New and forthcoming environmental books (October 2024)
As we enter fall we (in the Northern Hemisphere) can be grateful for reasons to stay inside — and read. Which leads me to this list of new(ish) and upcoming …
Nonfiction
Animal Tales: Novels old and new that every animal lover should read
From the snake tempting Adam and Eve to the sheep that saved Odysseus from the Cyclops, animals have featured prominently in literature from the very beginning of literature. Today, animals …
Book Review: Love Story with Birds
Love Story with Birds, by Derek Furr, is a work of literature that defies easy categorization, which is partly why I enjoyed reading it. By way of poems, essays, stories, …
Book Review: The Burning Earth, A History
Reading non-fiction books about climate change has, over the years, come to feel like a form of masochism. Rarely do I come away feeling optimistic about the future of this …
Book Review: Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat
We have the pandemic to thank for this eye-opening, empathetic and long-overdue tribute to one of our most misunderstood and widely despised relatives. The rat. And I use relative intentionally …
Book Review: How Far the Light Reaches: A Life In Ten Sea Creatures
What do we know about life in the ocean, and what can the varied forms of life there teach us about our own lives and selves? These are the questions …
Book Review: Wild Chorus: Finding Harmony with Whales, Wolves, and Other Animals
Guest book review by Gene Helfman. “…a woman’s place…is in the wild.” This remarkable book is a memoir, a unique lesson in natural history, a love poem to the wild, …
Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals
A toad can kill just by belching, and the lust of the octopus is blamed for its short lifespan. To produce a mule, the horse owner must give the mare a bad haircut to shame her into having sex with a donkey. The hedgehog is considered a spiteful animal because it urinates on itself when caught, unlike the lynx, who hides its urine until it forms a gem stone.
Such are a few of the many nuggets of animal lore recorded in Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals, a translation of De Natura Animalium by the third century Roman writer Claudius Aelianus, better know as Aelian.
Book Review: The Secret History of Bigfoot
It was while working on a film script set in the Pacific Northwest that journalist John O’Connor began to see Bigfoot everywhere: “On CBD oil and air fresheners. On car …
Book Review: Dark Soil
The title card at the end of Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, a classic of the New Queer Cinema film movement, reads “Sometimes you have to create your own history.” …
Book Review: Our Kindred Creatures: The birth of the American animal rights movement
Imagine it is 1866 and you are strolling the streets of New York City. The first thing you might notice are the hundreds upon hundreds of horses pulling people in …