Jules Pretty

This is a lovely poetic celebration of the eastern part of England. It includes references every now and again to the state of the world and climate change but is not strident.

Throughout it there is a very personal thread with the death of author's father and the care needed by his mother.

I can only marvel at Jules Pretty's powers of observations and then getting it down on paper.

The book has a very powerful sense of place that is the east of England. However for me this is completely spoiled by the American spellings which have been used. They introduce such a jarring note to one's reading - two examples: 'Gray light' p.94 'Towards the harbor...' p.95. What a pity.

The author has a personal relationship with Ronald Blythe the author of 'Akenfield' which I found was such an arresting book when I was younger. I must re-read it.… (plus d'informations)

As the description states, acclaimed nature writer Jules Pretty frames 'The East Country' around Aldo Leopold's classic 'Sand Country Almanac'. So, when this description came across my desk, I knew I had to read Jules book.

Leonardo da Vinci suggested heightening senses to enhance life's experiences. And in this book Jules Pretty shows us he's done this.

When you read the first page, you'll find that Jules excels at situational awareness. Can you imagine? Honestly, for many of us when we look out across the horizon. We see land. We see sky.

Jules Pretty provides us with close ups of all this - and with everything in between.

Happily, I enthusiastically noted, these local and the universal collections and reflections occur not only out in the meadow where we'd normally see things detailed. But, also they appear on roads and in an around buildings and while chatting with friends and associates over tea.

In this book, his words comes across like thousands of snowflakes - falling . Each having its own unique identity. And on the tongue its more like a melody than just mere words written on a page.

I surmise you could say, "I simply love his emotional output of text, his synthesising mind, and his attachment to the land."

Bottom Line: This is a beautiful read.I highly recommend it.
FTC Reviewed for Net Galley
… (plus d'informations)

Life in the world, and of it

The Edge of Extinction: Travels with Enduring People in Vanishing Lands by Jules Pretty (Cornell University Press, $27.95).

Jules Pretty’s thesis isn’t new; it’s his approach that is original. Many writers, environmentalists and foodies have been suggesting for close to a generation that we highly-evolved types have gotten too far away from the natural world and so have lost perspective and a certain spiritual connection to the planet.

What Pretty has done differently in this travelogue-slash-memoir-slash-polemic is to go out among groups of people who are still living in fairly traditional ways and bear witness to a life that is vanishing as rapidly as our climate changes.

Pretty visits 12 locales: coastal ecosystems among Maori in New Zealand and in Ireland, the deserts of Australia and California’s Death Valley, the mountains of China, snowy landscapes in Finland and Labrador, Russia’s steppes, a marshland farm in East Anglia and an Amish farm in Ohio, swamps in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin and in Botswana. For each place, he provides enough background—both ecological and historical—to get a grasp of the context for the people he meets living there, but it seems as if he’s covering so much ground that he doesn’t have enough time to fully get to know the characters he introduces.

It’s a fascinating book, but one that is most successful as a travelogue. In order to fully address the possibilities for human life on the planet, Pretty might want to undertake a sequel.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com… (plus d'informations)