We published 30 book reviews this year and read many more. And out of all the books we’ve read, here are a handful of our favorites. You’ll find a mix of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did! Nicole Emanuel You Are Here Whether you are craving a …
More than 35,000 people from more than 100 countries visited EcoLit Books this year. And this post shows where they spent most of their time. Here are the top 25 most-visited book reviews and web pages from January until now. The first page is no surprise but the second did surprise me given that it …
When the British colonized India throughout the 18th century they imported their narrative about the relationships between human and non-human animals. A narrative of violence and cruelty, in which wild animals were born to be hunted. But as author Sadhana Naithani writes in The Inhuman Empire, India was home to folk narratives that had existed …
In 1997, J.M. Coetzee delivered two lectures at Princeton University in the form of short stories. These stories ended up in the novella The Lives of Animals, which now is celebrating 25 years. In these stories, Coetzee introduced the world to the character of Elizabeth Costello, a famous Australian novelist who has reached the eff …
Guest book review by Gene Helfman. In Arroyo Circle, JoeAnn Hart deftly weaves a tale with multiple threads. As the story develops, the different characters become incorporated into the fabric through their disparate involvement in a tragedy. But the final product is less a weaving or tapestry and more a spider’s web. The characters, and the …
What will a post-climate-disaster America look like? In Ashley Shelby’s short story collection, Honeymoons in Temporary Locations, the results range from devastating to absurd to all-too-plausible. This trifecta is what makes Shelby’s eclectic mix of stories unique in a genre that tends toward the dystopian. First up is Muri, featuring talking polar bears being relocated to the South …
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 planet and, honestly, it has taken an emotional toll. Which is why I’d much rather read novels that tackle climate change (and not necessarily of …
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 as I learned from the book that the human species descends from rats. During the early days of Covid, while so many people were out …
Random House, 2023 “Shivers of lust passed through his elytra as he found her scent grow stronger,” and there we are, in the head of an Elm Bark beetle, one of many POVs in the thoroughly enchanting novel North Woods by Daniel Mason. The beetle had been deposited in this wooded piece of land in …
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, and a plea for peaceful coexistence with the natural world. Brenda Peterson is a multiple-award-winning, tremendously versatile, and prolific author, having published adult novels (mystery, drama, humor), …
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.
