Translated from Italian by Stash LuczkiwPublished by Harvill Secker and HarperOne The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen’s book about his trip to the Dolpo region in the Himalayas, was published in 1978. It is a blend of travelogue, philosophy and nature writing. Almost four decades later, in 2017, Paolo Cognetti sets off on a similar journey …
Continue reading Without Ever Reaching the Summit: Paolo Cognetti
Translated from French by Linda CoverdalePublished by Penguin “I’d promised myself that before I turned forty I would live as a hermit deep in the woods.” That was Sylvain Tesson’s promise to himself, a promise that he kept. Tesson spent six months in a cabin on the shore of Lake Baikal in Siberia from February …
Continue reading Consolations of the Forest—Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga: Sylvain Tesson
Published by Vintage and Penguin I read The Snow Leopard when I was in my early 20s, and I loved it enough to put it on my list of 10 favourite books—where it has stayed since then. Published in 1978, The Snow Leopard is a classic, blending travel and philosophy. Peter Matthiessen was an American …
Translated from German by Jane BillinghurstPublished by Greystone Books One day, Peter Wohlleben, a forester, stumbles across what he thinks are mossy stones but turn out to be old wood. But not just old wood, which would normally decompose, but the roots of a tree that no longer existed, that had probably been felled 400 …
“It is quite hard to remember which came first—the freedom of solitude or the energy of silence. … I became less driven, more reflective and great deal less frenetic. And into that space flowed silence: I would go out into the garden at night or in the early morning and just look and listen… . …
Published by Picador, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux “Shaving is tricky with an owl on your right shoulder.” Especially when the owl sees it as a game, pecking at the razor at the end of each stroke and trying to eat the shaving cream. Meet Mumble, the Tawny Owl with whom Martin Windrow shared 15 …
Published by Vintage Press There is something primeval about crows and ravens, which is probably why they often get a bad rap in fiction. They are often portrayed as the harbingers of bad tidings and connected in some way to evil. And when we are not seeing them as some sort of malign influence, we …
Continue reading Crow Country: A Meditation on Birds, Landscape and Nature—Mark Cocker
Published by Grove Press A hawk stares out from the cover of this book: it is hard to turn away from the fierce intensity of its gaze. And intense, too, is how I would describe this book, which is about grief, trauma and the relationship between humans and goshawks. When Helen McDonald’s father dies, she …
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