Adult Customer Reviews

This is yet another book with two stories running parallel. The first concerns Leo, who has just survived a bus crash in which his girlfriend, Eleni, has been killed. The second, set during the First World War, tells the sometimes harrowing story of Moritz, a young Austrian Jew, who makes an epic journey on foot from a prison camp in Siberia back to his homeland to find his childhood sweetheart.

I really enjoyed this book. The idea of having two stories, one current and one historical, seems to be very much in vogue at the moment (Kate Mosse's "Labrynth" springs to mind) and the jumping from one to another can often be irritating but in this case I think it is well done.

Set in the future, when civilisation as we know it has disappeared, this book is about a group of women who have 'escaped' into the Lake District hills where they survive by hunting and growing their own food - think Mad Max meets Waterworld with a bit of 1984 thrown in...But when their far from idyllic way of life is threatened by the authorities, the commune members have to make a choice - fight or flee.
I personally did not enjoy this book as much as Haweswater, but it is worth redaing and would, I think, be a good choice for readers groups as there are plenty of topics for discussion.

George is not a happy man. He is sure he has cancer and tries different ways to come to terms with it, including leaving home and not telling his family about his condition. There are lots of other troubles in his life! His only son is gay and his partner has just left him. His wife is having an affair with one of his friends. The story is told in short chapters and is very funny although it does have the occasional sad moment. A great holiday read and one I found very difficult to put down.

When Aunt Elner dies after falling off her ladder while picking figs she is taken to Kansas City hospital and then "dies" and goes to Heaven for a while, followed by a miraculous recovery. The story covers the situation from the lawyers wanting to sue the hospital to the reactions of her family and friends in the small American town. It is a funny, sad, happy and very enjoyable story with a very diverse range of characters from the mildly neurotic niece Norma to the laid back hairdresser and beautician Tot, not forgetting the young "adopted" truck driving son Luther. 

Another very good read from an author probably best known for her novel "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café". The unique but everyday characters make Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven difficult to put down. 

 

This is an entertaining account of how five men of 'maturing years', follow Wainwright's Coast to Coast long distance route across the north of England. It is told with a great deal of humour and the style is often lighthearted, but at the same time Alan Nolan manages to capture and do justice to the achievement that competing this walk represents. This is not just a book for walking enthusiasts, but rather anyone who would enjoy a humorous personal account of a journey which covers the coastline, fells and dales of our own county.

This is, by any standards, a heavyweight book. It is authoritative, comprehensive, draws together a massive volume of up-to-the-minute research into a coherent whole, contains 580 pages, and weighs a hefty 1.5Kg (not that I normally go around weighing books!). It starts breezily enough with an introductory chapter covering the basics – starting with ‘what is a bumblebee?’, a question I imagine few have paused to ponder over. The chapter includes an overview of species, distribution and decline, lifecycle, friends, enemies, and anatomy – all in 30 pages. These themes are considered at length in the remaining chapters, plus others on such novel themes as bumblebee psychology and the role of chemical communication. Beekeepers will note many similarities between bumblebees and honeybees in their lifecycle, castes, specialisation of worker roles, and foraging behaviour. None of which is surprising given that they must have evolved on a common path up to a point. Accordingly, the similarities only exist up to a point, and furthermore each species of bumblebee has its own characteristic behavioural traits. One thing they all have in common is that only the queens survive the winter, starting new colonies every spring. They are creatures of temperate climates and, compared with honeybees, they get up early, go to bed late, and remain active in cool conditions, including light rain. The chapter on psychology is argued from the premise that bees require more than pure instinct, and their behaviour demands discriminating abilities, learning skills, and both short- and long-term memory. It describes their innate abilities such as vision, smell, touch, and how they employ these abilities in combination with learning and memory to perform complex functions and conduct their lives, both as individuals and as colonies. The extraordinary and complex relationships between the six British species of cuckoo bumblebees and their hosts is dealt with in as much detail as current knowledge permits, but there is clearly scope for much further research into the lifecycles of these so-called nest parasites. Varroa notwithstanding, it is apparent that bumblebees are much more heavily parasitized than honeybees. In some species more than 50% of nests are taken over by cuckoo bees, and at the individual level more than 40% of bumblebees might be affected by any of a variety of parasites. The relationships between bumblebees and flowers is dealt with in two chapters. The first from the point of view of the bees, and the second from that of the flowers. The former is a protracted academic discussion about Optimal Foraging Theory (OFT) and its applicability to bumblebee behaviour which, ultimately, proves inconclusive. The overall impression is that the discussion is concerned more with OFT than the bees’ behaviour per se. The second of these chapters focuses on the reliance of plant species, both cultivated and wild, upon bumblebees (and other insects) for pollination. It concludes with an interesting short discussion of the impact of declining bee populations on the viability of crops and the survival of some species of wild flowers. Bumblebee identification is approached from two directions. The first, called ‘What Bumblebee is That?’, is a systematic guide to identification, starting with general colour and appearance, then becoming more and more detailed to include such distinguishing features as the shape of antenna segments and the distribution of hairs on the hind legs. The second is a description, one by one, of the British species, giving distribution, description, colony cycle, foraging behaviour, predators and parasites, habitat, and conservation status. In my view these two chapters, excellent as they are, do not sit well with the rest of the book, and taken together, would make a useful companion volume for the serious enthusiast for use in the field and the laboratory. The two final chapters deal with habitat and conservation. The first, on agricultural change and bumblebee decline, repeats the oft-heard tale of habitat loss due to agricultural intensification since WWII. It considers the effects of these changes on bumblebee populations, species by species, and reflects on the characteristics which make one species more or less resilient than another. The last one starts with a lucid account of the changes in agricultural policy and its potential for improved wildlife conservation. There follows a fascinating discussion about the challenges facing bumblebee conservation, and the need to research the factors influencing its success, including availability of suitable nesting sites, a sequence of suitable forage plants throughout the season for both pollen and nectar, optimal nesting densities, foraging ranges, and the ability of each species to colonise new habitat. Then repeat all that for urban, wild, brownfield, and farmed landscapes, and you have the size of the problem! So there you have it – everything you ever wanted to know about bumblebees. Well nearly – there are some omissions: it mentions carder bumblebees many times, but never says what one is; it implies, but does not confirm, that worker eggs hatch fertile males; and it does not reveal how long is spent at the various developmental stages of egg, larva, pupa, and adult. It is written from a scientific perspective, uses language that is often rather dense, and is decidedly heavy-going on occasions. But putting these minor quibbles aside, it remains an impressive and scholarly work. Roy Knowles