Book Review: The Hidden Life of Trees

Aug. 14th, 2025 08:08 am
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[personal profile] osprey_archer
I read Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World (translated from German by Jane Billinghurst) as a sort of follow-up to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Although they are coming at the question from different angles, both books make the same point that plants are, like, alive??

On the one hand, this is something that I think most people vaguely know. But it’s still startling to discover the plants communicate with each other through their root systems, and can send sugars through those roots so effectively that other trees can keep a tree trunk alive for centuries after its crown has died.

But this only occurs in trees in naturally occurring forests. When humans dig trees up to transport them and plant them where we want them, we sever the root tips, and trees never recover the ability to interface with other roots - even if there are other trees available to commune with, which there often aren’t if a tree is planted, for instance, alongside a street.

This helps explain why trees along streets and trees in tree plantations tend to be, in tree terms, quite short-lived. Also, Wohlleben points out, the qualities that humans consider “good” in trees are usually not the qualities that are actually good for trees. For instance, humans like to see trees growing fast, and sometimes point at the quick rate of growth in spruce plantations as proof that these plantations are actually good for trees.

But in fact fast growth is dangerous for a tree, as it creates structural weaknesses that will often kill a tree when it’s around a hundred years old. For human foresters, this is fine, as that’s about as long as we let plantation trees grow anyway, but from a tree’s perspective, 100 years is not a long time at all.

In Wohlleben’s view, humans struggle to understand trees because their perspective is so alien to ours. They’re stationary. Their senses and methods of communication are so different from ours that we struggle to believe trees have senses at all. (“In Wohlleben’s analysis, it’s almost as if trees have feelings and character,” says the incredulous author of this Guardian article, apparently unable to grasp that Wohlleben is arguing that trees DO have feelings, no “almost” about it.)

And, as Upton Sinclair pointed out, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” The modern industrial lifestyle depends on seeing not just trees but the entirety of the natural world as raw materials we can dispose of as we will. Now, of course we’re capable of accepting that trees have feelings and then blithely refusing to change our behavior on account of that fact: after all, we do this with other humans all the time. But why bother embracing extra cognitive dissonance? It’s just easier all around if we continue to see trees as technically animate but more or less inert objects.

Wednesday Reading Meme

Aug. 13th, 2025 08:03 am
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[personal profile] osprey_archer
What I’ve Just Finished Reading

My Unread Bookshelf Book this month was Meredith Nicholson’s Rosalind at Red Gate, which I originally picked for its gorgeous cover illustration of a canoe festival illuminated by Chinese lanterns, which I am happy to say is a scene that actually occurs in the book. The author is good at beautiful set pieces and lively action, but not so good at things like “coherent motivation” and “keeping track of which of the two almost-identical girls is in this scene.” (Also, although the Rosalind of the title is definitely a hat-tip to As You Like It - Nicholson quotes from the play, just in case we didn’t get there ourselves - there is no cross-dressing at all.)

The title of Tasha Tudor’s Heirloom Crafts might give you the impression that this book will contain crafting instructions, but it does not, possibly because when Tasha Tudor does a craft it’s something like “Well, if you want to make a linen shirt, first you sew the flax…” (I hasten to add that Tasha Tudor did not grow all her linen from seed. Sometimes she bought the fibers and merely spun, wove, and sewed.) Gorgeously photographed. I wish I could step back in time to attend one of the barn dances Tasha Tudor threw when her crafting friends all got together.

And I finished Dorothy Gilman’s Incident at Badamyâ, which was a delight! In Burma, not long after World War II, half a dozen people are kidnapped and held for ransom, and in the forced proximity of their captivity these strangers who don’t much like each other learn each other’s stories and grow as people and come to rely on each other, and also put on a puppet show, and I was so afraid they were going to escape before they did the puppet show but NO. Gilman knows we NEED the puppet show.

Now is this in any way an accurate depiction of Burma, you ask. Well, unfortunately my only other source of information about Burma/Myanmar is Amy Tan’s Saving Fish from Drowning, which is also about a bunch of tourists who get kidnapped (did Tan read Incident at Badamyâ at an impressionable age?), so I have no idea. Gilman’s book is very good at what it does, but what it’s doing is “Westerners (plus the daughter of a very depressed missionary who mostly let her run wild, so she has a lot of inside knowledge about Burmese culture without being fully an insider) in forced proximity,” so if you want something from a Burmese point of view this is not the book for you.

What I’m Reading Now

Continuing on in Puck of Pook’s Hill. I’ve gotten to the Roman Britain part, and even if I didn’t know already that Rosemary Sutcliff was a big Kipling fan (she wrote a book about his children’s books!), the influence is obvious. I just got to the story where our Centurion hero is posted to Hadrian's Wall and I'm getting STRONG Frontier Wolf vibes.

I also started Gothic Tales, a collection of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Gothic short stories, which I’m loving so far. I just finished the one featuring a spectral child who beats on the windows during snow storms and begs to be let in…

What I Plan to Read Next

Has anyone read Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles? I’ve been eyeing it thoughtfully but haven’t taken the plunge.

State of the Hobbies

Aug. 12th, 2025 11:26 am
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[personal profile] osprey_archer
When Joann’s closed (RIP), I decided to take advantage of the sale prices to get supplies for a couple of hobbies I’ve long meant to try: a crochet hook and yarn to crochet a scarf, and a cross-stitch kit featuring a motel on Route 66.

I still haven’t attempted the scarf, but I started the cross-stitch in July and I really took to it! I’ve already finished the Route 66 cross-stitch kit, acquired a second cross-stitch kit (from Michael’s, alas) featuring a handsome coffee cup, and spent a delightful afternoon at the library browsing cross-stitch books until I finally winnowed my selection down to Linday Swearingen’s Creepy Cross-Stitch, from which I have selected a favorite pattern that I am anxious to start except I’ve already started the coffee cup so I need to finish that first…

I’ve decided that the path of wisdom is to do one cross-stitch at a time, as the other pathway lies littered with unfinished cross-stitches. Not sure how to balance this with other potential fiber arts? As well as the crochet supplies, I’ve also gotten my little paws on a simple embroidery kit…

However, I remind myself that one does not take to every hobby. For instance, I’ve done some paper-crafting with my friend Christina (who is always happy to set us loose on her paper stash, as getting rid of some paper means she can buy MORE paper), and although I always enjoy our card-making sessions, I’ve never felt the urge to go into card-making myself.

The “one project at a time” principle is bearing fruit in another direction as well. Normally when I get a new cookbook, I mark every recipe I want to try and then make none of them, but this birthday a friend gave me Elizabeth Alston’s Biscuits and Scones, and I put a bookmark at the mushroom pie recipe, and made it… and then the herb scone recipe, and made it… and then the tattie scones recipe, which I made as well… and it’s been just a month since I got the book! (My bookmark now rests at the recipe for apricot swirl scones.)

Now of course it helps that this is just the kind of baking I like, but still, it’s rather magical to find myself actually trying these new recipes. Amazing!

Other hobby news. The garden does not perhaps rise to the level of a hobby yet, although it certainly ought to, as there’s some serious weeding that needs to be done. Sorry to report the tragic news that last week the condo mowers felled my thyme and my cherry tomato plant. The one that had actual baby tomatolets on it! The survivor has at last put forth a baby tomato of its own, but alas, alas, I mourn the tomatoes cut down in their prime…

In keeping with this newfound “one project at a time” theory, I am winnowing down my reading projects. There are currently four, but two of them are close to completion:

Newbery books (2 left!)
Postcard books (3 left!) (one of my friends gave me a set of twelve Famous Author postcards and I decided to read a book for each author. Actually, this coincided with my L. M. Montgomery reread, and so I ended up reading all of L. M. Montgomery… and there was another postcard for Jane Austen, and I had been meaning to finish up my Jane Austen reread… and Charlotte Bronte had a card, and, well, a Charlotte Bronte reread had ALSO been on my list… but then I managed to shake free of this “complete works” business, or else I would probably still be working my way through the complete works of Frances Hodgson Burnett, with a weary eye on the complete works of William Shakespeare, Jules Verne, and Charles Dickens.)

This leaves me with two projects. First, the Unread Bookshelf, and if I continue with my current pace of one book a month, that will be complete by 2027.

Second, when I was making my booklog, I noticed how many authors were on there whose works I had long meant to revisit. “What if,” I pondered, “I went through a year and wrote down each author I wanted to revisit, and then read one book by each author? And at the end moved onto the next year?”

I started in 2012 (that was the first year I had complete-enough records to make a book log possible) and have now reached 2014, so the great Saunter through the Book Log will keep me busy for a while.

Unfortunately for my hope of getting down to a single reading project, I’ve also been vaguely planning a readthrough of E. M. Forster’s novels (except Maurice, I did it one and three-quarters times and that was enough), and I don’t particularly want to put that off until 2027 or later… However that IS just five books (plus maybe some of his short stories, but those are strictly optional!) so perhaps I could sneak it in…

But not till I’ve finished the Newberys and the postcard books!

MCU meme

Aug. 11th, 2025 02:01 pm
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[personal profile] osprey_archer
[personal profile] sholio posted this MCU meme, and as you know I love nothing more than lists, so I couldn't resist filling it out.


Bold = Watched Entirety
Italic = Watched Part
* Watched more than once.
† Watched in the first few weeks of release (at least initially, for TV shows).

Phase One:
*Iron Man (2008)
The Incredible Hulk (2008)
*Iron Man 2 (2010)
*Thor (2011)
*Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
*The Avengers (2012)

Phase Two:
Iron Man 3 (2013)
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV 2013–2020)
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
*†Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Ant-Man (2015)
Daredevil (TV 2015–2018)
*Agent Carter (TV 2015–2016)
Jessica Jones (TV 2015–2019)

Phase Three:
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Luke Cage (TV 2016–2018)
Doctor Strange (2016)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
Iron Fist (TV 2017–2018)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
The Defenders (TV 2017)
The Punisher (TV 2017–2019)
Inhumans (TV 2017)
Runaways (TV 2017–2019)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Black Panther (2018)
Cloak & Dagger (TV 2018–2019)
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
Captain Marvel (2019)
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

Phase Four:
Black Widow (2021)
WandaVision (TV 2021)
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV 2021)
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Eternals (2021)
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Loki (TV 2021-2023)
Hawkeye (TV 2021)
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
Moon Knight (TV 2022)
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Ms. Marvel (TV 2022)
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (TV 2022)

Phase Five:
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Secret Invasion (TV 2023)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
The Marvels (2023)
Echo (TV 2024)
Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
Agatha All Along (TV 2024)
Daredevil: Born Again (TV 2025-2026)
Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
Thunderbolts (2025)
Ironheart (TV 2025)

Phase Six:
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)
Wonder Man (TV 2025)
Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)
Vision Quest (TV 2026)
Avengers: Doomsday (2026)
Avengers: Secret Wars (2027)

A few notes: Captain America: The Winter Soldier was my MCU gateway drug, and I was always more of a Captain America fan than an MCU fan as a whole. I rewatched most of the phase one movies in 2014 and 2015 as research for my massive Captain America fic Reciprocity, which is why I've seen most of the phase one movies twice.

For the same reason, I'm pretty sure I watched the first two seasons of Agents of SHIELD twice. What a show! I mean that in a mostly derogatory manner! But at the same time it did an amazing job creating characters that I still remember years later and liked even as they were making incredibly terrible choices in an inconsistently written show. I jumped ship after season 3 because I'd finished my fic and also was falling hard out of love with the MCU following Captain America: Civil War.

Even after Civil War, I tried to stay on top of the movies for a while. But after phase 2, I never even tried to keep on top of the TV shows, and it's startling to look at this list and realize how many MCU shows there are that I've never even heard of. Hawkeye had his own show? What?

Agent Carter is one of the few MCU properties I've rewatched for its own sake and not as fic research. I was very sad when it was canceled, but given the general downhill trend of my MCU feelings it may be just as well that it got canceled when it did... However, I've heard the third season was supposed to be set in London, which would have been fantastic and in my heart I'm still sorry we didn't get it even though season 2 was a mess and there's no reason to believe season 3 would have been an improvement.

I do vaguely intend to see a few of the later movies: The Eternals (big Chloe Zhao fan!), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and of course Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts. But they're somewhere below Moana 2 and catching up with all the Pixar movies I've missed since 2020, so it may or may not ever happen.

Book Review: Max in the Land of Lies

Aug. 7th, 2025 02:23 pm
osprey_archer: (books)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
Earlier this year, I read Max in the House of Spies, a novel about a twelve-year-old German Jewish refugee who escapes Germany on a kindertransport… then does everything in his power to get sent back as a spy so he can try to save his parents.

I had a number of criticisms of Max in the House of Spies. (You can also read [personal profile] skygiants wrote a review here.) My biggest criticism was that it saddles Max with a dybbuk and a kobold on his shoulders, who serve no particular purpose but to Statler and Waldorf about how recruiting a twelve-year-old spy is in fact a terrible idea. Of course they have a point, but let’s be real, when I picked up a book about a twelve-year-old spy, I did it in the spirit of “Damn the realism! Full spy ahead!”

And when Max in the Land of Lies begins, we are indeed going full spy ahead!

ExpandSpoilers )

Wednesday Reading Meme

Aug. 6th, 2025 10:01 am
osprey_archer: (books)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
What I’ve Just Finished Reading

As per [personal profile] lucymonster’s recommendation, I read Susan J. Eischeid’s Mistress of Life and Death: The Dark Journey of Maria Mandl, Head Overseer of the Women’s Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, a compulsively readable though very grim book about how a nice German girl rose to head overseer at Auschwitz. Alongside her usual concentration camp duties, Mandl started an orchestra among the prisoners, partly as a bid for status (one in the ear of the male guards, if you will), but also out of a genuine love of music.

There’s a general western cultural belief that art appreciation of all kinds should be morally uplifting, so one might be tempted to infer from this that Mandl was a rare spark of humanity among the camp apparatus. This is absolutely not so. Mandl was famously vicious, and her other interests included kicking prisoners to death and riding through camp like a Valkyrie just to show off her power.

I picked up Simon Barnes’ How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher on a whim from a display in the library, and found it an absolute delight! Barnes offers a few tips for the novice birdwatcher (acquire binoculars), but mostly the book is about the joy that watching birds in even the most incidental way can bring to your life: the thrill of Canada geese returning in spring, that wonderful moment when a hawk swoops down and you thrill to its power and majesty.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill, which I’m not loving as much as I’d hoped, but it’s still early days so perhaps it will grow on me.

What I Plan to Read Next

I picked up Kimberly Newton Fusco’s The Secret of Honeycake on a whim because I liked the cover. We shall see what we shall see!

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