April 8, 2021 Heavy Light: A Journey through Madness, Mania and Healing by Horatio Clare Reviewed by Peter Reason It was on a family skiing holiday that Horatio Clare finally went mad. This was the culmination of a period…
February 25, 2021 Thin Places by Kerri ní Dochartaigh Review by Peter Reason I have been totally absorbed in Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s Thin Places since it arrived in the morning mail and I…
January 28, 2021 The Fresh and the Salt: The Story of the Solway by Ann Lingard Reviewed by Peter Reason When I was a small boy—and this memory must reach back to around 1950—I played with a wooden puzzle made…
January 19, 2021 The Frozen River: Seeking Silence in the Himalaya by James Crowden Reviewed by Peter Reason Opening this book, I am immediately drawn in: ‘Silence, snow and solitude have got hold of me and will not…
December 3, 2020 Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman by Rebecca Tamás Review by Peter Reason. This elegant and engaging collection of seven essays by poet and critic Rebecca Tamás—her first prose collection—is beautifully produced as…
September 15, 2020 Riders on the Storm: The climate crisis and the survival of being by Alastair McIntosh Review by Peter Reason Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish Quaker, peace, community and environmental writer and campaigner, maybe best described as a spiritual activist….
September 3, 2020 Entangled Life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures by Merlin Sheldrake Review by Peter Reason Entangled Lives by Merlin Sheldrake has been greeted with much enthusiasm, not least by Robert Macfarlane in the New Yorker….
June 18, 2020 Sensuous Knowledge: A black feminist approach for everyone by Minna Salami Review by Peter Reason Minna Salami is a Nigerian and Finnish social critic, founder of the MsAfropolitan blog, who draws on Africa-centric and feminist…
May 26, 2020 Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils by David Farrier Review by Peter Reason In 2013, a spring storm uncovered, on the shores of Norfolk, the oldest traces of humanity discovered outside Africa: fossil…
April 23, 2020 ‘Not’ the Wellcome Prize Blog Tour 2020 #2 – Galileo’s Error by Philip Goff The Wellcome Book Prize is on hiatus this year – we really hope it’ll return in 2021 as this unique prize, which celebrates literature…
April 14, 2020 The Birds They Sang: Birds and People in Life and Art by Stanisław Łubieński Translated from Polish by Bill Johnston Review by Peter Reason Stanisław Łubieński first began observing birds in childhood through Soviet binoculars. Later, he took…
April 9, 2020 Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Review by Peter Reason There has been a lot of interest recently in the idea of ‘rewilding’, expressed for example in Isabella Tree’s Wilding:…
March 5, 2020 Red Sixty Seven, curated by Kit Jewitt Review by Peter Reason When I was a small boy, back in the 1950s, I remember going on Sunday School trips to the seaside….
January 21, 2020 Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World by Marcia Bjornerud Review by Peter Reason I have on my desk three pieces of rock, collected during my ecological pilgrimage on in the west coast of…
November 7, 2019 Galileo’s Error: A New Science of Consciousness by Philip Goff Review by Peter Reason This is a book about the philosophical perspective of panpsychism, written by a leading academic advocate. Panpsychism is an awkward…
October 17, 2019 The Summer Isles by Philip Marsden Reviewed by Peter Reason The Summer Isles is an account of a single-handed voyage from the south coast of England round the west of…
October 10, 2019 Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie Review by Peter Reason Kathleen Jamie is primarily known as a poet, but her prose writing is eagerly anticipated and widely acclaimed. Surfacing is…
July 18, 2019 The Frayed Atlantic Edge by David Gange Reviewed by Peter Reason David Gange is historian at the University of Birmingham and a passion for mountains and wild water. Well before The…
July 11, 2019 This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook Edited by: Farrell, Clare, Alison Green, Sam Knights, and William Skeaping Review by Peter Reason There cannot be many followers of Shiny New Books…
May 9, 2019 Horizon by Barry Lopez Review by Peter Reason Barry Lopez is one of the greats of ‘nature writing’ (although he dislikes the term, as it seems do most…
March 21, 2019 The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells Review by Peter Reason I am approaching my seventy fifth birthday. As I look back, I see my life has been overshadowed by the…
February 21, 2019 Europe: A Natural History by Tim Flannery Review by Peter Reason A natural history, Tim Flannery tells us, encompasses both the natural and the human worlds. This book attends to three…
February 12, 2019 Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis by Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky Review by Peter Reason I am not sure how I came across this book; I think I followed a link on Twitter. It appealed…
November 1, 2018 The Light in the Dark: A Winter Journal by Horatio Clare Review by Peter Reason Reading the title of this book and seeing the book cover, the prospective reader might, as did I, expect a…
August 9, 2018 How to Change your Mind: The new science of psychedelics by Michael Pollan Review by Peter Reason ‘The soul should always stand ajar.’ It is fitting that Michael Pollan introduces his latest book on the resurgence in…
