My November Reads 2024
Nature, Travelling & Going Back in Time
November was a strange month, and I mean that only in terms of books. There were marvellous books and others that are not even worth mentioning (I won’t, I promise! You only get the good stuff, of course.). I can’t remember a reading month with such an amount of disappointing books.
Luckily, we’re not short on wonderful books overall. Are we ever?
So, here’s my selection (aka the good stuff) of my latest reading adventures.
I travelled by train from Chicago to San Francisco, went to Sydney and Tokyo and visited England in the Middles Ages.
Not a month goes by without me reading a nature book, and this month is no different. More than one, actually. Quite a few, to be honest. Not all lived up to my expectations, but the following two were special! The world of bees, birds & an isolated island - what’s not to like, right?
Non-fiction books
Dancing with Bees: A Journey Back to Nature, Brigit Strawbridge Howard
It’s spooky sometimes how books come to us at the perfect moment, isn’t it?
The day I published my post Closer to Nature? about my deep connection with nature as a child and how I lost it over the decades without really noticing (and the turnaround just lately), I found Dancing with Bees. It stunned me because the introduction started with a very similar story to mine. Consider me intrigued!
The book is an oppulent account of a return to rediscover and to reconnect with the natural world. The author shares fascinating details of the lives of flora and fauna in the UK that fill her days with ever-increasing wonder and delight.
Although she focuses on bees and other pollinators, the author also shares her knowledge and enthusiasm for plants and birds. I especially liked her journey to the Outer Hebrides.
She knows how to introduce you to the world of honeybees, bumblebees, and solitary bees. Her passion is infectious! And I learned so much. I had never heard of cuckoo bees, for example.
I’ll definitely keep a closer look on the different kinds of bees in our garden next spring.
The book is an engaging, richly descriptive nature memoir, joyful and just beautiful!
As a bonus, Brigit Strawbridge Howard introduced me to soundscape ecology. According to that discipline, a soundscape of a region comprises of three basic sources of sound:
Geophony: Sounds produced by non-biological nature, especially natural forces such as water, wind, and thunder.
Biophony: Sounds generated by everything that lives, especially animals and their voices and noises, but also the rustling of leaves and the like.
Anthropophony: Sounds produced by humans, including all of their inventions from chainsaw to road traffic and instrumental music.
With this concept, I finally had terms for what I’ve experienced as a highly sensitive person for a very long time. Geophony as natural sounds, which I find unexplicably soothing. Biophony as sounds that make me smile and feel at ease (well, there are exceptions like a dog barking like mad for hours). Anthropophony as sounds I could usually well live without.
I wrote about it in an earlier post:
Der Inselvogt von Memmert: eine einsame Nordseeinsel, die Vögel & ich, Enno Janßen
Note: It’s a German titel (and roughly translates as: The island bailiff of Memmert: a lonely North Sea island, the birds and me).
This experience report spoke to me from the beginning. It had all the ingredients I cherish: one person living alone on an isolated island, birds and unspoiled nature in abundance. Perfect!
Memmert is a small East Frisian island off the northern coast of Germany in the Wadden Sea. (Well, not as north as where I live, but still.) It’s a bird protection island and strictly off limits for every being without wings. It’s part of the Wadden Sea National Parks and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Enno Janßen has worked and lived there as the island bailiff and an ornithologist for over 20 years now. In this book he tells his personal story and the story of the ever-changing island (because of storm tides and sand flight). He shares lots of anecdotes from his life on Memmert. Of course, he talks even more about the subject at hand: the multitude of birds that live and breed on the island or - in the case of migrating birds - just visit it.
It’s such an interesting book if only because you get to know a part of the world that you can’t visit yourself. The stories and reports he gives about the different bird colonies, their behaviour, their mating and breeding, their different ways of searching for food, their living together and so on are multifaceted. Janßen explains everything in such an interesting, casual way that it also makes this book fun to read.
I also liked his musings about the reasons why he chose this life (and the job). His thoughts about freedom away from an ordinary everyday life, the modern world and other people, that it’s not the clock that determines where you are next or what you have to do, but the daylight, the weather, the tides, the seasons, the wind force (plus the life rhythm of the birds), a much more natural way, all this and more appealed to me very much.
One way of thinking especially resonated with me. He said:
We don't go ‘outside’, we go ‘in buten’, into the outdoors. For us, you go into something when you go out - nature becomes a place that offers a sense of security. (p.113) (Translation by me)
What a beautiful perspective!
Fiction books
Fortune’s Wheel, Rebecca Gablé
From time to time I tend to retreat to books I’ve loved for a long time. So I turned to one of my favourite kind of novels and eras - which is history novels and England’s Middle Ages.
Although I’ve read lots of Ken Follett’s, Noah Gordon’s and others’ history novels, it’s Rebecca Gablé’s books I always come back to.
I love to dive into her novels of the English history, losing myself in the Middle Ages, following the ups and downs of people long before me.
Her novels are rich and deep and a marvellous read. Right from the very first sentence I don’t want to leave the characters or the world that opens up any time soon.
The Fortune’s Wheel is the first volume of the Waringham saga, followed by further books about the next generations of the family over the centuries. Opulent tales of love, war, power, success, losses, the injustices in life and small joys. They are all very good!
Donnerstags im Café unter den Kirschbäumen, Michiko Aoyama
Note: An English translation is not available, but the original Japanese title translates as: Cocoa on Thursdays.
Café Marble is tranquilly located by a small river in the shade of cherry trees in a suburb of Tokyo. It is an oasis of calm. The young man who runs the place has a secret crush on the young woman who visits every Thursday for a cup of hot chocolate. Every week she sits at her favourite spot and writes letters. But there are other regular customers: a stressed business woman, a hard-working nursery teacher, a father with his young son … They all come to pause for a moment in the café and each has their own life story to tell.
The novel is based on a series of short stories and is set in Tokyo and Sydney. It consists of 12 interconnected short stories, written from 12 characters’ viewpoints.
This fascinating web of interwoven miniatures kept me interested, although I didn’t particularly warm to the writing style.
All in all, a lovely little book about mindfulness, the art of finding happiness in the little things of everyday life and the role each one plays in another person’s life - often without realising it.
Children’s book
Adventures on Trains: Kidnap on the California Comet, M.G. Leonard & Sam Sedgman
It’s the second volume of a children’s crime book series that takes place on famous trains around the world.
This time twelve-year-old Harrison Beck accompanies his uncle on an iconic three-day train journey from Chicago to San Francisco. When the daughter of billionaire entrepreneur August Reza got abducted en route, Harrison finds himself with a mystery to solve. He has to uncover the kidnapper before the journey ends.
Another action-packed, thrilling mystery with lots of twists and turns. Plus lots of interesting information about this special train and its route.
What I especially like about the main character is his unique strength: Harrison solves the cases with the help of his sketchbook, in which he sketches scenes very quickly. Sherlock da Vinci (as a friend calls him) often finds clues there afterwards, things that don't fit at second glance - and can thus solve the case. Ingenious!
I’m looking forward to December and new reading adventures!
Interested in my previous reading months?