Posted on
by

Read: Solace House by Will Maclean ★★★★ 📚

After sudden scalding exposure to the late twentieth century, and the garish monomania of the supermarket, it was joyous to return to the hospital, to the house. I found that I wanted to immerse myself in Solace House and its environs, gather it around me, cloak myself in it. I didn’t doubt, in that moment, that this was what Flayne had felt, sequestered here in his self-imposed exile.

Fun Gothic horror with magic mushrooms. A narrator who becomes more & more unreliable as the book gets weirder. I am not sure I really know what went on. Plenty of nineties details.

Posted on
by

Likes We Ran a Huge Social Experiment on a Whole Generation. It Turned Out to Be Terrible | Pootlepress by Jamie Marsland.

Like:

“Wait. You knew it was damaging mental health, sleep, attention and social development, and your response was… to give younger children even more access?”

And we will say:

“Well, yes. But everyone else was doing it.”

A clear succinct run over social media & the young. Personally I think there might be something in making the vendors made efforts to fix social media but at least there seems to be some movement.

Posted on
by

Read Belonging By Amanda Thomson

ONE AUGUST, WALKING HIGH ON the Cairngorm Plateau, small groups of swifts came and went up and over us, slicing and screeching the air, moving north to south, arching, spiralling up and over, on their way again.

It is estimated that there might be as many as 90,000 seabirds on Mingulay during the summer, and on the day I was there, there were perhaps thirty people on the whole island – our presence so fleeting. It was clear that everything would go on, whether or not we were there, indeed despite us being there, and as a gust whipped up to unsteady us and we found ourselves suddenly too close to the edge, or on a bank down to another cliff edge that was slippier or steeper than we’d imagined, we knew how vulnerable, how remote, how isolated we were.

A wonderful book. Touches on so many things, some I know a bit about, trout flies, others new to me, the process of etching. Travels, walks, bird ringing & ecological surveys mix with family history. Lists of old Scot’s words for weather, gpx tracks turned into art. Capercaillies, hares and moths.

Posted on
by

Read: The Savage Landscape by Cal Fly ★★★★ 📚

Travelogue & wide ranging exploration of the idea of wilderness. Indigenous people, conservation, history, fiction & religion. The author digs through idea & puts herself in the picture, questioning her own ideas & coming up against lots of contradictions. Lots to think about. Curious & surprising details.

Travelogue & wide ranging exploration of the idea of wilderness. Indigenous people, conservation, history, fiction & religion. The author digs through idea & puts herself in the picture, questioning her own ideas & coming up against lots of contradictions. Lots to think about. Curious & surprising details.

Posted on
by

Read: The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich ★★★★ 📚

IN SOME PLACES, lambsquarters is considered the Prince of Greens, one of the most nutritious greens ever analyzed; it was one of the earliest agricultural crops of the Americas. It also resembles amaranth, but the brothers rarely spoke of that. The rough-cut men were preparing to eradicate one of the most nutritious plants on earth in favor of growing he sugar beet, perhaps the least nutritious plant on earth. Evolution thought this was hilarious.

A very mixed up novel, romance, farming, ecology, a series of bank robberies, local gossip & lots more. Often hilarious, enjoyable & thought provoking.