Author: Michael Welland
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2010
Price: £9.99 (paperback)
Isbn: 9780199588183

This amazing little book will gladden the hearts of fort­eans. Why conduct expens­ive hunts for Yeti or sea monsters, why spend lonely vigils waiting for ghosts or the Loch Ness Monster, when right at our feet is a world of madness in miniature? All you need do is pay attention to sand.

The author, a Cambridge-educated geologist, shows how. Welland knows his sand, and he’s also a very fine writer, sweeping up the reader in his sandstorm of a love affair.

Besides hourglasses, silicon chips, moving sand dunes and disappearing islands, we learn about sand smugglers, sandblasting, sand­paper, sizes of sand, round sand, pitted sand, sand in myth, coloured sand, old sand, new sand, sand on other planets, sand in water purifi­cation, sand art and there’s an A–Z of sand’s uses. Human civilisation is built on sand (but in a good way). It is vital to almost everything we do.

The text does get as dry as… well, sand, at times, but only rarely. Meanwhile, here’s one counterintuitive fortean nugget: when dry, sand flows like a liquid; when it’s wet, it acts like a solid. And that’s the least of sand’s myst­eries revealed in this novel and delightful book.