Bringing Back the Beaver

A bold new voice in nature writing, from the front lines of Britain’s rewilding movement

Bringing Back the Beaver is farmer-turned-ecologist Derek Gow’s inspirational and often riotously funny firsthand account of how the movement to rewild the British landscape with beavers has become the single most dramatic and subversive nature conservation act of the modern era. Since the early 1990s – in the face of outright opposition from government, landowning elites and even some conservation professionals – Gow has imported, quarantined and assisted the reestablishment of beavers in waterways across England and Scotland.

In addition to detailing the ups and downs of rewilding beavers, Bringing Back the Beaver makes a passionate case as to why the return of one of nature’s great problem solvers will be critical as part of a sustainable fix for flooding and future drought, whilst ensuring the creation of essential lifescapes that enable the broadest possible spectrum of Britain’s wildlife to thrive.

Storygraph, Amazon UK

The Bread the Devil Knead

Alethea Lopez is about to turn 40. Fashionable, feisty and fiercely independent, she manages a boutique in Port of Spain, but behind closed doors she’s covering up bruises from her abusive partner and seeking solace in an affair with her boss. When she witnesses a woman murdered by a jealous lover, the reality of her own future comes a little too close to home.

Bringing us her truth in an arresting, unsparing Trinidadian voice, Alethea unravels memories repressed since childhood and begins to understand the person she has become. Her next step is to decide the woman she wants to be.

Storygraph

July Wrap Up

July was… not a good month. I had a family birthday, death and got COVID myself so it was a month of brain fog. But it was also a great reading month (and did absolutely nothing else which is worrying considering what is due for work). There was no TBR this month for reasons but that worked out for me.

Polarthon TBR

I haven’t done a Polarthon readathon in a while and this one came up on my recommendations. This is Polarthon: the Meltdown and the Polarthon fishing tourney. The first one is a readathon which runs for 36 hours on the weekend 27-28th August and I might take part in it but I am working all that weekend so maybe not.

But the fishing tourney for the whole of August sounds like my kind of thing. There are no prompts at all but the goal is to catch fish (read 100 pages for every fish) and read books. There is also the side goal of raising money for Polar Bears International. This sounds like a great idea and I want to take part in it. The twitter for this readathon is here.

Orilium Autumn Readathon

I can’t believe it’s almost August. That means it’s almost the end of summer and things are going to start getting colder and darker hopefully. But until then we have to get through August!

This readathon is following on from the readathon in April (my TBR and Wrap Up). The twitter is here and the google drive with info and prompts is here. This month is building on the one from April so there are more prompts to get done because some subjects will have two or three prompts that have to be read (and it will be one book per prompt unless you have managed to rank as paragon in the guild.

The Book of Form and Emptiness

One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house – a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn’t understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.

At first Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, he falls in love with a mesmerising street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.

And he meets his very own Book – a talking thing – who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

Storygraph, Amazon UK

June Wrap Up

This month did not turn out how I planned. I had two weeks off work and I was planning to go away from a couple of days, maybe to the beach. But then my grandfather’s carers fell through and so I was there for the majority of the two weeks and then I was dog-sitting. My reading was very up and down throughout all of this but hopefully it will sort itself out now I’m back at home, and at work.

Great Circle

From her days as a wild child in prohibition America to the blitz and glitz of wartime London, from the rugged shores of New Zealand to a lonely iceshelf in Antarctica, Marian Graves is driven by a need for freedom and danger.

Determined to live an independent life, she resists the pull of her childhood sweetheart, and burns her way through a suite of glamorous lovers. But it is an obsession with flight that consumes her most.

Now, as she is about to fulfil her greatest ambition, to circumnavigate the globe from pole to pole, Marian crash lands in a perilous wilderness of ice.

Over half a century later, troubled film star Hadley Baxter is drawn inexorably to play the enigmatic pilot on screen. It is a role that will lead her to an unexpected discovery, throwing fresh and spellbinding light on the story of the unknowable Marian Graves.

Storygraph, Amazon UK

Sorrow and Bliss

This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn’t know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going.

Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn’t want to have children. He said he didn’t mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it.

By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn’t really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing – if you can find something else to want.

Storygraph, Amazon UK

Asian Readathon Wrap Up

This is my wrap up for the Asian readathon (TBR here) and for once, I actually managed to read all the books on my TBR. This was such a fun readathon for me because I enjoyed a lot of the books that I read and I picked up books that had been on my TBR for ages because of this readathon so definite success!