Nature Books

Advantages: Builds on TV series
Disadvantages: Not necessarily accurate

Walking With Dinosaurs is the companion book to the BBC television series of the same name. The book is laid out in the same format as the TV series with each chapter covering an episode of the series. The photography is superb, with stills taken from the television programmes, as well as other photos and diagrams not aired on TV. The book is reasonably well laid out and written in a clear, easy to read style. A lot of the information provided ... Read review

Advantages: Informative
Disadvantages: None really

… Food for Free is a classic book, written by Richard Mabey in 1972 but with more than a dozen reprints. It has therefore been a popular book and is still available in bookshops. As the title suggests the book is all about gathering your own food from the wild in the British Isles, such as the seashore, the forest or countryside. The reason I bought this book is that I was curious to know about food around us – supposedly growing wild ...
...a fair bit of free food that can be gathered in city areas too. However, there are some species in the book that I have never seen growing wild, such as chives, parsley, and blackcurrants. The book has four sections; edible plants, seaweeds, fungi and shellfish. The book is illustrated but many of the plants look quite alike so I am still uncertain about whether I dare try and eat them. I have a particular problem with the fungi many are very similar ... Read review

Advantages: Lightweight, compact, user friendly, a comprhensive guide
Disadvantages: Quite expensive

...book was first published by Collins in 2005 with a R.R.P for the paperback version of £16.99. This price might seem somewhat hefty but for me and many others it is well worth the price. There are over 20,000 different insect species that can be found in the British Isles so producing a field guide like this was no easy task. There have been many attempts over the years but these have generally resulted in something that resembled the Yellow Pages ...
...guide that you could slip into your rucksack and carry around with you. In just 384 compact pages this guide covers all of the most common insects that occur in Britain. Insects with a wingspan of less than 5mm have however been omitted as these can normally only be successfully identified by use of a microscope. The book also does not include spiders, which everyone knows are a part of the phylum Arthropoda along with insects but they do not belong ... Read review

Advantages: Extremely Interesting, Great Photos
Disadvantages: None

...down and watch documentaries on the TV with each other. Out of all the natural history documentaries my favourites and my dad's favourites were those presented by David Attenborough. When the series 'The Life Of Mammals' was shown on TV I watched every episode and found it fascinating and although I was at uni and my dad was at home I knew that he was also watching the series so when Christmas came round I new exactly what to buy him. Yes you've ...
...The book is split up into ten different chapters with each one looking at a different group of mammals which are divided up into the food they eat as Attenborough says this is the easiest way to categorise mammals and with 50 years of experience on the field I'm not going to argue with him. I found all of these chapters extremely interesting and full of interesting facts, some of which I hope to share with you during this review. The first chapter ... Read review

Advantages: Excellent reference, informative photographs.
Disadvantages: Too easy for the amateur to self-diagnose.

...to for occassional use and the one I am reviewing is a veterinary book for horses. As a horse owner, I spend a lot of money each month. Veterinary costs are one of the necessary costs though thankfully not too frequent (hopefully). Some of these are unavoidable, but some could be avoided if knowledgable enough. My horses are only about 2 and a half miles from the vets. For routine vaccinations I will ride them down and back to incorporate the vaccination ...
...bit more hassle than having the vet out, but it saves the £25 call out fee that is payable before anything else. Recently my horse was slightly lame. I had rested her for a few days and she was still lame. I was considering getting the vet out after 2 weeks as I didn`t know what it was. There was a slight amount of heat in her left hoof, indicating that the problem was within the hoof. From experience, it did not appear to be bad enough to be infection ... Read review