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Christmas present

Probably only worth reading if you’re an avid skier or kayaker wanting details of routes in Norway.

To me, it’s a massive, overly dense collection of holiday photos and diary entries. An editor could cut about 80% of it to create something slightly more interesting.

Recommended by a friend.

F liked it and thought it would be good for me, too.

Nicely written, fun & informative. A proper pop-sci book.

Recommendation from a friend.

This took me ages to read, because it was depressing and boring. I suppose there’s only so much you can write about the decline in these wonderful birds, which means the book is full of repetition. I wonder if the author’s mind works in a different way to mine, since I was never gripped by any of her writing, even in her most impassioned parts. It all just felt removed, which made it mostly boring on top of the sadness of it all.

F is reading it and enjoying it.

It’s fine. The Prologue was good, and thus encouraging, but the rest of the book wasn’t as interesting. It’s more of a list of “things cyclists do on mountains” than “why cyclists like mountains”, and there’s my usual bugbear of testosterone-fuelled conquering of mountains rather than the beauty of being amongst them.