It’s that best time of year—for reading! Cuddled under a warm blanket on the couch, or close to the wood stove with feet stretched out, these long nights are made for reading (as long as we have electricity). I asked friends and associates to recommend some books. The response was terrific!
Entangled Life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds & shape our futures by Merlin Sheldrake. “The audio book is read by the author which I always like. He weaves a rich personal story into an investigation and exploration into the deep interconnectedness of life forms and forces at all levels. I listened to it on a road trip, and I kept hitting the back button to rewind 30 seconds to hear bits again. I also like the way he explained and organized sections about very complex topics in ways that worked well for me.”—Mike LeBeau, energy consultant.
This recommendation is seconded by Katie Neff Dawson: “It is an entangled book full of wonder, curiosity, and passion.”
Both Mike and Susan Darley Hill recommend The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl. Susan says, “This beautiful book feeds the soul and gives voice to our collective love of the natural world. The author’s narration is a balm in itself as she relays her observations of backyard critters and plants through one year.”—Susan Darley Hill, retired biologist and active nature seeker.
Susan also loves Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. “His essays are wildly far-ranging but exquisite in their simplicity and humor as he shares a year of bemused wonder at his encounters with nature and human beings. More healing salve for those of us freaking out over insurmountable ecological problems. A daily dose of Ross Gay is a powerful antidote for the dread we may feel.”
Fire Weather: A true story from a hotter world by John Vaillant. “A vivid description of the 2016 fire in the Fort McMurray oil fields in Alberta: the context, the people, and the hourly progress of the fire, which was the main character.”—Ann Wagner, weed warrior and English tutor in Maryland.
Ann also recommends The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. A couple loses their land and, homeless, heads out to hike England’s 600-mile South West Coast Path. Superb writing about each mile. She is one tough cookie.”
So We and Our Children May Live by Sheri Hostetler and Sarah Augustine. “In a sea of climate content that I find more often crazy-making than anything else, this book spoke to my deep sense that we cannot focus on “techno” fixes to the planetary crisis, but rather need to confront extraction and colonization and engage Indigenous leadership for real solutions. A rush to mining as (bizarre) solution, for example, without critical conversations about undemocratic consumption, accumulation, and simply unwise use has me feeling frustrated and depleted. Rhetoric abounds right here in Minnesota with the mining lobby, the energy lobby, the data center lobby, even the “clean car” lobby; this book provides a useful antidote.”—JT Haines, Northeastern Minnesota Program Director, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoe Schlanger. “Well written, thought provoking look at the cutting edge (and at times, the far fringe) of plant studies.”—Mary Losure, author of Wild Boy and other nonfiction children’s books.
Dodge County Inc.: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America by Sonja Trom Eayrs. “Our nation’s middle-class farm economy is under siege by corporate livestock producers. Under their dominance, rural landscapes are being covered by factories filled with thousands of cows or pigs and millions of poultry. Politicians on both sides of the aisle praise the system’s alleged efficiency while ignoring the true economic and social costs. Minnesota’s own Sonja Trom Eayrs, has lived the true story. Eayrs’ page turner of a legal drama is a passionate chronicle of her pioneer family’s resistance to the global food barons looking to take Jeffersonian America back to the feudal.”—Lisa Doerr, farmer and activist in Polk County, Wisconsin.
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s first book, Gathering Moss, a Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. “I just found it recently, and it has certainly changed the way I walk through the woods looking at rocks and trees. From her preface: ‘Just at the limits of ordinary perception lies another level in the hierarchy of beauty, of leaves as tiny and perfectly ordered as a snowflake, of unseen lives complex and beautiful. All it takes is attention and knowing how to look.’”—Beth Tamminen, retired educator and climate activist.
And let’s not forget Kimmerer’s most recent book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. “Like her other books it is part autobiography, part Indigenous storytelling, part reflection, and part contemporary ecological science, all in service of offering a different economic relationship (whole relationship) we can embrace—a relationship based on abundance, gifts, gratitude, and reciprocity. In an era of bazillionaire oligarchy it is sweet air and soul balm.”—Erik Peterson, social justice organizer and consultant.
Erik also recommends An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong. “I always remember trying to convince my fifth grade science teacher that kelp was just as complex an organism as an animal in the ways it organized itself as a colony, shared, distinguished functions, etc. (I lost that argument.) I wish Yong’s book had been around then. He explores the different senses of animals and how they allow radically different experiences and adaptations to the world. The word I associate with this book is “awe”—joy that I am living surrounded by such extraordinary wonder.
Beth Tamminen seconds this recommendation: “There is so much that is astounding in his study of beings organized by their sensory capabilities. I could read only one short section at a time and had to stop to absorb it. Yong’s writing shares information in a way that makes this book like a series of meditations on the immense and unexpected beauty of life.”
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson. “It’s the story of a twenty-something who was so obsessed with fly-tying that he broke into The Tring Museum (part of the British Museum of Natural History) and stole hundreds of bird skins with the feathers in order to make authentic Victorian flies. Some of the bird skins he stole were over 150 years old and irreplaceable.”—Gloria Makris, Outreach and Community Engagement Librarian at Waukesha Public Library.
