Read Heartwood by Amity Gaige ★★★★☆
Gripping search for a missing hiker on the Appalachian trail. Told from three points of view, the lost, the searcher and a seemingly disconnected elderly lady in a retirement complex. An enjoyable read.
Category Archives: Book
Read Aurochs and Auks by John Burnside ★★★★★
Finally (and this seems less fanciful with each passing day) our inner spaces are being placed in jeopardy, as the providers of social media colonise and denature what use to be called the life of the mind for advertising revenues or political gain. Science fiction not so long ago, the enclosure of experience itself – not only of our consumer tastes, but also of our root desires, our dreams, our political leanings – has become commonplace. From habitat to place itself, from public to inner space, from freedom of speech to the chambers of our imagery?, everything is subject to enclosure, all too often by powers and principalities that we cannot even name.
and
This grief is all the more painful because it is shot through with a guilt from which no one is exempt. For, according to the accepted environmental / Climate Change narrative, we are obliged to accept that everyone is equally guilty, even though it always seems to be one small and shamelessly entitled group that profits most from the destruction.
What a wonderful book, 4 essays on morality & extinction. The Wind and the Willows, Thomas Hardy, poets & philosophers. Burnside touches upon a range of linked concerns from cave painting to covid always in depth if not at length.
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.
Read: In the Woods by Tana French ★★★ 📚
Doorstop of a police procedural. Lots of psychological twist & turns. Vivid characters. Maybe too much horror in the crime, like most thriller books and movies nowadays.
Belonging
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.
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.
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.
Read: An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro ★★★★★ 📚
But as for the likes of us, Ono, our contribution was always marginal. No one cares now what the likes of you and me once did. They look at us and see only two old men with their sticks.’ He smiled at me, then went on feeding the fish. ‘We’re the only ones who care now. The likes of you and me, Ono, when we look back over our lives and see they were flawed, we’re the only ones who care now.’
Hazy recall, guilt, regret, memory, aging. The book itself floats, a little sadly, with some troubling feelings. Super.
Read: Clown Town by Mick Heron ★★★★ 📚
Familiar world & characters with some interesting developments. A nice surprise at the end. I am surprised at how the series continues to be enjoyable & pleased the author has not needed to make things increasingly dramatic.
Read: Same as it ever was by Claire Lombardo ★★★ 📚
but the strangest thing I remember about having young children is how interminably the time moves, just these days upon days upon days, and every single one of them feels a million years long, but then suddenly months have gone by, enough time for a new baby to be born or one of the kids to start kindergarten, or college for God’s sake
Took me a long a time to get into this one. The central character irritated at first. She did grow on me as I got further.