For mysteries I loved Elizabeth Peters’s books, also under the name of Barbara Michaels.
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Recently read Tristan Gooley’s How to Read a Tree. It is a fascinating read on the nature of trees from leaves to branches, trunk and bark, and roots. How wind and growth habit shape trees and indicate direction. He also has a website worth more than a glance.
https://www.naturalnavigator.com/
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Her books for adults are written under T. Kingfisher and for kids under Ursula Vernon. Her Hamster Princess series is very funny and would be fun to read with an elementary school kid (or alone). I also enjoyed Castle Hangnail.
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I’ve been simultaneously reading Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything and Bone Sharp: The Life of Edward Drinker Cope. I think reading them together has enhanced the experience, especially when I’m reading them near a lot of their old haunts.
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You will never think the same about anything around you after reading the Electric Rainbow.
My first question was, have entomologists eliminated the possibility that beetle & moth antennae are picking up electromagnetic frequencies? There is such a material bias to our world and especially the scientific community.
If you like that book, this paper will blow you away:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12804
It’s a review of what is known about interactions between animals & plants and the “electrical ecology.”
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Wildlings by Mary Leister (savor these essays by an observant naturalist & gifted writer)
An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles by Arthur Evans & Charles Bellamy
Painterly Plants by Clare Foster (on the history of plant species as found in historical art)
For the Love of Insects by Thomas Eisner
and currently,
Much Ado About Mothing by James Lowen (you don’t have to love moths to love Lowen’s richly descriptive, prosaic passion re: his year-long hunt for the rare moths of Britain)
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Last Chance to See was quite a read: combining Douglas Adams’ signature sense of humor (he is the author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) with the sad poignancy that these are species on the brink of extinction.
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I finally got around to reading Last Chance to See a few months ago. I really enjoyed it but it was hard to see that some of the species had gone extinct since it was published. On the other hand a few of them are also a bit further along the long road to recovery
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“Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses”
by Jackie Higgins
The author presents animals with extraordinary abilities/senses and compares them with our senses. She writes about past research and current studies to explain how scientists tried to understand how animals/humans perceive the world.
I thought this was going to be a simple book on our five senses but, it is SO much more. Examples: Our sight is more than just seeing color and shapes, and rods and cones. We have a “sense of our body”. What I mean by this is: close your eyes and bring your finger to your nose. You “know” where every part of your body is. More in the book.
I don’t want to give any more spoilers but, I will say that, we have more than five senses and, they work in extraordinary ways. And, there are animals out there that experience the world in ways we can only imagine.
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Edith Holden’s “diary” (and other works), if only for the pleasant drawings.
Her untimely death should figure prominently in this thread.
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Finished the biography of EDC. It got weirdly defensive of his bigotry towards the end but otherwise gave a pretty decent overview about what we know about his life
Who is EDC?
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Recently finished reading What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins, and I can’t recommend it enough! Super interesting stuff, and it certainly changed the way I think about fish and their behaviour.
Been a while since I last read it, but I also greatly enjoyed Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, definitely worth a read!
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Edward Drinker Cope (well, pretty sure).
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Edward Drinker Cope is correct. He’s the father of American Paleontology but also did a lot of work in American race “science”
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Shaping the Wild by David Elias is a good read, especially if you are involved in conservation in the British uplands. It makes an evocative case for conserving the cultural landscape, which didn’t use to need a name but now does in the face of the pincer movement from rewilding and yet more tree-planting. It basically means keeping things as they are - farmed landscapes with the wildlife that has adapted to use them, but with fewer sheep per hectare.
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I have especially enjoyed The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees by Douglas W. Tallamy (2021), which discusses oaks and how numerous organisms, such as birds, insects, mammals, and worms interact with them. It is richly illustrated with photographs of insects, oak galls, some birds, and aspects of the trees themselves. The book is organized into chapters by calendar month, and includes observations of phenomena in a Quercus alba on the author’s property, as well as descriptions of how oaks are essential in maintaining biodiversity.
Another good book is Oak: The Frame of Civilization by William Bryant Logan (2005). It offers historical accounts of how humanity has used oaks for the past several thousand years for building living quarters, ships, and furniture, and how acorns were and still are used for food. The book is also rich with anecdotes of the author’s experiences with oaks and associated human culture. A chapter entitled “Oak Itself” discusses, well, oaks themselves. :)
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Tallamy’s book has been on my list for a few months. It just got moved to next in line.
Oaks of California Bruce M. Pavlick et. al. covers the species in the State and their myriad hybrids. It includes the range of each species and the various inhabitants of the oak landscape. There is also a bit on fungi in the oaks, yay!
Oaks of North America Howard Miller and Samuel Lamb is a good field guide with keys, ranges and detailed information on species.
The Life of an Oak, An Intimate Portrait Glenn Keator follows the oak life cycle and includes excellent illustrations. Along with fungi and other inhabitants he branches out to the rest of the family which provides a more thorough understanding of the evolution and state of the trees today.
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Yes, I have those books and highly recommend all three of them.
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I just bought Pests: How humans create animal villains and am looking forward to starting it
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