Helena GeraldesOur choices for nature writing books, being published in June.
FIELD NOTES FROM THE EDGE
By Paul Evans
Rider Books
Publishing date: 4 June
Price: 14,99 British pounds
Paul Evans, the acclaimed British writer of the Guardian’s “Country Diary”, has been looking for nature in the in-between spaces, hidden at plain sight. Evans takes us at cliff tops, caves, strandlines, mudflats and ruins, where one wilderness is on the verge of becoming another. Even in these places, and when we least expect it, wildlife has the power to inspire us, to be miraculous and yet mundane, part sacred space, part no one’s land.
Combining a naturalist’s eye for observation with a poet’s ear for the lyrical, “Field Notes from the Edge” brings us once again one of the leading British nature writers of our times. In his last book, “Herbaceous” (May 2014), Paul Evans wrote about the plant’s evolution through the year and the impact that climate change has on them.
IN PURSUIT OF BUTTERFLIES – A FIFTY-YEAR AFFAIR
By Matthew Oates
Bloomsbury
Publishing date: 4 June
Price: 16,99 British pounds
Matthew Oates has led a butterflying life. This naturalist and passionate lover of poetry devoted himself to observe these creatures, to study them and has worked to ensure their survival. Based on fifty years of detailed diaries, this book is a chronicle of this own life.
Oates takes the reader on a trip to mountain tops, peat bogs, sea cliffs, meadows, heaths, chalk downs and forests of the British Isles. Full of humour and expertise, “In Pursuit of Butterflies” provides an opportunity to know more about butterflies and one of British great butterfly lovers.
LE GUIDE DE LA SURVIE DOUCE EN PLEINE NATURE
By François Couplan
Larousse
Publishing date: 3 June
Price: 17,90 Euros
François Couplan, a French botanist and an expert on traditional uses for wild plants all over the world, brings us a book about the role of plants in our daily lives.
This is a guide full with advices and tips on how to “survive” in nature and how to feel good in a strange environment. He tells us how not to get lost in nature, which mushrooms can we eat and which are poisonous, how to find water and how to cook some wild plants.
But Couplan also writes about what we can do in our own homes and gardens to get closer to nature and plants. He says that spending more time in nature brings us peace of mind and a harmony much appreciated in our busy lives.
THE WILD INSIDE (fiction)
By Christine Carbo
Atria Books
Publishing date: 16 June
Price: 16 Dollars
One night in Glacier National Park, a grizzly bear killed Ted Systead’s father. He was fourteen at the time. Now, twenty years have passed and Ted returns to the same place as a Special Agent for the Department of Interior investigating a crime that echoes the horror of that night. As the days pass with no clear answers, not only is human life at stake, so too is that of a majestic creature who lives in the protected area. “The Wild Inside” is a debut novel by Carbo about the perilous intersection between man and nature.
AN OAKWOODS ALMANAC
By Gerry Loose
Shearsman Books
Publishing date: 19 June
Price: 18 Dollars
Gerry Loose has spent several years walking in the woodlands to observe the poetry of clouds and winds, the dance of the butterflies and listening to the musical compositions of wrens and ravens.
This is an Almanac of two different woodlands, one in the Scottish west Highlands and one on Finland’s Baltic coast, and it celebrates those woodlands and their human lives.
