It so often happens this way – not more than half a week or so after a promising new book makes its appearance in my post box, Mark Avery has a review of it posted to his blog. Most recently, the book in question is “Orchard: A Year in England’s Eden” by Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates, as published under the venerable William Collins imprint of HarperCollins UK.
What with so many of the local fruit trees either in or coming in to bloom right now, I took down a copy of a Johns Hopkins University Press backlist book, William Kerrigan’s Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard; A Cultural History, that was sent to me last year in a shipment of new review copies from that fine publishing house. In it was a note saying “Thought you might be interested in this as well.” Indeed, I remember thinking that it did seem interesting, but what with all the new books needing attention, I never quite got to it.