I will happily read anything Kimmerer writes; she brings magic to the mundane. She brings two different philosophies to her study of nature: the detail-oriented rigor of her scientific university education, and the reverence and respect toward the world taught by her Potawatomi heritage. When the two approaches are combined, magic happens: tiny mosses and microscopic creatures are described in detail but also given life and spirit: “urgency for departure pulses through [a colony of moss under threat] with remarkable speed” while putting on “a gaudy display of unbridled reproduction.” Science gives her the means to quantify the changes being undergone by the mosses; her Native heritage imbues them with spirit, promoting even greater understanding. Given her voice, mosses under her microscope become rainforests of activity, with rotifers and tardigrades trundling busily among the stems, desiccating impossibly to specks of dust, only to rehydrate to full functionality once their environment contains enough water once more. (The Three Body Problem aliens do exist!) This is a beautiful collection of personal essays about mosses, but it’s also a celebration of nature, and a plea to let it thrive.
Tag: genre-science
A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain, by Sara Manning Peskin
Through a selection of case studies written like medical mysteries, neurologist Peskin illustrates the terrifying effects of the tiniest changes: from the gene-directed protein synthesis that results in Huntington’s chorea, to a woman whose own immune system flooded her brain with hallucinogens, to a patient whose grip on reality was threatened by what turned out to be a simple vitamin deficiency, this book left me amazed both at the delicate balance our bodies must tread to maintain our brains.
What Fresh Hell is This? Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You, by Heather Corinna
After reading a couple of online articles about menopause that had the general tone of “if only I’d known beforehand,” I figured that since I’m currently in the beforehand period of life, I’d better educate myself. I don’t think I could have picked a better book. Corinna’s work is extremely educational along with being extremely understanding; she encourages people to take care of themselves while also sympathetically telling them what kinds of things to expect. Symptoms as well as physiological root causes are explored in a very down-to-earth, straightforward tone. I loved the inclusive tone of the book; Corinna constantly makes sure to acknowledge the existence of gender diversity as well as people who may abruptly entered menopause through medical procedures, which underlines the fact that menopause is experienced differently for every person. Really great resource.
Why We Swim, by Bonnie Tsui
The author has loved swimming ever since childhood, and every chapter of this book at some point includes a breathless, besotted description of being in the water. If there is one weakness to this book it is Tsui’s basic assumption of water as a comfort element to all humans, ignoring people who might not feel immediately at home when immersed in a pool or an ocean. But I suppose the book isn’t called “why we don’t swim,” so fair enough. Tsui talks about swimming in history and in extreme elements, even trying some of the cold-water swims herself; she also profiles extreme swimmers and digs into the history of swimming for both exercise and competition. I was particularly fascinated by the people who kept alive the art of samurai swimming (in full armor!) as well as the story of the international swim club that met in Baghdad in the Green Zone. I’m not a swimmer but after reading the book, I’m considering visiting the local pool more often.
For All the Tea in China: Espionage, Empire and the Secret Formula for the World’s Favourite Drink, by Sarah Rose
History, an absolutely fascinating look at the lengths the British went to in order to gain access to Chinese tea, and the ways in which tea made empire possible. The story is centered around Robert Fortune, a real life frontier botanist employed by the East India Company, who (despite internal wrangling within the Company as well as within the botanist world) ventured deep into the hinterlands of China and smuggled out tea plants and seeds to the rest of the world, breaking China’s monopoly. Rose also uses Britain’s tea trade as a jumping-off point to explore colonization, opium, and how tea made empire possible. My favorite quote: “What the world has sought when it sips a cup of tea is a mild effect, a high with neither lift nor letdown, a calming alertness, a drink of moods. What Fortune found in Wuyi Shan was Britain’s reigning temper: the thrill to conquer, but politely.”
Birds, Beasts, and Relatives, by Gerald Durrell
Second in the Corfu trilogy, which explores Durrell’s idyllic childhood on the Greek island of Corfu. For those who loved the first book (and who wouldn’t?) it’s more of the same: more zany and semi-fictionalized family antics, and more hilarious and wonderful gushing over the animal life of the island. The portraits of islander culture are a little problematic from a PC point of view, but it’s of a piece with the time. The ending note is bittersweet, though, and hints at the eventual loss of paradise with the coming of war.
Bitch: On the Female of the Species, by Lucy Cooke
This was such a delightful book, full of fascinating science and history. Ever since Charles Darwin cherrypicked his data to suit Victorian sensibilities about gender roles, schools teach that the female of any species is generally a meek, nurturing caretaker while the male gads about hunting, fighting, and flaunting bright plumage. Cooke goes into the field with many different scientists to observe the many ways that creatures in nature defy this theory, and also digs into the science to show that general assumptions made by observing limited species are far from universal. The content sounds dry, but Cooke’s writing style is super enjoyable. Really great read.
My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell
I picked this book up because of a stray passage from The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, which quoted its description of snails mating “like two curious sailing ships roped together.” Upon learning that snails were hermaphroditic, the narrator’s brother said, “I think it’s unfair. All those damned slimy things wandering about seducing each other like mad all over the bushes, and having the pleasures of both sensations. Why couldn’t such a gift be given to the human race? That’s what I want to know.” When their teacher pointed out that in that case, humans would have to lay eggs, their mother chimed in with “The ideal way of bringing up a family. I wish I’d been able to bury you all in some damp earth and leave you.”
So obviously, I promptly put the book on hold,* and I am happy to say that the rest of it was equally delightful. When Gerald Durrell was a child, his eccentric family decided to escape the gloomy English weather and moved wholesale to the Greek island of Corfu, and this is his recollection of the years that his family (hilariously and charmingly sketched) spent in that Mediterranean paradise. Gerald, an enthusiastic young naturalist, was mostly allowed to run wild over the island and study nature to his heart’s content; he brought back to his house a collection of birds, insects, and other creatures. Durrell’s loving portraits of animals and nature are adorable but a bit long-winded; it’s when he works in stories of his family and their ridiculous antics that the book really shines. Apparently his books were made into a BBC series called The Durrells in Corfu; I would love to look that up sometime.
*It turned out that the snail bit was not actually from this book, but from the sequel, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives, which was not available from my library. Fortunately, a preview was included at the end, so I was able to find this section after all.
When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamín Labatut
“This is a work of fiction based on real events,” says the author, and as such it’s weirdly disconcerting; you know the history, but you’re fuzzy on the details, and Labatut takes full advantage of that. The book kicks off with a mostly-factual account tracing the discovery of Prussian Blue to cyanide, poison, and its horrific use in the Holocaust; the author muses on the vibrant beauty of the color, and the stain that it left on history. The following stories go on to profile men of great brilliance, Schwarzschild and Heisenberg and Schrödinger among others, whose discoveries in math and science drive them to madness as they realize the destruction their ideas could wreak upon the world (or maybe, Labatut insinuates, they have to go mad to make these leaps of intuition at all). Their madness and visions are described with such lush prose that the feel of the text touches on gothic horror; fiction is woven so seamlessly into fact that you can’t draw a clear line between real and imaginary. The book swerves to end on a biographical, reflective tone, on which the narrator refuses to cut down a diseased tree; it is dying inside, but still tall and wide and of great sentimental value, and he does not wish to see the rot within. It functions as a kind of allegory: we can see and appreciate the outer structure of things, but if we dig too deeply, we may find ourselves revolted by what lies within, and the mere pursuit of that knowledge may bring it all crashing down around us.
The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, by Michael Lewis
Lewis is a solid writer; he writes nonfiction like a thriller. We lived through the pandemic so when he starts describing the initial events, the rumors of illness, the blithe dismissal of the politicians, we know things are going south… but he still patiently lays the foundation: public health officers on shoestring budgets, with power on paper but very little in practice; government plans for pandemics drafted and discarded; politics and caution prized over effectiveness and rapid response. Reading this was an intensely frustrating exercise, punctuated by only brief moments of relief, especially since, let’s be real, we’re still in the middle of a public heath crisis, and now we know even more about how very few people are able (or willing) to do anything to manage it.