Don't know how many times I've read this, but as I'm going to London by train (mask on!) and I was looking up a quote in it only yesterday, I'm going to just have to read it again.

Liked this a lot, but it felt like a long scenic walk. Great journalism about birding round the world. Perhaps a bit boring on the data. But still inspirational. #birds #birding

I loved this memoir / family history. It's a pageturner and truly fascinating. Also not all happy endings, it feels like proper history told without favouritism, opening up private lives to connect them to the famous bits. The sections on 1950s USA and the Paris art and fashion worlds were terrific.

I was drawn into this novel almost against my better judgement, because I don't like family sagas normally. But after reading Hadley Freeman's House of Glass I was curious about traditional Jewish family life between the wars in Europe. I learned a lot! But the continuing family dramas and fireworks started to give me bad dreams, so I bailed out.