Standing up for Nature
For me, this book is almost a perfect 10 – let’s give it a 9.6. I was handed this book by its author at the Bird Fair at the weekend and, after saying thank you, said I’d put it on the pile of books to review. But having unwrapped it from its cellophane I dipped…
Chris Packham is a great guy – I admire his toughness and his persistence. But he gets an awful lot of very nasty flak from the shooters. Remember the Countryside Alliance called for the BBC to drop their best wildlife presenter a couple of years ago – well, don’t think that has gone away,…
The authors’ forum at the Bird Fair is packed with good talks by authors of good books on each of the three days. Here are examples of talks by authors of books that have been reviewed here: Friday 1315-1400, Ian Newton, Farming and Birds Saturday 1415-1500,…
Reviewed by Ian Carter This is clearly a book that has stood the test of time, deemed worthy of a new edition almost ten years on from its initial publication. After a few pages of introduction, the bulk of the book is taken up by the species accounts, roughly equally split into vertebrates, invertebrates…
I sometimes wonder how many New Naturalists are read rather than collected as an investment – well this one should be read. Ian Newton has never produced a duff book – his works are characterised by clarity and suffused by a deep knowledge of the biology of the subjects on which he writes. This one…
Reviewed by Ian Carter This new book is not about the Monbiot version of re-wilding but its personal equivalent – the ‘re-wilding of the soul’ rather than the landscape. Lynx, Wolves and Beavers do get a few mentions but it is much more about what people can do to get closer to nature in everyday…
If, like me, you’ve heard quite a lot about mindfulness but don’t really know what it is, and if, like me, you are interested in birds, then this might well be the book for you. I found it interesting and read it all the way through. This book is a bit like most management courses…
This review has no spoilers about the winners – you will first find out about them at the Bird Fair on Saturday at 4:15 in the Events Marquee with Chris Packham. I was one of the judges for this competition, despite knowing little about photography. Of course we made perfect, finely-honed decisions about the…
Writing competition – write a book review of George Monbiot’s Feral Last year this blog held a writing competition which produced some excellent articles (including this winner in the Wildlife and Politics category by Kerri ni Dochartaigh). I have some ideas for further writing competitions and this is the first one. Write a book review…
Reviewed by Ian Carter This book looked a rather daunting prospect when it first arrived, with its striking cover of a storm-scarred sea and more than 300 pages of fairly small print, uninterrupted by photographs. It tells the very personal story of the first ten years of an adult life, from a hesitant, uncertain…