Books about crows, trees, and laziness
(I just discovered this post in my drafts. Better late than never!)
The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl
This beautiful book is a series of reflections nature specifically in the author's backyard and surrounding areas, near Nashville, Tennessee. It is full of life and death, baby bluebirds and sobering effects of climate change, mushrooms and moss, and the many ways that human lives interweave with the world. Definitely worth the read for anyone who enjoys nature writing.
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
This treatise about the many ways that trees communicate, form communities, ward off danger, respond to stimuli, and generally behave in ways that we associate more with animals than plants, was a fascinating read. It's focused on European forests, so I'd be very interested to read a similar book about the forests we have here.
Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price
Social psychologist Devon Price comes in hard with their thesis statement: laziness does not exist— or, more specifically, it is never useful to label any human behavior as "lazy," since there is always an underlying cause to be address. Labeling people or behaviors as lazy, they argue, shuts down our curiosity about what might be going on in that person's life.
Honestly, the initial article that this book is based on, which you can read here, covers most of the same points in a more concise way. The book brings up a lot of ideas but doesn't develop many fully, but the core idea is life-changing. Just read the article and you'll get the idea.
Previously on What I've Been Reading:
~~~
No comments:
Post a Comment