Book Synopsis:

A captivating and lyrical journey into our ancestral past, through what and how we eat.

Mo Wilde made a quiet but radical pledge: to live only off free, foraged food for an entire year. In a world disconnected from its roots, eating wild food is both culinary and healing, social and political. Ultimately, it is an act of love and community. Using her expert knowledge of botany and mycology, Mo follows the seasons to find nutritious food from hundreds of species of plants, fungi and seaweeds, and in the process learns not just how to survive, but how to thrive. Nourishing her body and mind deepens her connection with the earth – a connection that we have become estranged from but which we all, deep down, hunger for.

This hunger is about much more than food. It is about accepting and understanding our place in a natural network that is both staggeringly complex and beautifully simple. THE WILDERNESS CURE is a diary of a wild experiment; a timely and inspiring memoir which explores a deeper relationship between humans and nature, and reminds us of the important lost lessons from our past.
 

My Review:

The Wilderness Cure is a fascinating and thought provoking read about a subject I knew little about before reading this book.

Firstly I have always loved the idea of foraging but had no idea of the vast amount of edible plants and fungi there were in this country. A life time of being told to be careful of touching things I didn’t know in the woods made me a bit fearful of attempting foraging at first, though I soon discovered it was very enjoyable. The children and I had fun trying to find ingredients in our local woods which we made into a very decent soup. It was amazing to see what we had available in our local woods and how plants I had walked past on countless occasions were actually edible.

The author includes a bit of history about the food our ancestors in the stone age ate which I found very interesting. It was fascinating to discover the different foods they ate then and how we eat a much smaller variety now then they did back then. I enjoyed learning about when foods I take for granted as being available year round, are actually in season and discovering what food originated in the UK.

This is a book that is probably better to dip in and out of rather then trying to read in one go as there is a lot of information to absorb. I do wish there had been some pictures of some of the plants the author was discussing as I did spend a lot of time trying to Google them on my phone to check I was picking the right things. The author is an expert in her field which made for very interesting reading but I wonder how easy it would be for a normal person without her knowledge to do this experiment.

Overall I did enjoy this book and will be recommending it to others as it has taught me a lot. I often discover edible plants on my walks now that I previously wouldn’t have recognised and my kids are keen to try and make more things out of food they have collected from our woods.

Huge thanks to The Tandem Collective for letting me join in the read-along with my own copy of this book.

About The Author:

Monica ‘Mo’ Wilde is the author of The Wilderness Cure: Ancient Wisdom in a Modern World. Winner of The John Avery Award for “original and adventurous writing” in the 2022 André Simon Food and Drink Book Awards. Mo is a forager, research herbalist, author and ethnobotanist. She has been teaching foraging since 2005 but has had a lifelong passion for plants.

Mo has a Masters degree in herbal medicine, is a Fellow of the Linnean Society, a member of the Association of Foragers, a member of the British Mycological Society and a member of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS). Monica Wilde lives in Scotland in a self-built eco house, encouraging medicinal and foraging species to thrive in a wild, teaching garden. She also teaches and lectures on wild foods, plants, fungi and algae.

Good morning everyone! It was my birthday last week and I was lucky enough to receive some book vouchers from my lovely sister. This was quite an event as I never get books off my family as they say I have too many already.

I bought these two books as they sound really fascinating and I’ve been hearing lots of good things about them from my book friends. I’m excited to read them both soon.

What was the last book you bought?

The Dress Diary Of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasdin

‘The story of a singular woman… Kate Strasdin’s forensic detective work has finally let Mrs Sykes – and her book – speak again’ JUDITH FLANDERS

In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes.

Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album’s pages.

Piece by piece, she charts Anne’s journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life: pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain’s cotton industry.

This is life writing that celebrates ordinary people: the hidden figures, the participants in everyday life. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of mediums: the clothes we choose to wear.

When The Dust Settles by Lucy Easthope

Lucy is a world-leading authority on recovering from disaster. She holds governments to account, supports survivors and helps communities to rebuild. She has been at the centre of the most seismic events of the last few decades, advising on everything from the 2004 tsunami and the 7/7 bombings to the Grenfell fire and the war in Ukraine. Lucy’s job is to pick up the pieces and get us ready for what comes next.

Lucy takes us behind the police tape to scenes of chaos, and into government briefing rooms where confusion can reign. She also looks back at the many losses and loves of her life and career, and tells us how we can all build back after disaster.

When the Dust Settles lifts us up, showing that humanity, hope and humour can – and must – be found on the darkest days.

Good Morning everyone I hope you are having a great Easter so far.

As you’ve probably noticed I love a good book challenge so when I saw this on the lovely Joanne from Portobello Book Blog I knew I had to join in. The idea is to match one of your favourite books with a word you might associate with Easter.

If you’d like to join in please do as I’d love to see what you pick.

What have you been up to this Easter weekend?

Rabbits: A Book You Wish Would Multiply (A Book You Wish Had A Sequel)

I absolutely loved this book when I read it and I am really hoping that the author writes a sequel one day as I’d love to read more about the fantastic Emily and Josh.

Egg: A Book That Surprised You

I love a good thriller but as I read so many of them I’m often able to guess what’s going to happen or who’s done it. This book however absolutely blew me away and I wasn’t able to predict the outcome of it at all which I always love.

Hunt: A Book That Was Hard For You To Get Your Hands On

I had heard lots of great things about this book so I was desperate to read it when it came out. However Waterstones took ages dispatching my order so I ended up waiting a few weeks to receive it sadly.

Lamb: A Children’s Book You Still Enjoy

I was a huge Secret Seven fan as a kid with my sister and I even trying to form are own Secret Seven to solve mysteries. I’m currently reading them with my little girl which I’m really enjoying.

Spring: A Book With A Cover That Makes You Think Of Spring

When I was looking for a book for this prompt I squealed when I found this as not only is it yellow which is a very spring colour but it has daffodils on it which are one of my favourite spring flowers!

Jesus: A Religious Or Spiritual Book You Love

I absolutely loved this book and would highly recommend it to everyone. It was so uplifting and thought provoking with the many wisdoms or ideas it had in it. It’s one of the only books I’ve ever felt compelled to highlight parts of as I wanted to be able to find it again.

Good morning everyone and Happy Easter if you celebrate. I got woken up at half five this morning by three kids who wanted to see if the Easter Bunny has been. It had so I now have three very happy, chocolate covered children!

I thought I’d share the books they were enjoying this Easter weekend:

⭐ Robo Dog by David Walliams

⭐ Izadora -Moon Goes To School by Harriet Muncaster

⭐ Harry & The Dinosaurs Have A Happy Birthday by Ian Whybrow

⭐ We’re Going On A Egg Hunt by Martha Mumford

My eldest kids are huge readers, with my 10 year old in particular being hard to keep up with sometimes as he’s such a fast reader. My little girl loves books and we’ve just discovered the Izadora- Moon series which we’re steadily working our way through. My youngest is reluctantly learning to read and is struggling a bit with it at the moment. He loves being read to though and I always look forward to bedtime stories with him.

Anyone got any kid book recommendations for me?

Book Synopsis:

Welcome to Charon’s Crossing.
The tea is hot, the scones are fresh and the dead are just passing through.

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own sparsely-attended funeral, Wallace is outraged. But he begins to suspect she’s right, and he is in fact dead. Then when Hugo, owner of a most peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace reluctantly accepts the truth.

Yet even in death, he refuses to abandon his life – even though Wallace spent all of it working, correcting colleagues and hectoring employees. He’d had no time for frivolities like fun and friends. But as Wallace drinks tea with Hugo and talks to his customers, he wonders if he was missing something.

The feeling grows as he shares jokes with the resident ghost, manifests embarrassing footwear and notices the stars. So when he’s given one week to pass through the door to the other side, Wallace sets about living a lifetime in just seven days.

My Review:

Under The Whispering Door is a beautifully written, thought provoking and absorbing read that I’ve continued to think about long after reading.

Firstly I absolutely loved the author’s vision of what happens after we pass away and hope that’s what happens in real life. The tea shop was a lovely creation and I liked the idea of a place where the recently deceased can go to reflect on their life. It was quite amusing to watch Wallace trying to get used to being a ghost, with some of his actions making me laugh out loud.

There are some wonderful characters in this book that I enjoyed getting to know. I started off really not liking Wallace but grew very fond of him as the story progressed and he starts to become a nicer person. This change in Wallace was lovely to see, as was watching him grow closer to the other cafe inhabitants. His growing relationship with Hugo was interesting to follow though laced with sadness as to where it could go. I found myself feeling very sorry for Wallace that he seemed to have discovered this wonderful world too late.

The story starts off a bit slowly as the author sets the scene and we get introduced to the characters but I soon became absorbed into the story. I loved learning more about the cafe and the characters whose backstory was often very heartbreaking. The twist at the end was unexpected but beautifully done. I closed the book very happy though sad to leave the cafe and the wonderful characters behind. This was actually the first book I’ve read by this author but I’ll definitely be reading more from him in the future.

About The Author:

TJ KLUNE is a Lambda Literary Award-winning author (Into This River I Drown) and an ex-claims examiner for an insurance company. His novels include the Green Creek series, The House on the Cerulean Sea and The Exraordinaries. Being queer himself, TJ believes it’s important—now more than ever—to have accurate, positive, queer representation in stories.

tjklunebooks.com

Eek I was so excited to receive a copy of this book. I absolutely loved The Lighthouse Library by this author so I can’t wait to read this.

Huge thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book and to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour.

Yes I did take this book to a National Trust visit, hoping to get an opportunity to take a nice picture – hopefully I’m not the only one who does that ..

Out 27th April 2023

Book Synopsis:

 
A novel of second chances and blossoming communities from the author of The Lighthouse Bookshop. 

Budding landscape architect Luisa MacGregor is stuck in a rut – she hates her boss, she lives with her sister, and she is still mourning the loss of her husband many years ago. So when she is given the opportunity to take on a parcel of land in a deprived area, she sees the chance to build a garden that can make the area bloom.
 
Arriving in the rundown seaside town of Collaton on the north-west coast of Cumbria, she realises that her work is going to be cut out for her. But, along with Cas, a local PE teacher, and Harper, a teen whose life has taken a wrong turn, she is determined to get the garden up and running.
 
So when the community comes together and the garden starts to grow, she feels her luck might have changed. Can she grow good things on this rocky ground? And might love blossom along the way…?

About The Author:

I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, which is now a distressingly long time ago! I started out as an entertainment journalist – actually, my earliest published work was as a reviewer of science fiction and fantasy books. I went on to become a staff writer and then an editor for print magazines, before beginning to write non-fiction making-of books tied in to film and television, such as The Art and Making of Penny Dreadful and Wonder Woman: The Art and Making of the Film.

I now write both children’s and adult fiction – my first novel was called The Diamond Thief, a Victorian-set steampunk adventure book for the middle grade age group. That won the Redbridge Children’s prize in 2014, and I went on to write two more books in the series before moving on to other adventure books including The Golden Butterfly, which was nominated for the Carnegie Award in 2017, The House of Hidden Wonders, and a YA horror called FIR, which was shortlisted for the Lancashire Book of the Year Award in 2018.

My debut adult novel will be published by Simon & Schuster in August 2021. It’s called The House Beneath the Cliffs and it’s a story set in a very small coastal village in Scotland. The idea for it had lodged in my head years before. I have a love for unusual dwelling places and I came across a tiny house that completely captured my imagination. My adult fiction tends to centre on small communities – feel-good tales about how we find where we belong in life and what it means when we do. Although I have also published full-on adult horror stories, which are less about community and more about terror and mayhem…

I was born in Kent but now live in a very small house in an equally small village in northern Cumbria with my husband, who owns a bookshop in the nearby market town of Penrith.

Good morning everyone and happy first day of the Easter weekend! I thought I’d do a little reading update to show you what I’m planning on reading this weekend.

📚Last- Maybe Next Time by Cesca Major (Review posted Thursday)

📚Now – The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse

🎧 Now – Daisy & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

📚 Next – The Institution by Helen Fields

I’m really enjoying The Burning Chambers but the more I read the more I’m convinced I’ve actually read this book before as it seems very familiar.

I’ve been very intrigued about Daisy & The Six for a while now and have heard great things about the audiobook. I’ve got a few jobs to do this weekend so I’m looking forward to listening to this while I work.

Helen Fields is one of my favourite authors and I’m excited to read her latest book The Institution. I might end up reading it alongside The Burning Chambers as it’s difficult to read with the kids around so I might need a gripping book to ensure I manage to read this weekend.

What are you planning on reading this weekend?

Good afternoon everyone I was lucky enough to be accepted onto the Tandem Collective read-along for this fantastic sounding book. It sounds right up my street and I’m excited to read it alongside some of my lovely book friends.

Huge thanks to Tandem Collective for the invite and to Karen Kingston for recommending me for this read-along.

Do you like read-alongs or buddy reads?

Book Synopsis:

Born into a basket of clean sheets–ruining a perfectly good load of laundry–Emmeline never quite fit in on her family’s rural Nova Scotian farm. After suffering multiple losses in the First World War, her family became so heavy with grief, toxicity, and mental illness that Emmeline felt their weight smothering her. And so, she fled across the Atlantic and built her life in England. Now she is retired and living in a small coastal town with her best friend, Vera, an excellent conversationalist. Vera is also a small white dog, and so Emmeline is making an effort to talk to more humans. When she joins a memoir-writing course at the library, her classmates don’t know what to make of her. Funny, loud, and with a riveting memoir, she charms the lot. As her past unfolds for her audience, friendships form, a bonus in a rather lonely life. She even shares with them her third-biggest secret: she has liberated hundreds of spoons over her lifetime–from the local library, Cary Grant, Winston Churchill. She is a compulsive spoon stealer.

When Emmeline unexpectedly inherits the farm she grew up on, she knows she needs to leave her new friends and go see the farm and what remains of her family one last time. She arrives like a tornado in their lives, an off-kilter Mary Poppins bossing everyone around and getting quite a lot wrong. But with her generosity and hard-earned wisdom, she gets an awful lot right too. A pinball ricocheting between people, offending and inspiring in equal measure, Emmeline, in her final years, believes that a spoonful–perhaps several spoonfuls–of kindness can set to rights the family so broken by loss and secrecy.

The Spoon Stealer is a classic Crewe book: full of humour, family secrets, women’s friendship, lovable animals, and immense heart.

About The Author:

I love the ordinary moments.
I celebrate everyday things.

They are too often lost in the race for something grand. I hold dear our humdrum routines. These accumulating hours make up our lifetimes and when we remember, it is always the simplest of pleasures that make us happy. These are the memories I create in my books.

Hubby and I were raised in Montreal, but have lived in the same house in rural Cape Breton for forty-five years. It remains a sanctuary for our children and pets, both living and remembered. My writing began as an exercise in trying to understand my world and quickly became something that brought me joy. I dearly love my family, baby blueberry Gia, all creatures great and small, children’s books, and breathing in the wild ocean air. 

Also, raisin tea biscuits.

(Taken from author’s website)

Good morning everyone. I saw this fun challenge on @dems_book_den ‘s Instagram page and knew I had to join in!

My lovely bag was made by my Mother In Law for my birthday. She makes the most amazing bags and I always love receiving a new one from her.

In my bag we have:
⭐My diary
⭐ A note book and pen in case I have any good ideas whilst out. Also useful for entertaining the kids if needed.
⭐ My book with the lovely bookmark my daughter made me
⭐ My kindle just in case I manage to finish my book 😂
⭐ My wallet
⭐ A drink – I normally use my water bottle but couldn’t find it…
⭐ Chocolate
⭐ Birthday book vouchers

There is also a load of random receipts and a few kids toys too.

I’ve tagged a few people who might want to take part on Instagram but if you see this feel free to join in too!

What book would you recommend I buy with my book voucher?

Good morning everyone I was lucky enough to receive this fabulous package from Graeme Williams and Vintage Books to celebrate the paperback publication for Confidence by Denise Mina.

This book sounds great and I’m very excited to read it soon. You can find out more about the book below.

Out in all formats now!

Book Synopsis:

A MISSING FILMMAKER. A STOLEN ANTIQUE. SOMEONE WILL KILL TO STOP THEM BEING FOUND…

‘Denise Mina is crime-writing royalty’ Val McDermid, author of A Place of Execution

When filmmaker, Lisa Lee goes missing, alongside a priceless Roman silver casket, there is no doubt the two are linked together.

The day after her vanishing, the casket is listed for auction in Paris with a reserve price of fifty million euros.

On a thrilling chase across Europe to discover what happened to Lisa, journalists Anna and Fin are caught up in a world of international art smuggling, billionaire con artists and religious zealotry.

About The Author:

Denise Mina was born in Glasgow in 1966. Because of her father’s job as an engineer, the family followed the north sea oil boom of the seventies around Europe, moving twenty one times in eighteen years from Paris to the Hague, London, Scotland and Bergen. She left school at sixteen and did a number of poorly paid jobs: working in a meat factory, bar maid, kitchen porter and cook. Eventually she settle in auxiliary nursing for geriatric and terminal care patients.

At twenty one she passed exams, got into study Law at Glasgow University and went on to research a PhD thesis at Strathclyde University on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, teaching criminology and criminal law in the mean time.

Misusing her grant she stayed at home and wrote a novel, ‘Garnethill’ when she was supposed to be studying instead.

‘Garnethill’ won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasy Dagger for the best first crime novel and was the start of a trilogy completed by ‘Exile’ and ‘Resolution’.

A fourth novel followed, a stand alone, named ‘Sanctum’ in the UK and ‘Deception’ in the US.

In 2005 ‘The Field of Blood’ was published, the first of a series of five books following the career and life of journalist Paddy Meehan from the newsrooms of the early 1980s, through the momentous events of the nineteen nineties. The second in the series was published in 2006, ‘The Dead Hour’ and the third will follow in 2007.

She also writes comics and wrote ‘Hellblazer’, the John Constantine series for Vertigo, for a year, published soon as graphic novels called ‘Empathy is the Enemy’ and ‘The Red Right Hand’. She has also written a one-off graphic novel about spree killing and property prices called ‘A Sickness in the Family’ (DC Comics forthcoming).

In 2006 she wrote her first play, “Ida Tamson” an adaptation of a short story which was serialised in the Evening Times over five nights. The play was part of the Oran Mor ‘A Play, a Pie and a Pint’ series, starred Elaine C. Smith and was, frankly, rather super.

As well as all of this she writes short stories published various collections, stories for BBC Radio 4, contributes to TV and radio as a big red face at the corner of the sofa who interjects occasionally, is writing a film adaptation of Ida Tamson and has a number of other projects on the go.