To celebrate International Women in Science Day we’ve got a new feature! Introducing the Sovende Bjorn book club. This has been a long time coming but inevitable, I, Emily am a former bookseller (shoutout to my Waterstone’s homies), and although I ran the children’s department for a long time, I am still a veracious reader. Every month or so I will be sharing a few of mine and our favourite books. We’ll be having a conversation about them over on Instagram or you can follow me on GoodReads here.
To kick off this new feature we’ll be celebrating International Women in Science Day by featuring five books by women in Science & Nature fields & one really interesting book celebrating two trailblazing women botanists in the American West. You can click the book covers to shop the kindle books on Amazon or find them in your local independent bookshop.
Eight Bears by Gloria Dickie
A global exploration of the eight remaining species of bears―and the dangers they face.
Bears have always held a central place in our collective memory, from Indigenous folklore and Greek mythology to nineteenth-century fairytales and the modern toy shop. But as humans and bears come into ever-closer contact, our relationship nears
a tipping point. Today, most of the eight remaining bear species are threatened with extinction. Some, such as the panda bear and the polar bear, are icons of the natural world; others, such as the spectacled bear and the sloth bear, are far less known.
In Eight Bears, journalist Gloria Dickie embarks on a globe-trotting journey to explore each bear’s story, whisking readers from the cloud forests of the Andes to the ice floes of the Arctic; from the jungles of India to the backwoods of the Rocky Mountain West. She meets with key figures on the frontlines of modern conservation efforts—the head of a rescue center for sun and moon bears freed from bile farms, a biologist known as Papa Panda, who has led China’s panda-breeding efforts for almost four decades, a conservationist retraining a military radar system to detect and track polar bears near towns—to reveal the unparalleled challenges bears face as they contend with a rapidly changing climate and encroaching human populations.
Weaving together ecology, history, mythology, and a captivating account of her travels and observations, Dickie offers a closer look at our volatile relationship with these magnificent mammals. Engrossing and deeply reported, Eight Bears delivers a clear warning for what we risk losing if we don’t learn to live alongside the animals that have shaped our cultures, geographies, and stories.
The Wise Hours by Miriam Darlington
One minute I was sipping my tea by the window. There was nothing but the palest edge of grey light and a wisp of steam from my cup―and then a shadow swooped out of the air. With the lightest of scratches, as if the dawn light was solidifying into life, there it was, perched like an exclamation mark on the balcony: an owl, come to my home. Owls have existed for over sixty million years, and in the relatively short time we have shared the planet with these majestic birds they have ignited the human imagination. But even as owls continue to captivate our collective consciousness, celebrated British nature writer Miriam Darlington finds herself struck by all she doesn’t know about the true nature of these enigmatic creatures.
Darlington begins her fieldwork in the British Isles with her teenage son, Benji. As her avian fascination grows, she travels to France, Serbia, Spain, Finland, and the frosted Lapland borders of the Arctic for rare encounters with the Barn Owl, Tawny Owl, Long-eared Owl, Pygmy Owl, Snowy Owl, and more. But when her son develops a mysterious illness, her quest to understand the elusive nature of owls becomes entangled with her search for finding a cure.
Brave the Wild River by Melissa L. Sevigny
In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off down the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious expedition leader and three amateur boatmen. With its churning rapids, sheer cliffs, and boat-shattering boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. But for Clover and Jotter, it held a tantalizing appeal: no one had surveyed the Grand Canyon’s plants, and they were determined to be the first.
Through the vibrant letters and diaries of the two women, science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny traces their forty-three-day journey, during which they ran rapids, chased a runaway boat, and turned their harshest critic into an ally. Their story is a spellbinding adventure of two women who risked their lives to make an unprecedented botanical survey of a little-known corner of the American West at a time when human influences had begun to change it forever.
The Company of Owls by Polly by Atkin
As the autumn nights draw in, join Polly Atkin in a nocturnal love song to the owls that surround her Lake District home – a stunning meditation on learning to listen in a world full of noise.
This is such a beautifully descriptive book that really brings to the fore the author’s love of owls and how much they have impacted on her life. The Lake District is where Polly really encountered owls for the first time and her descriptions of the landscapes and natural history of the area are fascinating. The author brings poetry into this book and her narrative is poignant at times as it tells of her battles with poor health and how nature has healing powers that can never properly be understood.
I learnt a lot from this book as it describes not only the tawny owls of her Grasmere home but also other owls and other places she has lived. There are owls in the woods where I live, I often hear them but rarely see them, just an occasional silhouette at dusk so it was wonderful to share Polly’s encounters as it all really resonated with me. A truly wonderful reading experience and one that I will happily share with others.
The Age of Deer by Erika Howsare
Deer have been an important part of the world that humans occupy for millennia. They’re one of the only large animals that can thrive in our presence. In the 21st century, our relationship is full of contradictions: We hunt and protect them; we cull them from suburbs while making them an icon of wilderness; we see them both as victims and as pests. But there is no doubt that we have a connection to deer: in mythology and story, in ecosystems biological and digital, in cities and in forests.
Delving into the historical roots of these tangled attitudes and how they play out in the present, Erika Howsare observes scientists capture and collar fawns; hunters show off their trophies; a museum interpreter teaching American history while tanning a deer hide; an animal-control officer collecting the carcasses of deer killed by sharpshooters; and a woman bottle-raising orphaned fawns in her backyard. As she reports these stories, Howsare’s eye is always on the bigger picture: Why do we look at deer in the ways we do, and what do these animals reveal about human involvement in the natural world?
Vanishing Treasures by Katherine Rundell
The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and passionately persuasive book, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's most awe-inspiring animals currently facing extinction.
Consider the seahorse: couples mate for life and meet each morning for a dance, pirouetting and changing colours before going their separate ways, to dance again the next day. The American wood frog survives winter by allowing itself to freeze solid, its heartbeat slowing until it stops altogether. Come spring, the heart kick-starts itself spontaneously back to life. As for the lemur, it lives in matriarchal troops led by an alpha female (it’s not unusual for female ring-tailed lemurs to slap males across the face when they become aggressive). Whenever they are cold or frightened, they group together in what’s known as a lemur ball, paws and tails intertwined, to form a furry mass as big as a bicycle wheel.
But each of these extraordinary animals is endangered or holds a sub-species that is endangered. This urgent, inspiring book of essays dedicated to 23 unusual and under appreciated creatures is a clarion call insisting that we look at the world around us with new eyes—to see the magic of the animals we live among, their unknown histories and capabilities, and above all how lucky we are to tread the same ground as such vanishing treasures.
Beautifully illustrated, and full of inimitable wit and intellect, Vanishing Treasures is a chance to be awestruck and lovestruck, to reckon with the beauty of the world, its fragility, and its strangeness.
We hope you enjoy this selection and we’ve inspired you to pick up something new. Next month we’ll be looking at some of my favourite travel books.
Don't forget you can follow us over on Instagram here to join in the conversation and let me know any books you recommend adding to the list. Or comment below!