This week's paperbacks
Ragnarök: The End of the Gods
AS Byatt
Canongate, £7.99
The Norse legend of Ragnarök has been a favourite of the Booker winner AS Byatt since childhood, when she discovered it as an evacuee during the second World War. Here she reworks the tale, intertwining it with the story of "the thin child in wartime", whose world is transformed when she comes across a book of stories. Full of detailed, lush imagery, this is a descriptive read – a little too much so, perhaps – exploring the landscapes and histories of mythical places, cruel gods and giant squid, tangleweeds and curious wolves. Byatt vividly inhabits the mind of the young girl and her inner world, the strange tales casting a sense of wonder on almost everything in her path, like the moment she prises open a flower bud despite knowing in her heart that she was "cutting a life short, interrupting a natural unfolding".
SORCHA HAMILTON
Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed
Simon Barnes
Short Books, £8.99
Most birdspotting guides either ignore birdsong altogether or give such helpful hints as "the call of the lesser-spotted sausage-snatcher is kwirk-kwirk phooo. The greater spotted sausage-snatcher, on the other hand, clearly and obviously goes kwirk-kwark phooo." Birdsong isn't actually a clear and obvious business at all; it isn't easy for beginners to distinguish one species, let alone the numerous subgroups, from another. But with more and more of us taking an interest in what's going on at the feeders in our back gardens, a good guide is a godsend. And this is very good indeed. Barnes's approach is humorous, chatty and pragmatic. He avoids kwirk-kwirks altogether and goes straight for a 30-minute podcast that you can download free from the internet. He begins with the humble robin. He can't do the listening for you, but, boy, does he help sharpen up your ears.
ARMINTA WALLACE
The Land That Lost Its Heroes: How Argentina Lost the Falklands War
Jimmy Burns
Bloomsbury, £12.99
When it first appeared, in 1987, this book, by the journalist Jimmy Burns, won the prestigious Somerset Maugham Award for nonfiction. Now Burns has updated the book to mark the 30th anniversary of the brutal but short Falklands engagement. Burns strikes a nice balance between history, politics and the military aspect of the conflict and the hypocrisy of the imperial countries that fought over the territory. Worryingly, Burns believes the situation in the area might "become more serious" again. There is a fascinating early Irish connection to the saga. One Miguel Fitzgerald copiloted an aircraft to the Falklands in 1963, landed, raised the Argentine flag and issued a proclamation decrying the British occupation in the name of "22 million Argentines, who were determined to see the end of the 'third English invasion of territory' ". Wonder where he got that idea from.
PÓL Ó MUIRÍ
