well wish you were there – I did. I enjoyed hearing about the…
Sunday book review – Life Changing by Helen Pilcher
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Helen Pilcher writes with wit and clarity about life on Earth. This is a very good book, as was her previous book Bring Back the King (reviewed here). I think this one slightly has the edge but I’m glad to have both on my bookshelves and embedded in my thoughts. When I say that she…
I am reading
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I’m reading two books at the moment, both by authors I like and admire for their work so far. And both authors are short-listed for the Wainwright Prize for Global Conservation which will announce its winner (of a £5000 prize) on 9 September. The first of my two current reads is Life Changing by Helen…