The Birds of Pandemonium by Michele Raffin

3/5 stars

What's it about? Michele Raffin details her journey from animal lover to conservationist, as her California home evolves into Pandemonium Aviaries, a sanctuary for abandoned and endangered birds. A cozy read about compassion that will warm your cold human heart.

How’d I find it? I spent a year living in my spouse’s grandmother’s home in rural Virginia, and she generously left behind a wall full of books. This book was among them.

Who will enjoy this book? Helen Macdonald fans and those who liked The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery will want to pick this up.

What stood out? The stories of individual birds make up the most compelling sections of The Birds of Pandemonium. Take Sweetie, a joyful quail saved from becoming dinner by being forgotten in a supermarket produce section. Or Amigo, a red-headed Amazon parrot who survives a series of bad homes to fall in love with Michele’s son. The book is impactful in its urging to be better stewards of the natural world and to take responsibility for the lives that depend on us.

Which line made me feel something? Raffin shares a list of poetic flock names, of which I found particular delight in “an ascension of larks” and “a lamentation of swans.”

Fire by George R. Stewart

5/5 stars

What's it about? A lightning strike in the Sierra Nevada creates the wildfire known as Spitcat, which rages over eleven days in this outstanding nail-biter of a nature novel. Though intricate portraits of the firefighters, animal inhabitants, and the forest itself, Stewart crafts a luxurious landscape in which readers will become heartbreakingly invested.

How’d I find it? Fire was the August 2024 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club, which you absolutely need in your life.

Who will enjoy this book? Fans of The Overstory by Richard Powers or Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson will not be able to put Fire down.

What stood out? This read utterly enchanted me. Chapters open with a philosophical or historical treatment of fire, including the glorious line “Lightning is the true Prometheus,” before zooming into the happenings of one of the book’s characters, including the Spitcat herself. I couldn’t get enough of John Bartley, the ranger who loves the trees as family, and Judith, the plucky young lookout who first sees smoke. Originally published in 1948, the book suffers from some racist and sexist language, its only weakness.

Which line made me feel something? Stewart’s writing blew my socks off. Take, for example: “Now a fire is more like a shape-shifting monster, stretching out long and encircling arms before it. Now a fire is like a nation, growing weak for a while, and then springing up with a new vigor, as millions of flamelets within it die, or as new flamelets blaze up. But—man or monster or nation—like them all, the fire is the thing-in-itself. It begins, and is, and ends; it is born, and lives, and dies.”

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? Within my personal library, I am particularly proud of the nature collection and thought Fuzz would be a nice addition. This copy came from Politics & Prose.

Why not 3 or more stars? Mary Roach is a gifted writer with a keen eye for story, but she doesn’t manage to Rumpelstiltskin this into gold. Aside from the species of offender, Fuzz contains little variety. Nature, be it flora or fauna, causes harm to humans, and nature is dealt with, usually lethally. That’s about it. On the plus side: Roach’s signature dad jokes and a conversation with a Vatican priest about the ethics of man’s dominion (though the line of inquiry quickly peters out).

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

5/5 stars

What's it about? Sy Montgomery makes friends with octopuses in this exploration of the soul and of the diversity of consciousness on Earth. A hug of a book that I was ready to dismiss but couldn’t help but admire for its spirit and openness to discovery.

How’d I find it? My spouse says this book was given to him to prove the cruelty of eating mollusks. It’s effective — you’ll never want calamari again.

Who will enjoy this book? If you’re constantly watching documentaries on Netflix or anything narrated by David Attenborough, this read is for you. A fiction readalike? The Overstory by Richard Powers or The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler.

What stood out? Montgomery inhabits her project by befriending cephalopods, learning to dive, and becoming entangled in the happenings of the New England Aquarium. I appreciated the memoir approach to consciousness as a subject. Blending personal experience and science, The Soul of an Octopus is a human book about something beyond our species.

Which line made me feel something? “Perhaps, I muse, this is the pace at which the Creator thinks, in this weighty, graceful, liquid manner — like blood flows, not like synapses fire. Above the surface, we move and think like wiggly children, or like teens who twitch away at their computer-phones, multitasking but never focusing. But the ocean forces you to move more slowly, more purposefully, and yet more pliantly.”

In Deep by Maxine Kumin

4/5 stars

What's it about? Poet Maxine Kumin talks craft and country living in this volume of essays about managing a farm in New Hampshire while maintaining a writing life. A warm hearth of a book.

How’d I find it? I picked this up at Normals Books & Records in Baltimore, which has the kind of selection that makes me say, “Ooh!” and pluck a book off the shelf that I never even knew existed.

Who will enjoy this book? In Deep is for horse girls young and old, as well as for Mary Oliver and Henry David Thoreau acolytes.

What stood out? In Deep owes much to Kumin’s admiration of Thoreau, whose influence can be seen in essays dedicated to taxonomic descriptions of mushrooms and species of cattle as well as in “The Unhandselled Globe,” which centers on Thoreau himself. Kumin rejects the Freudian links to women who love horses and gendered assumptions about her mares; she and the animals she loves are the focus here, and glimpses of her human family are brief. She writes beautifully about the day-to-day labors of keeping a farm running, from building fences to keeping everyone fed.

Which line made me feel something? From the closing essay, “A Sense of Place,” an outstanding analysis of the stamp of home on Kumin’s poetry: “In a poem one can use the sense of place as an anchor for larger concerns, as a link between narrow details and global realities. Location is where we start from. Landscape provides our first geography, the turn of the seasons are archetypes for our own mortality.”

A Line in the World by Dorthe Nors, translated by Caroline Waight

3/5 stars

What's it about? Dorthe Nors explores the forces and landscape of Denmark’s northernmost coast in this contemplative collection of essays.

How’d I find it? I learned about this book through a review in Harper’s then found a copy at Normals Books & Records, which has notably good nature writing on offer.

Who will enjoy this book? Fans of Roger Deakin’s Waterlog and Mary Oliver’s Upstream should try this one.

What stood out? A Line in the World captures the Jutland Peninsula and the surrounding islands in all their diversity, cultural quirks, and violent expressions of nature. You can almost feel the windslap on your cheeks in every paragraph. The book is beautifully illustrated by Signe Parkins, who appears in the essay “The Timeless.”

Which line made me feel something? From “The Tracks around Bulbjerg:” “The eternal, fertile and dread-laden stream inside us. This fundamental question: do you want to remember or forget? Either way, something will grow. A path, a scar in the mind, a sorrow that you cannot grasp, because it belongs to someone else. All that must be carried alone. All that cannot be told.”

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

4/5 stars

What's it about? Thoreau’s treatise on individualism and respect for the natural world originated from his two years of self-sufficiency beside the shores of Walden Pond. A blend of philosophy, memoir, and field guide, Walden urges readers to shed frivolity and experience life at its simplest.

How’d I find it? Though a longtime resident of the TBR list, Thoreau became a pressing read. I borrowed my spouse’s copy for the occasion.

Who will enjoy this book? Rather than who, Walden requires guidance on how to read it: ever so slowly. A chapter a day was the perfect amount to chew at a time. If you liked Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, this book will speak to you.

What stood out? The questions of truth and resistance in Walden are relevant no matter when you read them, and Thoreau’s descriptions of the flora and fauna he encounters around Concord provide context for his experiment in the woods. A time capsule of 19th-century Americana.

Which line made me feel something? “The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broke strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted, but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.”

Waterlog by Roger Deakin

5/5 stars

What’s it about? Roger Deakin recounts his adventures swimming the waters of Britain in this enchanting diary of nature, humanity, and longing for lost places. A fervent must-read.

How’d I find it? I read an excellent review by Leanne Shapton in Harper’s and rushed out to Solid State Books to buy a copy.

Who will enjoy this book? The following works and writers found in Waterlog offer the perfect readalikes: Robert Macfarlane, who authors this edition’s afterword; Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson; and The Peregrine by J. A. Baker. I add to these Rob Cowen’s Common Ground, one of my favorite books.

What stood out? Witty and vivid, Waterlog is a book that makes you want to breathe a little deeper and love a little harder. The “endolphins” created by wild swimming — described by Deakin as a revolt against “the official version of things” — stir in me a desire to go out and explore for myself. This book sticks with you, tunes you into yourself and your environment.

Which line made me feel something? “Striking out into the enormous expanse of cold sea, over the vast sands, I immerse myself like the fox ridding himself of his fleas. I leave my devils on the waves.”

Watership Down by Richard Adams

4/5 STARS

What's it about? A group of outsider rabbits works to start a new home and avoid the dangers of the wild, including predators, man-wreaked havoc, and territorial rabbits. Interspersed with rabbit lore, rabbit language, and the weight of danger, Watership Down is an epic, action-packed tale of survival.

How’d I find it? At a book sale at Rust Library in Leesburg, I came across this copy, which happens to be the exact same edition I had as a child, red sprayed edges and all. The joy!

Who will enjoy this book? The closest read-alike is Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter (an excellent NYRB read, by the way), though similar books for readers of all ages, like Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, should also appeal.

What stood out? Adams does a stellar job of crafting unforgettable characters: Fiver, the prescient loner; Bigwig, the burly fighter with a soft spot for a helpful gull; and even General Wormwort, the hardened tyrant of Efrafa.

Which line made me feel something? The descriptions of setting in this book are universally lovely, but the following treatment of the turning of the season was particularly sumptuous: “In July the still blue, thick as cream, had seemed close above the green trees, but now the blue was high and rare, the sun slipped sooner to the west and, once there, foretold a touch of frost, sinking slow and big and drowsy, crimson as the rose hips that covered the briar.” Ugh.

Upstream by Mary Oliver

4/5 stars

What's it about? In this collection of selected essays, Mary Oliver offers insight into her life as a reader, writer, and human. Though most of the book focuses on nature and gratitude, a section devoted to literary criticism muses on Whitman, Wordsworth, Poe, and Emerson.

How’d I find it? My spouse received this is a Christmas gift and kindly let me read it first.

Who will enjoy this book? Fans of Walt Whitman, Annie Dillard, Ross Gay, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders

What stood out? Essays written by poets offer a buffet of language and sentiment, and Upstream is no exception. Oliver’s love for the world is potent and infectious; after sitting with this book, you’ll want to go for a walk. I find a current of sadness that runs beneath Oliver’s measured glimpses of her own life, but this makes the simple joys she describes, such as observing a resident spider feed, all the more special. The writing can be precious at times (think 2013’s Dog Songs), but the overall warmth of the reading experience makes those moments easy to overlook.

Which line made me feel something? “Once I put my face against the body of our cat as she lay with her kittens, and she did not seem to mind. So I pursed my lips against that full moon, and I tasted the rich river of her body.” Did…Mary Oliver admit to suckling a cat?