Faery Tale by Signe Pike

I really enjoyed this book but did have to constantly struggle against my inner sceptic saying 'yes but' and being rational all the time.  Signe Pike, disillusioned by city life in America, goes in search of fairies, first in Mexico and then to the great Celtic heartlands of fairy lore in England, the Isle of Man, Ireland and Scotland.  But it's less simple than a deluded new age hippie searching for magical beings.  Pike is desperately trying to come to terms with the death of her beloved, brilliant but difficult father and searching for the sense of wonder she had as a child.  I may not believe the same way as her, but the inward journey and a belief that the world is more than we can see with our terribly limited faculties makes sense to me, and her quest to recapture the childlike wonder that can heal any hurt is bewitching.  A little kooky in places, but a great lesson.

The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder

12 year old Hans Thomas is taken by his layman philosopher father on a road trip from their home in Norway over the Alps and down through Europe to search for Hans' errant mother in Greece and ask her to come home.  Lovely to read a book that actually asks you to thinks, both about an unfolding mystery within a book regarding a deck of playing cards, a magical lost land and the fantastically ridiculously named Rainbow Fizz, and about the nature of loss, love, and the importance of never losing your childlike curiosity and wonder at the world.

Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder by Richard Dawkins

Very enjoyable, about the fallacy that science cannot be beautiful and an exploration of the beauty in science but I wish that Dawkins could have stopped attacking other scientists for two pages, entertaining as it often was

Corvus: A Life With Birds by Esther Woolfson

An extraordinary book that has reinforced my love of nature, I just wish I could work out which of the wonderful noisy birds are in rookeries are corbies, ravens or rooks. AZ: "Esther Woolfson has been fascinated by corvids, the bird group that includes crows, rooks, magpies and ravens, since her daughter rescued a fledgling rook sixteen years ago. That rook - named Chicken - has lived with the family ever since. Other birds have also taken their place in the household - a magpie, starling, parrot and the inhabitants of an outdoor dovehouse. But above all, it has been the corvids (a talking magpie named Spike, Chicken the rook, and, recently, a baby crow named Ziki) that she has formed the closest attachments with, amazed by their intelligence, personality and capacity for affection.Living with birds has allowed Woolfson to learn aspects of bird behaviour which would otherwise have been impossible to know - the way they happily become part of the structure of a family, how they communicate, their astonishing empathy. We hear about Chicken's fears and foibles: her hatred of computers and other machines and her love of sitting on Woolfson's knee in the evening and having her neck scratched; the birds' elaborate bathing rituals, springtime broodiness, and tendency to cache food in the most unlikely places. Woolfson tells the darker story of way corvids have always been objects of superstition and persecution; and with the lightest of touches, she weaves in the science of bird intelligence, evolution, song and flight throughout. Her account of her experiences is funny, touching and beautifully written, and gives fascinating insights into the closeness human beings can achieve with wild creatures."

The Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson

I only knew Carson as the author of Silent Spring, which I still haven't got to. Carson has my sense of wonder about the world and here she speaks of the shoreline, the magical world between the tides. There is no shortage of factual information but it is couched in captivating prose.