"History does not repeat but it does instruct”.

Two things immediately spring to mind after reading On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. The first is “Wow!” and the second is….why have I only recently discovered this erudite Professor who, even a little research suggests, has developed a large fan base as well as stirring up controversy in academic circles.**
Perhaps the best response therefore is to do what the Professor himself exhorts us to do: read books, with the emphasis on books.
In his words:

“Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet.”

So read this one certainly. It is short, easy to read and packs a powerful punch whether you find yourself agreeing or not. Set out in 20 snappy “lessons” it encourages the reader,in essence,to learn from experience, from history in fact. Not to take anything for granted.Not to sink into a weary “`twas ever thus” frame of mind nor to think that things were better “in the old days”. Rather we should stay alert: ask questions, be prepared to stand out (lesson 8), believe in truth (lesson 10), be courageous (lesson 20).

Other lessons urge us to interact in the real world,“Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people” at the same time as cultivating a private life, “We are free only insofar as we exercise control over what people know about us”.

Sound a bit melodramatic? Perhaps. But taken in its entirety this book is only suggesting we take personal responsibility for what`s happening in the world. Not an unreasonable proposition.
It is lesson 9 that emphasizes the importance of reading books (including, happily, fiction; "any good novel enlivens our ability to think about ambiguous situations and judge the intentions of others").
It`s a theme to which this reviewer will return.

**https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20190412snyder

Thinking holistically.

Rewilding; a word that has been floating around for a while but lately seems to have become firmly fixed in the zeitgeist. Look it up and definitions seems fairly obvious:
" restore (an area of land) to its natural uncultivated state (used especially with reference to the reintroduction of species of wild animal that have been driven out or exterminated)."
What`s more, there are hundreds if not thousands of “rewilding” projects, big and small, up and running all over the world. All seems pretty straightfoward.
Until, that is, you read Wilding by the appropriately named Isabella Tree and suddenly it doesn`t seem quite so straightforward after all.
The sub-title is "The return of nature to a British farm", in this case a large, conventionally farmed estate in West Sussex which, despite the family following all the best advice and their best efforts, was haemorrhaging money. It became clear that continuing in the same way was to keep digging a bigger and bigger hole.
What happened next was essentially a "spectacular leap of faith". Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell decided to stand back and let nature take its course.
Well, sort of. What they actually began to do was learn: from Ted Green, a distinguished tree expert; from Frans Vera and his project in the Netherlands; from dozens and dozens of research papers and conservation reports. But perhaps most compelling they learnt from their own observations and what they learnt turned much conventional conservation wisdom on its head.
The book challenges understood notions of appropriate habitats which turn out to be more about how birds and animals have adapted to the available environment rather than how they might behave given truly "wild" territory.
It also challenges the idea of establishing and trying to preserve an apparently suitable terrain for one species which seems to ignore the way, the often extraordinary way, that, given the chance, flora and fauna are interdependent.
In this beautifully written and meticulously researched book we are encouraged to share the author`s delight and in some cases astonishment at what happens on the Knepp Estate as she and her family dare to let go and give nature "the space and opportunity to express itself".
It hasn`t been easy: some conservation experts have been wary, not to mention neighbouring farmers and the local dog-walkers, but in the end the book is about possibilities, about
"thinking holistically,....rebuilding systems with natural processes rather than setting endpoints, measuring function as much as outcome" (and thereby changing) "our whole relationship with the land".
At the very least, it may make you look differently at your local park or nature reserve, or even your garden.

Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

A potentially life changing....or at least mind-changing.....little book, Hope in the Dark had me by Page 4: “an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety”.

Rebecca Solnit doesn`t simply celebrate open-heartedness, she offers a joyful alternative to gloom, doom and despair at the state of the world, discarding, as she says, “the crippling assumptions that keep many from being a voice in the world.” What the book definitely isn`t, is hippy-dippy: all you need is love, it`ll all be fine, head in the sand, fingers in the ears la-la-la.

Anyone who has ever doubted the point of direct action, of marching in the streets, of non-violent protest, who has thought or said or heard other people say “it won`t make any difference” will find in this book all the answers they might need to counteract the temptation to give up - to be in her words “beautiful losers or at least virtuous ones.”

She redefines notions of revolution that replace “bad” with “good”, instead describing a process which rejects “the static utopia in favour of the improvisational journey”. By the same token “hope” then becomes more a way of approaching the world, not an inane, vapid optimism, but an acknowledgement of “wild possibilities”, a form of trust in the unknown. Which means the “dark” is not something to be feared but something to be embraced, a future we cannot know but which is ours to create - a darkness “as much of the womb as the grave”.

It helps to remember that, as Solnit says in one of her other books*, new ideas which are initially dismissed as extreme or unrealistic, often end up as “what everyone ….. thought they had always thought, because it`s convenient to ignore that they……...had thought something completely different, something that now looks like discrimination or cluelessness.”

Hope in the Dark is full of examples where the smallest act has helped new ideas take root, often in unexpected or unanticipated ways. It is a paeaon to the power of imagination, a joyful celebration of the possible and the conceivable. But be warned, it could inspire you to get involved in all sorts of mischief: "hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky....Hope is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency."

*Call Them By Their True Names

"To live is to be wild and various."

According to Mark Carnall, curator of the 500,000 specimens held in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, “many entomologists are now genitalia obsessed, examining specimens under the microscope and assessing whether the arrangement of penile bumps and hairs is a distinctive characteristic of a new species or not.”

Categorizing, classifying, ranking, apparently we can`t help ourselves. Make no mistake though, categories and classifications are never objective.

It can be a fun way to pass a wet Sunday afternoon (Wikipedia lists 28 genres of heavy metal music, all but 8 with numerous sub-genres), or simply a vanity project to get ones name on a new discovery. However,when we do it with books, the law of unintended consequences comes into force.

Which brings us to Into The Jungle, the latest foray into storytelling by Katherine Rundell. Richly illustrated by Kristjana Williams, it looks like a picture book and will probably be found in the children`s section of your local library or bookshop. Yet that is to put it in a straitjacket of genre which would do it a disservice and mean it could be easily overlooked by folk who would not normally stray into the children`s department.

The book is to be savoured even before it is opened, a gloriously produced, properly bound tome with a ribbon bookmark, the dustjacket resplendent with William`s illustrations and the legend “Stories for Mowgli” inscribed in clear, slightly raised white lettering which instantly demand to be caressed.
There are brief profiles of Rundell and Williams inside the cover but no big puff pieces, no extravagant reviews or prefaces or forewords. We are taken straight to the bold text, five origin stories for characters from the original Jungle Book written by Rudyard Kipling and published in 1894.

Nor, thankfully, are there pages of “comprehension” questions in the back. Increasingly, this has become an irritating feature of many children`s books as if without it readers can`t be trusted to have truly appreciated what they`ve read. Worse, it is creeping into stories intended for adults, often apparently aimed at book clubs, clearly unable to come up with their own discussion points.
No such patronising intrusion would have made it into Kipling`s original volumes and anyone who grew up in the company of Bagheera and Baloo, Kaa and Mowgli need have no fear of reading Rundell`s interpretation of their back stories. No Disneyfication here, only tales that swing along with joy and wit at the same time probing issues of belonging and identity. They also remind us of the old adage of nature being red in tooth and claw: there are few concessions to modern sensibilities.

The common thread that draws the stories together is Mowgli, seen first as an innocent and mischievous little boy who picks his nose and has to be reminded of his manners but is also fiercely loyal and brave and believes, as Bagheera has taught him, that “To live is to be wild and various”.

This is a theme Rundell returns to time and again in her writing. From Sophie in Rooftoppers to the wonderful Feodora in the magical Wolf Wilder, her characters take risks, spurn the mundane and the conventional, negotiating life in as energetic and honest a way as possible. Leavened always with humour and irreverence Rundell`s writing brings a breath of fresh air to our worried and safety obsessed world.

Best of all Into The Jungle could have been created to read aloud, surely the hallmark of excellent writing. Who would not want to take on the characters of Raksha the wolf and Shere Khan as they stare at each other, “eye to eye, teeth bared”, or Kaa, “a snake of unusual strength and beauty..with a ferociously unruly temper.” Coupled with the quite exquisite full page colour illustrations this is a book to become immersed in and to return to time and time again. And if it encourages someone to discover, or rediscover, Kipling`s stories, that can only be to the good.
In the end Into The Jungle is what a good book should be: entertaining and thrilling in equal measure, with a quiet insistence that the best happens when we behave in a brave, honourable and compassionate way.
It is not a child`s book, or a teen book, or an adult book. Nor is it a book of short stories or a book of animal stories. It is all of the above and more, the kind of thing everyone should be reading, regardless of age, gender, race or any other classification we can come up with.
Buy it for yourself. Buy it as a gift. It will stand the test of time. And when no-one is looking take it out of the children`s section and display it for all to see.

A beginning......

After several false starts this is a new blog.
Though occasionally I name check an amazing book @ www.walking-quite-fast.blogspot.co.uk, here I`m aiming to better describe what has made an amazing book -er- amazing.

There is no plan, no classifications, no reading targets, no lists of “must reads”. The book choice is as random as life itself.
The aim is to write about them while I`m still spinning from their fabulousness.