100 books like Curlew Moon

This is one of my favourite books. It is a palimpsest—a serious document about humanity’s effects on the natural world overlaid with Adams’s hilariously absurdist worldview. This book is different from most other popular science books in that it sort of isn’t one; it’s more of a travel book, with Adams acting as the uninformed everyman repeatedly confronted with the realities of an unfolding ecological tragedy and interpreting them as only he could.

Extinction is not an inherently amusing subject, and this book is a sobering account of how much biological diversity we have already lost, yet at the same time, it is painfully funny. For me, Adams’s recounting of his conversation with an Australian snake venom expert is worth the price of admission on its own.

I am a biologist and I have a passion, a deep love indeed, of the natural world. I always have. It boosts me and nurtures me–body, mind and spirit. But at the moment, with everything that is happening to the world, I think it is easy to lose hope.

Feral is everything you would expect from Monbiot–elegant prose and well thought out ideas building on solid knowledge. But it is more than that. It is a book that brings hope and makes me feel that, even if Monbiot’s vision isn’t the way, there most certainly is a way through the mess we are creating.

Positivity, action, hope–these are things we need more of right now.

A book I resisted reading for a long time simply because everyone told me I had to read it. I am glad I stopped being pigheaded about it.

Through an anthology of essays, Leopold explores the ecology of his farm in Wisconsin as it changes through the year and explores philosophy, ecology, our relationship with the land and nature, and indeed with ourselves. But no description really does it justice.

It is a beautifully crafted set of thoughts that inspired the American conservation movement and remains an important work. To read it is to be walking in nature with Leopold, and for me, that is an awesome place to be. I wish I’d read it earlier.

Published 80 years ago and based on the author’s experiences hunting man-eating tigers and leopards in northern India, I read this book repeatedly. Well and sensitively written, it is not a book of boasting, hunting, and bravado but a nuanced account of efforts to protect local people from the ravages of seriously dangerous wildlife.

Corbett, part of the British occupation machinery in India, projects a love of the people of northern India and the wildlife. He is deeply committed to both and laments the need to kill tigers but accepts that protecting ordinary people is the priority.

He provides a wealth of wildlife information and always explains how and why a tiger became a man-eater–often the result of a bad encounter with a porcupine, the breaking of canines in older tigers, or injuries received hunting or being hunted.

This is the best book I’ve ever read on what it feels like to be a bird. It takes the form of a novel following the migration and searches for companionship of an Eskimo curlew.

But it isn’t a kid’s novel of entirely anthropomorphized animals, complete with a full complement of human thoughts. Instead, Bodsworth gives a skillfully restrained rendition of what instincts and urges birds might really feel, carefully threading the needle between boring accounts that allow no emotions to birds and fanciful accounts that erroneously attribute all kinds of complex thoughts and calculations to them. 

The migratory and nesting instincts are tremendously powerful feelings, feelings experienced by the birds I see right in my neighborhood. Bodsworth does them justice and makes the birds characters in an enormous, epic drama.

I loved the completely unique plot of this novel; I haven’t read anything quite like it before or since. I was entranced by the story of a completely ordinary person who decided to do something extraordinary, not for attention or fortune, but because they became convinced that if they did, it would save the life of someone they once cared about.

It’s poignant, funny, moving, and I cried more than once. If you like to really feel things when you read a novel, try this one.

This is a glorious bird-by-bird book, filled with photographs and lots of information and first-hand accounts, including folklore and history, with copious endnotes and references. It was first published in 2005 and reissued in 2020. The book is divided into different bird families, starting with the Diver family, the Grebe family, and the Albatross family, so it can be read systematically or by dipping in and out. Birds Britannica perhaps deserves the name ‘coffee-table book’ – being so heavy, it is almost impossible to read unless seated (with a coffee) at a table. 

This is a truly lovely book. 

The idea is simple, as many good ideas are; there are 67 red-listed species of bird in the UK, let’s get 67 writers to write about them and 67 artists to depict them. The idea was that of Kit Jewitt and the British Trust for Ornithology has published the book.

What emerges is a varied book of different writing styles and perspectives with each page of text facing a piece of art with its own special character.

A book that is stimulating and informative to read but also gorgeous to behold.

This book, by Kirk Wallace Johnson tells the story of a bizarre heist that took place at the British Museum of Natural History in 2009.

The thief, Edwin Rist, was a 20-year-old American flute student who broke into the museum to steal hundreds of priceless, exotic bird specimens, many of which were collected by the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in the 19th century.

What first drew me to the book was that I knew Edwin’s dad back when I was in grad school. But what kept me turning the pages was the writing and story. The book explores the world of Victorian-era fly-tying and the obsession that collectors have with rare feathers.

Rist, who was also an avid fly-tier, had planned the heist to obtain feathers for his own collection, which he intended to sell to other collectors. Many of the collectors and fly-tying enthusiasts knew that the feathers probably… show more.

An unusually honest, rural memoir by the RSPB’s longest-serving female columnist. Chester’s writing has a lovely elasticity, dancing between wonder, introspection, and anger as she moves from the particular to the universal. I learned a lot about how Britain’s countryside is managed. I also enjoyed her more eccentric impulses, such as lying down in the snow on the edge of a field one night, just to see what might happen. She belongs to the disappearing English rural working class, and is intent on handing this baton to her three children. Chester also explores the familiar tension between wanting to write and being needed at home. The heady ecstasy of time carved out alone, in nature. The scrabble to earn a precarious living, and the insecurities of occupying a tied cottage. The idea of ‘home’ lies at the heart of this fierce, beautifully written, immersive book about one’s place within the… show more.