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I love things that grow or live where they are not supposed to be. A book about weeds is right up my alley, and I like the way Richard Mabey writes articles, so I expected to enjoy this. This is a book about weeds, their histories, their travels around the world, and why we think of them as we do.

The chapters each begin on a theme or a story about a weed, but often deviate unpredictably, and this makes the book a little loose and difficult to read. Mabey also has a tendency to situate all of the writing within a British perspective on weeds, which would be OK if he stated this as part of the book, but it feels as if it is just unconscious bias. As a result, the anecdotal moments about weeds growing in bomb sites or the paranoia of giant hogweed being a cold war weapon are a little tainted, and the book failed to hold my attention.

In the academic world of writing about fire, environmental historian Stephen J Pyne is regarded as an international expert. He has a deep understanding of the historical and social practices of fire management and fire ritual in many different cultures.

This book is presented as a brief history. It is brief, but the timeline is extensive, covering everything from pre-human period, through the first uses of fire for land management and hunting, to present-day technologies. Pyne is a good writer and the story is compelling, and he reveals many interesting things about the history of fire and how it has been used and manipulated by people in a multitude of ways. It is also refreshing to see that it is not solely a western story of fire, although it is predominantly.

There are very few references, so as a reader I had to trust Pyne's expertise, and while his knowledge is clearly broad, this type of trust is disappointing in a book of this type.

Buchi Emecheta was one of the generation of Nigerian authors who became world-renowned in the 1960s and 70s, but is often the most overlooked. Her incredible writing never loses pace, and her storytelling is always compelling and pointed. This was originally her first novel, and was semi-autobiographical, but the only copy was destroyed by her abusive husband before it was ever published. Emecheta later rewrote it, and this is the result.

Despite that history, it still feels like a first novel. It tells the story of Agu-nna, a girl becoming a woman in Lagos in the 1950s, whose father dies early in the story from illness caused by his time fighting with the Allies in World War II. Agu-nna has to move back to her father's village with her mother and her brother, and encounter the old ways of rural Nigerian life. The pacing and moments in the story show the promise of a young writer, which can be a little jarring at moments, but most of the delivery is that of a seasoned craftsperson; the themes move between imperialism, colonialism, tradition and modernity. It is deeply compelling, and somehow Emecheta manages to show sympathy and empathy to all characters, traditions, and social entanglements, which is the writer's warmest gift.