Pliny's Encyclopedia: The Reception of the Natural History Book

In just over 2 weeks, my wife and I will leave home to head, for the sixth time in as many years for a holiday on an island off the west cost of Scotland. We've been to Islay, Skye, Arran and Mull (twice) and this time we will take our courage in both hands and go further still into the Outer Hebrides.

Reading Findings has definitely heightened my excitement about this upcoming holiday. Much of the book is set in the Inner and Outer Hebrides and I suppose this might partly explain why I enjoyed reading the book so much.

It is also a book that spoke to me about the way I approach my life. I spend a lot of time outside searching for wildlife that I can photograph. It was great to read...

"This is what I want to learn: to notice, but not to analyse. To still the part of the brain that's yammering, 'My God, what's that? A stork, a crane, an ibis? - don't be silly, it's just a weird heron.' Sometimes we have to hush the frantic inner voice that says 'Don't be stupid,' and learn again to look, to listen.

Much of the book is an encouragement to notice things in the midst of normal life:

"Then the osprey was gone and I turned back to the dryer, looking for matching socks".

There are chapters about birds, a chapter about salmon, a chapter about the illness of the author's husband, a chapter about cetaceans. And more. In all of them, the author infuses a sense of wonder with a sense of the "normalness" of life.

As a bird watcher, I perhaps especially loved the chapters about birds. Last year on Mull, we took a day trip to Iona where we stood by a field for 2 hours because we could hear 2 corncrakes calling and we wanted to see them. Seeing these birds is notoriously difficult and we had to give up when it was time to leave to catch the ferry back to Mull. So when I read this, about a woman who also wanted to see a corncrake...

"Birdwatchers come especially - Sarah tells of an old lady who sat quiet and demure on this very viewing bench for an hour, two hours...then there was a whoop, and Sarah turned to see the old lady leaping around, punching the air like a footballer, just for a glimpse of an elusive brown bird."

...I was there, I could relate!

There is a chapter about a museum collection of body parts. As I read this, I could not help being reminded of both Flights and Sight. Perhaps this quotation will explain why to those who have also read these books:

"Several times, in his writings, he approached anatomy through metaphor striving for exactitude. 'The opened body is as a foreign country,' he wrote, 'Anatomy is as a harvest field'; 'Anatomy is as to medicine as sight is to the body.'"

A collection of meditations that manages to link history to our modern world and that manages to encourage us to look for the beauty and the detail around us.

A beautiful book.