NEW AND RECOMMENDED READING: 2010 2009 2008

What the editors have been reading or stumbled across recently.

December 2009

• Forthcoming

November 2009

• Forthcoming

October 2009

• Forthcoming

SEPTEMBER 2009

• Lorna Siggins writes about her encounter with the Silken Thomas yew and other "Meetings with remarkable trees", in The Irish Times last month.
• Vanessa Serrao has begun recording her adventures with wildlife over at Nature Break. The current video is an unsettling reminder that an entirely romantic attitude towards nature is an incompete one: botfly removal is not a pretty sight (and leaves not a pretty site).
• Illuminations: A Bestiary pairs photography by Rosamond Purcell to text by late biologist Stephen Jay Gould in a stirring essay celebrating the diversity of life. Norton, 1987, out of print.
• Over at The Jackdaw's Nest, blog curator Hedgie -- a retired college instructor and literary magpie -- has selected twelve nature poems for the pleasure of his readers.
• The Quill and the Scalpel looks like a good recommendation for your local or institutional library, as it is both attractively conceieved -- being as it is about "Nabokov's Art and the Worlds of Science" -- but also priced outside the budget of most private readers, at $54.95. Author Stephen H. Blackwell examines the way Nabokov examined science, and how the Russian writer's intellectual and aesthetical incorporation and reaction to empiricism shaped the worlds of his writing. Ohio State University Press, 2009.

AUGUST 2009

• Author Kim Smith has filled Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities: Notes from a Gloucester Garden with "design ideas and plants that work well in this coastal region" (according to reviewer Viveka Neveln in The American Gardener). This is more a handbook for cultivating nature in one's home yard, rather than a literary account of man's relationship with nature, but Smith's writing is lithe and clean and her experiences in conjuring beauty out of a quarter-acre plot in Gloucester make for excellent reading. David R. Godine, 2008, $35.
• The Bedside Book of the Garden, by D.G. Hessayon. Expert, 2008. $19.95. From Amazon: "If you ever longed to learn about plants you may never be able to grow, and to discover gardens you may never be able to visit, then here is your bedside companion. Learn how people gardened in the past and what they have contributed to our gardens today." Having only briefly browsed this title at the library, the editor concurs that the first twenty pages are quite enjoyable.
• Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, by David Quammen. Norton, 2009. $10.85. This collection of Quammen's columns by the same name from Outside magazine, gathers the author's considerations of Malthus, the mating habits of snakes, Tycho Brahe's quest for the stars, magnolia trees, whales, and deserts, and other topics that knit together data and interpretations from science, nature, and experience.
• The Living Planet: A Collection of Writing on the Environment, edited by Mary Green. Cambridge University Press, 2009, $12.00. This collection explores life on earth and our place within it through a range of non-fiction and fiction extracts and short stories and verse, arranged in four themed sections: Wild things, Water worlds, Nature's Power and Future planet. Includes texts by David Attenborough, Sujata Bhatt, John Clare, Susan Cooper, Roger Deakin and Michael Morpurgo.
• The Atlantic features Brendan Galvin's "A Note from the Spadefoot Toads," a poem recited or croaked by these backwater criers.

JULY 2009

• On BoingBoing, a self-proclaimed directory of wonderful things, is a handy selection of reviews of books written "by people who have raised apes in their homes." Read about Toto, Lucy, Nim, and others.
• On Cats, by Doris Lessing. Harper, 2008. $11.66. On Cats is a memoir of Lessing's own relationship with these "exotic visitors, household friends," whether roaming a farm in Africa or prowling a flat in London.
• Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places", by Bill Streever. Little, Brown, and Co. 2009. $14.99. In this new book, Streever travels high mountains, tracks explores, and documents in detail the phenomenon of cold.
• Ancient Light: A Portrait of the Universe by David Malin. Phaidon Press, 2009. $32.97. Malin's hardcover photography book features stunning photographs of celestial bodies, galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters, accompanied by short texts explaining the phenomena caught on film.
• Shakespeare's Garden, by James Harvey Bloom. Adamant Media Corporation, 2004. $23.99. The aptly named Bloom has painstakingly compiled "a compendium of quotations and references from the bard to all manner of flower, tree, bush, vine, and herb, arranged according [to] the month in which they are seen to flourish." Look no further for flora and poetry.

JUNE 2009

• Though seemingly indifferent to the wealth of breaking news in the nature poetry world, The LA Times animal blog, Unleashed, features animal interest stories.
• The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring, by Richard Preston.Random House, 2008. $16
  Preston writes about shinnying up giant redwoods on "spider rigs" and about the researchers who study these wild trees.
• Poetry for the Earth, edited by Saran Dunn and Alan Scholefield. Ballantine Books, 1992. $19.00
• Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl, by Stacey O'Brien. A reprint edition, 2009 from Free Press, $15. Stacey O'Brien brought a four-day-old owlet home and named him Wesley; this memoir relates the relationship these two shared over the next nineteen years.
• Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal, by Silas House and Jason Howard. University Press of Kentucky, 2009. $27.95

MAY 2009

• In his essay "Human Nature," Mark Dowie explores the concepts of wilderness and nature for Guernica, a magazine of art and politics.
• Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, by David Dobbs. $25.00 from Pantheon, 2005.
• The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants, by Jane Smith. $25.95 from Penguin, 2009. Tells the story of the emergence of modern agribusiness out of the nineteenth-century farm culture as magicked by wizard gardener Luther Burbank.
• Why Evolution Is True, by biology professor Jerry Coyne, is available for $27.95 from Viking (2009) or in easily-digestible blog format.
• Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, by Donald Johanson and Kate Wong. $25.00 from Harmony, 2009.

APRIL 2009

• Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum, by Richard Fortey. $27.50 from Knopf, 2008. A natural history of the natural history museum by the senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Reading the Mountains of Home, by John Elder. $20.50 from Harvard University Press, 1999. A memoir taking off from Frost's poem "Directive" to celebrate the natural wonder of Vermont's mountains.
• Can Poetry Save the Earth?: A Field Guide to Nature Poems, by John Felstiner. $35.00 from Yale University Press, 2009. Writes Harold Bloom: "John Felstiner's study is a remarkable attempt to bring the rich tradition of nature poetry to our aid in the current and ongoing ecological crisis."
• Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, by William Cronon. $15.00 from Hill and Wang, 2003. From Amazon: "Cronon treats the land of New England with the same sensitivity and attention to detail as the lives of the American natives and the colonists--he depicts the effects of changing land-use patterns on the texture of the New England landscape, and gives voice to the changing communities of trees, rock walls, and rivers."
• Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, by Neil Shubin. $13.95 from Vintage, 2009.
• Back from the Far Field: American Nature Poetry in the Late Twentieth Century by Bernard W. Quetchenbach. $19.50 from University of Virginia Press, 2000. Wherein close attention is paid to the nature poetry of Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, and Wendell Berry.

MARCH 2009

• Home: A Novel by Marilynn Robinson. $25.00 from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008. In this novel, Robinson—always a lyrical, introspective, and precise writer—returns to rural Idaho and the Boughton family.
• Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. $14.00 from Picador, 2008. An old man moves to the desolate Norwegian tundra only to find himself absorbed in a memory from years before.
• Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems, by Joyce Sidman. $16.00 from Houghton Mifflin, 2005. In this Caldecott Honor Book, Sidman enriches Beckie Prange's lovely woodcut illustrations with verse chunks and prose passages which give the kids scientific explanations of the species shown.
• Good Tidings: The History and Ecology of Shellfish Farming in the Northeast, by Barbara Brennessel. $29.95 from University Press of New England, 2008. From the same author and press, earlier in the year, Diamonds in the Marsh: A Natural History of the Diamondback Terrapin , $18.95.
• For the Love of Animals: The Rise of the Animal Protection Movement, by Kathryn Shevelow. Henry Holt and Co., 2008. Reviewed in the Washington Post.

FEBRUARY 2009

• The Variety of Life, by Colin Tudge. $30.20 from Oxford University Press, 2002. For lovers of taxonomy (not taxidermy, an art which is not nearly as stiff).
• The other four recommendations for this month have been shamelessly thefted from Jef Taylor, the Urban Pantheist; click here to see his original post.
  1. The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms ($19.00 from Basic Books, 2002). "I wasn't going to recommend it, but it is what I'm reading now. It's about the very fascinating subject of plants that evolved alongside seed-dispersing animals such as giant sloths and mastodons which are now extinct. It's not very well written, however, I like the subject enough that I'm digging through it. It's by Connie Barlow."
  2. Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction ($22.00 from Scribner, 1997). "Rather tomelike but entertaining piece on island biogeography, and how all biology is becoming similar to it, by David Quammen. I would recommend reading anything by Quammen, who recently has been writing stuff about Darwin for National Geographic. Let me take this opportunity to link to his essay Planet of Weeds, again."
  3. Beast in the Garden: The True Story of a Predator's Deadly Return to Suburban America ($14.95 from Norton, 2005). "A natural history book that reads like a pulp crime novel, about the way the world is has changed in such a way as to put mountain lions into dangerous proximity to humans, by David Baron."
  4. Parasite Rex : Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures ($15.00 from Free Press, 2001). "About the vital role parasites have played in the evolution of other animals, and how parasites can manipulate the behavior of other animals. By Carl Zimmer."

JANUARY 2009

• There’s a Porcupine in My Outhouse: Misadventures of a Vermont Mountain Man Wannabe, by Michael Tougias.$14.95 from On Cape Publications, 2006. The title says it all: a hapless New Englander buys a mountain-top cabin and, through trial and error – mainly error – learns how to become an accomplished mountain man.
• The Peregrine, by J.A. Baker. $15.85 from NYRB Classics, 2004. In lucid prose, Baker recounts a season of following and learning about the peregrine falcons that occupy the river valley by his home.
• Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invation, by Alan Burdick. $15.00 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Burdick provides a highly readable account of the ecology of invasions.
• In the July/August 2005 issue of Resurgence magazine, Tom Hodgkinson, editor of The Idler, has an excerpt of his book How To Be Idle (Hamish Hamilton, 2004). The essay, titled "To Ramble," is a distinctively more literary discussing of the slow art of going nowhere than Thoreau's more nature-oriented "Walking." NB: The Idler seems to share the Charles River Journal's preoccupation with snails.
• Elizabeth Bishop Poems, prose, and letters. Library of America, 2008. Particularly for "Questions of Travel," "The Fish," and "The Man-moth."