Book reviews and awards

Trevor’s  Success in Academic Writing now in its second edition, continues to be enthusiastically reviewed by writing and learning specialists.

On the cover of the second edition, Professor Gerry Czerniawski, University of East London writes:

This is an outstanding text, full of brilliant advice, guidance and tips. It is the best guide to academic writing I have seen and I will be recommending this to my own students.

Christopher Little’s review of the second edition in the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, October 2018

At times, you feel like you are ‘reading’ an academic writing class or tutorial. Each chapter features a range of useful activities and tips, which serve to keep the reader active and break up the prose. Trevor Day brings a wealth of experience to this book from his background in many different forms of writing: from press releases and news articles to journal papers and academic articles.

The book starts with a key message that those working in student-facing, Learning Development (LD) roles will be familiar with; yes, there are discipline-specific academic writing conventions to adhere to but there are also some universal principles that can be shared and used by all disciplines and the book goes on to explore many of these. While there are lots of published books aimed at helping students with academic writing, this is a particularly good one.

For the full review

Carol Matthews’ review of the first edition in the Journal of Pedagogic Development, November 2014

When this book landed on my desk I wondered ‘Do we really need to add yet another student guide to academic writing to the mountain of such books?’ Once I began reading I realised what an accessible and useful guide to academic writing this is …

Whether clarifying the reasons for formal academic writing, its nature and conventions, or explaining critical thinking and the art of composition, Day’s practical experience and craftsmanship combine to make this a book that students and academics alike can return to time and again and never fail to learn something or find inspiration. Do we really another guide to academic writing? In short: in this case, yes, we definitely do.

For the full review

Extract from Kathy Greethurst’s review in the Oxford Brookes eJournal of Learning and Teaching, December 2014

The importance of this book is that it is an easy-to-read and easy-to-access academic writing guide which will help students to realise that the effective delivery of compelling evidence-based arguments is key to achieving good grades. The book explains that academic study is just as much about students finding their academic voice as becoming an expert in their disciplines.

… this book is well worth reading for its broad overview of academic writing and for its wide range of tips, advice and practical examples to help students to develop their academic voice and academic writing skills. After reading this book, students will be equipped to tackle their university writing projects with confidence and fluency. Consequently, it is recommended for any undergraduate or postgraduate student especially if they are new to academic writing.

Sardine (Reaktion Books) is a multi-faceted biography of the fish, ranging from ecology and economics to poetry and literature, with urgent lessons for us about our stewardship of the oceans.

Reviews of Sardine:

Superb.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Review, December 2020

Thank you Trevor Day for making the commonplace miraculous. Sardines provide the second largest catch worldwide, sustain coastal peoples all over the world and are the basis of many oceanic ecosystems. A glorious book in a great series that makes you think again.

Mark Cocker, author of Crow Country and Birds Britannica, December 2018

Sardine is a delight. The debt to Mark Kurlansky’s Cod is clear, but Trevor Day’s canvas goes beyond Kurlansky’s historical, human-centred approach to look at life from the sardine’s point of view as well. The gauntlet of the ‘sardine run’, off the coast of South Africa, when every dolphin and seabird in the region is after them. The unexpected invertebrate predators, from comb jellies to arrow worms. The sheer sense of attrition that converts the 60,000-80,000 eggs laid in a season by a female into the (on average) two fish that replace her and the father – or would have done until human industrial fishing came along. Day is also good on the scientists who have painted the canvas of the sardines’ lifestyle. Sir Alister Hardy, with his continuous plankton recorder. Charles Hickling, who devoted more than three years of his life to recording sardines’ stomach contents. Even Ed Ricketts, essentially an amateur, who was the inspiration for ‘Doc’ in Cannery Row, a novel set among sardine canneries. The wider history is there, too, though. Who knew that Thomas Bodley, the founder of Oxford University’s library, owed his fortune to sardines? Or that St Anthony of Padua has a sardine festival on the streets of Lisbon. Or that, in 19th-century Cornwall, there was a profession called ‘huer’ which involved sitting on a cliff top day after day trying to spot sardine shoals, and then directing boats towards them by a system of semaphore. Sardines may not have driven the colonisation of new worlds, or provoked wars, in quite the way that codfish once did. But they were every bit as important to local economies, and local nutrition. And they are every bit as interesting.

5 stars. Geoffrey Carr, Science Editor, The Economist, February 2019

… and Whale Watcher (Natural History Museum, UK)
The guide is a useful and eminently pleasant primer to the taxon Cetacea – the whales, dolphins, and porpoises. I gladly recommend this book to general readers who want to know how, where, and when to watch these lovely mammals of the seas. Bernd Würsig, Texas A & M University, The Quarterly Review of Biology, Volume 82, 2007Responsible watching is stressed in this comprehensive, thoughtfully assembled reference book, aimed at one of the fastest-growing tourist activities in the world. Wildlife Conservation magazineTrevor Day … has produced an exceptional book that will satisfy the most ardent fan of whales and whale-watching. … Whale Watcher is both highly educational and fun to read. Highly Recommended. Elizabeth Larsen. Canadian Materials for Libraries (University of Manitoba)