Just wanted to alert my fellow nature lovers to a new series of gorgeous editions of nature-themed novels from Vintage. If you are looking for a nature-themed work of fiction, this is a great place to start; the covers are just magnificent. From the Penguin site:

Vintage Earth Series

Discover great writing on the most urgent story of our times.

“Eight wild, surprising and essential reads have been brought together in the beautifully designed Vintage Earth collection, a series of outstanding writing on the power and beauty of nature.  From Richard Powers’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Overstory to Monique Roffey’s Costa Book of the Year, The Mermaid of Black Conch, each of these transformative novels is a work of creative activism, a blast of fresh air, a seed from which change can grow”. 

The Last Quarter of the Moon looks absolutely irresistible so will be on my TBR. This is a completely new title to me. From Goodreads:

At the end of the twentieth-century an old woman sits among the birch trees and thinks back over her life, her loves, and the joys and tragedies that have befallen her family and her people. She is a member of the Evenki tribe who wander the remote forests of north-eastern China with their herds of reindeer, living in close sympathy with nature at its most beautiful and cruel.

An idyllic childhood playing by the river ends with her father’s death and the growing realisation that her mother’s and uncle’s relationship is not as simple as she thought. Then, in the 1930s, the intimate, secluded world of the tribe is shattered when the Japanese army invades China. The Evenki cannot avoid being pulled into the brutal conflict which marks the first step towards the end of their isolation.

In The Last Quarter of the Moon, prize-winning novelist Chi Zijian, creates a dazzling epic about an extraordinary woman bearing witness not just to the stories of her fellow tribespeople, full of wonder and pain, but also to the effects of the transformation of China on a hidden corner of that vast country. (less)

Richard Powers wonderful arboreal novel The Overstory is included in the series and The Mermaid of the Black Conch is another title that I have been meaning to read.

The Gaia/nature challenge will continue here next year, so if you are interested in participating some of the titles in this new collection would be great choices. Still, two months to go on this year’s nature reading challenge so plenty of time to squeeze in a few more nature reads for the year.

Penguin’s green ideas series is also a great place to start if you are looking for non-fiction nature-themed reading, with short works from some of our greatest thinkers on this subject and the existential crisis that is climate change. From the penguin website:

SCIENTISTS, INNOVATORS AND THINKERS MEETING HUMANITY’S GREATEST EXISTENTIAL CRISIS HEAD ON.

The writing’s on the wall: we are in the grips of a climate crisis. The kids are all over it. And the science is unequivocal. We must act now. If not yesterday. Here are some books that help us understand our predicament, and offer possible courses of action to get us out of this mess.

Just a quick post to share some nature reading ideas.