Booknook

Finished Late Light by Michael Malay that I mentioned last week, which is four extended essays about four species of animal found in the UK (eel, moth, mussel, cricket) with more general top and tail chapters at each end. The writing is meditative and expansive but also melancholy and inevitably downbeat as it's tracking declining populations in reducing habitats.

Also read Between Britain by Alastair Moffat, which is a book of popular historical and cultural anecdotes strung on the thread of walks along the Scottish / English border from coast to coast. The author's easy going attitude and readable prose seems to have overcome my reading ennui, which is funny because I only chose this as it needs to return to the library. I've ordered another book by Moffat and put a third on my library list for maybe later.

Began reading The Britannias by Alice Albinnia, which is supposedly a history (popular / journalistic) of selected "British" islands and the introduction is self-contradictory (fair enough - so is history) but also wrong on one key point by about 7,500 years. I like the prose style though so I'll keep reading and remove it from Mount ToBeRead.