2024 Reading List
Eco-Types : Five ways of caring abut the environment
Emily Huddart-Kennedy
Why acknowledging diverse eco-social relationships can help us overcome the political polarization that undermines our ability to protect the environment.
The Future
Catherine Leroux
In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own kingdom in the trees.
Climate Resilience
Kylie Flanagan
Centering the voices of Native Rights activists, queer liberation ecologists, youth climate-justice organizers, Latinx wilderness activists, and others on the front lines, Climate Resilience urges us toward a vision of climate care that invests in place-based, community-led projects.
Humane
Anna Marie Sewell
Who steals a dog from a shelter after receiving a dream message from their grandmother? Hazel Lesage never expected it to be her. Then again, she didn’t plan on becoming an unlicensed PI, helping the ‘throwaway people.’ However much has changed in Amiskwaciy, the problem of poor Indigenous women and girls being expendable hasn’t.
Life in the City of Dirty Water
Clayton Thomas-Muller
A gritty and inspiring memoir from renowned Cree environmental activist Clayton Thomas-Muller, who escaped the world of drugs and gang life to take up the warrior’s fight against the assault on Indigenous peoples’ lands—and eventually the warrior’s spirituality.
Being a Beast
Charles Foster
A lyrical, intimate, and completely radical look at the life of animals―human and other―Being a Beast mingles neuroscience and psychology, nature writing and memoir to cross the boundaries separating the species. It is an extraordinary journey full of thrills and surprises, humor and joy. And, ultimately, it is an inquiry into the human experience in our world, carried out by exploring the full range of the life around us.
Out Here
Carolyn Highland
Out Here is a collection of essays that explores what the wilderness has to teach us about the human experience, using outdoor endeavours as extended metaphors for greater truths. Each carefully chosen piece embarks on a different physical and metaphorical journey: managing expectations and reality during a medical emergency in a 40-mile ski mountaineering race; staring down fear and consequences on exposed ski lines in Alaska; re-examining self-reliance and decision-making through heartbreak and snow science; and leaving room for unexpected magic as a female travelling through Patagonia.
Deep Economy
Bill McKibben
In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. For the first time in human history, he observes, “more” is no longer synonymous with “better”—indeed, for many of us, they have become almost opposites. McKibben puts forward a new way to think about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all. Our purchases, he says, need not be at odds with the things we truly value.
Ministry for the future
Kim Stanley Robinson
Set in the near future, the novel follows a subsidiary body, established under the Paris Agreement, whose mission is to act as an advocate for the world’s future generations of citizens as if their rights were as valid as the present generation’s. While they pursue various ambitious projects, the effects of climate change are determined to be the most consequential. The plot primarily follows Mary Murphy, the head of the titular Ministry for the Future, and Frank May, an American aid worker traumatized by experiencing a deadly heat wave in India. Many chapters are devoted to other (mostly anonymous) characters’ accounts of future events, as well as their ideas about ecology, economics, and other subjects.
Streams of Consequence: Dispatches from the Conservation World
Lorne Fitch
A collection of essays highlighting the splendour and diversity of the landscape of southern Alberta.
Streams of Consequence weaves together a bit of “ecology for dummies,” a cross-section of stories and essays on Alberta’s biodiversity riches and treasured landscapes, and a backdrop of selections on conservation issues. These are stories of the land and of Alberta’s plants, fish, and wildlife told through the voice of a biologist with decades of experience on the front lines of conservation efforts. Through stories, metaphor, and allegory, basic ecological principles are made clear, ecosystems are described, and our human role in stewarding these natural treasures is revealed.
Signs of Life
Sarah Cox
Environmental journalist Sarah Cox has witnessed what happens when we drive species to the brink of extinction. In Signs of Life, she tags along with the Canadian military, Indigenous guardians, biologists, conservationists, and ordinary people who are racing to save hundreds of species before it’s too late. Through the eyes and work of individuals who are bringing species back from the precipice, Cox delivers both an urgent message and a fresh perspective on how we can protect biodiversity and begin to turn things around.
Prairie Edge
Conor Kerr
Meet Isidore “Ezzy” Desjarlais and Grey Ginther: two distant Métis cousins making the most of Grey’s uncle’s old trailer, passing their days playing endless games of cribbage and cracking cans of cheap beer in between. Grey, once a passionate advocate for change, has been hardened and turned cynical by an activist culture she thinks has turned performative and lazy. One night, though, she has a revelation, and enlists Ezzy, who is hopelessly devoted to her but eager to avoid the authorities after a life in and out of the group home system and jail, for a bold yet dangerous political mission: capture a herd of bison from a national park and set them free in downtown Edmonton, disrupting the churn of settler routine. But as Grey becomes increasingly single-minded in her newfound calling, their act of protest puts the pair and those close to them in peril, with devastating and sometimes fatal consequences.
The Butcher of the Forest
Premee Mohamed
At the northern edge of a land ruled by a merciless foreign tyrant lies a wild, forbidden forest ruled by powerful magic. Veris Thorn—the only one to ever enter the forest and survive—is forced to go back inside to retrieve the tyrant’s missing children. Inside await traps and trickery, ancient monsters, and hauntings of the past. One day is all Veris is afforded. One misstep will cost everything.
Kink Bands
David Martin
In his second book of poems, David Martin digs deep into an examination of the world using the lens of geology. With lyrically experimental poems expanding and retracting, this collection finds sonic and conceptual energy from the perspective of deep time and the geological forces that have shaped and continue to shape the Earth. Enacting seismic shifts, catastrophes, and erosions throughout the natural and cultural worlds, Martin’s poetic practice pushes forward to contend with the contemporary environmental changes and the structure of the Anthropocene that affect how we live in the twenty-first century. The collection veers from the Rocky Mountains and explorations of “fossilized” towns to family histories and myth-soaked theories, all while seeking a balance between disruptive poetic techniques and the centred lyrical voice.
Big Bear Hug
Nicholas Oldland
One day, a benevolent bear meets up with a human. This human proceeds to do something the bear cannot understand: he raises his axe and begins to cut down a tree. Suddenly the bear doesn’t feel like hugging anymore and must make a difficult decision on how to stop this destruction in his forest. The environmental message of Big Bear Hug is both funny and powerful, while simple enough to engage very young children and show them the awesome power of a hug.
Bompa’s Insect Expedition
David Suzuki, Tanya Lloyd Kyi, Qin Leng
This adventure into the extraordinary world of bugs is inspired by David Suzuki’s adventures with his own grandkids. It’s time for the twins to go on a nature expedition with Bompa. What marvelous place will they explore this time? Tidepools at the sea? The pond full of frogs’ eggs? Maybe deep in the forest? But to their disappointment, they are just exploring outside the door. Yet, as they begin to search for insects, they find world-champion flyers, eaters, and weightlifters. And more tiny surprises at every turn!
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