Jackie's Very Hungry Cat---egory Challenge

Welcome to my 2022 category challenge thread! This year I’m using pictures from the classic children’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. The pictures have no relation at all to my themes, but the book has a great relation to me, because I discovered that I was born on the very same day that The Very Hungry Caterpillar was first published! Maybe one day I’ll be as well-loved and considered a classic! :D All pictures are taken from our own classic copy of the book - first bought 18 years ago for my then-baby niece, and returned to us 10 years later for my own daughter.

I am using the same themes as always, 12 themes in total, and my 12th theme (which is usually changed each year) will stay the same as last year, as I loved it so much, and still have plenty of books to read in that category. Within each theme, I will use my Jar of Fate (a jar with colour-coded slips of paper with all my unread book titles on them) to determine which book I will read. I’ll also take part in some of the CATs and KITs (plus the non-fiction challenge in the 75 group) if the fancy takes me and I happen to have an unread book which fits the theme for that month.

I enjoy all the book chat here and in the ROOTs group, so am looking forward to another year of reading and chewing the literary fat!

1. Central & Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union

I have been lucky enough to live, work and travel in parts of eastern Europe over the years, and have maintained a strong connection, so this is where I’ll record my books related to this part of the world.

1. Julian Barnes - The Porcupine. Finished 5.1.22. 3.5/5.
2. Narine Abgaryan, translated by Lisa C Hayden - Three Apples Fell from the Sky. Finished 3.3.22. 4.5/5.
3. Jennifer Eremeeva - Have Personality Disorder, Will Rule Russia. Finished 3.6.22. 2.5/5.
4. Ed. Maija Jappinen, Meri Kulmala & Aino Saarinen - Gazing at Welfare, Gender and Agency in Post-Socialist Countries. Finished 28.8.22. 4.5/5.
5. Georgi Markov, tr. Dimiter Keranov - Two Essays. Finished 7.9.22. 4.5/5.
6. J.P. Nettl - Rosa Luxemburg. Finished 24.9.22. 3.5/5.
7. Diane Ackerman - The Zookeeper's Wife. Finished 7.12.22. 3.5/5.

2. Non-fiction (general)

All my non-fiction that doesn’t fit into one of the more niche categories.

1. Sarah Wilson - First, We Make the Beast Beautiful. DNF 17.1.22.
2. Bill Bryson - At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Finished 12.2.22. 4/5.
3. Nowick Gray - Flutes Jam: A Guide to Improvisation. Finished 25.4.22. 2.5/5.
4. Pragya Agarwal - SWAY: Unravelling Unconscious Bias. Finished 29.4.22. 4.5/5.
5. Rashmi Sirdeshpande, illustrated by Annabel Tempest - How to Change the World. Finished 19.5.22. 4/5.
6. David Long - A History of London in 50 Lives. Finished 20.6.22. 3/5.
7. Tove Jansson & Tuulikki Pietila - Notes From an Island. Finished 25.6.22. 5/5.
8. Arundhati Roy - The End of Imagination. Finished 10.7.22. 4/5.
9. Fintan O'Toole - Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain. Finished 24.7.22. 4/5.
10. Various, edited by Josephine Greywoode - Why We Read: 70 Writers on Non-Fiction. Finished 31.7.22. 3.5/5.
11. Ed. Hardeep Matharu - Wokelore: Boris Johnson's Culture War and Other Stories. Finished 6.8.22. 4.5/5.
12. Suzie Edge - Mortal Monarchs: 1000 Years of Royal Deaths. Finished 19.11.22. 5/5.

3. Contemporary fiction (1969-present)

All fiction published from the year of my birth to now.

1. Bernardine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other. Finished 18.2.22. 4.5/5.
2. Fredrik Backman - A Man Called Ove. Finished 18.2.22. 4.5/5.
3. Barry Hutchison - Beaky Malone: Worst Ever School Trip. Finished 7.8.22. 3.5/5.
4. Frank Cottrell Boyce - Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth. Finished 13.8.22. 4/5.
5. Gareth Lewis - Tales of the Thief-City. Finished 26.11.22. 4.5/5.
6. Jasper Fforde - The Well of Lost Plots. Finished 30.12.22. 4/5.

4. Sexual/reproductive health & rights; gender; sexuality; parenting; children

A wide category that reflects professional and academic interests. Not just dry academic books though; sweary parenting books from popular bloggers also find their way in here.

1. Lucie Fremlova - Queer Roma. Finished 2.3.22. 4.5/5.
2. Pragya Agarwal - (M)Otherhood: On the Choices of Being a Woman. Finished 15.7.22. 4.5/5.

5. Celtic

Book relating to the Celtic lands - particularly Scotland, where I now live, but not exclusively: Wales, Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany, Isle of Man could also appear on the list.

1. Peter May - Hebrides. Finished 21.2.22. 4.5/5.
2. Garth & Vicky Waite - Island: Diary of a Year on Easdale. Finished 30.6.22. 4/5.
3. Mike Parker - On the Red Hill. Finished 13.8.22. 5/5.

6. Vintage fiction (1900-1968)

For 20th century literature published before I was born. This is a relatively small category for me, but features occasional rewarding surprises.

1. Goscinny & Uderzo - Asterix chez les Bretons. Finished 15.3.22. 3.5/5.
2. 'B.B.' - The Little Grey Men. Finished 31.12.22. 3.5/5.

7. Academic

Books that I’ve picked up over the years of my academic career and beyond. Even though I’m no longer on the academic gravy train, I do still appreciate a good, well-written and thoroughly researched academic tome every now and again.

1. Didier Fassin - When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa. Finished 27.3.22. 4.5/5.
2. ed Christine Blomberg, Stuart Blume & Paul Greenough - The Politics of Vaccination: A Global History. Finished 19.6.22. 4.5/5.
3. Corinne Fowler - Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England's Colonial Connections. Finished 23.7.22. 4.5/5.

8. Biography; autobiography; memoir; true story

Featuring all sorts of people I’ve had a random passing interest in, from celebs to mere mortals.

1. Cassandra Alexander - Year of the Nurse. Finished 15.1.22. 4.5/5.
2. Harriet Harman - A Woman's Work. Finished 31.3.22. 4/5.
3. Miranda Hart - Peggy and Me. Finished 12.6.22. 3.5/5.
4. Stephen Rea - Finn McCool's Football Club. Finished 7.11.22. 4/5.
5. Lucy Mangan - Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading. Finished 14.11.22. 3.5/5.

9. Ancient fiction (pre-1900)

Books published pre-1900, which I’m not very good at reading but occasionally feel like I ought to. As long as there’s one book in here by the end of the year I’m happy.

10. Travel

I’m always up for some armchair travel, and good travel writing is one of my happy places.

1. Dan Richards - Outpost. Finished 9.4.22. 4.5/5.
2. Tim Severin - The Spice Islands Voyage. Finished 21.5.22. 4/5.
3. Monisha Rajesh - Around India in 80 Trains. Finished 23.5.22. 4/5.
4. Bernd Stiegler - Traveling in Place: A History of Armchair Travel. DNF 25.6.22. 1/5.
5. Tete-Michel Kpomassie - Michel the Giant: An African in Greenland. Finished 23.10.22. 4.5/5.

11. Religious

Mainly books related to Christianity, but not exclusively.

1. ed. Hugh Hillyard-Parker - News of Great Joy: The Church Times Christmas Collection. Finished 7.1.22. 4/5.
2. Andrew Rumsey - English Grounds: A Pastoral Journal. Finished 14.4.22. 5/5.
3. Jane Bentley & Neil Paynter - Around a Thin Place. Finished 4.5.22. 3.5/5.

12. Nature

My main literary sweet spot is nature, place & environment writing. Last year I read at least one book a month in this category, and I’d like to carry on doing this into 2022.

1. Robert Macfarlane - Underland: A Deep Time Journey. Finished 11.1.22. 5/5.
2. Jacob McAtear - An Engagement with Nature. Finished 19.1.22. 3.5/5.
3. Robin Wall Kimmerer - Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Finished 31.1.22. 4.5/5.
4. Ian Carter - Human, Nature: a naturalist's thoughts on wildlife and wild places. Finished 9.2.22. 4/5.
5. Various authors - In the Garden: Essays on Nature and Growing. Finished 5.3.22. 4.5/5.
6. Kathryn Aalto - Writing Wild. Finished 24.3.22. 4/5.
7. Mary Austin - The Land of Little Rain. Finished 15.4.22. 4/5.
8. Nina Mingya Powles - Small Bodies of Water. Finished 17.4.22. 4/5.
9. Josephine Woolington - Where we call Home: Land, Seas and Skies of the Pacific Northwest. Finished 19.4.22. 4.5/5.
10. Robert Macfarlane - The Wild Places. Finished 16.5.22. 4.5/5.
11. Tom Bowser - A Sky Full of Kites. Finished 30.5.22. 4.5/5.
12. Camille T. Dungy - Trophic Cascade. Finished 10.6.22. 4/5.
13. Claire Dunn - Rewilding the Urban Soul. DNF 22.6.22. 2.5/5.
14. Kathleen Jamie - Findings. Finished 26.6.22 (I think!). 5/5.
15. Stephen Moss - Skylarks with Rosie: A Somerset Spring. Finished 25.7.22. 4.5/5.
16. Lucy Jones - Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild. Finished 26.9.22. 4/5.
17. Alison Richard - The Sloth Lemur's Song. Finished 1.10.22. 4.5/5.
18. Elspeth Thompson - Urban Gardener. Finished 14.10.22. 4/5.
19. Nicola McGirr - Nature's Connections: An Exploration of Natural History. Finished 30.10.22. 3.5/5.

Welcome to my 2022 thread!

Cute theme! Good luck with the challenges.

I love this theme, especially for the extremely clever title :D Have a great reading year!

Wonderful theme! Love the Hungry Caterpillar and look forward to following your reading!

I'm placing a star here, Jackie, I love all the non-fiction recommendations that I get from your thread!

Great looking thread for this year. Happy Reading.

That is a really clever title, Jackie! Have fun with your Jar of Fate.

Good luck with your 2022 reads!

>15 majkia: >16 rabbitprincess: >17 VivienneR: >18 DeltaQueen50: >19 dudes22: >20 MissWatson: >22 mstrust: Thanks everyone!

I must confess to feeling really smug and pleased with myself for this thread title (I know it bears no resemblance to my actual categories, but it makes me smile every time I see the title :D ).

I'm looking forward to both receiving and giving plenty of BBs next year.

Great book! I hope your 2022 has many enjoyable moments!

Great thread title. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a wonderful book. Have fun with your reading in 2022.

I love your thread title! Looking foward to seeing how you feed your Cat---egories.

Love the caterpillar theme. Good luck with your 2022 reading.

Hope you have a great year of reading! Love the theme!

Great title and I'm looking forward to following along!

Like everyone else, I love your thread title! Such a fun theme.

>24 Tess_W: >25 hailelib: >26 Helenliz: >27 lowelibrary: >28 thornton37814: >29 MissBrangwen: >30 Crazymamie: Thank you all! I still smile goofily when I see the title, I'm ridiculously proud of it! :D Looking forward to getting into 2022 reading now - I made my pile of the paper books I'm planning to read for the various CATs and challenges I'm taking part in; that always feels like an acknowledgement of a new year around the corner!

Category: Central & Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union



The Porcupine by Julian Barnes is a novella about the trial of the former president of a nameless eastern European state shortly after the fall of Communism. It was published in 1992 and was widely known to be inspired by Bulgaria and the trial of its former president, Todor Zhivkov. Written mainly from the point of view of the Chief Prosecutor, we see the clash between the old and emerging new ideologies, and the realities of life under Communism and in the early years of the transition away from it. 3.5/5.

Happy New Year, Jackie! I love your thread title, brilliant idea. :) Enjoy your reading!

>33 Chrischi_HH: Thank you Christiane, happy new year to you too!

Category: Religious



News of Great Joy: The Church Times Christmas Collection, edited by Hugh Hillyard-Parker, is a collection of columns and articles, poems and stories, that have appeared in the Church Times over the last 20 years or so, relating to Advent, Christmas, and Ephiphany. I read a few articles most days over the whole period, and enjoyed the collection very much. As is always the case with these things, some pieces meant more to me than others, but overall I think this is an excellent collection and I might well end up going over it every year at the same time. 4/5.

Category: Nature
January Non-Fiction Challenge: Prizewinners



Robert Macfarlane's wonderful book Underland: A Deep Time Journey is my first 5* book of the year, and also (believe it or not) the first audiobook I've ever listened to! I listened to it whilst reading the ebook as well, and that turned out to be a fantastically immersive experience, once I got used to it. And it's a great book to be so immersed, dealing as it does with the land below the surface - caves, underground bunkers, sinkholes, glacier moulins, nuclear burial sites, as well as forest understorey and root systems, and city underground worlds such as the Paris catacombs.

I have to admit to being a total scaredy cat when it comes to being under ground or water, there's no way in a million years you'd get me caving or visiting pretty much any of the places he goes (apart from the forest, I could cope with that!), but his writing is so vivid and visceral that I kind of feel like I was there anyway. His writing does divide opinion - some people think his prose is particularly purple, but I honestly think there wasn't a word out of place here, and this book is a step up (in terms of depth and ambition and impact) from his previous books (which I also loved). This book deservedly won the Wainwright Prize a couple of years ago. 5/5.

>36 Jackie_K: I get my NF reads from you! On the list it goes!

>37 Tess_W: I hope you like it!

>36 Jackie_K: Underland sounds terrific and my library actually has it.

>23 Jackie_K: As you should- hope the positive feeling lasts all year. I love the illustration: have been very tempted by the Hungry Caterpillar socks/bag and other merch now available.

>32 Jackie_K: I hadn't heard of this one, sounds interesting.

>36 Jackie_K: This one is still on my shelf, I really want to read it, just haven't quite found the time. I am a fan of his writing. Definitely not purple for me.
Maybe this year...

>39 hailelib: It really is - it's very hefty though!

>40 charl08: The Porcupine was published in the early 90s; I must admit I preferred his more recent The Noise of Time (about the composer Shostakovich in Stalinist USSR). And yes, Underland definitely needs a bit of a time commitment, but I really do think it's worth it!

Category: Biography; autobiography; memoir; true story
January CATWoman: Biography/Autobiography/Memoir



Year of the Nurse: A 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir by Cassandra Alexander is a searing account of 2020-21 on the front line of healthcare in the US. The author is an ICU nurse in California, and in this account she draws on her journal/diary entries, tweets and author newsletter entries (she has a side-hustle as an indie author of paranormal romance books), to give a powerful account of how traumatic many nurses found working during the pandemic. It has to be said that if you (a) don't like swearing; and/or (b) voted for Donald Trump; and/or (c) are particularly Evangelical, and/or (d) are anti-vax and/or anti-mask, then you will hate this book (she is very sweary and she does not hold back over who she blames). If you can get past that then this is a very personal, angry, and no-holds-barred account of the trauma faced by healthcare workers and the ways they had to deal with things to look after themselves (the author herself already had long-standing mental health issues, which you can imagine were absolutely not helped by PPE shortages, unsympathetic hospital management and the political shenanigans of 2020). Despite it all, I'd have no hesitation in wanting her as my bedside nurse if I ever found myself in ICU. 4.5/5.

>42 Jackie_K: Well, I am a couple of those things--but it sounds like a phenomenal book. I will put it on my WL.

>43 Tess_W: It is phenomenal, Tess, but consider yourself suitably warned :)

Category: Non-fiction (general)



Sarah Wilson's First, We Make the Beast Beautiful is my first DNF for over a year. Honestly, if I'd realised when it came up on offer on Bookbub that she was the author responsible for the I Quit Sugar brand, I'd have left well alone. It's subtitled "A New Conversation about Anxiety", and as someone who's (pretty successfully, for the most part) living with anxiety I was interested to see what she had to say. But the overly chatty, familiar style, and the overwhelming bland soundbitey self-help vibe just ended up annoying me. I didn't recognise anything here that chimed with my own experience of anxiety, and I just found myself rolling my eyes more and more the further I got. I did read for 3 hours and got about 2/3 of the way through, so I think I did give it a fair chance, but it really wasn't for me. Compared to the previous book I read (Year of the Nurse) where the author writes so clearly and eloquently (and yes, swearily) about her mental health, this just didn't come anywhere close. 2/5.

Category: Nature



An Engagement with Nature by Jacob McAtear is a selection of the author's walks in the English Lake District, describing the landscape and nature. Its subtitle is "Ideal for Bedtime Relaxation, Meditation and Mindfulness", and I think this is the key to enjoying this book. Each short chapter focuses on the landscape and one or more of the creatures he comes across, and I felt (as I read several chapters a day during my lunchbreak at my nature-poor workplace) that I would enjoy reading this with a backdrop of 'natural white noise' (birdsong, rustling leaves, tinkling water, etc). It certainly helped me to slow down and remember nature, which I appreciated very much in my sterile work environment.

I do have to say that he is very fond of complicated words where simple ones would do just fine - every step feels like it is described with multiple adjectives, and there were a few times when I was jolted out of the lushness of the imagined nature experience by reading a word I'd never come across before and not having a clue what it meant. Just occasionally I would really have appreciated a description of the sky as blue, the clouds as white, and the view as amazing - that really would have done me fine! I will read other things this author writes though, as the book was certainly very evocative of the place, and the landscape was easy to picture as I read along. I did also laugh at a very funny description of a group of three birds swapping places with each other on top of a wall to keep him always at the same distance from the group - that was really well done. 3.5/5.

Category: Nature
January AuthorCAT: Indigenous Writers



Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer was a lovely way to end the month. Much like Braiding Sweetgrass, this combines extensive scientific and botanical knowledge with indigenous wisdom, and it's a wonderful combination. Who knew mosses could be so fascinating? I loved it. 4.5/5.

>46 Jackie_K: - Even though I haven't gotten around to reading Braiding Sweetgrass, I'm going to take a BB for this.

>46 Jackie_K: As someone who studied biology at uni, this sounds fascinating! I think I just got hit by a general bullet for Robin Wall Kimmerer.

>48 CaptainBookamir: Oh I really hope you enjoy her! I think I slightly preferred Braiding Sweetgrass, but they're both wonderful.

>46 Jackie_K: Same as >48 CaptainBookamir: - I haven't read Braiding Sweetgrass so far, but added this one to my WL, too. When I thought about it I just realized that I love moss - the texture, the look, even the feel - so I think this book must be interesting to read.

>50 MissBrangwen: Yes, I agree - and I love how even this far north we have patches of temperate rainforest, where the trees are covered in mosses and lichen, and look so atmospheric.

Well, I'm finding it really hard to settle down into reading books right now - I have several on the go, but don't seem to be anywhere near the end of any of them! This is the first book I've finished this month so far, which isn't like me.

Category: Nature
February Non-Fiction Challenge: Welcome to the Anthropocene!



Human, Nature: a Naturalist's Thoughts on Wildlife and Wild Places is a series of essays by Ian Carter who worked for many years at Natural England, including on the red kite reintroduction programme. I preferred the later essays, which looked at more thorny issues like what to do about non-native and invasive species (plants and animals), and human impacts on nature. He introduced very nuanced arguments around these issues, and acknowledged the very many grey areas where an obvious answer just doesn't exist. 4/5.

Category: Non-fiction (general)



At Home: A Short History of Private Life is another fun romp through history by Bill Bryson, this time using his own home, and the rooms and passageways within it, as the inspiration to look at the history of ordinary life - building materials, sex, sewers, employment, social class, all sorts of stuff. I really enjoyed it (despite forgetting to put my kobo on airplane mode yesterday and Overdrive reclaiming it with just one final chapter to go! Luckily was able to get it out again this morning to finish it off!). 4/5.

>52 Jackie_K: Glad to hear this is a good read! It's been on my tbr for a while now - and it will probably stay there for another while, but at least it gets to stay, hehe.

>53 CaptainBookamir: I think as I'm getting older I prefer his histories to his newer travel writing - I couldn't get past chapter 1 of The Road to Little Dribbling as I found him so grumpy, but I really like his light touch history writing - it doesn't take itself too seriously, but gives you lots of information that you can delve deeper into if you want.

I know a lot of readers found him too grumpy in Little Dribbling, but I really liked it. I must have a high tolerance for complaining though, as my mom is world class.

>55 mstrust: Another day I might enjoy Little Dribbling - but I know I wasn't in the mood for grumpy the particular time I got it out of the library! I might try it again sometime, when I'm less crabbit myself :)

Category: Contemporary Fiction (1969-present)



I was of course aware of Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other from when it jointly won the 2019 Booker Prize, but not being the biggest fiction reader it's one of those books that I'd maybe have got to eventually but wasn't a priority. Luckily for me, my sister-in-law bought me a copy for my birthday a couple of years ago, and this month my book group read it, and I'm so glad for both, because I really enjoyed it. Portraits of mostly black mostly women and their stories and links to each other, their loves and challenges, the racism and sexism and abuse they faced, the hidden stories behind the outer appearance, I thought it was great (and I loved the Epilogue, which was a really deft tying up of a loose end from further back in the book). As a bonus, I think this is the very first Booker winner that I have ever both a) finished and b) understood what I'd just read when I got to the end (the only other Booker winner I got to the end of was Ben Okri's The Famished Road, and at the end of that I just felt like I had no idea what I had just read, but the language was so beautiful it didn't matter. All the other ones I have tried I abandoned as I just couldn't warm to them or understand them, or both). 4.5/5.

Category: Contemporary Fiction (1969-present)



I started reading Fredrik Backman's A Man Called Ove in December last year, and felt myself getting quite emotionally invested in this lovable-despite-his-best-efforts grumpy old man, which is probably why it's taken me so long - I don't watch many films for the same reason, if I get emotionally invested then it's harder to stay cool and cynical :) However, I finished it today with a lump in my throat, and have to say I loved it despite taking 2 months to read it. Widower Ove mourns his wife, Sonja, gets grumpy with his neighbours, gets made redundant from work, and makes friends with pregnant Parvaneh who moves in next door, and her family, despite his best efforts not to. His years of fighting seemingly pointless battles in the local Residents' Association, along with his strong sense of integrity, come into their own when his neighbours face being separated by the council forcibly taking the husband into care. Ridiculous and moving situations ensue. I laughed and (nearly) cried at this, what a great story. 4.5/5.

>57 Jackie_K: Great review! I've had this on my shelf for 4-5 years. Hope to get to it this year!

>58 Tess_W: I hope you like it!

Category: Celtic



Sometimes when my reading has slowed down a bit and is feeling a bit of an effort, what the doctor (and the Jar of Fate) orders is a nice hefty coffee table book, and Peter May's Hebrides is a gorgeous example that I really enjoyed. The photos by David Wilson are really fantastic, and have captured the atmosphere of the islands beautifully.

The author's commentary is interesting - a bit of history, a bit of description of the landscape, and much more about how he came to get to know the Hebrides (firstly as the Director of a Gaelic-language series called Machair in the 1990s, and then returning to research for what became known as his Lewis trilogy of crime novels). For all of these - the TV series and each of the novels - he takes us through the landscapes which inspired locations and scenes in the series and the books, and the chapters on the books also include short descriptive passages from the books to accompany some of the pictures. I'm sure if I had read those books I'd be giving this 5* - this is a perfect accompaniment for anyone who's a fan of the trilogy (I'd recommend the hardback too, which I don't do very often - it's suitably hefty, and big enough that the photos reproduce some of the sense of space and isolation of the Hebrides). Although largely focused on Lewis, it does cover several of the other Outer Hebridean islands as well. Highly recommended for Scottish island-philes. 4.5/5.

You've had some excellent reading recently. I always enjoy your reviews that can tell me more about the book than many reviewers.

>59 Jackie_K: I loved May's Lewis trilogy and I've been on the lookout for this one.

>59 Jackie_K: Can you believe that I found this book in a box of discarded books at my workplace? I was so happy to rescue it!
So far I have just browsed it, but I will read it thoroughly when I have finished the trilogy (so far I have only read the first book).
Lovely review!

>60 VivienneR: Thank you very much Vivienne! I try to give a flavour of the book, and my reaction to it, without giving too much away - I'm glad I seem to be getting a good balance!

>61 MissBrangwen: Wow, that is a brilliant find for a book bin! Wherever I've come across them there's almost never anything I fancy.

>59 Jackie_K: I got that one for Christmas in SantaThing. I hope to get to it before too long.

>63 thornton37814: I hope you like it - I thought it was a thing of beauty!

Category: Sexual/reproductive health & rights; gender; sexuality; parenting; children



Queer Roma by Lucie Fremlova is an academic book of the author's PhD thesis, which is a qualitative study which interviewed LGBTIQ Roma from Europe and North America. It explores their various identities, and provides a fascinating and important addition to the academic fields of queer theory, intersectionality and Romani studies, amongst others. 4.5/5.

Category: Central & Eastern Europe; former Soviet Union
February CATWoman: Women in Translation



Three Apples Fell From the Sky by Narine Abgaryan (translated by Lisa C. Hayden from the original Russian) is an absolute delight, a timeless story of community, family and love. In the remote Armenian village of Maran, a rapidly ageing and dwindling population live and go about their business, supporting and celebrating with each other. The book only mentions a couple of things in passing which could roughly place it in a particular time - mention of eg a grandparent fighting to overthrow the Tsar, or another relative having fought the Bolsheviks - but other than those mentions, it could be anywhere, any time. They talk about going to 'the city' (which is never named), but most of the story takes place in the village. Some people have tagged this book 'magical realism', but to be honest I found those elements so well integrated into the story that I barely noticed them as out of the ordinary. The book follows the fates of several of the village families, and I loved every single one of the characters (with the exception of Anatolia's first abusive husband, of course). Highly recommended, it's gorgeous. 4.5/5.

>64 Jackie_K: I enjoyed this one too. I had no idea where it was going, though.

>65 charl08: Yes, but I think the apparently aimlessness of it was part of its charm. I'm so pleased I read it.

Category: Nature
March RandomKIT: Hobby Love



In the Garden: Essays on Nature and Growing is a lovely anthology of essays, from well-known and lesser-known (to me) authors. There were a number of names I recognised (eg Penelope Lively, Nigel Slater), but honestly, I loved every one. Reflections on growing, belonging, nurturing, home - it was gorgeous. I think my favourite quote was from the final essay, by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, it made me laugh out loud:

"I walk back to the kitchen and joke with T that it wouldn't be so bad to be reborn as an insect in a compost bin since every time I open it up it's like a rave in there."

There are two other anthologies in the same series - In the Kitchen, and At the Pond (about the Hampstead Ladies' Pond), I'm keen to read them too (they both have gorgeous covers too, like this one). 4.5/5.

I've noted Three Apples Fell from the Sky as a possible read some day.

>67 hailelib: I've noticed that I was more enthusiastic about it than helenliz (she's just read and reviewed it too; her review gives a bit more about what it's actually about!). I definitely think it's a worthwhile read, and will definitely keep it for a reread sometime!

>68 Jackie_K: I gave it 3 stars, which is a good read for me. I never considered not finishing, and it never felt like a chore to pick up. It just didn't knock my socks off.

Like >65 charl08: it took a while before I had any sense of where this was going to go, and it took me completely by surprise when it did.

>69 Helenliz: Yes, as unexpected plot twists go, it was brilliantly done - I certainly didn't see it coming!

>66 Jackie_K: I read the one about swimming, which was a bit all over the place for me - some I really loved, others that seemed a bit like someone had been asked to contribute who didn't really have much to say. Some of them were authors I'd already read before about swimming, which didn't help as I felt it was a bit of repetition. But as you say, a gorgeous cover - I was sad to give it back to the library!

>71 charl08: That's interesting, Charlotte. I didn't find the garden one to be as patchy, I pretty much enjoyed every essay in it. Actually the swimming collection is probably the one I'm least interested in of the three, although I probably will get them all eventually.

Category: Vintage fiction (published 1900-1968)



I've previously read this book in English, but now it was time to read it in the original French. Goscinny & Uderzo's Asterix chez les Bretons (Asterix in Britain) follows our heroes to help out an indomitable village in Britain which is resisting the Romans (sound familiar, Asterix fans?), and give them a barrel of their magic potion to give them superhuman strength to conquer the amassing Romans. The usual shenanigans, disasters, and beating up of entire Roman legions ensues, and the Britons discover their own magic potion. Lots of fun. 3.5/5.

Category: Nature



Kathryn Aalto's Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers and Mavericks who shape how we see the Natural World is a lovely anthology-esque tribute to a number of female writers who've written about nature and the environment. It came out of a magazine article about nature writing which didn't feature a single woman, and so Kathryn Aalto wrote a rebuttal, which was then expanded into this book. She showcases not just modern writers such as Amy Liptrot and Elena Passarello, and poets like Camille T Dungy and Kathleen Jamie, but also scientists like Rachel Carson, and goes right back to writers such as Dorothy Wordsworth and Susan Fenimore Cooper to show that nature writing in the 19th century is more than just Henry David Thoreau. She's also a lovely writer in her own right (and a fantastic teacher; she is the tutor on the writing course I'm about to start, and I did another with her last year), and my wishlist of books I absolutely must read has just grown exponentially. Some of the modern writers she either spoke with or even managed to go for a walk with, so as well as talking about their work, she's able to put a personal spin on their lives and writing. And even with the more historical writers, she often traces their footsteps - I enjoyed her walk up to Skiddaw in the Lake District in the footsteps of Dorothy Wordsworth very much. A lovely book to dip in and out of, or read in one go. 4/5.

>74 Jackie_K: - Our book club read Visionary Women by Andrea Barnet a couple of years ago about 4 women who changed their worlds and Rachel Carson was one of the women featured (Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall, and Alice Waters). I'm going to take a BB for this - it sounds interesting.

>74 Jackie_K: Thinking this would make a good gift (and how great to know the author in person). Hope your course goes well.

>75 dudes22: That sounds like a good one too!
>76 charl08: Yes, it's an ideal gift! Thank you, I have high hopes for the course!

Category: Academic



Didier Fassin's When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa is an academic anthropology text which very powerfully shows both the human face of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, and the roots of the politics surrounding it. Despite being quite old now (it was published in 2007) I found a lot of parallels between the situation of AIDS then and covid now (especially around disinformation, competing narratives, and distrust of medical knowledge and authority). Most interesting I thought was his very nuanced discussions of the controversial position adopted by then-President Thabo Mbeki about AIDS - reported as him denying the link between HIV and AIDS, but of course much more subtle than that, largely embedded in the social and economic realities of medicine in Africa, and the long-standing legacies of both apartheid and colonialism. The text is quite dense at times, and some of the academic theory was a bit hard work (for me, anyway), but even still, I thought this was a masterful, subtle and compassionate account, and a call for academics, politicians and all of us to examine our attitudes and beliefs about 'the other'. 4.5/5.

Category: autobiography/biography/memoir/true stories
March CATWoman: Women Pioneers



A Woman's Work is the autobiography of the Mother of the UK Parliament (ie the longest-serving female Member of Parliament), Harriet Harman, who has recently announced that she will stand down at the next election, having entered parliament in 1982. It's an account of her work throughout all her varied positions - pre-Parliament when she was a lawyer and working for the National Council for Civil Liberties, as a candidate and then MP, various Shadow Cabinet and government positions, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and twice Acting Leader when first Gordon Brown and then Ed Miliband resigned until their replacements were elected - particularly focused on what she did to increase both representation of women within and outwith parliament and political party, and laws such as the Equality Act and legislation around childcare and domestic violence. She's an MP I've long admired, even if I've not always agreed with her (eg she voted with the government on going into Iraq in 2003), and I think she'll be a super-hard act to follow. The misogyny and abuse she had to face just for daring to be a female MP and Party activist was horrific, and the fact that so much of what she faced is now deemed unacceptable is down to the work that she, and her colleagues, did over many years. I also liked that if there was someone she didn't get along with, rather than bitching about them like some autobiographies do, she just tends to mention them in passing, alludes to their disagreement, and then leaves well alone, rather than going on and on about why they were wrong. There are plenty of people in her position who would do well to do likewise. 4/5.

Category: Travel
April Non-Fiction Challenge: Armchair Travelling



Outpost by Dan Richards is subtitled "A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth", and certainly delivers on that. A fascination with huts, sheds, bothies, lighthouses and other outposts leads him all over the world looking at landscape and solitude. From Scotland to Svalbard, Japan to France, USA to Iceland, he explores their appeal and considers the future of wild landscapes in the Anthropocene. If this sounds worthy and earnest, in parts it is, but it's also very funny too (his description of his hangover at the start of the Scotland chapter made me laugh out loud). He's very self-effacing, and makes a charming and perceptive travel companion. 4.5/5.

>80 Jackie_K: Outpost sounds very appealing to me and when I checked my library I found it is there so this book has been added to my list.

>79 Jackie_K: I didn't know a lot about her when starting this book, beyond being aware of her in the news during the new Labour government years. Having read it, I wish many more would have access to it. The level of prejudice she faced as a pregnant woman in politics for example.

>81 DeltaQueen50: I hope you enjoy it if you get to it, Judy!
>82 charl08: Yes, I agree - the misogyny and sexism was extraordinary, wasn't it?

Category: Religious



For Lent this year I've been reading Andrew Rumsey's English Grounds: A Pastoral Journal. Andrew is now the Bishop of Ramsbury (in Wiltshire, part of Salisbury Diocese), but for my last couple of years in London (2003-2005) he was the vicar of the church I attended in south London, and I've stayed in touch with him on social media and bumped into him every now and then. This reminded me, yet again, of how much I miss his wisdom and his excellent sermons (there aren't many people of whom I can say I miss their sermons, but he's definitely one!).

The book consists of short entries charting his first year of moving to Wiltshire and getting to know the place, and contains musings on place, nature, Christianity, Englishness, and the place of the Church of England in all of that. It also features some of his lovely photos. His writing is so beautiful - short pieces containing such profundity. I absolutely loved this book, and highly recommend it. 5/5.

Category: Nature
April RandomKIT: April Showers



First published in 1903, Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain proves that powerful writing about nature and place in America isn't just the purview of Henry David Thoreau. This is a book of essays exploring the south western Californian desert, and the arid, sparse writing reflects the landscape but also reflects the colour and life in this seemingly barren land. I particularly loved the essay about scavengers (buzzards, vultures, coyotes, and others), and also her writing on water and trails. I'll definitely come back to this one again. 4/5.

>84 Jackie_K: - >85 Jackie_K: - Two BBs at once.

>84 Jackie_K: - Sometimes you don't realize how much you appreciate the sermons of one until you get someone not as good.

>86 dudes22: I hope you enjoy them both!

Category: Nature



You can really tell that Nina Mingya Powles, author of Small Bodies of Water, is a poet first and foremost - this is a book of prose essays using various bodies of water (some more tenuous than others) to explore belonging, family, nature, language, identity, and home, but the language is so beautiful and poetic that there were times that it felt more like a prose poem. She is of mixed race - white European/NZ on her dad's side, and Malaysian Chinese on her mum's, and she has lived and travelled throughout the world at various points in her life, so there were lots of places and cultures to inspire her writing. She writes about bodies of water she has known from swimming pools to coastlines to monsoon rains, and yet the chapter which affected me most was more internal, about periods - it was absolutely fantastic (now there's a word I wouldn't expect to use in the same sentence as 'periods'!!!). This is really hard to categorise, although a lot of people place it in nature writing (the proposal for the book won the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize a few years ago). It's lovely. 4/5.

Category: Nature



I received an ARC of Josephine Woolington's Where We Call Home: Land, Seas and Skies of the Pacific Northwest as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Programme; thank you to the author and publisher for the opportunity.

Chapters cover some of the nature and wildlife of the Pacific Northwest - plants, animals, insects, birds - and all of the chapters were well-researched and thorough. The author got a good balance between fact and her own experience, and this was very well-written. I really liked that as well as presenting facts, she also interviewed experts in the field - ecologists, Native teachers, scientists - which gave it a more personal touch. She presented the impact of climate change and human activity subtly but urgently, without preaching. I learnt lots, about a part of the world I'm not at all familiar with, and it's encouraged me to look at the nature and wildlife closer to my own home. 4.5/5.

>88 Jackie_K: This looks good, I'll watch out for it. I love the cover. Although my area of Canada is in the south west, it is generally known as the Pacific Northwest. In recent years I've moved away from the coastal area and really miss it.

>89 VivienneR: I love the cover too. This is mainly looking at US Pacific North-West (Oregon/Washington mainly), although the local marmot (the final chapter) does have a close relative in Vancouver Island, apparently.

The Vancouver Island marmot is found only on Vancouver Island and is one of the most endangered animals in the world. I lived on the island but have never seen one although I've seen marmots in other areas.

Hi Jackie. I just joined the group and am randomly visiting member's topics. I'll be following some of your categories here to get some reading ideas, especially non-fiction and nature. I enjoy those subjects as well, but don't read books in those genres as often as I'd like. My mood often highly influences my reading choices now. Wishing you good luck with all your remaining 2022 challenges. :-)

>91 VivienneR: I've been to Vancouver, but didn't make it over to Vancouver Island - it's one of many places on my bucket list. Quite a few islands around the world have their own unique animal species (eg there's a shrew that's unique to Orkney).

>92 Ann_R: Welcome, and thanks for popping by! I hope you enjoy your reading this year. I've found LT groups really helpful for encouraging me to read more, and think more about what I'm reading too.

Category: Non-fiction (general)



I received Flutes Jam: A Guide to Improvisation by Nowick Gray via the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Programme - thank you to the author for the opportunity to read this book.

This short book introduces basic fingering for the flute and for penny whistles, and theory based on scales and modes, designed to encourage the novice musician to be able to improvise along with other musicians. I was keen to read this, as a classically trained musician with a music degree, I'm always really aware of how self-conscious and basically clueless I am when I try to improvise. I have to be honest though, I really struggled with this book - if I didn't have a music degree I'd have been even further lost, the discussions of modes in particular soon had me more and more baffled. His system of visually representing scales and modes I think should have appealed to my nerdy side, but I found them hard to follow and visualise (they looked more like sudoku grids to me). I would have appreciated some suggestions for tunes, songs etc in the particular modes that would have worked with each of the scales and modes he was talking about, as it would have felt less abstract. I was grateful at the end that he included links to his YouTube channel, as I suspect I will get on a lot better when I see and hear the points demonstrated. On its own I found this book a bit baffling, even though there's clearly lots of thought and practice gone into it. 2.5/5.

Category: Non-fiction (general)
April CATWoman: Women Authors of Colo(u)r



SWAY: Unravelling Unconscious Bias is popular science at its best by Pragya Agarwal. It's thorough but accessible, and I feel like I learnt absolutely loads. The first few chapters look at the brain science around bias, and then the bulk of the book is looking at different areas where we can experience or exhibit unconscious bias, and what the research says about this. Issues such as race and gender, but also less 'obvious' ones like weight, beauty, accent (the accent/language chapter was really really interesting), and finishing with a discussion of the rise of AI and the bias built in to even the supposedly neutral AI tools. It was all very interesting, well worth a read. 4.5/5.

>95 Jackie_K: That sounds interesting. I've read other books that tackled some aspects of bias, but none discussed the AI element. I suppose as long as humans are controlling the software for AI, it would be really difficult to have a completely unbiased program.

>96 Ann_R: Yes, especially as the majority of people developing them are white cis techbros.

Category: Religious



Around a Thin Place: An Iona Pilgrimage Guide by Jane Bentley and Neil Paynter does what it says on the tin - it is for use either as an actual guide to pilgrims on the island of Iona, or for the armchair pilgrim at home like me, and uses pictures of the island and key spots from the weekly Iona Community island pilgrimage to structure the meditations, readings and prayers. I really want to visit Iona, and also have known Jane since I moved to Scotland, so this was right up my street. I must admit though, the armchair pilgrimage was a lesser experience than I'm sure the actual on-the-island pilgrimage is. It's definitely added to my wish to visit Iona though! 3.5/5.

Category: Nature



The Wild Places is an early book by Robert Macfarlane, published 2007. In it he travels around Britain and Ireland in search of the remaining wild places here - mountains, islands, holloways, etc - expecting them to be devoid of history and human influence, but eventually finding that everywhere is intimately tied up with human history and activity too. He often travels with friends, including several trips with the late author Roger Deakin, who died during the writing of this book. As usual his prose is beautiful and poetic (some might say purple, but I personally love it), and he brings the smells, sights, sounds and feelings of the various landscapes really vividly to life. My favourite bit was early in the book when he was camping out on the island of Ynis Enlli in Wales. At night the sea is full of phosphorescence, and he swims out in the middle of it, shooting his hands out like Merlin to watch the phosphorescence appearing to shoot out of his fingertips. I laughed out loud when I read that bit, and now doing that is my new life goal. 4.5/5.

>87 Jackie_K: Adding this to the wishlist - I've enjoyed her writing having heard her through the Forward prize readings during lockdown. She also co-founded a small press.

Just popping in to say that I have finally read The Crow Folk on your recommendation. It was not my usual thing at all, but I really enjoyed it and the ringing parts were very well done. It was interesting that he focussed more on the sound and the emotion than the technicalities. Although part of me is now wondering what they rang...

>99 charl08: I'd like to read some of her poetry - I always feel a bit thick with poetry, but her prose has given me hope that I'd find her poetry more accessible than some!
>100 Helenliz: I'm so glad you enjoyed it!

Category: Non-fiction (general)



How to Change the World is a lovely picture book by Rashmi Sirdeshpande, illustrated by Annabel Tempest. It features 15 double page spreads outlining times when groups of ordinary people have achieved extraordinary things - the campaign to ban whaling, the campaign for women's votes around the world, the beginnings of democracy in Greece, the Montgomery bus boycott, and others. It outlined each issue giving lots of information without being preachy. I liked it a lot. 4/5.

I'm feeling sorry for myself as I've finally succumbed to covid (my daughter had it a couple of weeks ago, and my husband has been ill with it all this past week, so it was pretty inevitable. My LFT tests were all still saying negative, but I have enough symptoms to be pretty certain!). I have been able to finish another book between my copious naps though!

Category: Travel



In The Spice Islands Voyage, explorer and writer Tim Severin sails round the Spice Islands of Indonesia in a traditional sailing boat following the footsteps (sailsteps?) of the Victorian era explorer and self-taught naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, who independently of Darwin came up with the explanation of evolution and natural selection at a similar time on the other side of the world. The aim of Severin's trip is to see how the area has changed since Wallace's time, in particular the environment and wildlife. He also writes a lot about Wallace's own trip, and I found this a compelling and fascinating travelogue, with signs of both environmental degradation and environmental hope. 4/5.

>102 Jackie_K: Oh no, Jackie! Hope you feel better soon!

>102 Jackie_K: Sorry to hear that, Jackie. Get well soon!

>102 Jackie_K: Hope you feel better soon.

I'm taking a note of the book: sounds like perfect gift material for my mum who loves travel books (and sailing).

Sorry to hear that you have succumbed but hope that you and all your family are feeling better soon.

You've been on quite a tour of the wild places! May your healing be swift and uneventful. It does seem like anyone who has held out so far is finally succumbing.

>103 rabbitprincess: >104 MissWatson: >105 charl08: >106 DeltaQueen50: >107 RidgewayGirl: thank you all! I'm still not feeling at all good, but I am taking things easy and sleeping lots, and hopefully will turn the corner soon! Already I think I'm feeling slightly less bad than I did at the weekend, although to be honest that's not a very high bar!

Category: Travel
April CATWoman: Women of Colo(u)r
April Non-Fiction Challenge: Armchair Travelling



More travels in southern Asia, this time by train rather than boat, with Monisha Rajesh's Around India in 80 Trains. Accompanied by a photographer friend she nicknames Passepartout (a nod to Around the World in 80 Days, of course), she travels the length and breadth of India by train over a 4 month period, exploring cities, countryside, and the peculiar subculture of train travel itself. There were times when it felt too caught up in the arguments she was having with Passepartout (they did make up eventually), but the latter 1/3rd of the book in particular I thought really gave an amazing flavour of 21st century India. I also loved Anusha, the long-suffering clerk at Delhi station. 4/5.

So sorry to hear you succumbed to the virus, Jackie. I hope you are feeling better very soon, with no lingering effects.

>102 Jackie_K: Taking a BB on the Tim Severin book, a writer I've always enjoyed. I'll look out for this one.

>108 Jackie_K: I am so sorry you are still feeling ill from Covid. I do wish you a full recovery and hope the worst of it passes soon.

Hi Jackie! I hope you and your husband are soon fully recovered from the virus.

>102 Jackie_K: Best wishes for a quick recovery.

>108 Jackie_K: In the late eighties and early nineties I made a couple of trips to India, one of them solo, and did quite a few train trips. Anything that could go wrong would go wrong, and each trip started with rushing up and down the platform, reading the passenger lists on the carriage doors to find out if you had been allocated a seat. There was no such thing as issuing a ticket on the spot when you booked. The computer was always down! Train travel in India is exciting and I'm really glad to have done it.

>105 charl08: I meant to say, Tim Severin has written 3 other books about travel and sailing, so she'll have plenty to keep her going!

>109 VivienneR: >110 Ann_R: >111 Chrischi_HH: >112 pamelad: Thank you very much! I'm now testing negative and back at work, but my goodness it's really taken it out of me. This subvariant really is horrible.

>112 pamelad: I guess I must be getting old, I'd love to see India but I was quite happy to travel the Indian railways by armchair :)

Category: Nature
May AuthorCAT: Author from your country



A Sky Full of Kites by Tom Bowser is the story of Argaty Red Kites, a centre not too far from here which has seen kites return since the kite reintroduction programme in Scotland in the early 2000s. Argaty is a farm, but the author (who runs Argaty Red Kites) did not want to follow his family footsteps into farming, and so is working to rewild large parts of the land and it now welcomes kites, ospreys, red squirrels, and most recently, beavers. I'm hoping to visit soon. He used to be a journalist, which shows in the quality of the writing. It is a tale of hope, of frustration, of figuring out our place in the natural scheme of things, and of trying to do the right thing. I found it very inspiring. 4.5/5.

Category: Central & Eastern Europe ; Former Soviet Union



Jennifer Eremeeva is an American expat married to a Russian and living in Moscow. She certainly knows the country well. This book, Have Personality Disorder, Will Rule Russia, is a whistlestop tour through all the leaders of Russia from the foundation of the nation through to Vladimir Putin. Most leaders just have a couple of pages, and the final 3 chapters are much longer, all covering Vladimir Putin. It doesn't claim to be a definitive history (in fact it claims the opposite, to be fair), and for most of the book (up until Boris Yeltsin) I found it mildly entertaining, and thought that it would actually be the basis of a decent standup set giving the history of Russia in an hour. The chapters on Putin - which include his invasions of eastern Ukraine and Crimea - felt different somehow. She's obviously struggling with the direction her beloved Russia is taking, and is no fan of Putin, but is frankly not complementary about Ukraine in a way that really doesn't read well right now. I also find the title of the book really distasteful - I don't think armchair diagnosis of mental disorders is very helpful, whoever it's aimed at, and the people that suffer aren't those the jibe is aimed at, but those who are genuinely diagnosed with those disorders. So I ended up lowering my rating. This is OK for a quick rundown of all the leaders that for the most part is vaguely amusing, but you'll get no more insight than if you read wikipedia. 2.5/5.

Category: Nature



Camille T. Dungy's Trophic Cascade is a powerful collection of poetry which encompasses motherhood, bereavement, nature and ecological damage. As usual with me and poetry, I am both astounded by the poet's ability to make something so beautiful from language, and also by my absolute stupidity and inability to write anything even close! Which is quite the challenge, as this is one of the set books on my current writing course, and this week I have to write some long-form poetry, inspired by this collection! I've given this book 4 stars, I'm pretty sure I won't give my own poetry that many! (although I am kind of looking forward to the challenge) :D 4/5.

Category: Autobiography; biography; memoir; true stories



In Peggy and Me, comedian Miranda Hart writes about her life with her dog, Peggy, and all she's learnt through becoming a dog person. The writing style is very much the same as her spoken style in her comedy (lots of chumminess, 'what I calls', and rambling internal monologuey asides), so if you like that then you'll like this book, and if not then it'll probably be a bit much. I can take Miranda in small doses, so only ever read a chapter at a time, but it was a nice enough diversion, and Peggy does sound lovely. 3.5/5.

Hi Jackie, so many wonderful books! I took a few BBs, especially for the travel books. A Sky Full Of Kites sounds like one I would enjoy, too.

>113 Jackie_K: we have Kites breeding locally. They are remarkably large when seen close to. If I'm out walking and see one circling, I'm always tempted to prove I am alive!

>116 MissBrangwen: Thank you for visiting! I hope you enjoy the books when you reach them!
>117 Helenliz: When I visited my parents in Northants last summer we often saw them circling over the nearby park - mum and I went for a walk (and a sit down) and watched one for ages right above us. The visit to Argaty was very interesting - they told us that although kites are large birds, they're super-light (including having hollow bones), so even though they are mainly carrion feeders, if the carrion is big they wouldn't be able to fly away with it because they wouldn't be able to carry it. And if the carrion hasn't already been split open then they wouldn't be able to do much with it either, as their beaks are actually quite short - you need the crows or another raptor with more of a hooky beak to have a go at it first. So the concerns of farmers about them carrying off lambs is unfounded - although they can manage a sheep's afterbirth.

Category: Academic
June Non-Fiction Challenge: Science & Medicine



The Politics of Vaccination: A Global History, edited by Christine Homberg, Stuart Blume & Paul Greenough, is an academic collection looking at the development of (or resistance to) mass vaccination projects throughout the world, with case studies from (amongst others) Pakistan, South Korea, Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, UK, Nigeria, and others. For an academic tome it was very accessible and readable, I thought, and I found the differences between the various countries fascinating. It added a lot of flesh to the bones of my knowledge - eg I knew that during the MMR controversy of the 1990s/2000s Japan had used single vaccines rather than the combined MMR, but this showed me how that mistrust of combined vaccines had historical roots in past vaccination campaigns. Likewise I knew that the Swedish response to vaccinating its population against covid was much slower than the rest of Europe (and indeed much of the world), and this book (which came out in 2018 so before the pandemic) detailed the frankly disastrous Swedish attempts to mass vaccinate the population in 2009 when the swine flu pandemic hit, prior to all study data on the vaccines being available, so all of a sudden their different approach to covid vaccination made a lot more sense. The afterword was also very interesting, highlighting (as did many of the chapters in the book) the limitations of global eradication programmes in countries where the particular illness being targeted may not actually be that country's main (or even any) priority for health improvement. Very interesting book. 4.5/5.

Category: Non-fiction (general)



David Long's A History of London in 50 Lives does what it says on the tin; 10 chapters each covering a particular area of London (it has to be said, 7 or 8 of those chapters are particular bits of central London), each containing 5 or 6 notable people who've lived there - artists, politicians, royalty, ne'er-do-wells, all sorts of great and good and not-so-good. There were just a few pages per person so it was pretty light and gossipy, it was a good read and pleasant undemanding diversion rather than earth-shattering. 3/5.

Category: Nature



I really wanted to like Claire Dunn's Rewilding the Urban Soul, which is my most recent library book, but I have to confess to abandoning it after 4 chapters. She's a good writer, and has interesting subject matter, but I just found this too 'woo woo' for my tastes. I am absolutely here for books about reconnecting with nature, but this one just didn't speak to my soul. Gorgeous cover though. 2.5/5.

Category: Non-fiction (general)



One of my birthday gifts this year was Notes from an Island by Tove Jansson & Tuulikki Pietila (known to all as Tooti). This is the account of Tove and Tooti's 26 summers spent on a tiny rocky island, Klovharun, in the Gulf of Finland, from the first trip out and building their cabin in the 1960s, to the decision to leave the island for the last time in 1991 once age finally caught up with them. Tove's writing, drawn from her diaries of the time, are perfectly complemented by Tooti's atmospheric etchings and wash drawings. There are also diary entries from Brunstrom, the gruff fisherman who helps them build the cabin. This entry from his diary really made me smile: "The ladies made pea soup; it was pretty good but didn't have any potatoes." And this from Tove made me stop in my tracks: "I was seized by a new feeling of detachment that was utterly unlike isolation, merely a sense of being an outsider, with no worry or guilt about anything at all. I don't know how it happened, but life became very simple and I just let myself be happy."

Even though the writing was sparse and beautiful throughout, the sparseness and beauty of the final chapter, when they're packing up to leave the island for the final time, took my breath away. The final image of their handmade kite caught by the wind and flying over the Gulf of Finland almost broke my heart. 5/5.

>121 Jackie_K: Beautiful book and review!

>122 MissBrangwen: Thank you! It really was lovely.

Category: Celtic



I was very chuffed to pick up Garth & Vicky Waite's Island: Diary of a Year on Easdale on my most recent trip to Barter Books, because up till then I'd only seen it online second hand for over £120! It's quite old now (published 1985), and in parts that showed, but it was still delightful. The authors retired to the Scottish island of Easdale (one of the so-called Slate Islands, near Oban on the mainland) and this is the diary of their first year, with Garth's words and Vicky's drawing and calligraphy. They also intersperse it with relevant poems, by both themselves and more famous poets.

The calligraphy probably hasn't dated as well, but the drawings are lovely (Vicky didn't have any formal art training), and give a really good sense of the wealth of wildlife and nature on the small island. There were one or two places where I cringed slightly - they wrote of picking up some frogspawn and tadpoles from a pond in the neighbouring island of Seil and transplanting it to a pond on Easdale (that sort of thing is discouraged nowadays due to the risk of transferring potential infections), and at the end they talked about wanting to bring over hedgehogs from the mainland to eat their slugs (again, introducing a species that is not native to such a small and fragile ecosystem can have all sorts of unforeseen consequences, eg for ground nesting birds). I've no idea if they did that or not, but it's definitely not something I'm used to seeing in my more recently published reads about nature and the environment!

Despite those misgivings though, this was a lovely way to spend a couple of hours and I definitely want to add the Slate Islands to my (ever growing) list of islands I want to visit. 4/5.

>123 Jackie_K: I want to go back to Barter Books and spend a long time there. Maybe next year.

>124 charl08: I never don't want to spend a long time at Barter Books! Hoping to get there in a few weeks, as we are heading south to see friends and family.

>121 Jackie_K: that sounds interesting. I read he The Summer Book a year or two ago, which is set on the same island.

>126 Helenliz: It was wonderful, and there's plenty you'll probably recognise (including the inspiration for their gruff fisherman friend).

Category: Non-fiction (general)
July AuthorCAT: Asian authors



After publishing her first book, The God of Small Things to great acclaim in the late 1990s, author Arundhati Roy wrote no more fiction for several years, instead finding herself more and more involved in political and environmental activism. The End of Imagination is a collection of essays and speeches published between 1999 and 2004. Mostly she covers Indian politics, but imperialism is never far away, so there's plenty of writing on America and the UK (amongst others) too. I learnt lots, and have to say I really admire her powerful voice, especially in matters of environment and social justice. 4/5.

>121 Jackie_K: a BB for me!

>128 Tess_W: I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

Category: sexual/reproductive health & rights; gender; sexuality; parenting; children



(M)Otherhood: On the Choices of Being a Woman by Pragya Agarwal is a terrific book which is part memoir, and part exploration of the current landscape of women's reproductive choices and rights. She looks at societal and political attitudes to motherhood and reproductive choice, and shows how it is a much more complex, less black and white issue than it is often portrayed. Her own story, incorporating unexpected pregnancy within an arranged marriage, abortion, infertility and surrogacy, is a really interesting way of exploring all sorts of issues, and I really liked that as well as discussing the usual Western scientific and psychological and religious canon, she also incorporated the worldviews prevalent in India, where she is originally from, which made the account even richer. And of course, given the news from the US and elsewhere recently, this was an extremely timely read. 4.5/5.

Category: Nature writing



I've just realised I completely forgot to add this book to my thread, I can't think what I was thinking as it was a 5* read! I finished it in June. Better late than never :)

Findings is a set of non-fiction essays by writer and poet (and Scotland's current Makar) Kathleen Jamie. It's a wonderful collection, rooted deeply in Scotland's nature and landscape, earthy and poetic. I loved her subsequent essay collection Sightlines, but I think I like this one even more. I love how she brings the beauty from the ordinary, and shows how even in the midst of normal, ordinary life (filling the washing machine, ferrying her children around), she can still find beauty in the peripheral views even as she can't necessarily always take time out to undertake epic expeditions. 5/5.

Category: Academic



Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England's Colonial Connections by Corinne Fowler is a fascinating academic book revisiting the English countryside. The author was the lead academic involved in the National Trust's recent review of the slavery and colonial links with its properties, and she has had a huge amount of criticism from the type of people who complain to the BBC when Countryfile show a segment about Muslim hikers or Black people accessing the countryside. I expected this book to be a look at particular landscapes or country houses and an account of how they're linked to slavery and colonialism, but actually it was much more interesting than that, using literature (classic and modern) to show that the English countryside has always had more diverse populations than the foaming at the mouth rightwingers would have us believe. She looks at various types of rural landscape - moorland, country houses, gardening etc - and finishes the book with a short story and a number of poems that she wrote inspired by the material she was gathering. Not an easy read, but really important. 4.5/5.

Category: Non-fiction (general)
July Non-Fiction Challenge: Books by Journalists



Heroic Failure: Brexit and the politics of pain by Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole, is a book looking at Brexit - what led to it, why we are where we are (NB it was published in 2018). I've always enjoyed the journalistic pieces he's written, he's a very astute observer, and this book is no exception. He looks at the contradictory but equally powerful lures of the British love of heroic failure (Scott of the Antarctic, kind of thing), and sense of British exceptionalism. Using a number of literary references (including, somewhat unexpectedly, Fifty Shades of Grey), this is an entertaining but also close-to-the-mark account from an external observer, and it shows Brexit for the whole Emperor's New Clothes farce it always was. It would be funny if it wasn't so pointless and utterly damaging. 4/5.

Category: Nature
July RandomKIT: Dog Days of Summer



Skylarks with Rosie: A Somerset Spring is an account by nature writer Stephen Moss of the first covid lockdown spring in 2020, and the nature and wildlife he encountered locally. This was just lovely, a gentle account, but with the politics underlying and giving context to the time. 4.5/5.

I'm going to be offline for a few days - back towards the end of next week. Happy reading everyone :)

hope you have a good time away form us - and plenty of good reading.

Enjoy your time away!

>135 Helenliz: >136 MissWatson: Thank you, it was lovely and I'm now needing a break to recover from it! As is always the way with these trips, I always plan to read more than I end up having time to do, but I did get a couple off the list, and have some others in various stages of 'on the go'.

Category: Travel



Traveling in Place: A History of Armchair Travel by Bernd Stiegler was a book I picked up several years ago from the University of Chicago Press free monthly ebook email. I thought it sounded fascinating - looking at literature that doesn't leave the room, it seemed like a really good partner and counterpoint to all the travel books I love from around the world.

I'm afraid I Pearl-ruled it. I found it very dry, and although I did try, I didn't really follow what what he was saying, and never understood why I should care. 1/5.

Category: Non-Fiction (General)



Why We Read: 70 Writers on Non-Fiction, edited by Josephine Greywoode, does what it says on the tin - short essays (1-5 pages) by 70 non-fiction writers explaining why they read. Some were really interesting, others a bit dull, many of them I'd never heard of (I recognised about 20 of them), and the majority were men (around 2/3 men, 1/3 women, roughly). So a typical anthology really. I'm glad I read it though, and will definitely dip in and out of it again. 3.5/5.

Category: Non-fiction (general)
July Non-Fiction Challenge: Books by Journalists



Over the past few years, The Byline Times has established itself as a hard-hitting alternative to the UK mainstream media. An online, subscription-based newspaper, it is unashamedly left-wing, and as it is not owned by shareholders or random rich blokes, it is refreshingly free of the tiptoeing round issues that is far too common in the news media these days. Edited by the paper's editor, Hardeep Matharu, Wokelore: Boris Johnson's Culture War and Other Stories is an anthology of articles from the first couple of years of the paper, from 2019, incorporating the aftermath of the Brexit vote, as well as the impact of the covid pandemic, the end of the Trump presidency, and other foreign stories too. This is a compelling account of the politics of the last 2 or 3 years, refreshing in its honesty, and depressing in the picture it paints of political corruption, incompetence, and love of power. 4.5/5.

Category: Contemporary fiction (1969-present)



A quick library book, Beaky Malone: Worst Ever School Trip by Barry Hutchison is the second in a fun series about a boy who (it turns out in book 1) visits a magic shop and is rendered unable to lie. In this book, having always got into trouble for lying, he's now getting into even bigger trouble for telling the truth. He has to partner the school bully, Wayne, on a school trip. Wayne has it in for Beaky at the best of times, even more so when Beaky can't not tell everyone about the time Wayne wet himself in fright at a clown on a previous school trip, so Beaky spends the whole trip waiting for the moment that Wayne will finally beat him up. But then he sees the woman, Madame Shirley, who was responsible for the truth-telling magic. Can he reach her in time to undue the magic, and escape Wayne? A fun read for early, newly-confident readers. 3.5/5.

Today is my 10th Thingaversary (I would have forgotten, but as it's the 10th LT kindly sent me a badge to remind me). I've already bought way more than 11 books this year, but I have quite a lot of kobo points built up, so maybe I'll splash out on just one later ...

I was never a huge fan of August, but it strikes me that this particular week in August has been good to me. Today is my Thingaversary, tomorrow is the anniversary of my first date with my husband, way back in 2006. I'm so grateful for both! :)

>140 Jackie_K: happy thuigaversary and first date-aversary. Sounds like two excellent things.

tempted by Why we Read.

>140 Jackie_K: Happy Thingaversary, Jackie. May there be many more years of happiness, both here and in real life.

Happy Thingaversary! I'd say it's definitely an occasion to treat yourself to at least one book! :)

Happy Thingaversary and first date anniversary!

Happy Thingaversary, Jackie! And, even better, happy First Date Anniversary!

>141 Helenliz: >142 MissWatson: >143 christina_reads: >144 Tess_W: >145 DeltaQueen50: Thank you all very much! We didn't do anything to celebrate the first date anniversary, as himself is recovering from a root canal, but I did buy a book to celebrate the Thingaversary, Nina Riggs' The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying. Pretty sure I'm going to need a mountain of tissues when I get round to that one!

Congratulations on both anniversaries, Jackie! And I hope 'himself' has a speedy recovery from his root canal.

>147 VivienneR: Thank you very much! He said last night that he could chew again without pain (we've had something of a soft diet the last few days!), so looks like it's working!

Category: Celtic
August AuthorCAT: Prize Winners



Mike Parker's On the Red Hill is a beautiful book of place, love and landscape. He ties together the lives of two gay couples (an older couple Reg and George, and then himself and his partner Preds) and the house in Wales that binds them to each other. Rhiw Goch is an old farmhouse, owned by Reg and George from the early 1980s, which they then bequeathed to Mike and Preds. The book is the story of lives of the four men, the house, the local landscape (both literal and figurative, as it also looks at rural attitudes towards, and acceptance of, gay people in Wales), and the importance of identity and home. Loving but uncompromising, beautiful but not shying away from the harsh realities of rural life in west Wales, I thought this book was wonderful, and it will definitely be in my top reads of the year. 5/5.

Hi Jackie, I caught up on your thread and as always, I loved reading your reviews and added several books to my WL. You always manage to find such unique and special books!

>149 MissBrangwen: Thank you for visiting, I'm glad a few of these books have piqued your interest! I've had some good reads this year.

Category: Contemporary fiction (1969-present)
July RandomKIT: Dog Days of Summer



Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth by Frank Cottrell Boyce is a fun children's fantasy, where foster child Pres and alien Sputnik (who appears to Pres as a boy with goggles and kilt, but to everyone else as a cute dog) have a few weeks to find 10 reasons why Sputnik's alien race shouldn't shrink the Earth to oblivion. Madcap adventures merge with more serious themes - dementia, fostering, family, home - and the audiobook, narrated by the wonderful Peter Capaldi, made it even more fun. (I also really enjoyed, and bet he did too, the narration of the quasi-Dalek scene involving a supermarket self-checkout). 4/5.

>150 Jackie_K: OMG I loved that scene too!

>150 Jackie_K: That sounds most amusing.

>151 rabbitprincess: I think he had a lot of fun narrating this book!
>152 Helenliz: It was, and I definitely recommend the audiobook.

>148 Jackie_K: This sounds lovely. I've got it on my wishlist, hope to find a copy at the library.

>154 charl08: I loved it, I hope you do too!

Category: Central & Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union



I must admit from the outset that this will be a biased review, because (*whispers*) I wrote one of the chapters in Gazing at Welfare, Gender and Agency in Post-Socialist Countries. Edited by Maija Jappinen, Meri Kulmala & Aino Saarinen, this academic book came out of a conference held at the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki in late 2008, which I presented at during my PhD studies. Of course I'd read my chapter before, but to my shame I'd never actually got round to reading most of the others, so the last couple of weeks I've enjoyed going back to my old research interests and reading some really interesting research. (I was also very relieved that my chapter was, though I say so myself, pretty decent. I was worried with the passing of time that I'd think it was really amateur compared to the others, but I think it held its own!). Most of the chapters deal with research in Russia, but there are a few diversions to the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Romania/Moldova (which is my chapter). Fascinating research looked at issues like migration, informal care, domestic violence, hospital volunteering, elderly care, sexual & reproductive health, amongst others. As I say, I'm biased, but I do think this is a great addition to academic work in central/eastern Europe/former Soviet Union looking at issues around gender and welfare. 4.5/5 (because even I'm not brazen enough to give a book I've contributed to 5/5!).

>156 Jackie_K: Good is good! Congrats on being published!

>157 Tess_W: Thank you Tess! I should have said in my review, the book was published in 2011, which is why it's so embarrassing that I'd not read the rest of it till now!

Category: Central & Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union



Two Essays (there are lots of touchstones to books called Two Essays, funnily enough, but none of them are this one. I'll have to remember that in my future publishing plans) is a short book with two translated broadcasts by the Bulgarian writer and dissident, Georgi Markov (the translation is by Dimiter Keranov). Yesterday was the 44th anniversary of the day that Markov was attacked on Waterloo Bridge in London with a poisoned dart from an umbrella, an attack from which he died a few days later, aged 49. My parents always had the news on every day, so although I was only 9 I do remember this happening. It also cropped up in the news again in 2006 when Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned by polonium in his tea.

Markov was a writer and journalist who was originally feted by the Bulgarian Communist authorities. Increasingly disillusioned, he defected to the West in 1969, eventually settling in London where he worked for the BBC World Service. He also produced bulletins about the realities of life in Bulgaria for Radio Free Europe, and it is thought that these bulletins are the reason why he was assassinated, for revealing the every day mundanity and mediocrity of life under Bulgarian Communist rule. This book is the translation of two of those bulletins, 'Prostitution' and 'Wastewater', and it gave a fascinating insight into the everyday corruption and realities of life (along the lines of From Our Own Correspondent or Letter from America bulletins). I'd love for some more of them to be translated. Apparently the translator is working on a biography of Markov, which I for one would be really interested to read. 4.5/5.

>159 Jackie_K: I remember both incidents well. (I'm a fan of the Cold War!)

>160 Tess_W: Yes, I remember them too. Like many people here I grew up in the last couple of decades of the Cold War, so these sorts of events punctuated my childhood. A couple of years after Markov's assassination I remember very clearly when Poland declared martial law.

>159 Jackie_K: I didn't know the name of the person killed this way: umbrellas on Waterloo bridge seems to have become a kind of shorthand for spy skullduggery (but possibly just in my head?). Sounds like a fascinating book.

>162 charl08: Markov's was definitely the case I remember - it was huge in the news at the time, at the height of the Cold War.

Category: Central & Eastern Europe/Former Soviet Union
September Non-Fiction Challenge: Biography



Rosa Luxemburg by J.P. Nettl is a huge book that I've had on the go for a few weeks. It was first published in 1966, and reissued a few years ago by Verso, and remains a comprehensive biography of a fascinating woman - Marxist economist, theorist and committed revolutionary, key in both Polish and German socialist/communist parties in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, and endlessly fought over and reinterpreted by the Communist thinkers that followed her. She certainly led a passionate and committed life.

This book is kind of strange for me to process. I feel like after all those pages (over 1000 pages, with notes) I still don't entirely have a handle on Rosa the woman, and there were so many people and parties and comrades that were quite hard to keep a handle on, so although I feel like I know infinitely more about her life and politics than I did before, if you asked me to explain in detail I'd struggle. I might go back and read Kate Evans' graphic biography, Red Rosa, I suspect that now having read Nettl's biography I'll get even more out of that (Red Rosa is a really excellent book), and it'll probably help me place some of the people and events better. Her eventual murder, just after the end of WWI, was truly a tragedy, although I can't help thinking that had she survived, Stalin would have got her eventually. A fascinating woman, and fascinating life. 3.5/5.

Category: Nature



Lucy Jones' Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild looks at the research and projects looking at tackling our disconnection with the natural world and the impacts of this disconnection on our mental health. Rooted in personal experience, but open to what the research says, this is readable and thought-provoking. 4/5.

Category: Nature



My first book for October is Alison Richard's The Sloth Lemur's Song: Madagascar from the Deep Past to the Uncertain Present, which I listened to in audiobook form. She is an academic, who from her PhD in the very early 1970s to today has lived and worked extensively in Madagascar. This book is a magnum opus, looking at all the evidence for Madagascar's emergence as a country and landscape, and the various changes it has undergone over deep time. As well as her own discipline (anthropology - her research is on lemurs), she draws on zoology, botany, geology, ecology, archaeology, climate science, and history, in order to complicate the simplistic narratives of Madagascar's virgin environment being destroyed by local human inhabitants, as well as how the unique habitats and landscapes and flora and fauna of the island emerged. She highlights local Malagasy research as well as international scholars, and also includes anecdotes from her own extensive experience of living and working in Madagascar, and this is a highly respectful and loving as well as meticulously researched account. The book was narrated beautifully by Lucinda Roberts. 4.5/5.

I want to read all three of the last books you've mentioned thanks to your comments, but given my superslow NF pace it's unlikely. Thank you for highlighting them though, they sound fascinating.
Madagascar is a place I'd love to visit.

>166 charl08: Losing Eden isn't too heavy-going, and has quite short chapters! The other two are more hefty, I must admit. I've had some good reads recently. I think I'm your mirror-image in that I have a few fiction books that are taking me months to get through, but I can race through a good NF book.

>165 Jackie_K: Sounds lovely. Going to put it on my WL, but to be honest, I'm not a big NF reader, have to force myself, so I may not get to it!

>168 Tess_W: It's quite hefty, so it may be that audio is the way to go. I can certainly recommend the narrator.

Category: Contemporary Fiction (1969-present)
August CATWoman: Children's/YA/Graphic Novels)



I've really struggled to get into much fiction this year, but have had slightly better luck with fiction aimed at younger readers. Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle is a modern classic (of course also made even more famous by the Studio Ghibli animated film), and after a slow start I have to say I really quite enjoyed it. Sophie Hatter, the eldest of 3 sisters, is put under a spell by the Witch of the Waste and suddenly becomes a very old woman, and ends up taking refuge in the moving castle of Wizard Howl while trying to remove herself from the curse of the spell. The Wizard is thought to live on the souls of young girls, but it turns out he has secrets of his own, as well as an unusual cast of characters in and around the castle. It's not always obvious to me when authors change the pace in their writing, but this book was a masterclass in how to accelerate the pace of a story to a frenzy by the climax. Lots of fun. 3.5/5.

Category: Nature



Urban Gardener by Elspeth Thompson has been on my shelves for the best part of 20 years; it was a birthday (or maybe Christmas) gift from my sister when I moved into my house in London in the early 2000s and first got serious about gardens and gardening. I can't believe it's taken me this long to get to it, but I'm happy I got there eventually!

The author was the gardening correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph, and this is a collection of 3 years of her weekly columns of the same name, from 1996-1999, detailing her efforts and discoveries and disasters working in both a new, small urban garden, and sharing a large allotment plot. As is often the case with these collections of journalists' columns, the book is great for dipping in and out of (which is why it's probably taken me a couple of months to finish), but it is certainly delightful and even though some of the garden fashions she describes are somewhat dated now (especially the obsession with decking), I still enjoyed reading and dreaming about my fantasy garden. 4/5.

>170 Jackie_K: - My sister-in-law is very much into gardening, and I like to find a book that's a little different for a gift for her. I'm going to write this down and look into it.

>171 dudes22: I hope you find it, it's quite old so I'm not sure it's still in print. Might be a fun detective hunt though!

>172 Jackie_K: - I figured it might be. There's a bookstore near here that deals in old and rare books, so I'll probably try there first.

>174 dudes22: Good luck, I hope the hunt is successful!

In other news, I've just discovered that the complete novels of Charles Dickens is a free audiobook on kobo (no idea if it's a one day thing or longer). I'm not sure if that also goes for Audible/amazon, but thought I'd flag it up in case anyone felt they needed 407 hours of new audio (!).

>175 Jackie_K: It is $1.99 on Kindle, but well worth the price for 12,771 pages of Dickens! I can't find an audio deal on US Kindle.

>176 Tess_W: I think realistically I'm never going to read the complete works of Charles Dickens, but I could realistically listen to them while washing up, in the bath etc! I've no idea what the narrators are like, so it could still be a case of getting what I pay for, but I figured at £0.00 I could take the risk!

I've listened to a number of Dickens novels and it works well. As they were originally serialised, they weren;t consumed in one go. And most people would have heard them being read rather than read them themselves. So it feels like a very authentic means of working through his back catalogue.

>177 Jackie_K: I am sure most don't read the entire Dickens! I think if I had to pick two as my favorites it would be Bleak House and A Tale of Two Cities. I'm currently reading Barnaby Rudge--it's not 5 star thrilling, but written well.

As it turns out, 407 hours of new audio was too much for my poor little tablet, so I've had to banish the complete novels of Charles Dickens to my audiobook archive for now. I'll have to figure out a way of downloading it which doesn't completely overload my tablet!

I've also got two more books read to report:

Category: Travel
September AuthorCAT: African Authors
October AuthorCAT: Authors in Translation
October RandomKIT: What's in a Name?



Michel the Giant: An African in Greenland by Tete-Michel Kpomassie (translated by James Kirkup with the Afterword translated by Ros Schwartz) is the extraordinary true story of a young Togolese man who, after a horrific encounter with a snake while hunting for food, reads of the Inuit of Greenland in a random book in an evangelical bookshop run by missionaries, and has a lifelong dream to live in this (snake-free!) magical land. Unlike most of us who dream, he makes his dream a reality, albeit spending 8 years to travel through west Africa and Europe before finally making it. He ends up living there for around 18 months in the mid-1960s, and this book is the result. His observations of both the extreme differences and the similarities between the people and their lives in Greenland and back home in Togo are profound and beautifully described - I felt like I was there with him. I have to say, as a vegetarian the thought of living on whale and seal blubber, including eating a LOT of raw offal, was not the most comfortable experience I've ever had, but I was honestly full of admiration for this man who threw himself so completely into the life of his chosen new home. A terrific read. 4.5/5.

Category: Nature



Nature's Connections: An Exploration of Natural History by Nicola McGirr is another book that's been on my shelves for the best part of 20 years. It is published by the Natural History Museum in London (which is where I bought it, in the museum's gift shop - you can tell it's old by the price tag stuck to it which says £5; a book this size in a museum bookshop these days would probably be closer to £20). It is, in effect, the history of natural history, richly illustrated with pictures from the Museum's collections and anecdotes from contemporary researchers. It was published in 2000, so in places is a bit dated (it talks about future missions to Europa and Mars, for example, and also the discussion about adding details of the Museum's holdings to databases definitely aged it!). But it is also overall a fascinating insight into the history and debates and contemporary and future challenges for the study and practice of natural history and conservation. 3.5/5.

>180 Jackie_K: I was charmed by An African in Greenland. Kpomassie was so curious and tolerant of the people around him that it makes sense that a random German lady would just bring him home and let him live there for awhile. And the story of the snake in the tree is the stuff of nightmares.

>181 RidgewayGirl: Yes, absolutely. I couldn't help wondering about what would happen if he tried his quest today, if he'd get the same reception.

>180 Jackie_K: Thanks for the nudge: I need to pick this up again. Such a fascinating (true) story.

Category: Biography; autobiography; memoir; true story
November AuthorCAT: Authors who have set their book against a backdrop of real events



Finn McCool's Football Club by Stephen Rea is a fun memoir of a pub football team with a difference - Finn McCool's is an Irish bar in New Orleans, and the team, largely made up of expats, formed the team just before Hurricane Katrina hit the city. It's a fond memoir of the team and the very big characters who formed it, and also a powerful eyewitness account of Katrina and her aftermath. There's a LOT of drinking involved (as you would expect from Irish, Scottish and other European team mates), and a lot of football talk, but even though I'm not actually that interested in football I really enjoyed reading this. 4/5.

Jackie: I thought you would find this amusing.....Last week a local school district banned all the Captain Underpants books from their library. The board decided the books promoted bad behavior!

>185 Tess_W: oh my goodness, God forbid our children have a sense of humour! All the more reason to read and write books, if the powers that be are so afraid of them.

>185 Tess_W: - Like that's the most important problem in the schools now. I'm just shaking my head. Can't wait to tell my sister this. (She the children's librarian at the library.)

>187 dudes22: It would be funny if it wasn't so baffling, and infuriating, and ridiculous.

Category: Biography; autobiography; memoir; true stories
November Non-Fiction Challenge: Books About Books



Lucy Mangan's Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading is a lovely look at classic (and not-so-classic) children's literature. She's the same generation as me, so we had quite a lot of crossover with our reading (Enid Blyton, CS Lewis, etc), so it was a nice trip down memory lane. I was mildly irritated by the writing style (taking the mickey out of her parents' Northern roots, exaggerating some people's personality traits for laughs), but could mostly look beyond that at the good points she was making about how literature opens us up to learning about not just the world, but how to be in the world. 3.5/5.

>188 Jackie_K: With the reservations in place, I could be tempted... and the library has a copy...

>189 Helenliz: I hope you enjoy it if you get it out!

Category: Non-fiction (general)



Suzie Edge's Mortal Monarchs: 1000 Years of Royal Deaths is popular history at its very best. The author is a medical doctor, but also has a Masters in History, and combines the two to look not only at the deaths of English and Scottish monarchs over the last millennium, from King Harold to King George VI, providing medical interpretations from the reports of what happened before and after the various deaths, but also reflecting on the ways in which we treat bodies after death has changed over the years, whilst remaining light-hearted and interesting. She's very prolific on TikTok, and I'd highly recommend her channel there, which is fun and informative. 5/5.

>190 Jackie_K: Definitely a BB for me!

>191 Tess_W: I hope you like it! Each chapter is only a few pages, but I learnt so much!

Category: Contemporary fiction (1969-present)
November RandomKIT: City



As anyone who reads my threads knows, I am not a big fiction reader. And this year I've found fiction even harder work than usual. So I am really delighted to say that Gareth Lewis' Tales of the Thief-City knocked all that on the head and provided a fictional fantasy world that I found myself totally immersed in. The city in question is Nexi, which somehow steals people from neighbouring worlds, and rearranges itself in order to accommodate them. Rax Darkthorn is a knowhound who can 'see' peoples' secrets, and so is often employed to solve mysteries. As he moves through the city he gradually learns the biggest secret of all, the secret of Nexi itself. 4.5/5.

Category: Central & Eastern Europe; former Soviet Union
September CATWoman: Women During War

Better late than never, here's my September CATWoman read, finally finished today!



Diane Ackerman's The Zookeeper's Wife is the fascinating true story of Antonina Zabinska, the wife of the head of Warsaw Zoo before and during WW2. Her husband, Jan, worked for the Polish Underground movement against Nazi occupation, and together with their young son Rys the family ended up housing over 300 Jews - most of them temporarily, on their way to a more permanent safe house, but some longer-term - in their villa on the zoo grounds and in some cases in the remains of the animal houses. This well-researched account draws heavily on Antonina's own memoirs, as well as interviews with Rys many years later, and with people who were involved with the family at the time. It gives a dramatic and vivid picture of life in occupied Warsaw, and the every day risks and dangers that this high-profile family faced. Much of it reads like historical fiction (I mean this as a good thing!), although I did feel, especially in the first half of the book, that there was quite a lot of 'look at all the research I've done for this book' that sometimes interfered with the narrative flow, and that could probably have been more strictly edited. This is definitely a good read though and I would recommend it for its perspective on life under occupation and one (of many) families who risked so much to help Jews to flee the Nazis. 3.5/5.

>194 Jackie_K: I read this book last year and also rated it 3.5*; however, for different reasons. I was wanting a book about a zoo, but really, more than half the book was not really about the zoo and the animals. I also thought some of the people lacked depth. And Rys, where did he go, what happened to him?

>195 Tess_W: I think I would have appreciated a brief Epilogue explaining what happened to the family and the zoo after WW2, under communism. I don't suppose that was a bed of roses for them either.

Category: Non-fiction (general)
December Non-Fiction Challenge: As You Like It!



The Decade in Tory by Russell Jones is the book-length version of his wildly popular Twitter threads, #TheWeekInTory. Its subtitle is "An Inventory of Idiocy from the Coalition to Covid", and it meticulously (and hilariously) covers, month by month, the pronouncements and policies of our Tory leaders and what was going on behind the headlines between David Cameron becoming PM in 2010, and the end of 2020 (and a bit beyond). Anyone familiar with the Twitter threads will know he has a fine line in creative insults, and I'm glad that "Pee Wee Herman reflected in a table spoon" (Matt Hancock), "Boris Johnson's comfort turbot" (Michael Gove), and "Witless Dickington" (Boris Johnson), which were particular favourites of mine from the original threads, made it into the book. I'd give a trigger warning that it's very sweary, but to be honest I think I should give a trigger warning that it's full of grifters, corruption, indifference and weapons-grade incompetence. I'm not sure if I should say that it's grimly hilarious, or hilariously grim. I'd certainly recommend it to any non-Brits who are despairing of the calibre of their own leaders, to give them a bit of encouragement that their country doesn't have the monopoly on terrible politicians. Obviously if you're a Tory voter you'll probably hate this, and it makes absolutely no claims to being an unbiased account. But I honestly think everyone should read it. 4.5/5.

>194 Jackie_K: I own Ackerman's book but haven't read it because I saw the movie and that always takes the shine off a book. I'll probably read it sometime in the future when the movie details have become fuzzy in my memory.

>196 Jackie_K: That sounds hilarious. I love political humour.

>197 VivienneR: I haven't seen the film (I'm as terrible with films as I am with fiction!). The book is definitely worth a read. And yes, I'd definitely recommend The Decade in Tory, although as an NI-er, you'll probably find the Brexit chapters infuriating.

I want to wish all my thread visitors the happiest and most book-filled Christmas!



(royalty-free picture from Dreamstime.com)

Category: Contemporary fiction (1969-present)
December AuthorCAT: Favourite Authors



The Well of Lost Plots is the 3rd in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. In this one, Thursday is sent to the Well of Lost Plots (where plot lines and characters wait to be allocated to novels) where she continues her investigations against literary interference with Miss Havisham, struggles to not forget her (currently eliminated, but we hope not permanently) husband, Landen Parke-Laine, and has various literary scrapes in both literary and genre fiction. I really appreciated this one, now that I've had a few years spending time discussing writing with authors of many different genres, there were a lot of publishing/writing in-jokes, as well as specific book storylines. There was also an extremely prescient (given this was published in 2003) sub-plot about the introduction of a new book generating system called UltraWord which very much made me think of current debates about AI story generation. Another solid addition to the series. 4/5.

Category: Vintage fiction (1900-1968)



'B.B.' is the pseudonym adopted by Northamptonshire schoolmaster D.J. Watkins-Pitchford, and The Little Grey Men (which won the Carnegie Medal in 1942) is probably his best-known work. The story is of the last four gnomes in Britain who live on the banks of Folly brook. One of them, Cloudberry, has wanderlust and sets off to follow his dream of adventure and finding the source of the Folly. When he doesn't return, the other three - Dodder, Baldmoney and Sneezewort - have to set off to try and find him. On the way they face danger from stoats and foxes, a giant trigger-happy gamekeeper, a shark-like pike and a curious boy, amongst others. But they also make friends, have an adventure like no other, and live to tell the tale. But do they ever find Cloudberry?

What I loved about this book were the lush descriptions of the local nature, which really brought the landscape alive. I was a little disappointed towards the end with the description and outcome of the fox hunt - I guess if the book was written nowadays that would have been written some other way. But of course nowadays is a very different time from the early 1940s, and this is definitely a delightful way overall to spend a couple of hours. 3.5/5.

And with that, may I wish all my thread visitors a happy new year! I hope I see you in 2023 and look forward to lots more great reading.

Hmm. This is the first year that I haven't quite completed my challenge, as I didn't finish a 'classic' fiction book (which I define as pubulished pre-1900). I am 100 or so pages through a book, so I'll just have to count it for 2023 instead! (I'm determined to finish it this year!)