It’s been a long while since I’ve reviewed a book here. In fact, it’s been a long while since I’ve read an entire book, especially a novel. I received The Conjurer’s Bird as a gift, and found it great bedtime…
Books
I received an awesome book just in time for summer: The Songs of Insects by Lang Elliott and Wil Hershberger. This gorgeous book provides species accounts for 75 North American crickets, katydids, and cicadas, and includes an audio CD of…
My last book review was of Marie Arana’s Cellophane, one of a number of books I have read that could be considered Latin American fiction or literature. It is a genre I enjoy, and when I ran across Dreaming in…
Marie Arana’s previous two works, American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood and The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work are both non-fiction. Cellophane is her first work of fiction, following a patriarch and his family as they…
As an ornithologist, I mostly read bird books that are technical or scientific. So I had not read Laura Erickson’s 101 Ways to Help Birds. I ran into Laura at a recent conference, and she gave me a copy. I’m…
Awhile back, I asked readers to choose the next book review they’d like to see. What We Believe But Cannot Prove inched out Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent. (For a review of that book, see John’s thoughts and links…
I’ve been convinced of the reality and seriousness of global warming for a long time. But in spite of my interest and my personal commitment to a climate-preserving lifestyle, even I have reached the saturation point when it comes to…
Silent Spring , Rachel Carson’s landmark book about the ecological devastation of chemicals and pesticides, alerted the public to the lurking dangers of the toxins around them. Nearly 45 years later, reporter Marla Cone’s Silent Snow renders a very similar…
I have a friend who continually passes on books to me. She’s much more inclined to read novels and literature than I am, so she has been largely responsible for much of my higher-brow reading the last few years. If…
Handbook of the Birds of the World, a project of BirdLife International published by Lynx Edicions, is an ambitious, stunning, detailed series of books which, when complete sometime around 2011, will illustrate and gather all the essential information about every…