Robert Macfarlane

[Pingers]

I am reading Underland and it is sublime. I haven't read any of his other books, but now I feel far more positive about my likely longevity, as it means I may get to read them all. I've read 90 pages and already feel I've been moved and nourished far more than by most books I've yet read.

Underland is a book about the spaces below the earth, full of myth and meaning and a sense of massive, weighty time, what he calls 'deep time'. His writing is fantastic, the sense of crushing claustrophobia followed by delerious rushes back to the light and wind of above ground is tangible.

Somewhere to my east, men are at work a mile below the moors, half a mile under the sea, cutting tunnels through the salt-ghost of an ocean to harvest is energy for crops as yet ungrown. A Time Projection Chamber is waiting for signals from Cygnus, the Swan, that might tell something of the birth of the universe, 13.8 billion years earlier. A labyrinth of drift is slowly closing up, lizard-machines and Ford Transits are being sealed into their tombs of salt - and through it all is passing a particle wind of WIMPS and neutrinos, to which this world is as mere mist and silk

He is writing about a potash mine in North Yorkshire in which there is also a lab looking for dark matter. Fucking hell.

[BlodwynPig]

RIP Zimbabwe's lion

[A Hat Like That]

I am reading Underland and it is sublime. I haven't read any of his other books, but now I feel far more positive about my likely longevity, as it means I may get to read them all. I've read 90 pages and already feel I've been moved and nourished far more than by most books I've yet read.

Underland is a book about the spaces below the earth, full of myth and meaning and a sense of massive, weighty time, what he calls 'deep time'. His writing is fantastic, the sense of crushing claustrophobia followed by delerious rushes back to the light and wind of above ground is tangible.
He is writing about a potash mine in North Yorkshire in which there is also a lab looking for dark matter. Fucking hell.

Picked up Mountains of the Mind for a bus journey and got hooked. The one I really like is Landmarks which is all about the words we, and others, use to describe the natural world.

The Lost Words is also great.

[Inspector Norse]

I read The Old Ways on holiday a couple of years ago and found it really wondrous and moving. He is a marvellous writer and I found he brought nature, and particularly the unique British landscape, to spectacular life.
But then I read The Wild Places on my commute more recently and found it hard to get into. Should give it another try when I'm in the right state of mind.
I have Landmarks on my shelf and Underland sounds fascinating too.

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

I haven't read any of his books, unfortunately, but I'm not exaggerating when I say that his Twitter account is the only one in existence which makes me think the operator is a thoughtful person who uses Twitter to enrich his follower's lives.