World Book Day…
It’s World Book Day. To be honest, every day is book day for me. I’ve loved books ever since I was a kid. Being a book worm was something I relished and I’d lose myself for hours in a book. The best reading times were the illicit hours in summer, when although I should have been asleep, I was instead reading by the light of the midsummer sun.
As an adult I read for pleasure, I read for research. I read for work and I read to escape and unwind. Words can move us, make us laugh and cry. They can make us think, reflect and be inspired. Isn’t it amazing that words can help us do all that?
I’ve started writing a book recently. It’s been something I’ve always wanted to do and strangely, this year of pandemic has given me reluctant but valuable time to make a start. A book about my years of expeditioning and leading has always been high up the list, but I’ve decided to start with a book that’s a bit closer to home. A kind of companion guide to the North of England.
The North of England is such a glorious and varied area. We have seas, mountains, lakes, rivers, moors, farmland, woodland, cities, hamlets, market towns, and so much more, all brimming with history, characters, legend and nature.
I have invested in many books to fuel my research and I thought that on World Book Day, I would share a couple of my favourite resource books with you…
Flora Celtica
The first one is Flora Celtica (plants and people in Scotland). It’s an absolute dream of a book. Huge and unwieldly, my copy is very battered but that’s only because it contains so much fascinating information about plants and plant lore. It is laid out in a great format, has fabulous pictures and the sheer wealth of information about plant names, herbal uses, folklore, farming and foraging is astonishing.
Although I am writing about the North of England, not Scotland, it has been a great starting point for cross referencing and fact finding. The book has helped me develop a better understanding of the intimate role plants have played in our lives, historically.
Norman Nicholson
Next up is Norman Nicholson’s ‘The Lake District: an Anthology’. I thought I knew quite a lot about the Lake District but the range of topics and authors featured in this book is broad and illuminating. I have learnt a lot of things that have helped me make connections from place to place. His own writing as a poet is a real joy to me too, with his vernacular style and grounded vision of the everyday.
If you’re so inclined, you can read a little about Nicholson in the link above, and listen to him reading his poem ‘Wall’.
A Murmuration of Starlings
My final choice of book to share is short, quirky and fun… ‘A Murmuration of Starlings’ by Steve Palin. It is quite simply a small book that lists the collective nouns of animals and birds and a paragraph or two of text alongside beautiful illustrations.
I particularly like ‘a crash of rhinocerus’, ‘a loomery of guillemots’ and a ‘business of ferrets’. It’s a A-Z book with only the letter ‘U’ conspicuous by it’s absence. I wonder what the collective noun for unicorns is…
