LOOK back and ask yourself where so many of your good memories of trips away, and your unexpectedly rich strands of thought, began. Often, it can be when messing around near water 鈥� or, if you are in the right place, exploring rockpools or tide pools.
In , Richard Smyth, who creates 快猫短视频鈥榮 quick crosswords, rediscovers the natural world as he and his children explore Whitley Bay in north-east England, and woods and moors nearer to home in Yorkshire. The young, Smyth discovers, are natural explorers and questioners. We can, we should, learn from them.
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All living things deserve our respect. Inevitably, though, we will end up picking favourites. Cats have done well out of this arrangement, dominating both savannah and sofa through the simple expedient of remaining remarkably themselves over evolutionary time. The Age of Cats by Jonathan Losos investigates their extraordinary success.
Why do cats grow up to be cats, and why do dogs look like dogs? As 快猫短视频 sci-fi columnist Sally Adee听gathered material for her book on the role of electricity in biology, researchers were uncovering electricity鈥檚 role in giving living things their shape. is Adee鈥檚 thrilling scientific detective story, a rich history that brings us up to date with the latest research.
Where there is life, there is constant change. The Earth Transformed by Peter Frankopan is an epic history of the human effort to understand, withstand and maybe even control our environment. Its tale of the rise and fall of civilisations makes for a sobering read, but also one full of challenges and hope.
Coming to terms with climate change is also the subject of Christina Gerhardt鈥檚 . Its essays, maps, art and poetry place small islands (vanishing under rising seas right now) at the centre of the climate story. This is a refreshingly different perspective on a problem that, she writes, is all too often 鈥渧iewed from space鈥�.
Now that we are barely more than a human lifetime away from mining the moon and prospecting on Mars, space is looking more thrilling. But such excitement is deflated by Justin Hollander鈥檚 The First City on Mars, a bricks-and-mortar account of terraforming written by an urban planner.
All things considered, it is just as well that we are thinking a lot more about the global food system. In , food entrepreneur Henry Dimbleby and journalist Jemima Lewis explain how plate and planet have ended up hostage to practices that are now entirely unsustainable.
The authors aren鈥檛 short of solutions, and neither is The Seaweed Revolution, Vincent Doumeizel鈥檚 exhilarating vision of how seaweed and marine algae could feed people and clean up the seas. Apparently, adding red algae to ruminants鈥� diets could cut their methane output by 80 per cent.
There is plenty of rethinking about everyday experience on offer, too. Andy Clark鈥檚 The Experience Machine sets the stage. Rather than perceiving the world directly, Clark explains, our minds must make ever finer predictions about what is out there.
The difficulty of working out where the self stops and the world begins probably explains those moments when we feel a presence at our backs. Ghostly sensations are real enough, but the science is still unfolding, as Presence by Ben Alderson-Day shows.
In Travellers to Unimaginable Lands, meanwhile, Dasha Kiper talks to those caring for people with dementia. Carers often struggle, responding to the person they knew rather than the person as they are now. Reality and the carer鈥檚 perception peel apart disturbingly in this highly original, compassionate work.
There is much to learn elsewhere too. Viorica Marian鈥檚 shows how valuable multilingualism can be, for the individual and for society. Then in Once Upon a Prime, Sarah Hart teases out surprisingly rich connections between literature and mathematics.
What if you have no time to read for fun? Throw away your clock, of course. Or at least read Jenny Odell鈥檚 Saving Time, which urges us to develop a deeper relationship with moments and their passing.
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