Homing: On Pigeons, Dwellings and Why We Return

"Less well publicised, but perhaps my favourite nonfiction book published this year was Jon Day’s Homing , a memoir of parenthood and pigeon fancying, and though that sounds like an odd combination, it works brilliantly. I wrote a review of it for Prospect magazine, which you can find here : I called it “dazzlingly erudite.” (His debut book Cyclogeography , a memoir of life as a bicycle courier, is also extremely good.) Other works of memoir I enjoyed this year included Melanie Reid’s The World I Fell Out Of , a searing memoir of life after a riding accident rendered her tetraplegic which is gracious, brave and unexpectedly life-affirming. I was delighted to see it win the Saltire Prize for Nonfiction recently at the Scottish national book awards – well deserved. And I must mention Rhik Samadder’s heartbreaking yet hilarious I Never Said I Love You , which excavates the author’s history of depression, self-harm, childhood abuse – and aerates this dark and difficult subject matter with spectacular wit and self-awareness. Other new nonfiction books I enjoyed this year: Caroline Crampton’s The Way to the Sea , a beautiful book about tracing the Thames River from source to estuary; this is a topic close to Crampton’s heart as she spent her childhood sailing in its waters after her parents emigrated – by yacht – from South Africa to London. It’s cultural history, memoir and straight history all swirled together, with lovely passages that highlight the bleak beauty of an unglamorous stretch of English coastline. New Yorker staffer Casey Cep’s Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee is an unusual blend of true crime and literary biography. Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize , it tells a remarkable true story of a murderous pastor in the American South, and the To Kill a Mockingbird author’s attempt to write about him, having contributed so much to Truman Capote’s true crime classic In Cold Blood . Also, Dan Richards’ Outpost is a charming travel book about remote hideaways such as those favoured by hermits, writers and ‘Mars colonists’ training in a mock-up space station in Utah. ( I interviewed Richards on the best of landscape writing .) Plus Mark Boyle’s The Way Home was a Thoreauvian take on the simple life: he records a year living off grid and without modern technology in rural Ireland. Thought provoking and bullish. (See my interview with Boyle on wilderness, here .)"