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Book Review: Troubled Waters by Mary Annaïse Heglar

There’s more than one way for a family to deal with generational trauma. And there's more than one way for a family to respond to systemic racism and the climate crisis.

Mary Annaïse Heglar’s debut novel, Troubled Waters, tells an intense, compelling, and deeply personal story at the intersection of these themes. After listening to her on the Hot Take and Spill podcasts, and reading her essays about climate justice and new children's book, I was eager to read her novel to see how these themes play out in her fiction. Now that I’ve read it, I’m pleased to report that this novel will be a great read for people interested in climate justice themes, racial justice themes, Southern characters and settings, strong women protagonists, and compelling literature in general.

The post Book Review: Troubled Waters by Mary Annaïse Heglar first appeared on Treesong.

Beat the Heat by Reading Climate Change Books

Are you feeling hot this summer? If so, you're not alone. The world just experienced the hottest day ever recorded -- and then broke that record the very next day.

The climate crisis is making almost every summer hotter than the last. What can we do about it?

We can start by reading climate change books!

The post Beat the Heat by Reading Climate Change Books first appeared on Treesong.

Book Review: The Deluge by Stephen Markley

What will the climate crisis and the world’s response to it look like over the course of the next decade or two?

The Deluge by Stephen Markley offers one of the most thorough and compelling answers to this question that I’ve read to date. This novel explores almost every facet of the climate crisis in amazing and terrifying detail. Even after reading dozens of other climate fiction classics like Ministry for the Future, Termination Shock, and Parable of the Sower, I found myself blown away by both the sheer scope of this novel and the many skillful ways Markley drew me in and kept me reading throughout the entire 896-page journey.

This novel covers so much ground that it could easily be the subject of an entire semester-long course on climate fiction. Since this isn’t a climate fiction course, I’ll narrow the focus of this review to three themes: climate catastrophes, climate solutions, and narrative structure.

The post Book Review: The Deluge by Stephen Markley first appeared on Treesong.

Let’s organize a town hall meeting about Gaza

Members of the City Council of Carbondale, Illinois recently said at a public meeting that they won't pass a resolution supporting a ceasefire in Gaza.

The people of Carbondale who are concerned about what's happening in Gaza should hold a town hall meeting on the subject.

Would you read interactive climate fiction?

Climate fiction is going mainstream. A growing number of novels, movies, TV shows, and other works of fiction are referencing the climate crisis as a significant or even central part of the plot and setting. There's a Climate Fiction Writers League, climate fiction writing contests like Imagine 2200, and groups like Good Energy working to improve the quantity and quality of climate fiction in print and digital media.

But what about interactive climate fiction?

Which climate music sounds better?

Did you know that you can use climate data sets to create music?

Climate data sonification is the process of turning climate data sets into sound -- in this case, music. I wrote a blog entry about this back in April of 2023 titled Turning Climate Data Into Music. Now that I'm delving into the world of audiobook production, I've decided that it's also time to revive my interest in creating music using climate data sets.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, anyone with internet access can make instrumental music tracks based directly on climate data sets (or any other data sets). All you have to do is find, convert, or create a data file (.xls, xlsx, .csv, .ods) and upload it to a web-based tool called TwoTone that translates the data into music. You can choose among several computer-generated instruments, combine multiple tracks, use the arpeggio settings to give the data a more musical sound, preview the results in your browser, and export the results in .mp3 or .pcm format.

Let’s get creative with our climate communication

Treesong created this Climate Communication art using the a climate warming stripe graphic. The original climate warming stripe graphic was created by Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading) and used in accordance with the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

The end of one calendar year and the start of another is often a great time to reflect on the course of our lives and the state of the world. This is particularly true when it comes to the climate crisis.

What happened with climate change in 2023? What might happen in 2024? What can we do about it?

Winter Ebook Sale (2023)

Happy winter! I'm pleased to announce that I'm having a big Winter Ebook Sale in honor of all of the winter holidays.

On December 21 (Winter Solstice) through December 25 (Christmas), all of my ebooks will be 50% off. This means that you can buy each ebook for just $2 instead of the usual $4.

A Tale of Two Novels: Hope and Grief in Climate Fiction

There is no single magic bullet solution to the climate crisis. There is also no single "right way" to feel about the climate crisis, as I explore in my climate poetry book, All the Climate Feels. Instead, there is a complex landscape of deep feelings and meaningful responses to the climate crisis.

With these two novels, I'm exploring two sides of my response to the climate crisis. One side is hopeful and solutions-oriented, looking for ways to make something like Solardale possible in the real world in my own town and elsewhere. One side is grieving and resistance-oriented, looking for ways to process my climate grief and hold powerful individuals and institutions responsible for their willful contributions to the climate crisis.

Both of these sides are necessary components of a comprehensive and effective response to the climate crisis. And I hope that both of these novels will be thoroughly entertaining tales that make important contributions to public discourse on the climate crisis.

Check out my Climate Change Books survey

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Do you like reading books about climate change? If so, you're in luck! I'm developing a whole new website that I hope you'll enjoy.

Climate Change Books is an online book catalog and book blog with a focus on climate change books. This includes climate fiction, climate nonfiction, climate poetry, and everything in between.

I'm pleased to announce that I've completed my "first draft" of the site! I still have to add a lot of reading lists, reviews, and so on. But it has all of the basics you'll need to get a sense of what the site is and how readers like you would use it. All that's left is to get some feedback on the site design and content before I make any more changes or do any promotions.

That's where you come in. I'm looking for people who are willing to look at the site and fill out a short Google form survey.