This is a good summery book about arguably our most spectacular of butterflies, the Purple Emperor. The author is an expert on this species and an unrestrained and unrestrainable enthusiast for this butterfly. And that makes this a very good book, packed with stories, anecdotes, history but also with good solid facts. And all wrapped…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Sunday book review – Europe’s Dragonflies by Dave Smallshire and Andy Swash
This photographic guide to Europe’s dragonflies is amazing, although WILDGuides have built up such a reputation for producing high quality books of this sort that it doesn’t come as a surprise really. But it is still amazing. Now, I have to confess that my knowledge of odonata is miniscule so the book could be riddled…
Sunday book review – On the Trail of Wolves by Philippa Forrester
Philippa Forrester, the UK broadcaster, spent over a year in the greater Yellowstone area with her film cameramen husband and their school-aged children. This book chronicles her encounters with wildlife and with Americans. I’ve been to Yellowstone twice and seen Grey Wolves there both times (and Grizzlies and Black Bears and a bunch of other…
The Well-read Naturalist
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I’ve been terribly remiss in not bringing you any news of John Riutta’s book reviews for quite a while, but he went a bit quiet for a time. I see he is back in the swing of things again now. Here are some books reviews by him that made me think in general, and think…
Sunday book review – The Accidental Countryside by Stephen Moss
It’s quite difficult to keep up with reading Stephen Moss’s books – I wonder how he writes them so quickly. But what we have come to expect is good writing with good knowledge of natural history. That is what we get here. The theme of this latest book is urban, or at least man-made, patches…
Sunday book review – Under the Stars by Matt Gaw
It is only March, and I hope to read lots of brilliant books through the rest of 2020, but I am pretty sure this volume will be in this blog’s list of books of the year. It’s a slim volume, fewer than 200 pages of text and quite well-spaced text at that, but it packs…
Sunday book review – The Birds They Sang by Stanislaw Lubienski
This book has a Polish author and many stories of Polish ornithologists, artists and writers. Since I first visited Poland last year, for a family reason, I was predisposed to these parts of the book. I enjoyed hearing of painter Jozef Chelmonski and then Googling his works, and greatly enjoying some of them and not…
Sunday book review – An Indifference of Birds by Richard Smyth
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This short book is a good read, and is a very different, but not indifferent, book. It only amounts to just over 100 pages but there are more novel perspectives in here than you’ll find in many books three times the length. And the author writes in an engaging manner. There are five chapters (Messy…
Sunday book review – Our House is on Fire by Malena and Beata Ernman and Svante and Greta Thunberg
I feel privileged to have read this book a few days before it is released. You should read it too. I don’t normally do this, but here is the publisher’s account of the book; rather unusually it sums up the book accurately: This is the story of a family led to confront a crisis they…
Sunday book review – Red Sixty Seven curated by Kit Jewitt
This is a truly lovely book. I’ve blogged about it before, because I knew it was coming, but now I am holding a copy in my hands it is just a delight. The idea is simple, as many good ideas are; there are 67 red-listed species of bird in the UK, let’s get 67 writers…