Group Bookshelf additions - recommend!

[Clare]

Thanks for the rec, Jamie, book will be added.

[Zach]

Clare wrote: "Good choice, Brian.
I have just finished In Search of Mycotopia: Citizen Science, Fungi Fanatics, and the Untapped Potential of Mushrooms


Brian, I highly recommend Integrated Management: How Sustainability Creates Value for Any Business. It is another book that presents a very different take on the feasibility of sustainability. This is a great read for anyone who runs their own business, is a decision-maker at their current job, or is just interested in the role businesses can have in the fight against climate change!

The author, Robert Sroufe, provides readers with a proven (and very simple) strategic planning approach backed by evidence-based examples that explains how sustainability can easily be integrated into the daily decisions of any business.

I learned after reading Integrated Management: How Sustainability Creates Value for Any Business that it even won an award in 2020 for Responsible Research in Business Management!

[Clare]

Sounds useful, thanks!

[Clare]

David Hetherington tells me on Linked In:


"The publisher of my book, The Lynx and Us, is currently providing digital copies of it free of charge until the end of February (they normally cost £10).
Visit their store & enter the code ‘LynxToScotland’ to learn about living alongside lynx:
https://lnkd.in/dBwMDZF "

I have downloaded and this is a beautiful and informative book. I highly recommend you grab the free offer.

[Clare]

Colin wrote:
Hi. Maybe this is a bit brash because I wrote this book. But I think it gets at a lot of big iss..."

Hi Colin,
Thanks for the rec, and I am sure your book is good and useful reading.
However, we are trying to avoid making the forum look like a series of adverts. So I suggest you repost your content in the Promotions Folder. You might add the cover image so people can recognise it when they see it on the shelf.
If another member reads your book and chooses to recommend it here, that will be acceptable. Similarly, you can recommend a book by another author which you believe is relevant.
I hope this helps.
Good topic. We need to learn about this subject.

[Clare]

Recommending a book: fiction about a beekeeper and her young apprentices. This is an adult read.
The Music of Bees

[Hákon]

I recently read The Lamentations of Zeno by Ilija Trojanow. It's fiction. About a scientist that has been researching glaciers for forty years, and is now a tour guide in the Antarctica. It's a book that I thought presented eco anxiety very well.

[Clare]

Good to know, Hakon, thanks. I'll shelve the book.

[Clare]

Thanks to Candice for this rec! Sounds like a fascinating read. When I was growing up, secondhand meant from a relative or local person, or from a secondhand bookshop or jumble sale. Now it often means sending goods abroad.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

"Downsizing. Decluttering. Discarding. Sooner or later, all of us are faced with things we no longer need or want. But when we drop our old clothes and other items off at a local donation center, where do they go? Sometimes across the country-or even halfway across the world-to people and places who find value in what we leave behind.

In Secondhand, journalist Adam Minter takes us on an unexpected adventure into the often-hidden, multibillion-dollar industry of reuse: thrift stores in the American Southwest to vintage shops in Tokyo, flea markets in Southeast Asia to used-goods enterprises in Ghana, and more."

[Stef]

I just read Humanity's Moment : A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope by Joëlle Gergis

I'd see it as a must-read (non-fiction) as it combines scientific fact (from her work in the field) with emotional experience and reflection. Despite the title I feel the author is struggling to be positive but then again so are we!

[Clare]

Thanks, Stef, I will add that one.
I think it's easy to write a depressing or shocking title, but that will turn off many readers who might otherwise take a lot from the message. A hopeful message will prepare readers for the work that needs to get done.

[Clare]

I have added Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

[Clare]

Nice looking YA book The Art of Rewilding: The Return of Yellowstone’s Wolves


I have put in a request for a review ARC.

[Clare]

Just got an ARC of
The Solutionists
How Businesses Can Fix the Future
by Solitaire Townsend

The Solutionists: How Businesses Can Fix the Future

[Clare]

John Boorman


Adventures of a Suburban Boy


John Boorman filmed The Emerald Forest among other standout films.

[Jimmy]

I loved The Emerald Forest.

[Clare]

Candice recommends The Darkness Manifesto: On Light Pollution, Night Ecology, and the Ancient Rhythms that Sustain Life

[Clare]

Goodreads's blog recommends this lovely list of recent nature books.
I've got a few on my shelves already, and they all look interesting.

https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/2...

[Clare]

New romance fiction from Gayle Irwin

Rescue My Heart not on Goodreads yet. This follows a wildlife biologist studying sandhill cranes on a ranch. Gayle has written several animal rescue fiction books.

[Clare]

Jemima Pett recommends
The Orchid Outlaw: On a Mission to Save Britain's Rarest Flowers

[Noha]

Hi folks,

I would like to recommend The Regenerative Enterprise .

Such an inspiring masterpiece that has been endorsed by world leaders in the space.

Best,
Noha

[Clare]

Hi Noha, thank you for the rec This certainly looks like a good fit for our Bookshelf.

[Clare]

I've had a rec for Groundbreakers: The Return of Britain’s Wild Boar – SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION – HIGHLY COMMENDED by Chantal Lyons

Chantal Lyons

[Clare]

I've just read Bluebird Day by Megan Tady which is women's fiction about the ski racing sport, mentioning that warming is endangering the sport.

[Clare]

I'm currently reading Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them by Dan Saladino

[Clare]

I've enjoyed The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization by Roland Ennos. Same book, two titles.

[Clare]

I've had a recommendation.
Of Thorn & Briar: A Year with the West Country Hedgelayer by Paul Lamb

[Clare]

I've added Murderbot Diaries Collection Complete Hardcover Series Set

The Murderbot Diaries are SF set in a future based on planetary and asteroid mining and giant interstellar corporations. Exploitation of workforce is commonplace and environments are despoiled. A few research groups are trying to oppose the status quo.

[Clare]

I've had this book recommended to me, I have now read it. Looks like fun. This has a serious side however, and new tech is involved in monitoring a bird sanctuary.

Murder with a Side of Seagull: A Junie Carmichael Coastal Cozy Mystery by Tracy Auten

[Clare]

Free right now is Something Shady at Sunshine Haven by Kris Bock who depicts the American Southwest landscape. I got this on Kindle but I understand it's free on other retailers too at present. First in a series.

[Clare]

The Hare's Corner: Making Space for Nature was launched in Dublin this week. Jane Clarke is among the authors, and the book is illustrated.

[Clare]

Recommended to me in the newsletter of Climate Story Garden, written by Arlene Williams. She quotes a few paragraphs of her chosen book.


"Bill McKibben, founder of the climate action organization Third Act, has a warm, hopeful tone in his voice that inspires people. Even on the written page he is an enthusiastic storyteller.
I heard him speak in person in July 2024, so as I dove into his newest book, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, I imagined him reading aloud to me, drawing some of his uplifting energy into my day. Even if you’ve never heard him speak, I think you’ll really enjoy his book, and I’m eager to tell you about it.


Just rereading the book to write this post, I became enthused all over again. Here in the United States, there’s a bit of gloom for me about climate action because the focus has become more fundamental, a fight for democracy itself. If you read the book though, it might cheer you up, like it did me, because the world hasn’t stopped forging ahead with solar energy just because America lost its way. McKibben emphasizes there’s still a chance for the planet because energy from the sun is now the cheapest form of power on Earth. He says:

“Sometime in the early part of the 2020s we crossed an invisible line where the cost of producing energy from the sun dropped below the cost of fossil fuels. That’s not yet common knowledge—we still think of photovoltaic panels and wind turbines as “alternative energy” as if they were the Whole Foods of power, nice but pricey. In fact—and more so with each passing month—they are the Costco of energy, inexpensive and available in bulk.”

That quote is on page 3 of the Introduction. From then on I was hooked, hungry to learn more about this chance, not just for my grandchildren to have a clean energy future, but for the billions of people on our planet—ones whose only option is dirty diesel and kerosene—who now may get access to cheap, reliable, clean electricity. In fact, that was my favorite chapter in the book: But Can the Poor World Afford it? which followed the chapter called: Can We Afford it? (Hint: we can!)

In that chapter, McKibben tells the story of Pakistan, a poor country that is blessed with plentiful sun. He starts with a mystery, saying,

“Beginning in 2023, energy analysts started noticing something bizarre: demand for electricity on the national grid had begun to fall, and substantially—Pakistanis seemed to be using a tenth less electricity.”

No one understood what was causing it.

They couldn’t figure it out until in 2024 someone studied Google Earth images and spotted solar panels everywhere—on rooftops, in farmer’s fields. Unbeknownst to the utility companies or the government, people were installing solar panels on their own. Panels from China became cheaper and more reliable than grid power in the cities and also cheaper than the diesel used to pump water onto the fields. In 2024, diesel sales in Pakistan fell 30 percent, while the equivalent of 30 percent of the nation’s electric grid was installed, panel after panel, by Pakistanis without any government help. McKibben quotes a Pakistani solar entrepreneur who says,

“A 3-kilowatt inverter with, you know, maybe four or five panels is now routinely included in a bride’s dowry.”

That story shows the huge potential for change—fast and unstoppable. The government can help, but it’s really down to the choices of people. Why wouldn’t you and your neighbors spend your money on solar if the economics make it cheaper than fossil fuels? Even oil rich, but sunny places like Texas and the Mideast are investing in solar. It just makes sense.

Bill McKibben doesn’t know if the change will happen fast enough to stave off the worst of the warming, but the opportunity is here, finally. There are challenges to overcome because the upfront installation expenditures must often be financed for many around the world, but manufacturing is constantly being refined to bring down costs, and panel efficiencies are rising so fewer panels are needed to produce the same amount of power. McKibben tells great stories about all that progress in the opening chapters."

[Clare]

Ed Stafford was the first person known to have walked the length of the Amazon River.
Walking the Amazon: 860 Days. One Step at a Time.