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Fingers In The Sparkle Jar



January 31, 2018

Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir - Kindle edition by Packham, Chris. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir.

Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir, Paperback by Packham, Chris, ISBN, ISBN-033506, Brand New, Free shipping in the US A memoir, in which, the author brings to life his childhood in the 70s, from his bedroom bursting with fox skulls, birds' eggs and sweaty jam jars, to his feral adventures. BBC Radio 4 Extra - Fingers in the Sparkle Jar by Chris Packham Broadcaster and naturalist Chris Packham's painfully honest memoir.

Chris’s memoir Fingers in the Sparkle Jar has been voted Britain’s favourite piece of nature writing in an online poll organised by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Chris’s response:

“Thank you. What an extraordinary surprise. I am very flattered because up until this point almost all the discussion ‘Sparkle Jar’ has generated has been about my Aspergers . . . and that was easy to write about! What I slaved over were the sections of nature writing. I tried to wring out all the wonder I felt in prose in an original and poetic style. Indeed, the few sections I actually like are those where a few words have made an everyday encounter magical – as they always were through my prying young eyes. I am equally surprised, as the format of the book is unconventional, confrontational and challenging – everything I needed it to be, but perhaps didn’t expect the readers to enjoy so readily. It’s not a novel, but it needed to be novel.
PS: I voted for Wind in the Willows”

. . .

Shortlist of 10

In total, 7,300 votes were cast in a national online poll featuring 10 shortlisted books. In second place was the classic Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson and in third was Common Ground by Rob Cowen. Also on the final shortlist (in alphabetical order) were:

  • The Peregrine by JA Baker
  • Poems by John Clare
  • The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
  • Findings by Kathleen Jamie
  • The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris
  • The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
  • The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White

These were selected by a panel of experts from more than 270 titles nominated by the public last year. The panel members were: Mike Collins, Arts and Humanities Research Council; Miriam Darlington, nature writer and lecturer at the University of Plymouth; Naomi Fuller from Avon Wildlife Trust; Ben Hoare, Features Editor at BBC Wildlife Magazine; Professor Graham Huggan, University of Leeds.

Land Lines

The campaign to find the UK’s favourite book about the natural world was used to help launch Land Lines, a two-year research project, funded by the AHRC. Led by the Universities of Leeds, St Andrews and Sussex, the project will take a deep look at the history of modern nature writing from 1789, when Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selborne was first published, to the present day. Adstec laptops & desktops driver.

Dr Pippa Marland, Research Fellow on the Land Lines project, University of Leeds said: “The Land Lines team would like to congratulate Chris Packham wholeheartedly on his well-deserved win. Fingers in the Sparkle Jar is an outstanding book: raw and brave, and written with an astonishing vividness of perception and recall.

“With this memoir Chris has succeeded in attracting readers who would perhaps not usually pick up a ‘nature book’. Informative and heart-breaking in equal measure, and graced with a punk sensibility and wry sense of humour, Fingers in the Sparkle Jar is a work of great originality which pushes at the boundaries of the nature writing genre’.” B&b usb devices driver download.

Public comments about Fingers in the Sparkle Jar

Fingers In The Sparkle Jar Review Guardian

“It’s the most powerful, honest account I’ve ever read about how nature can shape a person and how interactions with wildlife can stay with someone for ever. It’s beautifully written and the messages and story stayed with me long after I turned the last page.”

“Fingers in the Sparkle Jar is a truly beautiful, honest account of growing up with Asperger’s and in love with nature, when everyone around you wasn’t. It’s brutal and hard to read at times but ultimately brilliant. And very well written! I couldn’t put it down.”

Gary Grubb, Associate Director of Programmes at the Arts and Humanities Research Council said: “The AHRC funds a wide range of research that contributes to our cultural understanding of the natural world and of our environmental values, experiences and behaviours, as well as the ways that nature inspires and contributes to human creativity and cultures.

Fingers In The Sparkle Jar Review

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“Research on the ways the environment is represented through art media and literature, including the Land Lines project, is helping us to better understand the cultural value of the natural environment, the role that it plays in societal wellbeing and how communities are engaging with narratives about environmental change.”

Find out more about Land Lines at www.landlinesproject.wordpress.com or email: LandLines@leeds.ac.uk Twitter: @LandLinesNature or Facebook: www.facebook.com/LandLinesNature

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Fingers in the Sparkle Jar Quotes Showing 1-3 of 3
“It was a pity he couldn't do an O level in beetle smell. Or rat identification, or birdsong.”
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“The day we were all allowed to bring our pets into the classroom was going to be special. It was a nice sunny morning and Batty my black mouse had been spruced up for the occasion. He was in his new second-hand plastic cage, it was mustard coloured, had the mandatory wheel and sleeping chamber but had previously been a torture chamber for my cousin's late hamster. Despite my best efforts to revitalise it the wire remained rusty in places but at least it was more secure than the wooden enclosure my father had made.. and Batty had instantly, and repeatedly, chewed his way out of.
Sadly the species list for the class was a meagre four: rabbit, hamster, guinea pig and.. one domesticated house mouse, Batty. They all ignored him, they cooed over the 'bunnies' and those chubby-fat tailless things whose eyes bulged when you squeezed them a bit, and queued to offer carrot and cabbage to those cow-licked multicoloured freaks with scratchy claws, but not one of the kids wanted to see, let alone hold, my mouse.
By mid-afternoon the teacher finally caught sight of the lonely boy whispering into his mouse cage in the corner and gingerly agreed to let the rodent walk onto her hand in front of the class. Batty promptly pissed and then pooed three perfect wet little pellets, the classroom erupted with a huge collective 'urrgh' and then a frenzy of giggling, she practically threw him back in his cage and then made a big deal about washing her hands. With soap. Then we were all meant to wash our hands, with soap, but I didn't and no one noticed.”
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Chris Packham Fingers In The Sparkle Jar

“Without the restless insects the place seemed stunned, stupefied, shocked by the ballet of gossamer violence, the wonder of plain and simple things drawn together to conjure such beauty, transforming that bubble of urban air into a theatre where an astonishing performance was fleetingly played to an awed audience of one, the memory of which would sparkle for a lifetime. And he knew it then, in that moment of dead happiness, what a gift, what a thing he had seen, what a treasure he held.”
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tags: handful-moments, rare-gifts, snatches-of-brilliance

Fingers In The Sparkle Jar By Chris Packham


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