People, places and plants

Roy Lancaster's memory is phenomenal. I know the secret. He carries around a small A5 notebook in his jacket at all times. Within it are the people, places and plants he has visited. Some of them anyway as his travels have been prodigious and he has had at least 80 years to amass an incredible volume(s) of friendships and stories. I was lucky enough to obtain a dedicated copy of his autobiography 'My life with plants' and to walk around Hilliers garden along with a few others to listen to him recount the memories that each plant reveals. Not only could he remember where in the world a particular plant was collected, and the species taxonomy, he could remember the time of day, date, who he was with and probably give you their family history as well. He says that he could shut his eyes on a train and imagine all the places he has been and people he has met. He clearly doesn't need an MP3 player or iPad to keep him entertained. But the best thing - which has come across in all his TV, radio and personal appearances - is his infectious enthusiasm for all things natural. It's a mistake to think of him as a gardener. He isn't one for topical tips and double digging. He is, at core, a natural historian in the very best and encyclopedic sense of that noble and somewhat neglected professional term. Happy days all round. 

The road less travelled but most busy

 

We see history and culture through a very localised lens but what Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads teaches us is that the lens is a kaleidoscope of rich images that have often travelled further than we think.
There are many things that surprised me about the contents of this book. Like many people in my locale I was brought up with a Eurocentric view of history that there were a few Kings and Queens and then we had a couple of World Wars. I don't suppose it is that different in the States or in some parts of Africa for that matter.
The publishers have given this book a rather pretentious claim to be "A New History of the World". It is. As long as you recognise that it is still going to be one view (although curiously echoed by Sam Willis' excellent BBC documentary The Silk Road) then The Silk Roads gives a welcome, refreshing and fascinating view from the Asian end of the road and in particular the "stans" and other partially lost cultures, nations and religions of the vast lands above India between Turkey and China. These nations and people became partially eclipsed by conquest but their mineral wealth will probably bring them (or at least their oligarchs) back into view as the Silk Roads remain open for business.

Reach the Border and climb upside down

Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation is speculative fiction at its best. I hesitate to call it science fiction because the genre carries such a weight of comic book action heroes. There is some shooting and running about but character and description are the core of this story which forms the first part of the Southern Reach series of books. The lead character is a biologist who is sent across the border into alien territory where very little is known about the inhabitants and their world. What she encounters there challenges her understanding and, at times, the description of the author. That is what I like about it - that Vandermeer tries to describe something which is indescribable. That trope used to be the mainstay of horror: that there was something lurking in the dark rather some psycho with a chainsaw in the full glare of light. So it is with this genre that the speculation about alien ecosystems is so alien that we struggle to describe it. Even the architecture is strangely symbiotic and contradictory as we have a lighthouse tower but the main tower in the story is really an underground tunnel. The only thing I didn't like was the fact that we were so obviously setting up a sequel and maybe even a prequel. I felt that all the stories in any sequence should be able to stand alone as self-contained. Publishers disagree. They want the repeat of the familiar but that isn't what this kind of fiction is about.

Patterns

There are no straight lines in my body nor most people I know. So why do we live in square boxes? Do you know how difficult it is to get a builder to do a bendy wall with curvy bricks?
The problem is we like patterns. We like to organise the visual world into lines, dots and symmetrical squiggles because it helps us interpret it as data. 1s and 0s.
I received a V&A Pattern book based on Sanderson 1954-74. You've probably guessed by now it's not a bodice-ripping best seller but it is very pleasing to the eye.
This illustration is not Trio (Triad1) which I would have liked to have used because I don't trust the Trustees not to enforce  copyright restrictions even though the book comes with a handy CD of beautiful images. So this is my sketch interpretation of a field boundary marked by an old hedgerow tree that didn't get grubbed out when the farmer decided he wanted to draw the plough lines up to the edge.

Not just a penguin

The Invention of Nature by A. Wulf. I just love it when somebody does something appropriate to their name. It seems to happen more often than you think. I used to think Humboldt was just a penguin. Of course I knew the penguin had probably been a person's name. I didn't think Humboldt was an adjective. But I knew nothing about him. It's odd that some people get all the credit for breakthrough discoveries when in fact an idea often builds amongst great men and women over many decades.
Andrea Wulf's excellent biography is subtitled The Lost Hero of Science and it's unfortunately down to a bit of anti-German feeling post two world wars that seem to have obscured this Prussian polymath from wider recognition. I think it's also difficult to classify someone like Humboldt when we are used to being able to say someone is a naturalist or a botanist or an astronomer or an explorer. Humboldt's strength is his description of people and places that brings his data and analysis to life and his ability to think about connected environmental systems where geology, geography and evolution are integrated. He sits fair and square in the centre of a continuous rope of thought that connects Goethe, Thomas Jefferson, Simon Bolivar, Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau and John Muir (who persuaded the US President Roosevelt to effectively found the National Parks movement). Just a shame the British East India Company persistently prevented him from exploring India so his observations were restricted to South America and the Russian end of Asia. Not that it really dented his global vision and his legacy.

Skin

Sarah Hilary's Someone Else's Skin is a perfectly good novel.

I liked the way she skittered over your preconceptions about gender and race to tell an otherwise routine detective tale of murder and mayhem.

The world she conjured up is largely nocturnal, urban, claustrophobic and full of mistrust. It's not my world but I recognise its appeal both in book and TV worlds. I longed for more description of place (set in Bath ideally), not just people, and a little less violence.

But I know I'm in a minority so I wish DI Marnie Rome well.

If only he had understood the variety of sausages available on the continent

The reinvention of Ladybird books with adult satirical content has been a brief but enjoyable fashion. The best are full of cracking one liners that go well with the artists' pastiches of original content.
Less successful, I think, is the attempt at longer form writing with little Enid Blyton-style stories...or maybe it's just this one: Five on Brexit Island by Bruno Vincent. Perhaps it's still too painful or, you could take the opposing view, that the reality is far funnier and involves bigger buffoons than you could possibly make up.