Nature books

Nature is intrinsic to our experience of being alive and reading about it allows us to connect not just with the natural world but with ourselves. Here Victoria Bennett, author of All My Wild Mothers, a memoir of grief and creating an apothecary garden, recommends five other nature memoirs, highlighting personal and reflective prose by writers including Lauret Savoy, Mary Oliver, and Jamaica Kincaid.

Amy Liptrot, whose bestselling memoir The Outrun won the 2016 Wainwright Prize for nature writing, talks to Five Books about her favourite writing about landscape—and how her immersion in island life helped her recover from alcoholism.

Novelists, non-fiction writers and poets all attempt to create immersive and atmospheric settings in their books—what is called a 'sense of place' in literary terms. Here, the British journalist Patrick Galbraith selects five books that explore and evoke a sense of place—including works by Joan Didion, Mark Kurlansky and John McPhee.

The Scottish Highlands are known for the stark splendour of the landscape and the bellowing of the stags. They have inspired many classic works of poetry and nature writing, says Annie Worsley—the author of a memoir set on Scotland's rugged north west coast. Here, she recommends five books on the Scottish Highlands that portray the people and their place.

Again and again we return to the question: how should we live? To Henry David Thoreau, the 19th-century author, philosopher and naturalist, the answer was simplicity itself. Here his biographer Laura Dassow Walls selects five key texts that explore the Thoreauvian way of thinking.

Wonderful as it would be to climb Mount Everest or row across the Atlantic, not all of us will get the chance to go on an epic adventure. But that doesn't mean we can't go exploring. Alastair Humphreys, the British adventurer, explains the concept of 'local adventure' and recommends books that give a feel for what it's about and why it's worth pursuing.

The tidal zone is among the most vital and dynamic environments on Earth, but also one of the least well known. Here, the author Adam Nicolson explores formative works on the subject that have informed his book, The Sea Is Not Made of Water.

Natural history can offer a "portal into wonder and astonishment," says David George Haskell, the biologist and award-winning author of nonfiction works including Sounds Wild and Broken and The Forest Unseen. But natural history books, in the past, have also been guilty of reinforcing prejudices. Here he recommends five natural history books that celebrate the diversity of life.

Humans have mapped only 25 percent of the seafloor, so the ocean is ripe for exploration and investigation. Environmental journalist and author Laura Trethewey recommends five books by 'ocean journalists' that explore the life, crime and science of the seas.

Generations of writers, explorers and armchair travellers have found a focal point of fascination in the idea of the remote island. Why so? Gavin Francis, the award-winning writer, explains the everlasting appeal of the lonely isle – and why the fantasy is at least as powerful as the salt-sprayed reality – as he selects five of the best books on islands.