Jamie Bastedo – Falling for Snow

A couple of weeks ago I was at the library browsing for books, something I hadn’t done in a long time. One of the types of books I was looking for sort of naturalist books, I suppose you could say. I picked out two wintry books, this and another I still have to read. Falling for Snow  is, quite simply, exactly says.

The narration style of this book is the only thing that irritated me slightly. It quickly became clear to me that I wasn’t the target audience, though – it was the tone the author took that tipped me off to that. This book is clearly written for people who have never experienced snow properly. I am not one of those people. The prose is full of gentle teasing and ‘Snow really is a good thing, believe it or not!’ Which, of course, is how I sometimes like to talk my friends in warmer climates, but to put up with it for a whole book could be tiring. Still, it’s barely worth mentioning in comparison to all the better aspects of this book. (I feel like just pointing it out makes it so much bigger than it actually was…it was just something I noticed, not something that unduly bothered me ^^;)

Okay, I’ve been writing this post for weeks and I’m gonna wrap it up quickly now so I can take this book back to the library: There was a section about various blizzards and how different places dealt with them and I was waiting for the Toronto snowstorm heading, because I figured that would have to be in there but there was no subheading and I was kind of disappointed until I turned the page and saw that Toronto got there own heading, haha. I like hearing about Toronto’s snow problem, makes me feel nice and smug. I liked that chapter about the different writings on snow, the poetry and the bits of prose. I liked the story about James Glashier (crazy man. somebody should write a fictionalized account about him…). I liked all the different knowledge/information about snow contained in this book. A good read with lots of different perspectives on the subject.