I re-read Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013). 

Occasionally you will come across a book that weaves itself into your worldview and stays there. I am a different, better person for having read it--though as with all books that reshape me, I struggle to adequately describe it.

Part memoir, part botany text, part indigenous philosophy, Braiding Sweetgrass shows us a different way of thinking and existing, a world where an economy of gifts and reciprocity replaces our current economy of capitalist extraction. It's a world where people care for each other...and not just human people, but animals and plants. A world where maple trees are people, and so are rivers, and so are the domesticated ducks who live in the pond out back.

I worry I am making this sound fluffy or Disneyfied. The book is neither shallow nor saccharine. It is a serious book that draws on indigenous knowledge and the lessons of plants to describe a better way to live. The topics are heavy, but the tone is hopeful. I listened to Kimmerer narrate the audiobook with her soothing voice (she reminds me in several ways of religious writer Anne Lamott) and I kept breaking out in tears as I walked my dog, not just because of the heaviness of the topics but because of the joy and hope. 

The other reason I love this book is because Kimmerer is a superb writer. As she contemplated college, she was torn between botany and poetry. Usually when I read, my editor brain is turned on, thinking of spots where I would have chosen different words or phrasing. Not with this book. Kimmerer's words are a pleasure to read. 

I read Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet, written by astrophysicist turned climate scientist Kate Marvel and with audiobook narration by Courtney Patterson.

This was a good overview of where we are and where we’re headed. Marvel makes the science of climate accessible to the lay reader, and may I just say, as someone who has edited writing by astrophysicists, I strongly appreciate that.

Marvel weaves her personal experience into the narrative, not enough to make the book a memoir, but enough to make her relatable. She writes about missing California, not just because she relocated to New York, but because she misses the California she knew as a child. Climate change has made it a hotter, dryer place. I’ve never been to California, but I recognize her grief. That’s how I feel about North Carolina.

Reading books about the climate is never emotionally easy, but Marvel does include reasons to hope, including the advances we have made in sustainable energy and the promise of future technologies that may one day scrub our atmosphere of the excess carbon and methane. Climate change is my biggest fear and my biggest grief, but Marvel personally has hope for the future, which makes me feel less pessimistic.

In now the sixteenth month of my unusually isolated lifestyle, following a general history of being not outgoing whatsoever, I find myself reading more about social connections, either why we need them or how to forge them. This led me to Lydia Denworth's 2020 book Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond, audiobook narrated by Tiffany Morgan.

Though I've read a lot of popular nonfiction about human relationships, most of those books have been more on the social science side of things. This introduced me to research I was unfamiliar with.

One finding: friends have brains that process the world the same way. It turns out that we do not all experience music in the same way, for instance. Friends are more likely to have similar brains that lead them to enjoy the same types of music. Or put another way, shared interests are more than just superficial commonalities. They speak to similar brain structures.

I find that many of these books are written by extroverts who just...don't quite get it. I like extroverts. Some of my best friends are extroverts! But I am not sure I trust the social advice of people who understand the words "dinner party" beyond the abstract.

My other frustration was that discussion of social media was shoved into one chapter, as though it were still a niche consideration in friendships. And within that chapter, the advice was that social media should supplement friendships, but that you should spend more time with people in real life. Excuse me, I am right here! Excuse me!

Of course I would prefer local friends. Spending time in the same room is valuable, even if you're just hanging out instead of talking. Also there are certain activities that cannot be managed satisfactorily without proximity.

But the author seems unaware that many friendships start online. My closest friends are people I have not met. Not met yet, rather.

I want to read one of these books written by someone who is Very Online.

These mild concerns notwithstanding, I enjoyed the book. I broadly recommend it, because social connections are so important for a healthy and happy life, for all of us, even the hermit-in-the-snowy-woods types like me.