A Nature-Loving Book Club

I know veggies aren’t always seen as a comfort food — which is the kind of food I prefer for book clubs — but this looks decadent. It calls for roasting an entire head of cauliflower after marinading it with harissa paste, making a lemony garlic yogurt sauce, frying chili, shallot, and pine nuts, and finally drizzling with tahini. The entire ingredient list, plus instructions and a video, can be found here.

Poet Nezhukumatathil’s childhood took her from mental institutions where her mother worked to the Arizona mountains where she hiked with her father, but no matter her physical environment, she always knew to seek comfort and guidance in the fauna she found around her. This illustrated memoir is a lovely ode to the natural world.

Science journalist Yong paints a vivid picture of all that can be sensed in the world. Turtles can outline the Earth’s magnetic fields, giant squids see sparkling whales, plants hold the songs of courting insects, and there are even humans who use sonar like bats. I love books that show how rewarding it is to step outside of our own singular experiences as humans.

Writer and comedian Blythe Roberson ponders on America’s view of travel — and all the alleged freedom it brings — as she takes to the road in her stepdad’s Prius. If road trips are the ultimate acts of freedom — as many American travel writers have stated — who truly has the financial means to be free? And why does it seem like all the travel narratives lauded as classics of the genre seem to be written by white guys? Roberson actually quits her day job to go on the ultimate American Adventure^TM, traveling to national parks, the ocean, the Pacific Coast, and more — all the while exploring just how our view of travel fits into things like enlightenment, conservation, freedom, and climate change.

The latest from the National Book Award-winner for All That She Carried shows how some history-making women of the 19th century subverted gender norms by finding freedom in physicality and their environments. The outdoor labor Harriet Tubman was forced to do taught her the skills she’d need to bring herself and others to freedom. Dakota writer Gertrude Simmons Bonnin found freedom from the American Indian boarding school she attended when she played basketball outside. And Louisa May Alcott found her feminist voice in writing that was inspired by nature walks.