Richard Cannings

This is an excellent book on the natural environment of British Columbia's Okanagan valley. Like all of Richard Cannings's books, it is well-written and interesting to read. It is much more than just a travel guide, as it is full of information on the species and ecosystems of the Okanagan, from rare dragonflies to glacial geology. If you have any interest in this region, I would highly recommend this book. (And I'd also suggest supplementing it with some good local field guides.) The only fault I can find with it is that it is strongly biased toward the South Okanagan (the book has 11 chapters for the South and only 4 chapters for the North Okanagan!). This is understandable as Cannings himself lives in the South Okanagan, but I do wish he had included more of the North.… (mehr)

This was a wonderful and lovely book, so accessible it felt like listening to a conversation with the author about his experiences with birds and nature.

Each chapter is about a different bird, some of their history and nature and his experiences in seeing them, often going back to when he was a child. Each chapter also only has one image of the bird in question, a simple black and white line drawing of each one and while as usual I would have loved color photos in this case the simple images really suited the book, photos would have been a detraction I feel.
I also appreciated his ecological message which brought the point of the need for better management of natural resources on our part without ever getting preachy.
Physically I also really liked the smaller than average book size, the quality of the paper (at least for this edition) and the simple but elegant cover and overall structure of the book.… (mehr)