Best science books and must-reads to stimulate your mind this summer

LOOK back and ask yourself where so many of your good memories of trips away, and your unexpectedly rich strands of thought, began. Often, it can be when messing around near water – or, if you are in the right place, exploring rockpools or tide pools.

In The Jay, The Beech and the Limpetshell, Richard Smyth, who creates New Scientist‘s quick crosswords, rediscovers the natural world as he and his children explore Whitley Bay in north-east England, and woods and moors nearer to home in Yorkshire. The young, Smyth discovers, are natural explorers and questioners. We can, we should, …