Category Archives: Nonfiction

The Book of the Frog by Sally Coulthard

by Rebecca

The Book of the Frog
by Sally Coulthard
2024

This is a beautiful little book and frogs are a lot more diverse than I had realized! Frogs have been around for somewhere in the order of 250 million years. Then 66 million years ago, dinosaurs went extinct after a meteor impact, and frogs survived:

“When all the dust had settled, and the world began to recover, the number of frog species ballooned rapidly. From the ruins of the Chicxulub impact, anurans emerged victorious and went on to colonize new and exciting ecological niches. With such an uncontested landscape to occupy, it’s perhaps no surprise that frogs and toads are now found in a wide and often bewildering range of different habitats. From Arctic pools to steamy treetops, underground burrows to urban back gardens, the resilient little anuran has made them all its home.”

The book is only 170 pages long, but covers a wide range of topics including evolution, reproduction, skin, sound, movement, food, and culture, with references and further resources at the end. The book gives generalized descriptions of frogs as a whole family while also highlighting some of the really interesting species that prove to be the exceptions. There’s apparently very few description of frogs as a family that doesn’t involve an exception for at least one species. My favorite might be the Brazillian Pumpkin Toadlet which jumps with no further control and careens through the air until it descends like any other not-particularly aerodynamic object, because it’s one of the handful of species of frogs that never learn how to land. Or it might be the Izecksohn’s Brazillian tree frog which, unlike most other frogs, is not carnivorous, likes to drink the nectar of the milk nut tree, and is the only known pollinating amphibian. There are so many awesome frog species!

The author alternates between describing frogs — both generally and specifically — with ideas for how the reader could help frogs — from creating ponds for breeding and protected places for hibernation to lobbying against poaching to participating in citizen science projects. While Coulthard celebrates how resilient the frog family is, she also address how a lot of species are going extinct and a lot more are under direct threat from a variety of sources including habitat loss, global warming, and four decades (so far) of their own fungal pandemic.

Over all, it’s a lovely little book, fun to read, and quite inspiring. I took pictures of the references and resources pages before returning the book to the library, but I might need to buy my own copy just to have.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Graphic Edition)

by Anna

By Timothy Snyder

Well, this was a long overdue read. My uncle gave this to me years ago; I read the first lesson (do not obey in advance) and got so bummed out (by all the people and institutions doing just that) that I set it aside for far too long until I couldn’t ignore the necessity of it any longer.

Timothy Snyder knows well that this is both a difficult read and a very important one, so he’s made it as accessible as possible. I have the graphic edition, illustrated by Nora Krug, who has previous written about reckoning with her German history.  The graphic novel comes in at a tidy 120 pages, broken down even further into 20 clearly delineated lessons that run 2-4 pages each. I had assumed it was condensed from the original, but the original also turns out to be a well compressed little chapbook as well.

This book is a perfect example of the idea that it takes a real expert to write on a topic briefly and clearly. It is clear that decades of research have gone into this, and the reader gets the final fruit of all that labor, organized into these 20 practical lessons. This is not an academic or historical treatise; Snyder has done his best (which is better than most) to create a roadmap for readers to push back against the erosion of freedom and democracy.

Each lesson starts with a short explanatory paragraph, followed by more context. Snyder weaves in events and quotes throughout history, 1930s Germany of course, but also 1960s Soviet Union bloc and US slavery, among others; not in flagellation, but a push to really work to learn from the history available to us. Despite the temptation to just tear through it and get it read, I set myself the schedule of only one lesson a day, so that I had the time to really think through and internalize each one.

Wicked Plants, Wicked Bugs by Amy Stewart

by Rebecca

Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities
by Amy Stewart
read by Coleen Marlo
2009

Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon’s Army & Other Diabolical Insects
by Amy Stewart
read by Coleen Marlo
2011

These books were each between four and five hours long as audio books, so not all that long as these things go, and were kind of a stream of mini non-fiction cozy body-horror stories, which is a crazy intersection of genres but that makes it all the more fun.

In many cases, they’re not even precisely stories; more like entries in a lexicon: something between a dictionary, encyclopedia, and field guide. Not something I would normally sit down and read, cover-to-cover, but I could easily set the audiobook to play without worrying about being too distracted from driving. I didn’t so much learn the details of anything in particular, but got all sorts of inspiration for writing, either mysteries with weird symptoms or science fiction/fantasy with weird creatures and societies. (It turns out there are plenty of peculiar creatures and societies right here on Earth!)

The various entries are interesting and funny, horrifying and gross, but also somewhat disappointing, especially in the few cases where I just happened to know more about a given topic than the author does. They fit into much the same niche as Mary Roach‘s writing, but the comparison doesn’t do them any favors. Mary Roach does deep dives and really digs into the crazy/scary/gross topics she writes about while Stewart accurately introduces the books as something of a dilettantes look at the subjects rather than any sort of expertise. Stewart writes from the perspective of a lay person with a very human-centric perspective. The application of modern protestant morality to the plants and bugs she discusses is done humorously but also distracts from how cool they really are when viewed simply as themselves rather than through the lens of their impact on humans.

I’m incredibly impressed with Coleen Marlo’s reading skills. She not only seamlessly reads the scientific names of each entry, but just overall does a wonderful job of reading the book in such a way that it just flowed smoothly. I didn’t spend any significant time thinking about her voice because it was just naturally the sound of the book. It can be difficult to properly value the skill that takes until you try listening to an audiobook by a reader who doesn’t have it.

To sum up, Wicked Plants and Wicked Bugs were both good for what they were: not deep but fun and interesting and inspirational for fiction writing ideas.

Wicked River by Lee Sandlin

by Rebecca

Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild
written by Lee Sandlin
read by Jeff McCarthy
2010

This is a wild ride. It’s a non-fiction black-comedy history book. It’s a collection of crazy stories about unpleasant people living awful lives and they are hilarious. Except that sometimes it gets grim enough that it overloads my sense of humor and just gets super depressing even in its ridiculousness. But it really is fascinating and an excellent look at American history and social movements. It’s kind of amazing how many patterns of events and types of people I recognize as being present in today’s world.

This is by the same author who wrote Storm Kings , which I enjoyed so much that I immediately checked out their other audiobook. Storm Kings is the better book, with a more cohesive storyline, while Wicked River is more a scattershot of stories and events, but it’s still very good and very impactful. Each chapter looks at a different aspect of life along the Mississippi, mostly pre-Civil War, skipping around in time and location, with a lot of stories about the lives of specific individuals and events. It gets into the nitty gritty of life and death and trade, the horrors of recurring epidemics, the cognitive dissonance of slave-holding societies, the lawlessness of the various settler justice systems, intermittent excesses of debauchery, celebrations of casual violence, ubiquitous drunkenness, and a vast cast of characters from all walks of life.

The book concludes with the Mississippi River Commission being established immediately post-Civil War and essentially taming the river, at the same time that railroads were replacing boats for transport. In the end, there’s a sense of nostalgia for the wildness that has been lost, because the river cultures were amazing and easily romanticized, even though, or perhaps especially because, they sound truly awful to have lived through.

Storm Kings by Lee Sandlin

by Rebecca

Storm Kings: The Untold History of America’s First Tornado Chasers
by Lee Sandlin
read by Andrew Garman
2013

This is AMAZING! I had expected it to be vaguely interesting, enough to keep me entertained on my commute without being a problem to stop whenever I arrived. I had also expected it to be about modern storm chasers. Instead, it was utterly fascinating and surprisingly funny and I had to turn it off occasionally when I got to tricky intersections in my driving because the story was too distracting. For about two weeks, I started the majority of conversations with “In this book about weather….” because it just filled my thoughts and I wanted to share the fascination with everyone around me.

Via the focus on tornadoes, the book covers the development of weather research in the United States from colonial days to the present, following the work of maybe a dozen pivotal individuals driving tornado research. And let me tell you: the people who dedicate years, decades, or whole lives to the study of tornadoes are some truly fascinating characters!

Tornadoes by themselves are interesting phenomenon, but more than that, the books focus on tornadoes gives an amazing perspective on a wide range of history of the United States and the history of scientific studies in general, allowing the book to cover a wide range of issues without ever getting too far away from the primary topic. The book touches on Benjamin Franklin’s famous lightning experiment, the establishment of the Smithsonian, the displacement of American Indians, various arctic explorations, the great dust bowl, and a number of wars, all while discussing how these specifically related to the study of tornadoes. Sandlin does a really amazing job of covering long time periods succinctly and then covering specific events in minute-by-minute detail, and not letting the story he’s telling get bogged down in either.

The book also felt rather timely, as the current news reports storms and deaths and political decisions that interfered with factual weather knowledge, because it turns out that none of that is new or unusual to the weather service. This book is full of storms and deaths and the politics that go into deciding which facts to look at and which theories to believe. But it’s also distant enough to not be just one more bit of depressing news.

Overall, this book was fascinating and funny and horrifying and jaw-dropping, and I highly recommend it. Also the reader for the audio book is excellent.

Spinning, Dyeing and Weaving by Penny Walsh

by Rebecca

Spinning, Dyeing and Weaving: Essential Guide for Beginners, from the Self-Sufficiency series
by Penny Walsh
2009, 2016

I’ve recently been delving into the basic fibre arts. I’ve taken classes in how to spin wool on a drop spindle, how to dye yarn with natural dyes, and how to “skirt” a fleece that’s been freshly sheered off a sheep. One of these days I’m hoping to learn how to sheer a sheep myself. I already had the basics of weaving, knitting, and crocheting (albeit at the most basic level) and I’m enjoying figuring out the precursory stages. This book seemed like it would be right up my alley.

And it is, sort of. However it’s also absolutely bonkers. It veers wildly between being an extremely basic overview to being an extremely detailed instructional manual, and then back again. Harvesting vegetable fibres such as flax, hemp, or nettle is given a half page summary that mentions the necessity of starting and then interrupting the rotting process; meanwhile, there are 18 pages of recipes for dyes, including ingredients, amounts, temperatures and durations. However, I knew from early on that this book wasn’t going to be particularly reliable when it starts with discussing how easy maintaining a couple of sheep is to have your own steady source of fleeces. That seemed to be the theme of this book: mentioning some elaborate and time-consuming endeavor while narrating that it’s actually very simple.

Overall, I found it inspiring to keep working on the projects I’m working on. In some places, it reinforces some of the things I’ve learned from other sources and while in others it provides alternatives to some of the things I’d previously learned. But I didn’t learned anything new from this book, and not because there wasn’t anything new in it, but because nothing entirely new was explained well enough for me to learn it.

Oddly, the book also tries really hard to be easily readable to both British and American readers, and does so by providing translations between British and American terms as well as between metric and imperial measurements, but every time it does that, it just makes the text that little bit more confusing. For example, writing “2 square metre (21.5 sq ft.)” looks both weird and weirdly specific when talking about a garden plot for raising dye plants. It seemed representative of the variable levels of respect for the reader: we are assumed to be able to understand tapestry weaving from a two page spread including three diagrams and an illustrated loom, but also need clarification about “furniture (slip) covers”.

Overall, I’m not quite sure who the intended audience for this actually is, but it’s really not for a beginner. And while I enjoy learning all of these skills as a fun hobby, it’s not easy, it’s not quick, and it’s not a replacement for store bought: this is not a guide for self-sufficiency. However, reading this did get me off my couch and preparing a fleece for spinning that I’d been procrastinating about. So that’s a win!

The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell

by Rebecca

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
written by Amanda Montell
read by Amanda Montell
2024

It took me awhile to write up this review for an audiobook I finished a couple of weeks ago, which is helpful because I want to say that it stuck with me. Not constantly, but every day or every other day, I have the thought of: oh this reminds me of that section of The Age of Magical Overthinking! And that is quite impressive.

I can’t recall how I ran across this book but my library had it as a book-on-tape (ie, CDs) and I have a commute that goes faster if I’m listening to something interesting. This was definitely interesting and gave me plenty to think about. Montell has a bubbly upbeat voice and matching word choice, her book is filled with fun metaphors and sitcom-esque anecdotes, and that combination tried valiantly to keep the tone of this book cheerful as she discusses cognitive biases and how they impact people on both an individual and societal level, including some pretty grim scenarios.

Magical thinking is the idea that your thoughts alone can manifest changes in the world. Montell picked the title of this book with intention, because this isn’t a book about magical thinking, it’s a book about magical overthinking. And she does the same thing with each of these biases: acknowledge that they developed for a reason and have a reasonable place in our mental toolkit. They are not inherently wrong, but they can cause immense harm when they’re over-used or used inappropriately.

The table of contents lists the biases she covers and also gives you a sense of her conversational writing style:

  • Make it make sense : an intro to magical overthinking
  • Are you my mother, Taylor Swift? : a note on the halo effect
  • I swear I manifested this : a note on proportionality bias
  • A toxic relationship is just a cult of one : a note on the sunk cost fallacy
  • The shit-talking hypothesis : a note on zero-sum bias
  • What it’s like to die online : a note on survivorship bias
  • Time to spiral : a note on the recency illusion
  • The scammer within : a note on overconfidence bias
  • Haters are my motivators : a note on the illusory truth effect
  • Sorry I’m late, must be Mercury in retrograde : a note on confirmation bias
  • Nostalgia porn : a note on declinism
  • The life changing magic of becoming a mediocre crafter : a note on the IKEA effect.

Most of these I’ve long been aware, and none of them came as a shock, but some of them I hadn’t given much thought to before this book. And they’re all worth thinking about. This book does an excellent job of introducing the biases to the reader for further contemplation.

In cases where I had already spent a lot of time thinking about them, Montell’s discussion was still an introductory overview that didn’t cover some of the more complex aspects, which is fair given the kind of book it is. But for the biases where I hadn’t been thinking about them, this was a good jumping off point, to start the process of thinking about how I’m thinking.

The Little Book of Bees by Kearney and Holliday

by Rebecca

The Little Book of Bees: An illustrated guide to the extraordinary lives of bees
written by Hilary Kearney
illustrated by Amy Holliday
2019

This is a really nice, easy, nonfiction read about bees, with gorgeous illustrations and fun facts and the text broken into many short sections, which is good for my current level of concentration (which has been shot recently.) It felt like it was structured a bit like an elementary school textbook, with lots of side bars and large illustrations, but written for an audience with an adult reading comprehension.

A bit more than half of the book is a solid overview of what bees are, how many types of bees there are (hint: it’s a lot!), and what the differences are between the different types of bees.* The remaining sections talk about different kinds of honey (which led me down an extra online rabbit hole regarding the most expensive honeys), a brief overview of beekeeping (which I’m already thinking of trying), and how modern environmental issues are causing declines in bee populations (which is really depressing although this section does include some suggestions of things regular people can do to help, many of which I’m already doing, but I can try to do more).

Bees really are very cute and I enjoy seeing them in my garden and this book was lovely and interesting, written by someone who really loves bees. And the illustrations are gorgeous!

* I do have to call out one sub-section that discussed the differences between bees, wasps, and flies, though, because it is hilariously biased and told me a lot more about the author than it did about bees, wasps, or flies. According to this author bees are cute and adorable and elegant and lovely, while wasps and flies are simply not as wonderful. (Examples: A bee has elegantly curved eyes wrapping around its head, while a fly has ugly bulbous eyes protruding from its head. A bee has playfully curious antennae, while a wasp has restlessly jittery antennae.) HAHAHAHA! It was a single section that stood out as being uselessly subjective and that made it all the more hilarious.

Detroit Zine Fest 2025

by Rebecca

I hadn’t been quite sure what to expect from the Detroit Zine Fest, but was delighted to discover that it was like a local mini Small Press Expo. Maybe somewhere between 50 and 80 vendors? Thus, it was still slightly overwhelming to browse through all the stalls, but was also delightful and I bought a number of really good zines:

Michigan Cryptids by Shi Briggs
A Michigan Unnature Journal by Shi Briggs
These are two books, 12 pages each, about cryptids natives to Michigan, with absolutely gorgeous illustrations and short descriptions. I don’t actually know much about cryptids, so I’m not sure how much these were researched versus created, but I did recognize the Michigan Dogman as a thing. But the black and white illustrations are so beautiful and creepy and inspiring.

Thank You by Eddie Roberts
2023
This is a gorgeous and pointed poem about the culture of consumerism and the push-pull of gratitude for getting things you desire with the discomfort of always having more pushed upon you. It described many of my own conflicting feelings. The author also experiments with some really interesting typography effects.

Passages by Liana Fu
2019
Is a series of poems and musings on being Chinese diaspora going to visit Hong Kong and trying to learn Cantonese, struggling to figure out where they fit in the world where all their native cultures see them as other, and how this intersects with the ongoing cultural struggle of Hong Kong itself under an increasingly oppressive Chinese government.

Of Course I’d still love you if you were a worm, but like we might have to renegotiate certain aspects of our relationship, y’know? It’s a big adjustment: A guide to safely and responsibly loving your partner post wormification by Seth Karp
This is hilarious and also the best kind of crack-treated-seriously brochure. It’s clearly a take-off of the “Would you still love me if I were a worm?” meme, but reminds me even more of an elaborate version of the Jack Harkness test meme. It’s got advice and perspective on what to do if your significant other spontaneously turns into a worm. (Step one: ask what kind of worm? There are different kinds of it will effect your decision.)

Helianthus by Jone Greaves
There is Something in the Basement by Jone Greaves
Instructional Musings for Encounters & Summoning by Jone Greaves
Intent to Carcinize by Jone Greaves
I spent some time trying to figure out which of Jone Greaves’ zines to get since they were all such fascinating titles and wound up getting four of them, each of which is unique and fascinating and thought-provoking. I’ve been getting into short-story writing competitions recently and I feel like these are all examples of how it’s done: to create a world and a concept and maybe a character in just a few pages.

Gentle Laundry by India Johnson
2023
This is a surprisingly fascinating non-fiction 24-page zine about laundry. As someone who mostly learned to do laundry to the extent of put clothes in a machine with detergent and it will come out Officially Clean regardless of any evidence to the contrary, this zine opens up whole new worlds of understanding about what is actually happening and what detergents, soaps, bleaches, etc actually do. It’s also tonally very approachable, although by about halfway through I was feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the all the options and decision branches. But it’s valuable information to know and I have a few ideas for changes I want to try when doing my own laundry. Once I’ve tried a few things, I’ll need to re-read it to see what else.

The Archer by Paulo Coelho

by Rebecca

The Archer
by Paulo Coelho
illustrated by Christoph Niemann
translated by Margaret Jull Costa
2020

I picked this up randomly at the library when I was searching for something else, and I’m glad I did. It’s a short book (only 160 pages) with beautiful illustrations, and it feels like a combination of Zen and the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. The text is not quite poetry, but I want to refer to the verses rather than paragraphs, due to the care and curation that has gone into the prose. It’s a short book but not a quick read, not because it’s difficult but because it leads me to slow down and take breaks and think about what it’s saying.

It has an extremely basic framing story where a boy discovers that the local carpenter in his little village is a famous archer, and asks him how one masters archery. The archer says that he can tell the boy how in an hour, but doing so takes years. The bulk of the book is made up of the short descriptions on what it takes to master a skill and thus master oneself. It’s essentially a book of meditations, with the skill of archery being itself a framework for self improvement.

The framing story sets this book as fictional with characters and events — that was what had originally drawn me to it and I enjoyed both the opening and the closing chapters — but it feels more like nonfiction to me. This book consists of the advice man gives to a boy about how to live a good life: how to be a bow, aim an arrow, pick a target, and be respectful of it all.

Also, the illustrations really are gorgeous, in a very simple style.