RECOMMENDATIONS – BOOKS ON ART & NATURE – AN ONGOING LIST

 

NON-FICTION:

Feral, George Monbiot, 2013
This is one of the most important books ever written about the environment and how we interact with nature. In Feral, George Monbiot makes a passionate and convincing argument for rewilding both our landscapes and our lives. A book that only feels more relevant as time goes on.
See more here.

The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd, 1977
One of the most beautiful pieces of writing ever created, Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain defies categorisation and simply enchants, intrigues and challenges our preconceptions. Shepherd’s text, written during WWII but not published until 1977, offers new ways of experiencing, looking at and being in nature that still feel entirely fresh.
See more here.

H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald, 2015
This is one of the first non-fiction books I’ve come across that I read with the speed and engagement I usually apply to novels. Helen Macdonald’s story of grief and the training of a hawk is both ordinary and extraordinary, entirely relatable while simultaneously being entirely other from most people’s everyday experiences.
See more here.

The Fish Ladder, Katharine Norbury, 2015
Katharine Norbury’s ‘journey upstream’ is revelatory. Her style of writing manages to be allusive and full of meaning while also telling an apparently simple story: grief is present again, as well as illness and motherhood. Norbury’s insights into the natural world are reflections that allowed me to form my own ideas and follow my own tributaries of inspiration as I read.
See more here.

The Library of Ice: Readings from a Cold Climate, Nancy Campbell, 2018
A nonfiction work by artist and poet Nancy Campbell inspired by several years spent travelling and undertaking residencies in Arctic countries. Setting out from the world’s northernmost museum, in Upernarvik, Greenland, Campbell explores ice in all its facets, on glaciers and in libraries, through hiking and reading. Campbell’s textual clarity doesn’t reduce the landscapes, people, or problems of the Arctic to an essence. Instead, her prose sheds light on the messiness of Arctic beauty, on the sprawling, never-ending network of languages, cultures, and text that the ice-covered margins of the world evoke — an ecosystem of ideas that cannot be distilled.
I recently reviewed The Library of Ice for Hyperallergic. See more here.

 

FICTION:

Folk, Zoe Gilbert, 2018
Gilbert’s debut novel reads more like a collection of interconnected short stories, exploring life on the imaginary and folklore-heavy island of Neverness. A beautiful meditation on human instinct, relationships and deep but uneasy connections with the land.
See more here.

 

POETRY:

Sleepwalk on the Severn, Alice Oswald, 2009
A poem for several voices. Oswald takes on the personae that characterise the liminal spaces of the river Severn at night, from local individuals to the moon itself. Stunning.
See more here.

 

Please feel free to send recommendations my way! anna@annasouter.net