1FlorenceArt
Welcome to the Greenhouse! This thread is dedicated to discussions and books around nature and our interactions with it. A vast subject!
We humans are a part of nature. We have been shaped by our environment and have shaped it in turn. And being humans, we have a lot of stories around nature. We admire or despise it, we fear it, we worship it, we deify it, we anthropomorphize it, we study it, we exploit it, we destroy it and we try to preserve it. And we write books about it!
I have a very poor track record as a thread keeper, but I will try to check in from time to time. And in my absence, please don't hesitate to talk amongst yourselves. There will be no test and no grading.
Here is the link to last year's thread
(Photo of a tree in my mother’s garden)
2FlorenceArt
(Reserved for book recommendations)
4WelshBookworm
Well, I'll start. I've just gotten The Lost Words from ILL at the library. I wasn't expecting a huge coffee-table-sized book, but it is. It is utterly gorgeous, and I think I might have to purchase my own copy. I only have it for a couple of weeks, but I will save it to make it one of my first books read in 2025. Here is the "blurb" from the back cover:
"When a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary - widely used in schools around the world - was published, a sharp-eyed reader soon noticed that around forty common words concerning nature had been dropped. Apparently they were no longer being used enough by children to merit their place in the dictionary. The list of these "lost words" included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, and willow. Among the words taking their place were attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail. The news of these substitutions - the outdoor and natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual - became seen by many as a powerful sign of the growing gulf between childhood and the natural world. Ten years later, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris set out to make a "spell book" that will conjure back twenty of these lost words, and the beings they name, from acorn to wren. By the magic of word and paint, they sought to summon these words again into the voices, stories, and dreams of children and adults alike, and to celebrate the wonder and importance of everyday nature. The Lost Words is that book - a work that has already cast its extraordinary spell on hundreds of thousands of people and begun a grass-roots movement to re-wild childhood across Britain, Europe, and North America."
This was one of my "random" non-fiction picks for 2024. I generally add all of the Wainwright shortlist to my TBR. Each of the words in this alphabet book is accompanied by the poetry of Robert Macfarlane, and full two-page spreads of the beautiful art work of Jackie Morris.
"When a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary - widely used in schools around the world - was published, a sharp-eyed reader soon noticed that around forty common words concerning nature had been dropped. Apparently they were no longer being used enough by children to merit their place in the dictionary. The list of these "lost words" included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, and willow. Among the words taking their place were attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail. The news of these substitutions - the outdoor and natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual - became seen by many as a powerful sign of the growing gulf between childhood and the natural world. Ten years later, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris set out to make a "spell book" that will conjure back twenty of these lost words, and the beings they name, from acorn to wren. By the magic of word and paint, they sought to summon these words again into the voices, stories, and dreams of children and adults alike, and to celebrate the wonder and importance of everyday nature. The Lost Words is that book - a work that has already cast its extraordinary spell on hundreds of thousands of people and begun a grass-roots movement to re-wild childhood across Britain, Europe, and North America."
This was one of my "random" non-fiction picks for 2024. I generally add all of the Wainwright shortlist to my TBR. Each of the words in this alphabet book is accompanied by the poetry of Robert Macfarlane, and full two-page spreads of the beautiful art work of Jackie Morris.
5japaul22
I received What It's Like to Be a Bird by David Allen Sibley for Christmas. It's a beautiful, coffee table sized book that I'm excited to dip in to. I also highly recommend a book I just finished called Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. It didn't have a lot of information that I didn't know, but it's a lovely nature journal with absolutely beautiful bird sketches that Amy Tan did herself. I found it a beautiful book to spend time with over the hectic holiday season.
The Lost Words sounds fabulous. The one good thing about the covid shut down was that my kids and I spent the year exploring the mature woods and creek just at the bottom of our street. My boys were 10 and 7 and fantastic ages to really dig in and spend time outdoors.
The Lost Words sounds fabulous. The one good thing about the covid shut down was that my kids and I spent the year exploring the mature woods and creek just at the bottom of our street. My boys were 10 and 7 and fantastic ages to really dig in and spend time outdoors.
6FlorenceArt
>4 WelshBookworm: That’s a fantastic back story, and it sounds like the book lives up to it!
7DAGray08
>4 WelshBookworm: Love The Lost Words. The art and the poetics. Ever since Margaret Atwood's angry letter (9 yrs ago now) to the editors of the Junior OED on the removal of nature words from the latest edition I've been intrigued by the connection between our language and what we know/don't know about parts of our world.
I have a couple of books by biologist and professor David George Haskell on my shelf. The Forest Unseen is a poetic description of a plot of ground in the forest around Sewanee in Tennessee. Had the chance to hear him read excerpts and have been meaning to get back to this for a while. And The Songs of Trees, a poetic meditation on interconnectedness through a biologist's eyes.
Loved his book Sounds Wild and Unbroken so I'm looking forward to getting back to these.
Getting back to reading poetry and I will probably start with Camille T Dungy's anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry.
I have a couple of books by biologist and professor David George Haskell on my shelf. The Forest Unseen is a poetic description of a plot of ground in the forest around Sewanee in Tennessee. Had the chance to hear him read excerpts and have been meaning to get back to this for a while. And The Songs of Trees, a poetic meditation on interconnectedness through a biologist's eyes.
Loved his book Sounds Wild and Unbroken so I'm looking forward to getting back to these.
Getting back to reading poetry and I will probably start with Camille T Dungy's anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry.
