Outdoor Books
Nature Writing & Wildlife
Nature writing is a broad shelf. A field guide to the reptiles of Borneo and a memoir about a year spent following geese both belong on it, and they ask completely different things of a reader. What holds them together is attention — someone went out, looked properly, and then did the harder work of getting it onto the page.
Start here
If you are starting from scratch
Four books that assume nothing. Each one is a door rather than a survey, and any of them will tell you quickly whether this is a shelf you want.
If you want to name what you see
Identification, and the pleasure of it. One standard field guide, and three books about looking hard at things most people step over.
If you are here for the prose
Nature writing read as literature. These are books people go back to for the sentences as much as for the subject.
Featured
Underland : A Deep Time Journey
Macfarlane goes downwards — into burial chambers, mine workings, sea caves, the blue veins under a glacier — and keeps arriving at the same question: what people choose to bury, and what they come back for. Not a cheerful book. Not a difficult one either.
Read more
Explore
The same shelf, cut four ways. Each count is the number of books in this category carrying that tag, and that is exactly what you will land on.
From the Journal
The full shelf
All books in Nature Writing & Wildlife
504 books
