The snowstorm

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Paul Sheldon. He's a bestselling novelist who has finally met his biggest fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes and she is more than a rabid reader - she is Paul's nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house I have a few issues regarding his writing (there was some repetition of points) and his overall point - I wholeheartedly agree, but it felt like he didn't base it on anything but intuition. And intuition is rarely enough if you want to convince the rest of the world, even if your intuition is right. George Osborne should read this book – but he just wouldn’t get it. Or maybe he would – it is very engagingly written.

This is a book about loss – and about joy, and about wonder, and about hope. There’s a lot about the loss of nature over the last few decades and the author mixes this with memories of personal loss. A love of nature can be a support and strength during one’s life. Mike writes really well and he tells a good tale. I smiled once or twice when I read accounts which I have also heard from the author’s own mouth as we have quaffed claret with others over a good dinner. It is clear that more than half of all Britain's wildlife, as it existed at the end of the Second World War, has now gone". This is a very good read from one of our finest writers about the natural world. I think Mike could write well about anything – certainly anything he cared about. But notice, that he is not, and would not claim to be, an expert on nature. Maybe that’s one reason why he sees the joy more clearly than some of us who ‘know’ more. Perhaps that knowledge compromises how much we can feel for nature. Does the head too often get in the way of the heart? I hope not, but if it does then this book reminds us of the richness of nature from an emotional point of view as well as an intellectual one.And it’s a book about wonder. The loss of nature matters, at least in part, because we lose the opportunity to have ‘Wow!’ moments where we see things that we couldn’t have imagined and that are so beautiful and are part of our, yes our, world. Our only world. The harrowing true tale of seven escaped Soviet prisoners who desperately marched out of Siberia through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.

Or a moth he happened upon on a hike. Or a butterfly. Or perhaps it is within his DNA, and not just his. But it is not in any way my contention that the love of nature is universal. What is universal, I believe, is the propensity to love it; the fact that loving it is possible for people. So he had some corny moments. And some inconsistencies. He spends considerable effort proving that China is by far the worst pollutant country in the world. Then he blames capitalism for global warming. Absolutely amazing!… hard to put down. I felt what the characters felt, as if I were right there watching it all’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐The destructive directions came from Genesis, he says: and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that loveth upon the earth. Hyperbole? You could say so, I suppose. But what can I do, other than speak of my experience? Once, on a May morning a few years ago, I came out on to the banks of the Upper Itchen, at Ovington in Hampshire, and the river with its flowers and willows and the serenity of its flow and its dimpling trout in its matchless, limpid water, all gilded by the sunshine, seemed to possess a loveliness which was not part of this world at all. I absolutely loved this book… I loved the setting… I loved how the book took multiple twists throughout … It was perfect. I absolutely will recommend this book to my book friends.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ When I first joined Goodreads fourteen years ago (it feels longer) I entered many of the giveaways and was the happy winner of seventeen books. I dutifully wrote a review for each one, even a few cookbooks. Then, seven years ago, the winning stopped. (No more sparrows?) Seventeen books in the first seven years; zero books in the next seven years. This is probablistically impossible. This is long before I pissed Ms. Underwood off. Perhaps it's because I ignored instructions and quoted from an uncorrected proof.

his personal story regarding his mother who had a breakdown and brother who committed suicide was a sad one but I struggled to marry the two narratives together. Nature has many gifts for us, but perhaps the greatest of them all is joy; the intense delight we can take in the natural world, in its beauty, in the wonder it can offer us, in the peace it can provide - feelings stemming ultimately from our own unbreakable links to nature, which mean that we cannot be fully human if we are separate from it.

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Alongside this joy is anger, impotent anger, as he describes the pointless despoilation and destruction of Saemangeum in South Korea by the construction of a 23 mile long seawall which has annihilated the rich mudflats upon which countless thousands of migrating birds had depended. I read it in one sitting. People kept asking me ‘why are you glued to your phone?’ Because I want to find out whodunnit, duh! It had so many elements I love…had me guessing almost all the way to the end.’ Goodreads reviewer There are, however, several tropes that I wish could be left out of such books. This is just one of several books about the glory of nature to be, in part, about the complicated adult relationships we have with our parents. I wonder what it is about the reverie of nature that surfaces those feelings as well? There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, and no way out. One of her fellow travelers is a kidnapper. But which one? I wanted to share that feeling with a fellow human, and know that I am not alone in that upwelling. That is a part of this thoughtful book, along with some solid points about the evolution of humans as a part of the world. The connections to our mental health and the world around us are also well spoken for here.

his argument is that we have to learn to love nature, again. Because for 5,000 generations from the plesteceine period we lived off the tundra and survived because of nature it is our ancestral home but within a generation we have become computer dependent. Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation, with a child’s life and her own on the line, Darby must find a way to break the girl out of the van and escape. The chapter called the Great Thinning probably affected me the most. In the author's own lifetime he recalls the great abundance of wild flowers, butterflies and other insects, birds etc etc. All gone, mainly due to 'modern' farming methods introduced in the last 50 years. He means a time before flowers, a time when the world was just shades of green. Then some plants began to use insects instead of the wind to move their pollen around. Voila! It didn't have to happen, he says. Nothing said it had to happen before we came along: we might well be living happily - in so far as we can live happily at all - in an all-green world still, and perhaps we would never miss what we never had. As the power goes out and we become completely cut off from the mainland I suddenly realise that I’m surrounded by people I can’t trust. So I have to face the facts: did one of us do this? Can I find the answers in this raging storm? And if I do, will I be next?

Wow! So many crazy twists and turns! This book had suspense, intrigue, action, great police work and a great who-done-it!… Had me glued to my Kindle!’ Sassy Southern Books the narrative is essentially saying that to save the world from man-made obliteration isn't utilitarianism (monetising the value of natural assets) because it essentially kills everything else off that doesn't provide any common benefit (that we know of).