Between the Pages

Usually the last Wednesday of the month is reserved for a book review. But I’ve been reviewing so many books lately that I don’t want to do another one for this post. Instead, I want to talk about what I’ve gleaned from the books I’ve reviewed lately, and what my reaction has been.

I’ve reviewed one book on mental heath in academia, and four books of environmental nonfiction.

The book about mental health was highly relevant to my personal situation, and I felt sometimes like the author was writing it for me. Except that I’m no longer in academia so don’t have to worry about ‘outing’ myself as mentally ill—everyone knows about it by now. The book does a good job of outlining the problems with being mentally ill in academia—I particularly appreciated her comment that university students get depression and anxiety but everyone else seems to have it, too, so it becomes normalized in the academic community. The review hasn’t been published yet but will come out in Women in Higher Education.

The four environmental books I reviewed (and am still in the process of reviewing) are all on different topics but I’m starting to feel like they blur into each other as they cover many of the same ideas.

The first one was Nature’s Ghosts, by Sophie Yeo (read my review here). It really stood out. It moved from deep time into the future and back to the present, keeping a strong handle on environmental changes and challenges throughout those time periods without getting overwhelmed by a difficult topic. It’s a unique book in the perspective it takes on the idea of wilderness and restoration, and really made me think hard about how long we as humans have been shaping the environment and what our relationship should be moving forward.

The second one was a cookie-cutter nature book: 1. Pick species; 2. Pick setting; 3. Go out on field trips with scientists to see those species; 4. Wrangle some personal and historical bits into the narrative; 5. Let everyone know that they should pay attention to this issue; 6. Outline some epiphany you had from the whole experience. It was well-written and I learned something from it, but it was a bit boring and predictable.

The third one was so thoroughly researched I felt like I had to get a book of post-it notes to identify all the scientific characters and scientific terminology and individual research projects, then rearrange them on a wall into something I could understand. The author stated their goals in the beginning of the book, but I think they got lost in the weeds of their research. They included things many nature books cover: shifting baselines, restoration timelines (to which time period to you restore an ecosystem – 1492? Or do you just adjust the things that need adjusting so that the ecosystem flourishes again?), Indigenous cultural burning, etc. What was different was that they included a section on carbon credits and accounting, a new topic that I haven’t seen in the nature books I’ve read lately. Thankfully, the author actually brought their son in at key points in the narrative which worked out well. But it just seemed like, as a scientist, they felt they had to talk to every scientist on every topic and also do a deep-dive on those topics before they could write their book.

The fourth one has received rave reviews from a wide range of well-known nature writers, and I’m halfway through it now. While it’s a different premise, and the book is well-structured and well-written, I’m having a hard time paying attention when I’m reading it. It, too, has a whole chapter on fire and Indigenous burning. It has a chapter on the mammoth steppe – something that Sophie Yeo also write about, but it fits better in her book where it ties into landscape change and human hunting of megafauna in the Pleistocene. The biggest problem is that this book isn’t grabbing me and pulling me in. I think partly because it doesn’t have people as characters and is largely narrative- rather than scene-driven.

I think of Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan Slaght and The Treeline by Ben Rawlence, both nature books that drew me in. What did they do differently to make such engaging reading? As one reviewer wrote about Owls of the Eastern Ice, “Unlike much current nature writing…it does not treat encounters with wild creatures as opportunities for the writer to explore their own emotional and psychological landscape, or to kick-start a discussion of literature, philosophy or social history.” I think The Treeline is the same; there is minimal discussion of anything other than the shifting treeline and the science behind it. Also both books have just a few characters, people who are present throughout the narrative and whose personalities can be unpacked over the course of the book. Not that I’m against exploring literature, philosophy, or social history, but there are some people who do it well, and other who don’t. When done well, I appreciate and enjoy it. When jammed in as an afterthought, I’m not impressed.

Also, it seems as though many nature book authors jump in and out of the lives of many scientists to do research, but they don’t build relationships with these people—they just extract information. A different variation on this theme is Crossings and Eager, both by Ben Goldfarb. He talks with a range of scientists but he always describes them and works with them in the field to cement that relationship. He also talks to both professional and amateur researchers, getting a range of perspectives.

Some of you may be wondering where the women are in my discussion of good books. Well, the mental health book I reviewed was by a woman (Katie Rose Guest Pryal). The first nature book in this list was by a woman (Sophie Yeo). The three following ones were by a man and two women. Another woman writer whose nature books don’t follow the same tired tropes is Emma Marris. She was ahead of her time with Rambunctious Garden (2013), which concluded that the Earth is a garden we tend. We can’t bring it back to what it was but have to make do with what it is and how we can best manage it for the future. I haven’t read her latest book, Wild Souls (2021), but I suspect it may be equally as challenging of the status quo. There are others I could cite, but in the interest of length I’ll leave it there. Let me know in the comments about nature writers you enjoyed and why!

Just my meandering thoughts on books: what comes across my desk and what the bigger picture of the nature/environment genre is. I don’t find these books bad by any means, I just need a break from reading nature books. Especially since I don’t need to read more about shifting baselines, Indigenous fire keepers, and the mammoth steppe of the Pleistocene!