It’s not unheard of for Mark Avery and I to have found ourselves unexpectedly – as they say in the ad biz – “in sync” when it comes to a book we choose to write about on a particular day.
So it seems that it is this present Sunday in the selection by both of us of James Aldred’s recently published “Goshawk Summer; A New Forest Season Unlike Any Other.”
For some – well, perhaps all aside from humans, that is – the summer of 2020 was indeed a summer worth remembering, for in the withdrawal of humans from active life in the world, the rest of the planet’s creatures once again had a chance to live their lives in a way they haven’t been able to do for centuries.
Many is the time I’ve called up Mark Avery’s blog on a Sunday and found not just one freshly published book review, but two. However today is the first time I can recall discovering one and a half.
Taking up Roy Dennis’ new “Cottongrass Summer,” a collection of fifty-two seasonally arranged essays about the natural world to be published this very month by Saraband, Mark immediately reflects upon how he “can think of no better comparison [than Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac] to give you an idea of its content and of this book’s quality and worth.”