Pagesfromthewild

Anand Vishwanadha on his versatile poetry collection Stray Birds, and what birdwatching brings to his life

Anand Vishwanadha's Stray Birds reads like a birder’s journal, but one that has been pruned to hold only the most memorable images and resultant thoughts.

To read Robert MacFarlane’s Underland is to reimagine what we might learn from the pursuit of the subterranean

In Robert MacFarlane’s Underland, he travels across the UK, Western Europe and Finland to enter and explore a multitude of landscapes beneath the surface — both geological and manmade

Hope Jahren’s The Story of More marries personal reflection with science to trace the narrative of climate change

In an informative new book, Hope Jahren demystifies the combination of sometimes accidental, sometimes deliberate events, choices and passing of the reins of power in the last 50 years or so that have over-taxed the planet while still leaving more than 800 million people starving.

S Hareesh’s Moustache is a diligently told story of a troubled yet awe-inspiring land

S Hareesh’s novel Moustache, translated from Malayalam into English by Jayasree Kalathil, is set in Kuttanad where he has lived his entire life.

Chinese novel The Waste Tide goes where little writing ever does — the recycling industry and class inequality at its heart

The greatest lesson of Chinese author Chen Qiufan’s little-known novel, The Waste Tide, may be that trash is frequently invisible to those who create it — as are the people who process it, such as manual scavengers, the labourers in ship breaking yards and so on.

In times of climate crisis, why nature-journalling can be a simple, yet potent tool to build intimacy with nature

The practice of nature-journalling has been variously adapted by enthusiasts to forms that personally suit them, with the split between scientific observation, writing and illustration varying wildly from person to person. This private note-keeping is the simplest, most accessible form of nature writing available to a wide spectrum of people, especially at a time when the world is threatened by rising fascism, climate crisis and infectious diseases, as there seems to be an urgent need for practices that will anchor us and deepen our ties to our one world.

Ramya Reddy's Soul of the Nilgiris is as much a history of place as it is a history of people

Ramya Reddy’s Soul of the Nilgiris is a tribute to the Nilgiris, a mountainous range whose landscape comprises shola forest and grassland, and the four indigenous groups that populate the upper regions | Urvashi Bahuguna writes in #PagesFromTheWild

A field guide to field guides: Be it a title on birds or trees, for nature enthusiasts there are few tomes as useful

In this fortnight's #PagesFromTheWild column, Urvashi Bahuguna writes why field guides are the books related to nature she returns to most often — the ones that continually teach her new details and correct imperfectly remembered knowledge

Of sundews, strangler fig and elephant foot yam: Nirupa Rao's Hidden Kingdom is an ode to flora of Western Ghats

In Hidden Kingdom, the unusual plants of the Western Ghats are demystified and allowed the space they need to be understood in their singularity, Urvashi Bahuguna writes in a new column about environmental literature, #PagesFromTheWild