Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees

Written by: Thor Hanson

First line: The crossbow fired with a dull thwack and we watched its bolt disappear upward into the leaves and branches, trailing a length of monofilament fishing line that glinted in the scattered beams of sunlight.

Why you should read this book: Bees are fascinating even if you're not a biologist, and they're even more fascinating when you have a biologist to explain them to you. Spanning the entire apian world (not just honeybees!), this book details, in particular, the evolution of bees (from wasps who figured out how to live fully vegetarian lifestyles) and how that impacted the evolution of plants and the evolution of humans. Focusing on the tiny microcosms of bees' worlds, this book opens up a vast, active universe that most of us are simply too big and too busy to notice. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You are ambivalent toward bees and have no interest in learning their secrets.

Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge, A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution

Written by: Terence McKenna

First line: A specter is haunting planetary culture—the specter of drugs. 

Why you should read this book: I suppose this will be the last of my COVID reads, but this is another book I've owned for close to two decades without cracking it open. McKenna's now-classic treatise on  psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and related plants delineates his theories on how they guided the development of human consciousness, archaeological evidence for their importance to ancient civilizations, how and why psychedelic experiences fell out of favor as civilization "progressed," what was lost in the transition, what was found when westerners rediscovered them, and what this all means for the future of our species. The book is, at times, heartbreakingly prescient in its discussion of the forces that continue to suppress the knowledge and practices that could heal humans, individually and as an animal species connected to a vegetable world, and yet containing kernels of hope that seem to pop every time another city, state, or country relaxes restrictions on marijuana and psychedelics. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You are a cryptofascist, or you work for the CIA, or you have a financial interest in the alcohol industry, or you really fell for that lazy D.A.R.E. information someone spewed into your head in the '80s or '90s. 

Venus Plus X

Written by: Theodore Sturgeon

First line: "Charlie Johns," urgently cried Charlie Johns: "Charlie Johns, Charlie Johns!" for that was the absolute necessity—to know who Charlie Johns was, not to let go of that for a second, for anything, ever.

Why you should read this book: Charlie Johns, an average, twentieth century man,  wakes up to find he has been inexplicably summoned to a seemingly utopian, technologically advanced future where gender doesn't exist and all people therefore live in perfect harmony. The Ledom, presumptive inheritors of an Earth destroyed by careless homo sapiens, want Charlie to know them, their culture and customs, and to offer up his honest opinion of their civilization, so that they may better know themselves. With wide-eyed wonder tinged with a yearning for home, Charlie agrees to a complete tour of paradise, down to its greatest secrets, while a parallel story interspersed with Charlie's journey offers up a picture of flawed egalitarianism in a modern (1960) nuclear family.

Why you shouldn't read this book: While Sturgeon was, in so many ways, ahead of his time, he was also, like the rest of us, a product of his time; I'd like to believe that our understanding of sex, sexuality, and gender has advanced substantially in the last 60 years.

Grandmother Fish: A Child's First Book of Evolution

Written by: Jonathan Tweet and Karen Lewish

First line: This is our Grandmother Fish. She lived a long long, long, long, long time ago.

Why you should read this book: A joyful and accessible explanation of evolution directed to the youngest readers, this book begins with a fish (not because life begin with a fish, but because children can comprehend the concept of "fish" better than they can "single celled organisms"), points out her evolutionary advantages (she can wiggle, swim fast, and chomp things), and then discusses some of the evolutionary branches that descended from this proto fish. The book goes on to draw a line from fish to reptiles, reptiles to mammals, mammals to apes, and apes to humans, using the type of poetic repetition and variations that draws children into stories. The supplementary material includes a partial family tree of all life on earth, and many notes for adult humans seeking to further illuminate these concepts for young humans. All around a wonderful reference for little kids just beginning to explore their world, science, and what it means to be alive.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You know who you are and you can get the hell off my book blog. We believe in science around here.

Galapagos

Written by: Kurt Vonnegut

First line: The thing was: One million years ago, back in 1986 A.D., Guayaquil was the chief seaport of the little South American democracy of Ecuador, whose capital was Quito, high in the Andes Mountain.

Why you should read this book: Pure Vonnegut: a ghostly narrator points out the fatal flaws of the human race as it exists today and explains how civilization as we know it ends, along with the details of natural selection that helped out species evolve to be happier and better suited to our environment. A cast of ultimately human characters and mistakes skip along from disaster to disaster, and finally to salvation. Expect cynicism.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You don't understand cynicism.