In the mid-2000s I had read parts of Robert Macfarlane’s book Mountains of the Mind for a Masters Degree assignment on Percy Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’. I must admit, until he appeared on my Twitter feed with his ‘Words of the Day’ tweets having been retweeted by someone else, I’d almost forgotten how knowledgeable he is.
How does this all link to a book by a completely different author? Well, Macfarlane and writer Julia Bird, decided that over the festive period they would run a Twitter-based, read-along reading group based around Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising.
The #DarkisReading and #ArtisRising hashtags were born.
The story, despite being written for a younger audience, is full of rich descriptions of landscapes and nature. Furthermore, Cooper seems particularly adept at recreating the otherworldliness of the snow-bound countryside: “The strange white world lay stroked by silence. No birds sang. The garden was no longer there, in this forested land. Nor were the out-buildings nor …
How does this all link to a book by a completely different author? Well, Macfarlane and writer Julia Bird, decided that over the festive period they would run a Twitter-based, read-along reading group based around Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising.
The #DarkisReading and #ArtisRising hashtags were born.
The story, despite being written for a younger audience, is full of rich descriptions of landscapes and nature. Furthermore, Cooper seems particularly adept at recreating the otherworldliness of the snow-bound countryside: “The strange white world lay stroked by silence. No birds sang. The garden was no longer there, in this forested land. Nor were the out-buildings nor …