The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World by Oliver Milman - 2022 - 278 Pages

 

 The insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World by Oliver Milman - 2022 - 278 Pages is a fascinating incredibly educational account of how climate change is impacting the insects of the earth and importantly why humans should care about them. Milman begins by focusing on how negatively our food supply would be impacted with out the pollination of food plants by insects.

"A devastating examination of how collapsing insect populations worldwide threaten everything from wild birds to the food on our plate.

From ants scurrying under leaf litter to bees able to fly higher than Mount Kilimanjaro, insects are everywhere. Three out of every four of our planet’s known animal species are insects. In The Insect Crisis, acclaimed journalist Oliver Milman dives into the torrent of recent evidence that suggests this kaleidoscopic group of creatures is suffering the greatest existential crisis in its remarkable 400-million-year history. What is causing the collapse of the insect world?  Why does this alarming decline pose such a threat to us? And what can be done to stem the loss of the miniature empires that hold aloft life as we know it?

With urgency and great clarity, Milman explores this hidden emergency, arguing that its consequences could even rival climate change. He joins the scientists tracking the decline of insect populations across the globe, including the soaring mountains of Mexico that host an epic, yet dwindling, migration of monarch butterflies; the verdant countryside of England that has been emptied of insect life; the gargantuan fields of U.S. agriculture that have proved a killing ground for bees; and an offbeat experiment in Denmark that shows there aren’t that many bugs splattering into your car windshield these days. These losses not only further tear at the tapestry of life on our degraded planet; they imperil everything we hold dear, from the food on our supermarket shelves to the medicines in our cabinets to the riot of nature that thrills and enlivens us. Even insects we may dread, including the hated cockroach, or the stinging wasp, play crucial ecological roles, and their decline would profoundly shape our own story." From the Publisher 

Oliver Milman is a British journalist and the environment correspondent at the Guardian. He lives in New York City.

"Salt" - A Short Story by Carol Shields 4 Pages - -included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.

The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.
 

"Salt" is the 21st short story by Carol Shields upon which I have so far posted upon.  As Buried in Print has commented a number of the stories by Shields center on someone travelling, often a Scholarly authority of some kind. The central character, home based in London, is on a lecture tour through Canada.  We never learn what he speaks about.  In his ship in Manitoba there are six men in attendance, no women are allowed.

The speaker asks a minister present why Lot's wife was turned to salt.

"“There’s something I’ve been wondering about lately. It’s a biblical question, and perhaps you would be able to provide me with an answer.” At this the theologian looked mildly disoriented, and a bridge of bone over his eyes pushed forward. “Well I’m afraid my Bible’s a bit rusty—” “It’s just this,” Thornbury said. “Why was it that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt?” “Disobedience, wasn’t it?” The theologian was vague, engagingly so, probing his salad with a busy fork. “She disobeyed God by turning and looking back at the burning city.” “Yes,” Thornbury said, “of course. But my question is, why salt? Why not limestone, for instance? Or marble?” “Salt is soluble,” someone pronounced, not very helpfully. One of the lawyers. “Highly perishable, a pillar of salt. Wouldn’t last long in this part of the world, not in the springtime, anyway.” “But in that part of the world where the rainfall—” 

There are open questions about speaker Thornbury's relationship with his wife.

The End of Eden: Wild Nature in the Age of Climate Breakdown by Adam Welz - 2023 - 288 Pages

 

The End of Eden: Wild Nature in the Age of Climate Breakdown by Adam Welz - 2023 - 288 Pages 

There is more and more focus on climate change in the news broadcasts and on YouTube videos.  There is almost no mention about how these changes impact the  nonhumans with whom we share the earth.  The End of Eden: Wild Nature in the Age of Climate Breakdown by Adam Welz does a brilliant, beautiful highly edifying account of how every thing from red tail Hawks, to ticks, moose and elephants are finding their very existence challenged by forces set in motion by carbon emissions.  The End of Eden: Wild Nature in the Age of Climate Breakdown by Adam Welz is full of fascinating matters it would be hard to find elsewhere.  

"New Yorker Best Book of the Year

“Exquisite.”-DAVID WALLACE-WELLS “At once an elegy and an exhortation.”-ELIZABETH KOLBERT “A book that goes deeper than any before into the meaning of the climate breakdown for all the rest of creation.”-BILL McKIBBEN “Celebratory and heartbreaking.”-DAVID GEORGE HASKELL

A revelatory exploration of climate change from the perspective of wild species and natural ecosystems--an homage to the miraculous, vibrant entity that is life on Earth.

The stories we usually tell ourselves about climate change tend to focus on the damage inflicted on human societies by big storms, severe droughts, and rising sea levels. But the most powerful impacts are being and will be felt by the natural world and its myriad species, which are already in the midst of the sixth great extinction. Rising temperatures are fracturing ecosystems that took millions of years to evolve, disrupting the life forms they sustain--and in many cases driving them towards extinction. The natural Eden that humanity inherited is quickly slipping away.

Although we can never really know what a creature thinks or feels, The End of Eden invites the reader to meet wild species on their own terms in a range of ecosystems that span the globe. Combining classic natural history, firsthand reportage, and insights from cutting-edge research, Adam Welz brings us close to creatures like moose in northern Maine, parrots in Puerto Rico, cheetahs in Namibia, and rare fish in Australia as they struggle to survive. The stories are intimate yet expansive and always dramatic.

An exquisitely written and deeply researched exploration of wild species reacting to climate breakdown, The End of Eden offers a radical new kind of environmental journalism that connects humans to nature in a more empathetic way than ever before and galvanizes us to act in defense of the natural world before it's too " from Bloomsbury Publishing 

Adam Welz is an enthusiastic naturalist and widely traveled environmental writer, photographer, and filmmaker. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Yale Environment 360, The Atlantic, Ensia, and many other outlets worldwide. He's a recipient of a Middlebury Fellowship in Environmental Journalism and currently lives in Cape Town with his wife, Sarah, and triplet daughters.

Mel Ulm

The Reading Life 

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli - 2003- 240 Pages - Newberry Medalist

 Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli - 2003- 240 Pages - Newberry Medalist

I last read Milkweed in 2009.  I was delighted to find it available on Libby.

As I read it I remembered the persona of the young boy in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation,  the tone of the work, and the totally wonderful ending.  

"He's a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Runt. Happy. Fast. Filthy son of Abraham.

He's a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw. He's a boy who steals food for himself and the other orphans. He's a boy who believes in bread, and mothers, and angels. He's a boy who wants to be a Nazi some day, with tall shiny jackboots and a gleaming Eagle hat of his own. Until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind. And when the trains come to empty the Jews from the ghetto of the damned, he's a boy who realizes it's safest of all to be nobody.

Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli takes us to one of the most devastating settings imaginable - Nazi-occupied Warsaw of World War II - and tells a tale of heartbreak, hope, and survival through the bright eyes of a young orphan" - from the Publisher Scolastic Press

I think this beautiful work about an incredibly ugly place and time will deeply move most readers, of any age.  We end up seeing the narrator as a grandfather.

"The Journal" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 4 Pages - Included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

"people sometimes take on a different persona when they travel" from "The Journal" 

"The Journal" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 4 Pages - Included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.

The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.

"The Journal" is the 20th story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted. Her stories are often centered on people on a trip.  The idea this may allow people to escape briefly from the routines of their existence.  In "The Journal" a 40 year old married couple are in France.

"WHEN HAROLD AND SALLY TRAVEL, Sally keeps a journal, and in this journal Harold becomes H. She will write down such things as “H. exclaimed how the cathedral (Reims) is melting away on the outside and eroding into abstract lumps—while the interior is all fluidity and smoothness and grace, a seemingly endless series of rising and arching.” Has Harold actually exclaimed any such thing? The phrase seemingly endless sounds out of character, a little spongy, in fact, but then people sometimes take on a different persona when they travel. The bundled luggage, the weight of the camera around the neck, the sheer cost of air fare make travelers eager to mill expansive commentary from minor observation. Sally, in her journal, employs a steady, marching syntax, but allows herself occasional forays into fancy."

Harold has his own reaction to France:

"A quotidian quaff is the tickling phrase that pops into Harold’s head, and it seems to him there is not one person in all of Reims, in all of France for that matter, who is not now happily seated in some warm public corner and raising pleasing liquids to his lips. He experiences a nudge of grief because he does not happen to live in a country where people gather publicly at this hour to sip drinks and share anecdotes and debate ideas. He and Sally live on the fringe of Oshawa, Ontario, where, at the end of the working day, people simply return to their homes and begin to prepare their evening meal as though lacking the imagination to think of more joyous activities. But here, at a little table in France, the two of them have already gone native—“H. and I have gone native . . .”—and sit sipping cups of tea and eating little pancakes sprinkled with sugar. Harold feels inexpressibly at peace—which makes him all the more resentful that he can’t live the rest of his life in this manner, but he decides against mentioning his ambivalent feelings to Sally for fear she’ll write them down in her journal.   "

The Carol Shields Literary Trust has a very good biography 

"Home" - A short story by Carol Shields - 9 Pages, - Included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

"Home" - A short story by Carol Shields - 9 Pages, - Included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 

This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.

The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.

'"Home" is the 19th short story by Carol Shields upon which I have so far posted. In just nine pages Shields develops near life histories of several people on a plane from Toronto to London.

"IT WAS SUMMER, THE MIDDLE OF JULY, the middle of the twentieth century, and in the city of Toronto one hundred people were boarding an airplane. “Right this way,” the lipsticked stewardess cried. “Can I get you a pillow? A blanket?” It was a fine evening, and they climbed aboard with a lightsome step, even those who were no longer young. The plane was on its way to London, England, and since this was before the era of jet aircraft, a transatlantic flight meant twelve hours in the air."

We soon learn why a married couple are making the long flight:

"Ed Dover, a man in his mid-fifties who worked for the post office, had cashed in his war bonds so that he and his wife, Barbara, could go back to England for a twenty-one-day visit. It was for Barbara’s sake they were going; the doctor had advised it. For two years she had suffered from depression, forever talking about England and the village near Braintree where she had grown up and where her parents still lived. At home in Toronto she sat all day in dark corners of the house, helplessly weeping; there was dust everywhere, and the little back garden where rhubarb and raspberries had thrived was overtaken by weeds."

There are others.

The Carol Shields Literary Trust has lots of data on her life and work.

The Reading Life Review- May 2024

 

May Nonfiction 

1. . The lost library: the legacy of Vilna’s Strashun library in the aftermath of the Holocaust by Dan Rabinowitz. - no post

2. The Wide Wide Sea : Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by  Hampton Sides - 2024 - 411 Pages - a magnificent historical narrative 

3. Blood on the River : a Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast by Marjoleine Kars. - 2020 - no post

4. Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I by Steven Ujifusa - 2023

5, Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery by Ana Lucia Araujo- forthcoming October 2024- 620 Pages is an extraordinarly valuable addition to the history of Trans-Atlantic Slavery

May Novels

1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe by Douglas Adams - 1979. 272 Pages - no post

2. Crooked Plow : a novel by Itamar Vieira Junior ;2019 - translated by Johnny Lorenz from the Portuguese - 2023 - A 2024 International Booker Prize Finalist 

3. Miss Morgan's Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles - 2024 - 324 pages

4. The Awakening of Miss Prim- A Novel by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera 2023 -272 Pages - translated by Sonia Soto

5. The House of Haunting Hill by Shirley Jackson- 1959 - 208 pages

May Short Stories were three by Carol Shields 

Home Countries of Reviewed Authors 

1. USA - 4

2, Brazil - 2

3, Canada- 1

4. Spain - 1

Four May authors are women, four men, only one is deceased.  All but Carol Shields had their initial feature this month.

Blog Statistics for May

Since Inception The Reading Life has received 7,749,749 page views

In May there was 58,212 Page Views 

Origin for May Visitors

1. Hong Kong 

2. USA 

3. India

4. Germany

5. Philippines 

6. United Kingdom 

7. France 

8. Canada

9. Indonesia 

10. Cambodia 

The most frequently viewed posts were on short stories