Focus on Reading - Week 37 - Earth Day Reads

[Booknblues]

Have you been reading anything which would be appropriate for Earth Day?
Do you have anything on your TBR which you are hoping to read?
What topics would you read for Earth Day?

[Peacejanz]

Suggestions about books that make you want to love the earth more: I have read all of these and recommend them.
Bewilderment - Richard Power
Raft of Stars - Andrew J. Graff
Same Place, Same Time - Tim Gautreaux

peace, janz

[Robin P]

Disappearing Earth

[Jen K]

I just read The Island of Missing Trees this week which was a good fit for Earth Day.

[Holly R W]

It's been awhile since I've thought about Earth Day as anything but a day to connect with nature. So, after looking it up, I re-learned that it began as a day to spread awareness about environmental issues and encourage activism. So, in that spirit, I would recommend the following books:

Greenwood by Michael Christie
Happiness by Aminatta Forna
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (a bit too preachy for my taste, but still a good book)
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Personally, I think any book with a nature theme is good and if you can read it outdoors, that's even better.

[Robin P]

Other Barbara Kingsolver books -

Small Wonder
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Prodigal Summer
Animal Dreams

Pretty much anything by her!

Also sci-fi or "cli-fi" has plenty of options including Dune

[Theresa]

I endorse all the Kingsolver and Lab Girl. I would highly recommend a book from the newly emerging SciFi subgenre SolarPunk - A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers - the second in her duology comes out in May I think.

To find out more about SolarPunk:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar...

Anyone remember when it was Arbor Day we celebrated? I do. All about trees. As environmentalism and climate concerns grew and Earth Day came into being, Arbor Day seemed to get submerged. But it is still observed every April; it was just overshadowed. This year it is April 29th.
Background: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbor...
Also: https://www.arborday.org/

I do think we can honor Arbor Day here too because if there is one thing I learned from Lab Girl it is that trees are critical to our environment and survival.

You know, I have long had a cross stitch design honoring Arbor Day in mind. Someday I will pull out my notes and actually create it and stitch it! One more thing that work caused these last few years to fall by the wayside.

I started off my year finally reading The Martian then Lab Girl, and since then a couple books have followed where lo' and behold a tree in particular featured at some point or botany has, thus giving me a sense of falling down a reading rabbit hole featuring trees and botany:

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter -a mystery set in Appalachia - death of elms from dutch elm disease has a presence
My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout - image of a single tree in a field important to part of story.
Bring on the Dusk - spec ops thriller that has great sections involving redwoods and climbing them.

I have The Overstory in my TBR but not ready to read that yet. I rarely target read for monthly themes anyway.

[LibraryCin]

The ones that immediately come to my mind are a bit older, but hopefully they are still relevant:

The World Without Us / Alan Weisman
No Impact Man / Colin Beavan

ETA: These are recommendations.

[LibraryCin]

If I took more time to look through my read books/tags, I could come up with many more, I'm sure!

[Holly R W]

Theresa wrote: "I endorse all the Kingsolver and Lab Girl. I would highly recommend a book from the newly emerging SciFi subgenre SolarPunk - A Psalm for the Wild-Built by [author:Becky Chambers|83..."

Theresa, I have to smile when you talk about falling into a rabbit hole about trees. A few years ago, that's what happened to me! It seemed that every book I unwittingly picked to read had some message about trees. As there were several books, I ended up creating my own Goodreads shelf called 'Trees'. Happy Arbor Day! ;0)

[Theresa]

I love it! Thank you Holly!

There has been a deepening of that tree rabbit hole - gardens. But that isn't unusual because books with gardens playing a significant role are not unusual for me. The simply marvelous The House in the Cerulean Sea has trees (there are earth and forest sprites as characters after all) but also gardens (a garden gnome of course is a character).

I forgot one of my tree books this year - Thea Stilton and the Mountain of Fire middle grade book introduced me to the wollemi pine in Australia - the oldest most protected tree on the planet. It was growing at the time of the dinosaurs.

Ah, and a nonfiction history read that fits I think given it is about the spice trade and the near extinction of the nutmeg for profit: Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History.

For environmental themed fiction, don't overlook Maja Lunde's climate series which are great fiction reads. The first two so far have been translated and published in English: The History of Bees and The End of the Ocean.

[Book Concierge]

I don't do any reading specifically for Earth Day, but a few years back I read The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston (who also wrote The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus) It was wonderful!

[Theresa]

Checking deeper into my shelves, I have these:

The Stone Gods - Jeanette Winterson - scifi - I dod not care for it but read my review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...

Anne McCaffrey - Dragons of Pern series

Project Hail Mary

[Theresa]

@Holly - added a couple from your tree shelf to my TBR. Already had others. I am now inspired to start my own tree shelf!

Rabbit holes should be honored.

[Holly R W]

Theresa wrote: "@Holly - added a couple from your tree shelf to my TBR. Already had others. I am now inspired to start my own tree shelf!

Rabbit holes should be honored."

That's great!

[Booknblues]

Holly, I always think of Earth Day as day to connect with nature, but also as a day to spread awareness about environmental issues and encourage activism. I think Of Earth Day as a way to connect with nature and reaffirm or responsible stewardship of Earth.

The first book I think of when I think of Earth Day is always Silent Spring as it is the first book I read about taking care of the environment. I just happened on it as somebody gave it to me and I needed something to read.

The idea of taking care of our environment has always been a part of me and I think it influences my reading.

I wouldn't say that I read for Earth Day, as I make choices which ring with connecting to nature and environmental stewardship throughout the year.

A recent purchase was Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them and I am interested to see what it is about, because certainly our choices in food and agriculture make significant impacts on our environment.

Often Science fiction and dystopian books have something to say about our environment.

I am always interested in flora and fauna and read books about them.

I love a good slow travelogue and especially ones which notice the landscape.

I'm going to come back to this and list some books.

[LibraryCin]

I wasn't specifically planning to read for Earth Day, but I had hoped to get to this one this month. I'm not sure it will happen, but I'm still hopeful:

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

[Rachel N.]

I didn't specifically pick this up for Earth Day but I did just finish reading Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park. The author spends a year visiting every U.S. National Park. I had some issues with too much time spent on the authors love life but it is a good intro to the parks if you don't know much about them.

[Booknblues]

I wanted to put this list from Goodreads in this thread:

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

[Peacejanz]

I just finished The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris. It really is an Earth Day read. There is so much more to the debut novel but after thinking about it, I realized that two of the major characters LOVE nature, being in the woods, looking carefully at trees, plants. Nature is not the point of the book - Ending of the Civil War is the nature of the book and all the hate that followed. Personal growth is important also. I highly recommend it. peace, janz

[Booknblues]

Dystopian:
Salt Lick
Feral Creatures
Hollow Kingdom
The Rain Heron

I'll be back with more

[Jgrace]

I've read several books appropriate to Earth Day in the past year. But specifically in the past week I've been out and about with my binoculars, as well as watching the critters in my backyard ( bobcat and coyote on the hillside beyond my fence)
This is the book that I've had to hand every spring migration season for years.
National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of Western North America

[NancyJ]

Thank you for this thread. I love it! I'm old enough to remember the first Earth Day. My school went all out with experiential games and activities, and we each took on the role of different stakeholders. (I was an amusement park). This is a major theme for this year.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Recommended:

Ecology, ecosystems, extinction (nonfiction):
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes - I learned a great deal from this fascinating book.
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Lab Girl Hope Jahren
The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here Hope Jahren
The Secret Wisdom of Nature: Trees, Animals, and the Extraordinary Balance of All Living Things ― Stories from Science and Observation

Trees:
Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
Greenwood
The Overstory
The Hidden Life of Trees: what they feel, how they communicate : discoveries from a secret world

Eco-fiction or Climate-Fiction:
Margaret Atwood's Maddadam trilogy - Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, MaddAddam
Migrations
Once There Were Wolves
Flight Behavior byBarbara Kingsolver

We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at BreakfastJonathan Safran Foer
My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki
Bewilderment



TO READ:

Happiness
The History of Bees by Maja Lunde
The Island of Missing Trees
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future 2021, by Elizabeth Kolbert
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
The Hungry Tide
Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back
Even As We Breathe
The Journeys of Trees: A Story about Forests, People, and the Future or, The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by BIll Gates
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

This also looks really good, by people involved in the Paris Climate talks. They show two different potential futures.
The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis Christiana Figueres