Mark is on the level

I saw a hummingbird in the garden one summer. It was a hawk moth. Not as striking as the psychedelic elephant hawk moth but pretty big and it's wings were buzzing away in a blur of motion as it fed on the flowers.
When Stephen Moss wrote his unassuming natural history of an English village called Mark in the Somerset Levels he chose (or maybe it was the publisher) the title Wild Hares & Hummingbirds. The name is a bit deceptive because Moss is at his most knowledgeable talking about birds but perhaps it didn't make a great title or theme for a cover graphic.
This is a very slight tome - there is nothing much to it in size or scope - but it reminds us that observation of the small things in life can be the most pleasurable and, in an inverse perspective on human life, much more significant than our short term obsessions with celebrity and political posturing.

An Island Race

For about two thirds of JD Taylor's Island Story I'd assumed that he had a fixed political attitude and a bit of a chip on his shoulder about traditional targets of establishment authority. Well, he probably does but it was only towards the end I realised that he was genuinely curious about people's sense of identity - whether misguided or not - and openly humane.
He is an entertaining but far from traditional guide around the country and sees life from a very different perspective to, say, Bill Bryson or Wainwright's walks. Taylor is an angry, bewildered, stoned young man; not a sardonic grumpy old man and that's fine.
The only reservation I would have though is the pace at which he cycles. He steams through large expanses of countryside where I would have preferred if he had gone to fewer places but spent more time, with more attention to detail. Like all pilgrimage-style journeys I suspect he learned more about himself than his surroundings but he travelled a long, long way from social work in South London and his mind was broadened as well as the reader's. He's a cyclist without a pointy hat and pink lycra and that's got to be a plus.

We Want What You Have

In a time of nonsense politics and the economics of greed, suspicion and envy then the slogan 'We Want What You Have' makes perfect sense. The British - or to be more exact the South Eastern English - are inordinately fond of owning their own property but wanting more. In many places in the world it's still more common to rent, particularly for young professionals living in the city. Home for them is more about family than bricks and mortar. When you add the toxic house price inflation of some parts of London into an already confused set of cultural aspirations it's not surprising there is tension.
John Lanchester's Capital brilliantly captures all the social threads and uniquely enables you to identify with every single family or individual ...with one exception. No, not the rich spoilt City worker. It's the poor footballer from Senegal who gets injured, plus his minder, that I struggled to find engaging. No wonder their characters more or less got dropped from the successful TV adaptation. They just didn't add anything other than be an obvious example of contrasting poverty and wealth. The rest of the inhabitants and workers in Pepys Road all resonated with warmth and cynical humour. Lanchester has a lot to teach us about ourselves and our values but he avoids being preachy or having a closed mindset - which is why everyone gets an equal grilling of tough love.

A Herd of Independent Minds

To quote Robert Wyatt quoting Noam Chomsky quoting Harold Rosenberg the trivialisation of personal experience in mass media leads intellectuals unwittingly into a conformity of herd-like behaviour both in politics and the arts. I think its simpler and more fundamental than that - we are social animals influenced by the behaviour of others, whether we admire them or not. What's worse, in my view, is that we like to categorise people of independent minds into groups and movements. It's one of the laziest tropes of literary, artistic and musical criticism and it drives me bonkers.I probably belong to the bonkers group.
So then, what is the Bloomsbury Group? An independently minded lady called Vanessa Bell fancied a change and moved house to Bloomsbury. She went with her sister Virginia Woolf (left) and often invited people round to tea. That's about it really.
I'd rather it was called the Charleston group because there is something hugely evocative about the farmhouse where Vanessa and Duncan Grant and others lived during the War years. The painted walls, furniture, garden and every aspect of their daily lives danced with an open minded cosmopolitan optimism. Frances Spalding's biographical gazetteer of The Bloomsbury Group personalities (of which there are many and various) is a good primer but don't be deceived. These people may have known each other, met and loved each other but they are not a hive mind.

Strange new books

If you're an inveterate science fiction reader you will find this book neither strange nor new. But good science fiction isn't about space opera ray guns and planetary travel. Good science fiction is just fiction about people but gives you an otherworldly perspective on the strangeness of human civilisation and puts your perception of the here and now in a totally different light.

Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things does exactly that.

It takes a fairly routine one dimensional story about a Christian missionary and makes it poignant by wrapping it around a story of isolation from your species and your family. It preaches tolerance and acceptance of all that is foreign and alien at a time when we need to be firmly reminded of what it means to be a citizen of somewhere and everywhere. It's not about Scottish independence by an adopted Scottish author. It's not about Brexit. It's about the practicalities of helping fellow creatures not to die.