Francis Gooding is a contributing editor at the London Review of Books and Critical Quarterly and is a regular columnist and feature writer at The Wire. His writing on diverse subjects including art, film, music, politics and colonial history has been published widely, appearing in publications including Time Out, Guardian, The Thinker, We Jazz magazine, and for Redstone Press, the Lisson Gallery, the Barbican, BFI and others. His book on painting and myth, Black Light, was published in 2009. He teaches film and is Head of Research at the Derek Jarman Lab; he also co-runs a record label, Tapestry Works.

• 1: A Walk at the End of the World 2: Mystic Writing Pad: Rocks 3: Parents and Skeletons: Earth 4: A Terrestriall Galaxie: Plants 5: Mars Owns the Herbs: Gorse 6: Kill Not the Moth: Small Things 7: The Script of the Stones 8: Ways Down 9: L'Origine du monde: Caves 10: The Secrets of the Sea: Rockpools 11: And Back Up Again 12: The Pathless Path: Birds 13: Every Calf and Cow: Mammals 14: Black Apples

The Script of the Stones is at once a deep excavation of the difficult histories bound up in human writing about nature, and a call to attend to what languages and texts may be held within the changing layers and surfaces of the Earth itself. I loved this book for its deliberate stickiness, its openness to mystery and strangeness, its commitment to taking unmarked paths - from which, inevitably, emerge moments of great insight, and exhilarating, mind-altering new truths.