Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Everything is connected

The Secret Network of Nature: The Delicate Balance of All Living Things by Peter Wohlleben

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CBR16 BINGO: And Also, a repeat of the Earth Day square BINGO: Détente, And Also, Scandal, Tech, Rings Wolves in Yellowstone National Park support the beaver population. Salmon help trees grow. Ravens and wolves form an alliance against bears. Peter Wohlleben’s The Secret Network of Nature is filled with fascinating stories about the interconnectivity and delicate balance of our environment. Wohlleben is a German forestry expert who has written several bestsellers, including The Hidden Life of Trees and The Inner Life of Animals. Given my […]

I’ve the munchies

Wild Brunch: Poems About How Creatures Eat by David L. Harrison

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Wild Brunch: Poems About How Creatures Eat by David L. Harrison and illustrated by Giles Laroche is a delightful introduction to a few animals and how they eat. Some familiar animals (hippos) and some new ones (aardvarks) will each be given a page to allow you to have a poetic peek into things. Not only are some familiar, like the fly, you do not usually get them in a book like this. They are broken down into types (land, air, etc) and a handful of […]

not exaaaaactly what it says on the tin, but a good time none the less!

Fuzz by Mary Roach

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Honestly, Mary Roach could write a book about the paperwork filing systems for an auto dealership (my truest nightmare) and I would still roll up my sleeves and give it a go. Luckily, the topic  of animal criminals is NOT my nightmare, so I was eagerly anticipating another romp with my gal, Mary! As usual, I listened to this one, and if you are interested in picking it up I recommend doing the same as well! I almost always prefer a read-by-the-author piece of non-fic […]

The most poetic tribute to trees since Joyce Kilmer

Tree, A Life Story by David Suzuki & Wayne Grady, with illustrations by Robert Bateman

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“A lightning bolt illuminates the sky, striking the highest point of the forested ridge.” Thus begins the biography of a single tree. Tree, A Life Story is a 700-year-long tale that begins with a Douglas fir dropping a seed from its cone in response to a forest fire and ends with the fallen tree continuing to supply the forest with nutrients even after death. In between, the authors trace the growth journey of the fir as it takes root, matures, and reproduces. But what could […]

My mind is blown, and not because I’ve been sampling magic mushrooms

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds, and Shape our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

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I have read many books on science and natural history, but few have made me stop reading every few pages to look up and declare to whomever is within hearing distance (currently, my husband and cats, because we’re in a pandemic), “This is fascinating.” I don’t care if you’ve never read a book about nature in all your previous existence. Entangled Life will ensorcel you with tales of carnivorous mushrooms, zombie fungi, acid trips, and superhero microorganisms that could end up saving the planet. If […]

We owe fungi a lot, and you owe it to yourself to read this book

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

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This is a book about fungus. If you’re thinking “Huh, fungi are weird and I like learning new things,” you should pick up this book immediately. If you’re thinking “Ew, no. Mushrooms are gross,” you should pick up this book immediately because fungi (apparently!) are so much more than just mushrooms (which I learned are just the fruiting bodies of some fungi). In Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake, which may be the greatest name ever, begins by walking the reader through the basics of what fungi are […]



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