An Immense World

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong, 464 pages.

I think this is one of my new favorite books. Yong guides the reader through the mechanics and corner cases of various senses (and not just the five that humans usually talk about), but that really undersells what this book is. I had initially picked up this book with the intention of getting some insider knowledge for a game where I was playing a character who can turn into animals, but what I got instead was a total paradigm shift. Yong does an unbelievable job adding magic to the world we live in, and I often had to put down the book to really sit with the implications of something I just read (the chapter on vision in particular had a lot of these moments). 

I've been recommending this book to pretty much everyone, even before I finished it, and I'm going to keep doing that here. Read this book to learn more about nature, or people, or just to add some wonder into your life. Yong is funny, thoughtful, empathetic, and does an excellent job writing for science in a way that laypeople can understand. This book was never a drag.

Fair warning: if you're anything like me and read this with anyone else in the room, you WILL have to stop every five minutes to share fun facts.
 

Upstream

 Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver, 178 pages.

This collection of essays by poet Mary Oliver reflects on the natural world, her place in it, and the process of writing and creativity. The book is broken into five sections (although the final section is a single short essay), loosely sorted thematically. 

I really enjoyed the first couple of section in this book, which read almost like poetry about the natural world. There was also several in the collection that I found fairly boring, or didn't enjoy for assorted other reasons. I tend to have very weird feelings about Mary Oliver, where the things I like I think are completely wonderful, and a lot of the rest doesn't really do anything for me. That being said, there are some very nice essays in here, and the whole volume is short enough that it doesn't take much effort to read it.

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

 Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer, 168 pages.

Gathering Moss largely follows the same path as Kimmerer's better known book, Braiding Sweetgrass (which is also phenomenal and I would recommend it). This book is essentially a collection of discrete chapters that straddle the line between personal essay and science education. What most carries this book is definitely how deeply Kimmerer obviously cares about the subject matter. This is clearly a personal matter for her, and it feels a lot like being invited into a world I never knew existed. These essays cover more moss-related topics than I ever knew existed, which probably also contributes to that impression. 

My one difficulty with this book is that it is sometimes a little technical for the casual reader. I really like moss, but I didn't know much about it, and I definitely found myself getting bogged down by the more technical elements in a book that feels like it's mostly for casual consumers. I did enjoy this book, but I would also definitely say that it's not as strong as Braiding Sweetgrass.