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 …
This is the last “what’s new” post of 2024. Plenty of new books to check out! Happy reading — and happy new year! Crimes Against Nature: New Stories of Environmental Villainy Edited by Robert Lopresti The way we treat the world is a crime-fifteen of them, in fact. Some of the best and most honored …
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 …
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 …
EcoLit contributor Bill Streever has a new book out, A Sea Full of Turtles, and it provides a hopeful antidote to the more dystopian environmental literature in bookstores today. Bill’s book left me feeling optimistic. I hope it does for you as well. I recently asked Bill about the book and here’s what he had …
Here’s the latest batch of books to come across our desks — enjoy! The first book is written by the founder of an amazing chicken rescue organization, Sweet Peeps, based in Mobile, Alabama. If you’ve never visited an animal sanctuary (not a zoo) you’re missing out. And you don’t have to go to Alabama to …
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 polish and coronavirus masks. On scented candles and Nalgene bottles and maple syrup and vile, undrinkable IPA.” But is Bigfoot an “actual zoological possibility or …
There is a conversation, repeated several times, during the powerful novella Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia, translated by Zoë Perry: “Like they say in these parts: as long as there’s a cow in this world, there will be a man keen to kill it.”“And another keen to eat it,” concludes Edgar Wilson. …
Mountain Time, A Field Guide to Astonishment is a sharp and moving collection of essays about author Renata Golden’s time in the Chiricahua Mountains in Southeast Arizona. Hard on the New Mexico and Mexico borders, the area is isolated, but not desolate. For those who pay attention, the desert is teeming with life, past and present.
