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Books Related to A Tiger in the Sand Mark Cocker - ISBN: 0224078828
Another fascinating book on natures dramas and foibles by this talented writer - Rated
Having been turned on to the lyrical , almost poetic writing of Mark Cocker with his book about corvid,s "Crow Country " I decided to seek out more of his books and that led to me reading A Tiger In The Sand. The book is a collection of over a hundred articles ,taken mainly from his columns in The Guardian and Guardian Weekly and collates almost twenty years of writing on his fascination with nature .
This is a hugely varied selection but not too surprisingly it does dwell at times on his common themes of the wildlife and landscape around his Norfolk home. There is also predictably much about his fascination with the almost magical vitality of birds, his specialist subject as it were. He returns to his obsession with crows in a section of the book called "black beasts" which also deals with rats , gulls and other often despised creatures.
Happily the articles have a far more broad reaching scope than Norfolk or indeed The British Isles. He observes gorillas in Uganda , lions , rhinoceros, whales, elephants , a species of owl in Hungary which when it is threatened "seems to suck itself in , and pull itself up till it assumes the appearance of a small branch. " and penguins in Antarctica. All these encounters are suitably exotic and fascinating but it's his ability to make the most mundane and everyday encounters resonate with something elemental and dramatic that grades Cocker as a writer with rare ability. His description of foxes stalking hares -" a clod with the power of sight" is superb and even a visit to a museum to look at some mammoth fossils is given a sense of drama and history as he interprets what he finds at the exhibition to give a credible account of natures foibles thousands of years ago.
This also taps in to one of Cockers other central themes- the relativity across time and what the action of man could cost us down the years. This environmental agenda is a major nuance of the book but curiously never feels overplayed or causes the reader to roll their eyes when it crops up again .Some may differ on that one but it's this uncanny ability to educate , inform ,entertain and yes moralize that makes Cocker such a vibrant voice . He's a great writer sure and I ,d recommend his books to anyone and hope he continues to write more , but the guy is to some extent wasted in print. Put him on the box .He could do their, for nature, what Michael Wood does for history.
