I don't really need to ask permission to buy books, but just occasionally, when I feel like I've bought quite a few, I might casually say to Bookhound...
'Tell me to buy this book that I really really want and the fact that the gas lorry is about to deliver a hugely expensive tank full doesn't really matter at all....'
And he looks at me as if I've spoken in a new foreign language.
Anyway I had a bit of a blitz-book-buying day when really I was supposed to be on line looking for a new iron because yet another of these all-singing all-dancing steam things had gone kaput. If, while we are on the subject, anyone can recommend a good iron that gets hot and flattens things and lasts longer than two years then I would be very grateful,because I'm not having much luck with them.
Three books in fact.
The first, well I'd been sort of hoisted by my own petard.
Having succumbed to a really great deal to get The Times newspaper on line for three months for £12, I then email all sorts of interesting things to interested friends from behind the paywall. I had been sending Fran HB countless reviews and plaudits for a book by Ann Wroe Six Facets of Light because it was ostensibly about Fran's patch and paths across the South Downs, except the more I read the more I wanted the book too.
"Goethe claimed to know what light was. Galileo and Einstein both confessed they didn’t. On the essential nature of light, and how it operates, the scientific jury is still out. There is still time, therefore, to listen to painters and poets on the subject. They, after all, spend their lives pursuing light and trying to tie it down.
Six Facets of Light is a series of meditations on this most elusive and alluring feature of human life. Set mostly on the Downs and coastline of East Sussex, the most luminous part of England, it interweaves a walker’s experiences of light in Nature with the observations, jottings and thoughts of a dozen writers and painters – and some scientists – who have wrestled to define and understand light. From Hopkins to Turner, Coleridge to Whitman, Fra Angelico to Newton, Ravilious to Dante, the mystery of light is teased out and pondered on. Some of the results are surprising.
By using mostly notebooks and sketchbooks, this book becomes a portrait of the transitoriness, randomness, swiftness, frustrations and quicksilver beauty that are the essence of light. It is a work to be enjoyed, pondered over, engaged with, provoked by; to be packed in the rucksack of every walker heading for the sea or the hills, or to be opened to bring that outside radiance within four dark town walls."
I have made a start. Fresh out of Landskipping I was bound to love it and I am.
The trouble is you check out one book and it flags up a whole heap more of You Might Also Enjoy.
Well of course I would.
'I am spending half my life walking to the woods at the moment because it is bluebell time and it is looking gorgeous, so when I read this about The Wood For the Trees - The Long View of Nature From a Small Wood by Richard Fortey I was sold, or rather it was sold to me...
'From one of our greatest science writers, this biography of a beech-and-bluebell wood through diverse moods and changing seasons combines stunning natural history with the ancient history of the countryside to tell the full story of the British landscape.
‘The woods are the great beauty of this country… A fine forest-like beech wood far more beautiful than anything else which we have seen in its vicinity’ is how John Stuart Mill described a small patch of beech-and bluebell woodland, buried deeply in the Chiltern Hills and now owned by Richard Fortey. Drawing upon a lifetime of scientific expertise and abiding love of nature, Fortey uses his small wood to tell a wider story of the ever-changing British landscape, human influence on the countryside over many centuries and the vital interactions between flora, fauna and fungi.
The trees provide a majestic stage for woodland animals and plants to reveal their own stories. Fortey presents his wood as an interwoven collection of different habitats rich in species. His attention ranges from the beech and cherry trees that dominate the wood to the flints underfoot; the red kites and woodpeckers that soar overhead; the lichens, mosses and liverworts decorating the branches as well as the myriad species of spiders, moths, beetles and crane-flies. The 300 species of fungi identified in the wood capture his attention as much as familiar deer, shrews and dormice.
Fortey is a naturalist who believes that all organisms are as interesting as human beings – and certainly more important than the observer. So this book is a close examination of nature and human history. He proves that poetic writing is compatible with scientific precision. The book is filled with details of living animals and plants, charting the passage of the seasons, visits by fellow enthusiasts; the play of light between branches; the influence of geology; and how woodland influences history, architecture and industry. On every page he shows how an intimate study of one small wood can reveal so much about the natural world and demonstrates his relish for the incomparable pleasures of discovery.'
How could I not...
Finally, and fearing bankruptcy if I didn't stop this book-buyng flurry it seemed folly not to order the newest book from John Lewis Stempel, The Running Hare- The Secret Life of Farmland. In fact in happy retaliation Fran sent me a link to a review of the book not five minutes after I had read this and pressed the button...
"Traditional ploughland is disappearing. Seven cornfield flowers have become extinct in the last twenty years. Once abundant, the corn bunting and the lapwing are on the Red List. The corncrake is all but extinct in England. And the hare is running for its life.
Written in exquisite prose, The Running Hare tells the story of the wild animals and plants that live in and under our ploughland, from the labouring microbes to the patrolling kestrel above the corn, from the linnet pecking at seeds to the seven-spot ladybird that eats the aphids that eat the crop. It recalls an era before open-roofed factories and silent, empty fields, recording the ongoing destruction of the unique, fragile, glorious ploughland that exists just down the village lane.
But it is also the story of ploughland through the eyes of man who took on a field and husbanded it in a natural, traditional way, restoring its fertility and wildlife, bringing back the old farmland flowers and animals. John Lewis Stempel demonstrates that it is still possible to create a place where the hare can rest safe."
I loved Meadowland, John Lewis- Stempel's first book so how could I not...
It might help my cause if you could all confirm in comments that you do this book-buying-frenzy thing very occasionally too...
And do any of these take your fancy..
Any similar reads to suggest...
Ones that I might have missed...
Bought any good books lately...
Recent Comments