Is a River Alive?
If you love nature writing, you simply must read this, and you must not rush it. Macfarlane’s prose is sumptuous and his sense of wonder is palpable.
About the book
Author: Robert Macfarlane
Publisher: W. W. Norton
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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My Review
This was my first book by Robert Macfarlane, but it absolutely won’t be my last. I’m so excited to have an entire backlist of his full of nature writing of this caliber, holy smokes.
Is a River Alive? is part travelogue, part journalism, part essay, and (dare I say it) part poetry, chronicling the author’s journey along three rivers. One is in Ecuador, one is in India, and the last is in Canada. He wonders at the power of rivers and examines the idea of personhood in service of the “Rights of Nature” movement, in which activists fight to earn natural entities like rivers the same legal rights and protection as people (or corporations).
If you love nature writing, you simply must read this, and you must not rush it. Macfarlane’s prose is sumptuous and his sense of wonder is palpable. The introduction, especially, flows like poetry, begging to be read aloud — and while this would get exhausting if he’d attempted to sustain it for a whole book, he brings it back in just the right moments and quantities.
Pair this with the novel There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak and go read it by a river. You’ll thank me.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Climate anxiety
Playground
A bold statement: I think Playground is my favorite Richard Powers so far. I know he won the Pulitzer for The Overstory (which I definitely enjoyed!), but I said what I said.
About the book
Author: Richard Powers
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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My Review
A bold statement: I think Playground is my favorite Richard Powers so far. I know he won the Pulitzer for The Overstory (which I definitely enjoyed!), but I said what I said.
Telling you too much about this book would spoil the whole thing, but here’s what you have to enjoy in order for it to be for you: multiple character POVs, multiple timelines, nature writing, social commentary, and big reveals.
What I can safely tell you is that yes, it’s about the ocean — in part — but also so much more. The topic risks being preachy, but this is Powers, so it’s not. It’s totally engrossing and very moving. But above all it’s incredibly, unbelievably smart, even the parts that may might strike your ear funny at first. It’s a spoiler to tell you why — you’re just going to have to trust me that this book comments on today’s world in unexpected ways.
Finally, you are definitely going to want to have someone on call to discuss the ending with. (Thank God I read this with a book club!)
Content and Trigger Warnings
Terminal illness
Colonization
Dementia
Family death and grief
Racism
Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices
I feel genuinely better prepared to decide what kinds of things are personally worth my effort (and my guilt). The time I spent listening to this audiobook was time extremely well spent.
About the book
Author: Travis Rieder
Publisher: Dutton
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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My Review
Catastrophe Ethics is pitched as “a warm, personal guide to building a strong ethical and moral compass in the midst of today's confusing, scary global problems.” As someone who often agonizes over decisions like whether it’s okay to throw away an old, unusable comforter because it’s just so hard to find a way to ethically recycle it, this book was calling my name. And even though it kind of answers that question and kind of doesn’t, I found it to be very helpful and clarifying.
I would only recommend this book to someone who has never studied ethics. I get the sense that if you took even an introductory class on ethics in college, a lot of this might feel basic. But for me, I enjoyed and deeply appreciated the tour Rieder gives us through modern moral reasoning, laying a foundation and building layers on top of it like all good teachers do. He uses both big and small, timely questions to put that reasoning to the test — from recycling to abortion to activism to whether to have kids. Because he’s so clear and engaging, the book also works very well on audio.
Even though there are no clear answers that apply to everybody, I feel genuinely better prepared to decide what kinds of things are personally worth my effort (and my guilt). The time I spent listening to this audiobook was time extremely well spent.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Climate anxiety
Abortion
What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures
What If We Get It Right? is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and almost certainly the best audiobook specifically. I am going to be pushing this into people’s hands (or headphones) for years.
About the book
Author: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Publisher: One World
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
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My Review
What If We Get It Right? is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and almost certainly the best audiobook specifically. I am going to be pushing this into people’s hands (or headphones) for years.
In What If We Get It Right?, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson — who brought us All We Can Save back in 2020 — interviews a ton of the smartest people working toward climate justice in all different areas, from farming to finance to legal action and even museum curation. She talks to all of them about their area of expertise and then asks them what the world would look like if we “get climate change right.”
What makes the audiobook so incredible (and long, relative to the length of the book) is the fact that instead of having a narrator read the book, aka the edited transcripts of these interviews, she just…plays the whole interview itself. It actually feels more like a series of podcast episodes than a book, tbh, and it works SO well.
I started this book a few days before the election to give myself some optimistic media to focus on rather than the news, and it turned out to be a fantastic choice for that entire week. Johnson is hopeful without ever being saccharine or cheesy, and listening to it felt productive and active but never overwhelming, even in the midst of terrible news.
I truly cannot recommend this audiobook enough. (But also get yourself a hardcover copy, because it’s gorgeous!)
In Ascension
This ended up being one of my favorites from the 2023 Booker Prize longlist. I’m also glad I read this with a book club, because holy moly is there a LOT to process after that ending.
About the book
Author: Martin MacInnes
Publisher: Black Cat
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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My Review
In Ascension probably wouldn’t have made it to the top of my TBR had it not been longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, but I’m really glad it was — this ended up being one of my favorites from the list. I’m also glad I read this with a book club, because holy moly is there a LOT to process after that ending.
Beautifully, compellingly written, In Ascension simultaneously contemplates both our place in the universe and our relationships to one another. It’s about a woman named Leigh whose search for escape from physical abuse as a child leads her to a career as a microbiologist studying the deep sea and the cells that became the origin of life. A mind-boggling research voyage early in her career eventually sends her her to (literal) heights she never could have imagined, but she always feels pulled back home as well.
This is one of those books that toes the line between litfic and sci-fi in a way that’s perfect for someone who loves both (like me), but may go a bit too far for those who typically read one or the other. Too much science for the litfic crowd; too much ambiguity and scientific wiggliness for the sci-fi crowd. But as someone who has a high tolerance for both, I liked it very much.
The prose here is the biggest shining star, but I also just sank into the story and felt compelled through it. In fact, it was going to be a five-star book for me until I hit the last ~125 pages. Unfortunately, the penultimate section broke the momentum and felt like an unnecessary 100-page epilogue. But the very, very end — that was awesome.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Child abuse/physical abuse (remembered)
Dementia (loved one)
Birnam Wood
I can’t quite say that I ENJOYED this book — it’s tense and uncomfortable and heavy — but it’s also unputdownable, and there’s no denying that Eleanor Catton is an incredible talent.
About the book
Author: Eleanor Catton
Publisher: FSG
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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My Review
WHEW.
This was on my TBR all year, and I finally squeezed it in as my last book of 2023. What a powerful (but very heavy) note to end on, kind of like 2023 itself. The story is about a group of activists who call themselves Birnam Wood, planting vegetables in random plots of land, and a billionaire whose interests briefly intersect with theirs, to devastating effect. I should have thought a little bit harder about Macbeth as I read this one, and maybe it wouldn’t have walloped me as hard in the gut as it did; truly, I have only myself to blame there, lol.
I can’t quite say that I ENJOYED it — it’s tense and uncomfortable and heavy — but it’s also unputdownable, almost like a thriller in the second half. Nearly every character is morally gray, which keeps things interesting and gives it depth. There’s no denying that Eleanor Catton is an incredible talent. The Luminaries has been staring at me from my shelf for months, and I think it’s finally time for me to make it a priority!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Murder and violence
Death and grief
Drug use
The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape
This book is drop-dead gorgeous and you simply must purchase yourself a physical copy. And if you read it a little at a time — don’t rush it — you will walk away moved and inspired.
About the book
Author: Katie Holten
Publisher: Tin House
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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My Review
This book is drop-dead gorgeous and you simply must purchase yourself a physical copy. Katie Holten has used illustrations of different species of trees to create an alphabet; apple for A, cedar for C, etc. Then she collected a bunch of short essays, poems, and other pieces on nature and our relationship to the earth and transcribed every single one using this alphabet. She printed each resulting “forest” alongside its corresponding essay, resulting in an act of translation truly unlike anything else I’ve seen.
Most of the pieces in this book are only a couple of pages long, so it’s definitely one to and read a little at a time and savor over many, many days (at least a week; a month might be even better). But if you do that — don’t rush it — you will walk away moved and inspired.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Ecoanxiety
How High We Go in the Dark
How High We Go in the Dark is a heartfelt, unsettling book set in a near future riddled with plague and climate change. I enjoyed some chapters more than others, but liked the book overall.
Author: Sequoia Nagamatsu
Publisher: William Morrow
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, a spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague—a daring and deeply heartfelt work of mind-bending imagination from a singular new voice.
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.
Once unleashed, the Arctic Plague will reshape life on earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.
From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resiliency of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.
TL;DR Review
How High We Go in the Dark is a heartfelt, unsettling book set in a near future riddled with plague and climate change. I enjoyed some chapters more than others, but liked the book overall.
For you if: You like novels made of connected short stories, like Olive Kitteridge.
Full Review
How High We Go in the Dark has gotten a lot of buzz since it was released, and I was excited to read it. And while I enjoyed some of its chapters more than others, I definitely liked it overall.
Each chapter of this book focuses on different characters and jumps forward in time, so it spans a few generations. In the first chapter, climate change releases a plague that had been frozen in the arctic ice. The rest of the book examines how the world reacts, and it’s heavy — from funerals becoming highly commercialized to euthanasia theme parks to give terminally ill children one final happy day and a pain-free ending. But there are also happy moments, hopeful moments, and moments of beauty.
So as I’ve alluded to, this book is actually told in a format that’s much more like linked short stories — think Olive Kitteridge or Disappearing Earth. (I thought that was interesting, given that this author is typically a short story writer, and they’ve positioned this as his “debut novel” and entered it for a bunch of prizes … but I digress.) But while I really loved those two books, I liked — but just didn’t quite love — this one. Those books felt like albums with no skips, but this one didn’t. It had more chapters on the fringes of the “central plot,” less connected to everything else, and I was impatient with them.
That said, there were some chapters that made my jaw drop too (especially the one from which the novel gets its name), and while the ending felt like somewhat of a swerve, I also really liked it. There’s no doubt that Sequoia Nagamatsu has created something deeply resonant and human here, and I’ll happily read his next work.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Death of a child (many children)
Euthanasia
Pandemic / plague / lots of death
Suicide
Terminal illness
The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet
The Intersectional Environmentalist is a short but impactful read. While I did know some of the things it teaches, I learned plenty new and felt re-called to action.
Author: Leah Thomas
Publisher: Voracious
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Cover Description
A primer on intersectional environmentalism aimed at educating the next generation of activists on how to create meaningful, inclusive, and sustainable change.
The Intersectional Environmentalist is an introduction to the intersection between environmentalism, racism, and privilege, and an acknowledgment of the fundamental truth that we cannot save the planet without uplifting the voices of its people -- especially those most often unheard. Written by Leah Thomas, a prominent voice in the field and the activist who coined the term "Intersectional Environmentalism," this book is simultaneously a call to action, a guide to instigating change for all, and a pledge to work towards the empowerment of all people and the betterment of the planet.
In The Intersectional Environmentalist, Thomas shows how not only are Black, Indigenous and people of color unequally and unfairly impacted by environmental injustices, but she argues that the fight for the planet lies in tandem to the fight for civil rights; and in fact, that one cannot exist without the other. An essential read, this book addresses the most pressing issues that the people and our planet face, examines and dismantles privilege, and looks to the future as the voice of a movement that will define a generation.
TL;DR Review
The Intersectional Environmentalist is a short but impactful read. While I did know some of the things it teaches, I learned plenty new and felt re-called to action.
For you if: You want to start to merge your feminism, antiracism, and environmentalism.
Full Review
The Intersectional Environmentalist is a quick and easy read (the audiobook is only four hours long), but it packs a lot of good stuff in. Leah Thomas is the founder of a climate justice collective by the same name; it’s well known, with 423K followers on Instagram. No surprise that she’s written such an impactful little book.
It’s essentially a starter/introduction to intersectionality in environmentalism, covering common terms and a brief history of related movements (ecofeminism, environmental justice, etc) and then making the case for merging them. I work at/write for a company focused on gender equality, so there were sections that reiterated info I already knew, but it also taught me plenty new (especially as she shed an intersectional light on things like fast fashion, climate change, renewable energy, and food justice) and framed everything together in a really compelling, effective way. I found the first few and last few chapters especially engaging. I also loved that each chapter provides a slew of questions for reflection, which would be great to use as you do your own work, or even in a book club. There are also a ton of resources in the back of the book.
All in all, the info Thomas presents here is a good reminder and re-call to action for those who are involved in this work, and a great introduction for folks who are looking to enter it. Aka everyone should read it!
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate
This Changes Everything is a hard-hitting book on climate change issues, full of real-world stories and examples. I sometimes lost the narrative thread, but I’m really glad I read it.
Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems.
In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option.
In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.
Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.
Can we pull off these changes in time? Nothing is certain. Nothing except that climate change changes everything. And for a very brief time, the nature of that change is still up to us.
TL;DR Review
This Changes Everything is a hard-hitting book on climate change issues, full of real-world stories and examples. I sometimes lost the narrative thread, but I’m really glad I read it.
For you if: You want to learn how our economy is impeding progress on climate change.
Full Review
“In other words, changing the earth’s climate in ways that will be chaotic and disastrous is easier to accept than the prospect of changing the fundamental, growth-based, profit-seeking logic of capitalism.”
I’ve been meaning to read This Changes Everything for a while now, given that it’s one of the most famous nonfiction books on climate change out there. The book itself is as hard-hitting as you’d guess from the title and cover, and even though it was written in 2014 so some of the stats are out of date, unfortunately it’s pretty much just as relevant today.
The book, as you might guess from its subtitle “capitalism versus the climate,” focuses on how our current economic system and those who cling to it impede progress on climate change, and it makes the case for the fact that if we’re going to avoid disaster, we need to make radical changes. Even our most progressive leaders are still searching for a way we can have our cake (the earth) and eat it (fossil fuel profits) too, but it’s just not going to work.
This is chock full of real-world stories and examples, and I found that to be both good and bad. Good because it really did help me get a grasp of the issues and marvel at the denial humans are capable of (which I think, ultimately, is the point here, so that’s good and effective). My only complaint is that I felt like I lost the narrative thread of the book overall; if you asked me the theme of the chapter I was reading, I’d likely have forgotten it. Maybe a reread would help me out in this regard. Still, though, it was very very worth the read.
I’m really glad I read this, and I’m and looking forward to trying Naomi Klein’s other books as well. I do think I’m still looking for a good hand-holding intro to all the issues and players and actions of climate activism today, so I think I’m going to try her 2021 book for young readers, How to Change Everything.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Miscarriage and infertility
Clean Air
Clean AIr is a smart, surprising, character-driven thriller set in a world ravaged by climate change. I read 75% of it in one sitting and was so surprised by the twist/reveal.
Author: Sarah Blake
Publisher: Algonquin
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
The climate apocalypse has come and gone, and in the end it wasn’t the temperature climbing or the waters rising. It was the trees. The world became overgrown, creating enough pollen to render the air unbreathable.
In the decade since the event known as the Turning, humanity has rebuilt, and Izabel has gotten used to the airtight domes that now contain her life. She raises her young daughter, Cami, and attempts to make peace with her mother’s death. She tries hard to be satisfied with this safe, prosperous new world, but instead she just feels stuck.
And then the peace of her town is shattered. Someone starts slashing through the domes at night, exposing people to the deadly pollen—a serial killer. Almost simultaneously, Cami begins sleep-talking, having whole conversations about the murders that she doesn’t remember after she wakes. Izabel becomes fixated on the killer, on both tracking him down and understanding him. What could compel someone to take so many lives after years dedicated to sheer survival, with humanity finally flourishing again?
Suspenseful and startling, but also written with a wry, observant humor, Clean Air is the second novel from poet Sarah Blake, author of the award-winning literary debut Naamah. It will appeal to readers of The Need, The Leftovers, and Fever Dream as it probes motherhood, grief, control, and choice.
TL;DR Review
Clean Air is a smart, surprising, character-driven thriller set in a world ravaged by climate change. I read 75% of it in one sitting and was so surprised by the twist/reveal.
For you if: You like to be hooked but genre thrillers aren’t your thing, and/or you like climate fiction.
Full Review
First, thank you to Algonquin Books for the advanced copy of this novel! It comes out February 8. I really loved Sarah Blake’s first novel, Naamah, and I’ve been waiting for her next one ever since. Clean Air is very different (totally different genre), but I loved this one too.
Clean Air is a character-driven thriller set about 30 years in the future. The world looks totally different thanks to what was called the Turning, when all the trees started spewing so much pollen that it made the air unbreathable. Now everyone lives in air-filtered bubbles, essentially. But then someone starts slashing the bubbles open at night! And our main character’s young daughter talks about the murders in her sleep — while they’re happening!! As you might expect with a premise like that, this is a really quick read — I finished 75% of it in a single sitting. Sometimes we literary fiction readers really just need a fast-paced story to hook us like that!
I’m not really a big fan of your typical genre thrillers, but I can totally get behind a “literary” thriller like this (character development and interiority 5ever). Especially with the climate angle. Izabel really is a great character, and her inner turmoil with motherhood and grief (about many different things) and her society’s unwillingness to see darkness under the surface was sharp and deeply felt.
My favorite part about it was the part I can’t tell you anything about without spoiling it — the twist/reveal. It went in a direction I just hadn’t expected, although looking back, all the clues were there. I think people will either love it or hate it, but I loved it. So I can’t wait for more people to read this one and talk about it!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Death/murder
Death of a parent/grief
Wallet Activism: How to Use Every Dollar You Spend, Earn, and Save as a Force for Change
Wallet Activism is a great book and I’m really glad I read it. It taught me new things, reminded me of others, and inspired me to make some changes.
Author: Tanja Hester
Publisher: BenBella Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Cover Description
How do we vote with our dollars, not just to make ourselves feel good, but to make a real difference?
Wallet Activism challenges you to rethink your financial power so can feel confident spending, earning, and saving money in ways that align with your values.
While we call the American system a democracy, capitalism is the far more powerful force in our lives. The greatest power we have—especially when political leaders won’t move quickly enough—is how we use our money: where we shop, what we buy, where we live, what institutions we entrust with our money, who we work for, and where we donate determines the trajectory of our society and our planet. While our votes and voices are essential, too, Wallet Activism helps you use your money for real impact.
It can feel overwhelming to determine “the right way” to spend: a choice that might seem beneficial to the environment may have unintended consequences that hurt people. And marketers are constantly lying to you, making it hard to know what choice is best. Wallet Activism empowers us to vote with our wallets by making sense of all the information coming at us, and teaching us to cultivate a more holistic mindset that considers the complex, interrelated ecosystems of people and the planet together, not as opposing forces.
From Tanja Hester, Our Next Life blogger and author of Work Optional, comes the mindset-shifting guide to help you put your money where your values are. Wallet Activism is not a list of dos and don’ts that will soon become outdated, nor does it call for anti-consumerist perfection.
Instead, it goes beyond simple purchasing decisions to explore:
The impacts a financial decision can have across society and the environment
How to create a personal spending philosophy based on your values
Practical questions to quickly assess the “goodness” of a product or an entity you may buy from
The ethics of earning money, choosing what foods to eat, employing others, investing responsibly, choosing where to live, and giving money away
For anyone interested in leaving the world better than you found it, Wallet Activism helps you build habits that will make your money matter.
TL;DR Review
Wallet Activism is a great book and I’m really glad I read it. It taught me new things, reminded me of others, and inspired me to make some changes.
For you if: You want to be more intentional with the things your money does and does not support.
Full Review
“The question of whether we wanted all this waste and pollution was never put up for a vote. No one has ever run for office on a platform of disposable clothing. Make no mistake: our votes matter. But changing the way things are won’t happen through our votes alone. How we spend our money matters, too.”
First of all, BIG thanks to BenBella Books, who sent me a complimentary review copy of this book after I expressed interest in reading it. I’m happy to report that I loved it just as much as I’d hoped I would!
Like its title suggests, Wallet Activism is a book about how to use your money to make a positive impact on the world. The first section is all about what it means to be a wallet activist and how to become a better judge at what kinds of decisions can make the most difference. Then the second section dives more specifically into advice for specific areas, like what food and material goods you buy, where you live, and where you bank and invest.
What makes this book especially great is how accessible all of the advice is. Tanja Hester did a fantastic job of emphasizing that something is always better than nothing, and that there’s no shame in not doing the absolute most (and that doing the absolute most probably isn’t as helpful as it seems anyway). She lists steps that can be taken at all different levels of income and wealth.
One thing that I didn’t expect was often this book focused on wallet CLIMATE activism, specifically. I think that pretty much all the advice can be applied to any area of activism, but she did pull a lot of climate-related examples. But as someone specifically looking to become a better environmental citizen, I was definitely not mad about it.
I walked away from this book armed with more knowledge and a ton of inspiration to make some changes. You should read it!
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
All We Can Save is a moving, hopeful, and digestible collection of essays on climate activism. It made for an excellent book club discussion and inspired me to join/stay in the fight.
Editors: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson
Publisher: One World
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it's clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it's a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone.
All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States--scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race--and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.
Intermixing essays with poetry and art, this book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future. We must summon truth, courage, and solutions to turn away from the brink and toward life-giving possibility. Curated by two climate leaders, the book is a collection and celebration of visionaries who are leading us on a path toward all we can save.
TL;DR Review
All We Can Save is a moving, hopeful, and digestible collection of essays on climate activism. It made for an excellent book club discussion and inspired me to join/stay in the fight.
For you if: You want to read more about climate activism with a tone of hope.
Full Review
“To see beyond what despair sees—to move from the feeling toward the possibility—calls for things we have in abundance: love, imagination, and a willingness to simply tend the world as best we can, without guarantee of success.”
I was drawn to All We Can Save for its promise of education lined with hope. I picked it up because Kate of @treatyoshelvess (aka bookstagram’s climate queen) hosted a giant buddy read. Our particular group chose to read it slowly, over the course of two months (one of the eight sections per week), with discussion along the way. It was PERFECT for a book club setting.
I have, admittedly, always been a very passive person when it comes to climate change and environmentalism. I’ve always felt like I didn’t have the time or energy to understand or dedicate myself to it fully, so I just skimmed along. This collection, in combination with a few other books I read the last few months, have helped really drive the point home that something > nothing, and small steps > no steps.
These essays are pretty much all excellent. Each one taught me something new, asked me to see something in a new light, and challenged me just the right amount. (Also, the audiobook is great, with a cast of narrators who lent strong voices to the words — including Jane Fonda and America Ferrara!) I’ll be thinking about them for a long time.
If you want to learn more, keep climate change top of mind, and/or feel inspired, pick this one up.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Suicidal thoughts (minor)
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Braiding Sweetgrass was everything people told me it would be: warm, moving, eye-opening. I read a chapter a day and never wanted it to end.
Author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Cover Description
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.
TL;DR Review
Braiding Sweetgrass was everything people told me it would be: warm, moving, eye-opening. I read a chapter a day and never wanted it to end.
For you if: You want to learn more about nature and/or botany and/or Indigenous wisdom about the earth.
Full Review
“For all of us, becoming Indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it. … Can a nation of immigrants once again follow [Skywoman’s] example to become native, to make a home?”
In early September, I asked my Instagram followers for one book that changed the way they saw the world — and three people recommended this one. (Out of 26!) So that obviously put it on my radar, and a few friends and I decided to read it together in October. (It has 31 chapters, not counting the introduction and conclusion, so it fit perfectly into the month.) And…it’s hard to overstate how much we loved it. We were all truly sad when it was over, having wanted it to last forever.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and an ecology professor at SUNY Environmental Science & Forestry (which happens to be where I grew up, near Syracuse, NY). In this book, she takes science and Indigenous teachings together, braiding them in with the broader world and our relationship to it. She is so kind, warm, and wise — this comes through especially so in her reading of the audiobook. She does say she once considered being a poet, and it shows.
I learned so much. So much about science, about plants, about Native American teachings and traditions, about reciprocity and gifts, and about myself, too. I had never before considered how humans’ presence could benefit our planet, or how we other and other species don’t just share the world, but actually depend on one another. I’d considered our responsibility to try to avoid harm, but never our responsibility (or ability!) to do active good.
I especially loved the chapter on Onondaga Lake, because it was so much about my home. But I also really really loved the one about “learning the grammar of animacy,” as I’m obviously a big language person.
I will be giving this to people as a gift for years, I think. I just want everyone to read it, to be touched by it.