How To Read Water

A must-have for all nature lovers - perfect reading for your winter adventures

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How To Read Water

By: Tristan Gooley

Narrated by: Tristan Gooley

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About this listen

A Sunday Times 'Must Read' book

'This study of rivers, lakes, puddles and seas brims over with astonishing facts...His observational skills can be breathtaking' The Sunday Times

A must-have book for walkers, sailors, swimmers, anglers and everyone interested in the natural world, in How To Read Water, Natural Navigator Tristan Gooley shares knowledge, skills, tips and useful observations to help you enjoy the landscape around you.

Includes over 700 clues, signs and patterns.

You'll learn how to:

Interpret ponds like a Polynesian

Spot dangerous water in the pitch black with the help of a clock face

Read the sea like a Viking

Forecast the weather from waves

Find your way with puddles

Decipher wave patterns on beaches

Decode the colour of water

Unravel a river like an expert

From wild swimming in Sussex to wayfinding off Oman, via the icy mysteries of the Arctic, Tristan Gooley draws on his own pioneering journeys to reveal the secrets of ponds, puddles, rivers, oceans and more to show us all the skills we need to read the water around us.

(P)2016 Hodder & Stoughton©2016 Tristan Gooley

Biological Sciences

Ecosystems & Habitats

Natural Resources

Nature & Ecology

Outdoors & Nature

Sailing

Sailing & Boating

Science

Walking

Water Sports

Sports

Thought-Provoking

Swimming

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Critic reviews

Tristan Gooley's lovely and exhaustively researched book...if you like water, as I do, you will learn a lot.

This inspired guide to water in all its forms will make a big splash...Gooley has done his subject proud - this is seriously fascinating stuff.

This study of the behaviour of rivers, lakes and seas brims over with astonishing facts... His observational skills can be breathtaking... Gooley's infectious delight in knowledge translates into a gleeful hoarding of words... The joy of these words and phenomena is that they make you yearn to observe them in the real world... Gooley even manages to explain tides coherently and excitingly in just 14 pages, which is quite some feat, given that they are a lot more complicated than being a mere effect of the moon's gravity.

The quirks and habits and secrets of good old H2O were crying out to have a book written about them. That said, it had to be written by the right person... Fortunately, the job went to Tristan Gooley... His tales recount wisdom gathered on the ground (literally), often by trial and error, and his joy at discovering something almost makes you feel you did the work yourself... The book doesn't just cover the rural sections of the waterfront: urban dwellers get a look-in too.

Quite apart from being well written and an enjoyable read, there is plenty in the book that is revelatory.

He writes with passion, humour and clarity and engages so deeply with the tributaries of inquiry that reading it feels as exhilarating as being towed by a dolphin...There's so much here that I can't do it justice; chapters on water at night; currents and tides; reading waves; the coast. This is an absolute gem of a book. A must-have for anyone who loves the water.

The goal of the author is to have his readers never look at water the same way after reading this book. He has certainly achieved his objective and I doubt I will now ever be able to walk past a lake or even a pond without checking for surface patterns.

Gooley, who has single-handedly been reviving natural navigation in this age of GPS, has the birdwatching skills of Bill Oddie and the deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes. He can make you feel that you've spent half your life walking about with your eyes only half-open. He does it again with this fascinating guide to watching and interpreting water, everywhere from the garden pond to the Pacific.

Most relevant

I really enjoyed this book.

There are a wealth of nuggets of information that make you want to rush outside and check something for yourself!

Even though the narrator (and author) tries his best to keep things simple, I found some of the content quite heavy going and think it will take a second / third read for much of the knowledge to sink in.