Suffolk Libraries launches Wild Reads 2022

Suffolk Libraries is launching its new Wild Reads booklist for 2022 with Suffolk Wildlife Trust this week!

Wild Reads makes the connection between the natural world and the written word and inspires people to enjoy the very best of nature writing with a special selection of books and activities. 

Originally launched in 2020 as a nature writing project for adults, Wild Reads aims to help inspire and ignite a love of nature and the Suffolk countryside.

Suffolk Libraries has created this year’s Wild Reads booklist with six selected titles and with one of the six authors, Jessie Greengrass, relaunching Wild Reads with a special online author event on Wednesday 6 April at 6pm. Jessie’s book ‘The High House’ is one of the Wild Reads titles and was shortlisted for the Costa prize 2021. 

Kellie Dimmock, Suffolk Libraries Information for Living Librarian, said:

“We first launched Wild Reads with Suffolk Wildlife Trust in January 2020 and despite the challenges everyone has faced during the last couple of years we have been developing the Wild Reads book collection with a view to engage as many people as possible with the project. With the Easter holidays just around the corner and Spring hopefully not too far away, we hope the new selection of books will inspire more people to get out and about to connect with wildlife and the environment around them and to discover the wonderful and varied Suffolk countryside and the wonders of the natural world which are waiting for us.” 

Tickets for the online event are free and can be booked online (donations to Suffolk Libraries are welcome). For full details of the Wild Reads booklist and to book tickets for the Jessie Greengrass event, visit www.suffolklibraries.co.uk/wild-reads . For more information about engaging with nature in Suffolk visit the Suffolk Wildlife Trust website at www.suffolkwildlifetrust.org

You can share your views about the Wild Reads books by tagging @SuffolkLibrary and @SuffolkWildlife on social media and using the hashtag #WildReads

Jessie Greengrass’ story collection, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It, won the Edge Hill Prize 2016 and a Somerset Maugham Award, and she was shortlisted for the PFD/Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. Her first novel, Sight, was shortlisted for the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

The six Wilds Reads books are as follows:

The High House by Jessie Greengrass – A stunning novel of the extraordinary and the everyday, The High House explores how we get used to change that once seemed unthinkable, how we place the needs of our families against the needs of others – and it asks us who, if we had to, we would save.

Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty – This book chronicles a year in the author’s life, following the seasons, his struggles and successes as an autistic teenager and finding security in nature.

The Moth Snowstorm by Michael McCarthy. One of Britain’s leading writers on the environment discusses the joy and delight we can take from the natural world.

Waterlog, by Roger Deakin. In 1996 Roger Deakin set out to swim through the British Isles. From the sea, from rock pools, from rivers and streams, tarns, lakes, lochs, ponds, lidos, swimming pools and spas, from fens, dykes, moats, aqueducts, waterfalls, flooded quarries, even canals. This is a personal journey, a bold assertion of the native swimmer’s right to roam, and an unforgettable celebration of the magic of water.

The Way Through the Woods: Overcoming Grief Through Nature by Long Litt Woon. Long Litt Woon loses her husband of 32 years to an unexpected death. An immigrant in his country, in losing the love of her life she has also lost her compass and her passport to society. It is only when she wanders off deep into the woods with mushroom hunters and is taught there how to see clearly what all around her is, and learn how to make distinctions, take educated risks, and hear all the different melodies in Nature’s chorus, that she returns to life and to living. 

On the Marsh: A Year Surrounded by Wilderness and Wet by Simon Barnes. When writer Simon Barnes heard a Cetti’s warbler sing out as he turned up to look at a house for sale, he knew immediately that he had found his new home. Once they’d bought it, they began to manage it as a conservation area, working with the Wildlife Trust to ensure it became as appealing as possible to all species. For their son Eddie, who has Down’s syndrome, it became a place of calm and inspiration.