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  As I had just finished Chris Packham's memoir, I was in the mood to continue on a natural theme so when I spotted Alys Fowler's book on the 'Recommended' table in the library, I decided to give it a go. This one doesn't have the gripping intensity of Packham's book as Alys Fowler has a much gentler tone and there are sections that are so laid back that I almost got the impression that she was hoping I wouldn't notice what she had written. The full title of the book is: 'Hidden Nature, A Voyage of Discovery' and that clearly has the dual meaning of both environmental and personal discovery.  There are two themes running all the way through as Alys takes up paddle boating through the network of canals around Birmingham at around the same time she began to think that she is probably gay. This would not normally be a problem, but Alys was married to a man at the time, and although she still loved her husband, she couldn't deny her changing sexualit...

  It's not very often it happens, but this is likely to become one of those books that I will remember forever.  It challenges the way the reader thinks about nature and the condition of being autistic, and I hope it has a positive impact on everyone who reads it. Over the first few pages, I found the writing style a little clunky, and I wondered why the editor hadn't smoothed the wording over a bit, but then after about 50 pages or so, I realised that the text  has to be left as it is because this is Chris.  The way the language is used is how he thinks and speaks, and I had demonstrated the eternal problem he has with the rest of us when I expected him to change it just to make it better for me! Once I got over myself, I allowed his language to do its job and he let me see the world through his eyes.  Chris has a unique view of the world and he is truly interested in every bird, every creature and every creeping thing.  As a child, he picked up dead thin...

  A slightly different post this time.  Instead of the usual few paragraphs about the books I read, this post is about an author talk I attended this week. The last book I read was Adele Parks' 'Just my Luck', and I'm afraid I thought it wasn't really my type of book and I took it back to the library thinking I wouldn't bother with any more from the author.  Anyway, that was a few days ago, and now I've listened to Adele talk about her writing career, I'm beginning to wonder if I haven't been unduly critical, and maybe I should give her another chance. I turned up to the talk with an open mind because you have to admire anyone who can shift 4.5 million copies across 31 languages, and today's fiction market is a very crowded place.  Adele has written a book a year for the last twenty years, and always has one in progress, one in editing and one to be promoted.  At the time of writing, she was just days away from the publication of her latest book,...

  A friend has invited me to be her guest at an Author Talk at her Women's Institute so I thought I ought to do a bit of homework before I show up to spend an evening with Adele Parks. You will see from the pic of the front cover that Adele Parks is a 'Number one bestseller', but somehow or other I had never read any of her work, even though she has over twenty books to her credit.  Just my Luck turns out to be one of her top sellers so I have to assume it is a good one to read as an example of her writing, and it falls very firmly into the category of Women's Fiction.   It's about a family who win the lottery, and what follows is a disintegration of their circle of friends, and a pretty comprehensive description of what not to do if you suddenly come into a lot of money.  To further complicate matters, up until the week before their numbers came up, the family were in a syndicate with two other families and now the jackpot  of over £17 million has come up,...

  Apologies for the picture quality of this one folks but I made a sudden decision to visit the library to grab another book, and it wasn't till I got there that I realised I hadn't taken my blog pic.  Anyway you can see what it says on the front despite the light glaring off the plastic cover. This was a good one and it makes a perfect summer read.  Not too taxing but very believable and there can't be too many fiction books that cover the subject of crop circles. It's set in 1989 which was a time when we were all obsessed by the mysterious appearance of ever-more complex crop circles that appeared in cereal crops.  No-one knew how they got there, but everyone had a theory.  Some people thought they were caused by freak weather conditions, but as they became more geometrically complex, many people genuinely believed they were created by aliens.   Almost disappointingly, they turned out to be man made, and this book follows the creative excursions carr...

  All right, I'll come clean, I haven't finished this book but it will be heading back to the library this afternoon and I won't make any effort to renew it. It's well written, of course it is, it's by the very well educated Anthony Holden, (he who is famous for writing biographies of members of the Royal Family) but you know, I just didn't feel any connection with him and it turns out I need that feeling if I am to carry on with an autobiography. I liked it to start with, and I particularly took to his grandfather Ivan, but all too soon he was off to Oundle school followed by Merton College Oxford, and he began to mix with the kind of society that I can only dream about.  His friends have become the literati of his generation and Gyles Brandreth found the book 'Funny, moving and telling, a rollercoaster of a good read' so don't let me put you off.  There are famous names on every page, and if that's your thing, enjoy!

  This is one of those books that you can really become invested in.  By the end, I felt as though I knew the writer Joe Hammond and that the memories shared in the book were actual memories of things he had told me about in conversation. Joe was diagnosed with Motor Neurone disease when his two boys were very young, and he had to face the reality that he would never see them grow up to be adults.  It's a heartbreaking situation and no matter how hard anyone wishes to fix it, there is no cure. In some respects, a terminal diagnosis frees the mind making it possible to view relationships objectively and write with a kind of honesty that fears no payback.  Hard truths are faced and shocking incidents recounted, but all the way through he keeps a sharp sense of humour and a clever turn of phrase. Joe has written pieces for the Guardian and developed a loyal following, but I regret to say that I had never heard of him before I read this book. That makes me feel as though...