Bargain Books and Medicine Chests

I seem to have got in a groove of reading non-fiction at the moment. I have god knows how many novels started – to the extent that I’m now having to search for bookmarks as my previous forest of bookmarks are all being used for X marks the spot on all the books that I’m not reading. I think part of it is the continued Covid weirdness where I can’t quite commit to narratives, so non-fiction books, especially memoirs, feel easier to read in increments when I’m in the mood. Add to this is that we’ve got seriously ‘smoky skies’ on the island just now which is caused by the drift from the wildfires in Oregon, Washington State and California. I’ve been watching the news in horror and can’t imagine what it’s like if you’re living in one of the wildfire areas. I know we’re very fortunate not to have had a bad wildfire season this year in B.C. but living with the constant haze and resultant diminishing air quality is bad enough. It’s kind of counter intuitive because the crappy atmospherics s...

  The Ravenmaster is a blokey book. By that I don’t mean that it is written for blokes. I mean that Christopher Skaife writes as if he’s just come up beside you at the bar in the pub, and while you’re waiting to be served, you both start talking about ‘what you do’, and he starts talking about Ravens and the Tower of London and what it’s like to be in charge of seven very individual and idiosyncratic birds. While  you’re having that conversation, waiting for your pint or glass of wine or whatever, he’ll be down-to-earth, funny, self-deprecating and passionate and he’ll never once make you feel like your own job is dull as ditch water, but after you both leave the bar, you’ll probably think ‘wow, someone actually has that job and you know, he just seems like a normal bloke except he lives in a royal palace and looks after birds that supposedly have the fate of their nation in their claws’. Christopher Skaife is the titular Ravenmaster and since the book is subtitled ‘My Life wi...