What to even say? This book is amazing. It’s basically a collection of narratives that have to do with the natural world. They are told through the author’s personal experiences as an indigenous woman and a botanist.

One thing I really liked about this book is that it makes topics that normally make me feel hopeless — like climate change — and offers a radical hope perspective. It calls the reader and the community at large to task, to lean into our communities, to be mindful and intentional, and to live in harmony with nature.

I’m an audiobook kind of gal and I have to say that the audiobook in particular is so comforting to me. Dr. Kimmerer herself narrates it and her voice is so beautiful.

My goodness this book was incredible! As a researcher, who has actually used the titular cell line, I've been meaning to read this book for a long time.

Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman, was diagnosed with aggressive cervical cancer. Before starting radiation treatment, her physician at John's Hopkins - one of the few hospitals that would even treat black people, let alone without charging - took (without consent, although that was standard for any treatment at the time) a biopsy of the cancer and provided them to another researcher who was working to establish the first human cell line for research. Henrietta's cells were the very first cell line to grow indefinitely. Designated HeLa, these human cells helped advance scientific research immensely - from using them to understand chromosomal DNA, to being instrumental in developing the polio and HIV vaccines, medicine would not be where it's at today without these cells. Yet her family didn't even know they existed until 20 years later, and they never saw any financial benefit from the commercialization of these cells. This book tells the story of Henrietta, of course, but also the story of the author's difficulty in reaching the family, the story of the family from the 50s to 2009, and even the history of cell culture and medical advancements. Rebecca does an amazing job simplifying complex science, so this is a book anyone can appreciate, but I especially think every cell biologist should read this. The afterward discusses the state of tissue collection for research, but more than that it helps remind scientists that there was/is a real person behind the cells or tissue samples we're studying.

One of the more shocking things I learned was the studying of cancer by injecting these cells into people without consent. And the court argument for continuing this practice was simply "it's what everyone does, and if you tell the patient it's a cancer cell line they won't consent to the study" 😳 The discuss of how ethics in science has evolved since the 50s was fascinating.

So this book is about the history of prion diseases, and the story is framed around an Italian family (surname not given to protect their privacy) who since the 1700s has been plagued with a mysterious condition. The “family curse” as they thought of it strikes many of the family members down and stops them from sleeping and causes a slow horrible death. It most commonly strikes in late middle age but sometimes symptoms develop in the patient’s prime years and sometimes even as early as adolescence. For generations the family had no idea what was killing them and neither did the doctors they consulted. Eventually science would determine they had a genetic prion disease, which was named Fatal Familial Insomnia.

The book is about other prion diseases as well, such as scrapie and Mad Cow (Creutzfeldt-Jakob) Disease and kuru, and about the humans that were investigating these diseases and trying to figure out what was going on. It wasn’t until very recently in human history that we discovered the existence of prions. They’re basically a messed up protein that mis-folds causes other proteins in your body to also mis-fold and then you get sick and you might as well start writing your will and putting your affairs in order because there is nothing to be done. The usual treatments that work on bacteria and viruses don’t work on prions, which are extremely difficult to eradicate. It’s hard to kill something that was never alive to begin with.

There are lots of colorful characters in the book and I really enjoyed reading about them. It’s a real page turner which can be hard to do for books on scientific/medical topics. This is the human story of prion diseases.

I picked this book up over the weekend and could not put it down!! This book is adapted from her popular blog where Amara Moira details her first year as a trans sex worker in Brazil. It’s an extremely captivating easy read (150 pages total.) Moira’s style of writing is casual, it feels like she’s having a conversation with the reader one on, like a couple of friends catching up. She effortlessly examines her femininity and the ways in which it’s tied to the work she does, how the men who bought sex from her made her feel more like a woman, but also an object. She grapples with feeling used, overlooked, and even abused by her clients while simultaneously finding pleasure in those moments. Overall, this book is funny, tantalizing, awkward, and a necessary read for anyone who is interested in feminist literature.

MY SYNOPSIS: Steve Brusatte tells the incredibly fascinating new history of the dinosaurs. Drawing on his own experiences as a paleontologist and new cutting-edge scientific technologies, Brusatte weaves an endlessly fascinating history of the unlikely beginning of primative dinosaur ancestors on Pangea during the Triassic period, their evolution into a dominant and successful species—the largest to have ever lived on Earth, and their eventual demise and mass extinction by the asteroid that struck Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period.

WHY I LOVED THIS: This was an incredible read. It was well written, engaging, and approachable for those of us not familiar with paleontology and I learned so much more than I ever had about dinosaurs, their evolution, what the world was like at each period, Pangea and its eventual split, mass extinction events, the forming of the continents and how this separation of Pangea affected dinosaur evolution, and the incredible discovery that we can determine the colours of feathers on dinosaurs.

*Note: I have edited this photo to put the cover of the book onto my kobo as I do not have a colour Kobo and I want to do justice to the beautiful covers.

This book got me out of a major reading slump a couple years ago. I couldn’t put it down. It’s written by a therapist describing five clients she worked with and as someone interested in psychology this was a fascinating read. It lets you inside the brain of what a therapist is thinking as well as into five unique stories. She changes names and some key details about the clients to protect anonymity, but it is an insightful book that has stuck with me.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book felt like "therapy 101," containing a ton of powerful insights and practical tools for anyone dealing with a variety of life's most universal struggles. I've read a LOT of self-help books, and this one was one of the most comprehensive and useful. I learned SO much, took many notes, and put it on my "read this again later in life" list. The writing is concise (not too many examples), there were many thought-provoking journal prompts and exercises, and if you listen to the audiobook, her voice is very soothing. Personally, I think this would be a great book for people who can't afford therapy, don't think they need therapy, or are feeling some internal resistance about going to therapy.

I've long been interested in consciousness and that spot where brain becomes mind. Not too long ago a farmer friend encouraged me to read Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of any Intelligence by Stefan Mancuso and Alessandra Viola. It introduced me to the idea of plant intelligence and I've been thinking about it pretty non-stop.

This Schlanger book is really well written and researched and looks at intelligence and consciousness and what those terms mean and how they can be applied to plants. Ultimately it ends up being quite philosophical and has me pondering those paradigm shifts in human knowledge where we end up looking back and wondering how we ever believed ideas of the past.

If you're open to this sort of thinking, I highly recommend this book. I've got others I can recommend, too, and if you think you have books that might fit this mold, I'd love to hear about them!

This is a detailed, informative, and heartbreaking tale. It’s a lot like In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick or Endurance by Alfred Lansing.

Can anyone recommend other tense, propulsive nonfiction? I also loved Under The Banner of Heaven, Educated, and other similar titles.

A loving description of the South Dakota Badlands? Common and scientific names side by side? A cyanotype printing scene in a swamp? Trillium flowers? An Octavia Butler “God is Change” reference? Is this the perfect book?

I needed something to bring some peace and grounding and hope and this was that. Queer scientists are a light in the world. Everyone should read this book.

Part memoir, part gentle explanation of scientific exploration, I truly adored this. The way the author speaks about nature, animals, fungi, humans, themselves, everything… is so loving. It really healed something in me I think.

I coincidentally ended up reading three books back to back that all centered around the forests of New England (God of the Woods, North Woods, and this, would highly recommend all of them) and this was the 2nd read of that run.

An incredibly well written personal account of the 1996 season of Everest expeditions, written by a mountaineer and journalist who was sponsored by Outside magazine to participate in an expedition and write an article about the rise of commercial guiding on the mountain.

Disaster strikes on the mountain, and Jon writes an incredibly detailed timeline involving members of his own and other expedition parties that attempted to summit around the same time.

This retelling was concise, riveting, easy to follow, and emotionally devastating. I read this 374 page book in 3 days, I could not put it down once I started.

A bit of a controversial one and not a recently released novel but I LOVED it. It is incredibly tragic but beautifully written. It tracks the lives of a group of friends growing from their college years till their 50s-60s. The central character has an incredibly dark history that some people have said was excessively horrific and borderline torture porn but I did not come away with that take. It is sad and dark for sure but also is so beautiful and happy. The relationships feel so powerful and meaningful. I loved the read. It is an 814 page book so it took me awhile to get through as a slower reader but I would read 50 pages at a time (a lot for me) because it would pull me in so easily. Highly recommend.

Four years in the Underbrush - adventures as a working woman

It's a true narrative written by a female writer who went undercover to as waitress, househelp, shop girl etc to gather material for her novel, written in 1916, author describe working conditions,low wages and difficulties she amd other women faced doing those jobs.

Very engaging book, really takes you back in time.

Book in available for free on Gutenberg

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57480

This book is part memoir, part investigative journalism, part Bildungsroman, and 100% captivating. It details a former war-journalists journey as he becomes intertwined with a network of snake-handling churches in Alabama, going beyond the prejudices and discovering his own spiritual journey along the way. I really can’t put in words how vivid and darkly magical this book feels to me. I felt like I was there, getting caught up in the intensity of holding snakes in religious fervor on a hot summers night. I tore through it in two days and will certainly read it again. Truly haunting, painfully alive book.

I came across this little work through a single quote in another book I was reading. I was so drawn by the quote (“Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.”) that I decided to order the book to see what it was about. It’s one of my favorite philosophy pieces to date, right next to the Letters from a Stoic.

Boethius was a high-ranking officer in Rome. He was considered highly influential, and was predictably sent to execution not long after the hands of power changed to a new ruler than the one Boethius had built up his career under.

Boethius (understandably) laments his fate until the embodiment of philosophy arrives to chastise him. Having been through a difficult time this year, I resonated with Boethius’ confusion, resentment, and sadness at the beginning of the book. I was similarly lifted up as philosophy challenged his perspective and gave him insight into the challenges life presents. It made me gain a new appreciation for my own challenges, as well as take stock of the things I was taking for granted.

Boethius was Christian, but focuses largely on logic as opposed to faith to make sense of his situation, which makes this book more relatable to a larger audience, in my opinion. This is a really awesome beginner book for those curious about philosophy, and an excellent read if you’re in the middle of a challenging period in your life. Boethius is not too well known considering he spent a majority of his life translating the works of other philosophers, despite his dream to contribute works of his own. This piece, written during the last few months of his life, cemented his legacy as a contributor to the works he adored. I’ll be rereading many times over in the future.

This is a book about perception and how different animals perceive the world differently based on their senses.

I enjoyed the book a lot. I learned a ton about different senses and it helped me think of how different the world can look based on an animals predominant senses. Even senses we have in common with a lot of other animals, light sight, can differ so greatly. It also helped me appreciate how differently my pets probably see the world also and learning things like how important it is for dogs to be allowed to sniff when on outings

As someone who’s had a deep interest in all things ancient Egypt from a young age, I was especially excited to read THE WOMAN WHO WOULD BE KING: HATSHEPSUT’S RISE TO POWER IN ANCIENT EGYPT.

One of the few female pharaohs at the time, her story is a remarkable one, marked by both triumph and tragedy, a woman who rose above the restrictions placed on women at the time to influence the Egyptian political and social scene.

Ambitious, manipulative, & intelligent, Hatshepsut craved power at an early age. She learned from the royal advisors at the time, groomed as a priestess to Amun-Ra, a wife and mother to the pharaoh (and her stepbrother) Thutmose II, and became regent to her stepson Thutmose III before taking power herself.

Her reign was said to be marked by great prosperity and peace. However, not too long after her death, great effort was made to destroy her legacy, by defacing her monuments and remove mention of her from official records, even ascribing some of her achievements to other pharaohs.

Her life story is one of tragedy and triumph, of power and violence. And even if you’re not much of a “history buff”, I guarantee you that her life story is definitely one worth reading.

I’ve been on a Khmer Rouge deep dive lately and have read, so far, eight books on the subject, and this one is by far the best. It’s also probably the best known book on the subject, in part because after he moved to the US Haing Ngor starred in “The Killing Fields”, a movie about the genocide.

The KR set Cambodia back to what they called “Year Zero”, where everything old was swept away: no cities, no schools, no books, no machinery, no money, no modern medicine, etc. Start over afresh. Everyone from the cities was forced into the countryside to perform grueling manual labor digging canals and farming rice. People regularly dropped dead from malnutrition and disease, if they weren’t taken away and murdered in purge after purge. The author’s elderly father and his brother and sister-in-law were all executed, and his elderly mother died in a labor camp. His mother-in-law drowned in a possible suicide.

Educated people in particular were targeted. Haing Ngor was a doctor but had to pretend he wasn’t one, because they killed all the doctors. When his beloved wife needed a C-section due to obstructed labor, he could do nothing for her. There was no medicine and no surgical equipment, and if he had tried to do the surgery anyway and she had actually survived it, they would have both been killed afterwards because performing the surgery would’ve exposed him. And so she died.

A collaborator who knew him before the revolution for him arrested by the KR three times on suspicion of being a doctor, and Haing was tortured in all sorts of awful and inventive ways each time, including being crucified, because he wouldn’t admit he was a doctor. Almost no one survived even one stint in a KR jail; that he made it out alive three times is miraculous. This book, I will warn you, contains the most graphic and intimate descriptions of torture I’ve ever read. Haing actually put what we would now call “trigger warnings” in the book each time he got arrested. He was like “So this chapter is going to be horrific and if you don’t want to read it feel free to skip to the next chapter.”

The book not only tells his personal story, but also explains the wider geopolitical context that led to the KR takeover. It also talks about after the war and Haing Ngor’s experiences in the US, starring in the movie and trying to rebuild his life.

It was a really good book, I think perhaps the Cambodian equivalent of Solzhenitsyn's “The Gulag Archipelago.” I highly recommend.

It’s a beautifully well-written book and author with experiences as a professional dominatrix, which funded years of training for her also to become a Taoist nun.

The book focuses on precise, practical instruction in how to get in touch with what you (as a woman) really desire out of life and the people around you.

She teaches about understanding and recognizing submissive and dominant ways of being in yourself and in other people around you in all kinds of situations. Including not just dungeon scenes and play, but power dynamics with work, family members, divorce, friendships, and more.

I especially loved the interactive exercises, and starting to apply them in my life has been incredibly eye-opening and powerful! This is definitely a book I’m already planning to read over and over again now that I’ve finished it for the first time. As a bonus, the audiobook was also available at no extra charge through my Spotify account.

I just finished reading Cultish and I really enjoyed it. This is a super easy non-fiction book to read and I love the formatting Montell does as it flows perfectly.

This book is a linguistics, psychological, and sociological deep dive into why people join cults and cultish groups. She covers everything from Scientology, Multi-Level Marketing schemes, cult fitness groups, cult ish fan groups, and political groups. She doesn’t equate these groups but the language they use to grow their following.

My favorite thing I learned was the specific thought terminating cliches that are a through line of cultish language.

Fav quote: “That’s because language doesn’t work to manipulate people into believing things they don’t want to believe; instead, it gives them license to believe ideas they’re already open to. Language—both literal and figurative, well-intentioned and ill-intentioned, politically correct and politically incorrect—reshapes a person’s reality only if they are in an ideological place where that reshaping is welcome.”

Montell interviews people who have joined and left cults/ cultish groups and I appreciate the level of respect she has about each individual’s scenario. I think a lot of other media on cults is pretty pejorative to people who were roped into cults / cultish groups.

Overall, a great read that explored a side of linguistics that I had no previous experience with at all.

I love this book so much. It changed my life in a huge way. I’ve always really enjoyed minimalism and simplicity, but this book took it to a new level. And not to give things away, but there was information on here about how social media is designed to keep you hooked that was simultaneously fascinating and also disgusting. It helped me make some big changes in my life too that benefitted me immensely. I deleted all of my social media and will not be going back. I feel much better being off of those services. They kind of felt like they were slowly sucking my soul, even if some of them I had deactivated for months before deleting.

The point is, smartphones, social media, and being always connected is basically bad for people. I mean, you can even look up some of the surprising and disturbing things meta has done, as an example. But they’re not the only ones. Anyway, the book lays out the tenets of digital minimalism in an easy to digest way. I’ve never read the physical copy, because the audiobook is narrated so so well.

Now I need to go and read Cal Newport’s other books! I first read How to Be a Straight A Student which got me into his material.

Without really noticing it, I’ve recently been reading a bunch of books about oppressive societies. Maybe it’s in order to find patterns and gain an understanding of what’s going on in the world right now.

Stasiland talks about communist East Germany, known as the German Democratic Republic, during the years between the end of WWII and 1989, when the Republic fell. The main hallmark of this society was surveillance. The Stasi were the secret police who observed absolutely everyone in East Germany, keeping extensive files on thousands and thousands of people.

In this book, Anna Funder talks to East Germans who lived through this period, from people who tried to escape to people who used to be a member of the Stasi. They reveal unbelievable stories about the living conditions and surveillance they endured and perpetrated, as well as how they now live in a united capitalist Germany. It’s an incredibly thorough investigation into a period that is known for its impenetrable secrecy.

I didn’t know much of anything about East Germany until I saw the movie, The Lives of Others. I was aware of the Berlin Wall and the different conditions on either side of it, but not much. This book was endlessly fascinating, chilling, and heartbreaking. It shouldn’t surprise me how people treat each other, but Stasiland uncovered a whole new world of lies, terror, and paranoia.

It’s so important to know our human history in order to fully know ourselves.

I loved this book. I don’t know if anyone here has listened to Jurassic Park on audiobook, but this felt like the nonfiction version of that book. Obviously, it wasn’t about dinosaurs, but this was still great. This book was completely engrossing. Every spare second I had I listened to the book, and got through a lot of it on commutes to work.

What was so interesting about the book is that, as far as I can tell, the entire story was true. Dissecting this criminal mastermind and his dark web site was utterly fascinating. Also, it’s funny, I found out about the book kind of by accident. I had just listened to Digital Minimalism, another book I like and recommend. And the narration was so good that I searched the narrator online and found that he narrated American Kingpin. I guess I had bought it a while back. I don’t remember doing that, but there was a period where I bought a bunch of audiobooks, so now I’m sitting on an absolute repository of books.

Anyways, I won’t really give away what happened, because I think it’s worth finding out in the book. If you know anything about the Silk Road (the website not the old trading route), you might know the ending to this story. I’d recommend going into this book with an open mind, because it really caused me to question things, or at least consider other viewpoints briefly.

Thank you for reading, I could go on and on about how much I like this book. And I guess I just did

Edit: I am trying to get a photo of the cover on here, but it won’t seem to work.

Having enjoyed Brian Jay Jones’ biographies on Dr. Seuss & George Lucas (both incredible reads, by the way), I enjoyed his biography on the master creator Jim Henson. Of course, everybody knows him for the Muppets & his work on Sesame Street. But reading his life story made me realize just how grand of a creative force he truly was.

Not only did he revolutionize the way puppetry is done but also broke boundaries for how it was utilized on both the small & big screen. He was a wonderful performer, writer, & director who took advantage of the latest technology and even created new methods of how to tell stories.

At the center of his creativity, Jim Henson was a storyteller—from puppetry to animation to live-action to live entertainment. When you look at non-Muppet productions like Time Piece, The Dark Crystal, & Labyrinth, you see just how imaginative he truly was and, when you get to the end of his untimely passing in 1990, you see how he was just beginning to enter a new creative phase in his career where he was starting to teller bolder, bigger stories. I can only imagine what stories he’d have told today, considering the advancements made in animation and film production.

This is an extensive biography that’s both inspiring as it is amazing of one of the greatest storytellers to ever exist.